From The Guardian (UK):

The undergraduate degree in homeopathic medicine at the University of Central Lancashire has stopped recruiting new students after “relentless attacks from the anti-homeopathy league”.

The course leaders, Kate Chatfield and Jean Duckworth, blamed low recruitment levels for the decision not to enrol new students on to the course this year or in 2009.

But academics against the “pseudo-science” degrees, led by Prof David Colquhoun, a pharmacologist at University College London, are claiming the move as the “first major victory in the battle for the integrity of universities”.

Several universities run degree courses in complementary medicine, which critics have slammed for being unscientific and damaging to a university’s reputation.

The undegraduate students interested in learning about real medicine have apparently recognized that shit like homeopathy, herbal treatments for real problems, chiropractic medicine, etc. will only make their degrees look like crayon drawings on napkins instead of anything worth telling anyone. I’d rather admit to dropping out of middle school than tell someone I practice homeopathic or alternative medicine.

For the uninitiated, here’s a definition of what homeopathy is from Quack Watch:

Homeopathic products are made from minerals, botanical substances, and several other sources. If the original substance is soluble, one part is diluted with either nine or ninety-nine parts of distilled water and/or alcohol and shaken vigorously (succussed); if insoluble, it is finely ground and pulverized in similar proportions with powdered lactose (milk sugar). One part of the diluted medicine is then further diluted, and the process is repeated until the desired concentration is reached. Dilutions of 1 to 10 are designated by the Roman numeral X (1X = 1/10, 3X = 1/1,000, 6X = 1/1,000,000). Similarly, dilutions of 1 to 100 are designated by the Roman numeral C (1C = 1/100, 3C = 1/1,000,000, and so on). Most remedies today range from 6X to 30X, but products of 30C or more are marketed.

Now here’s a simple way to imagine just how much water is needed for this kind of proper dilution of the substance:

A 30X dilution means that the original substance has been diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. Assuming that a cubic centimeter of water contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth.

Basically the theory behind homeopathy is, a mineral becomes stronger by adding more water to the solution. If you want to test this theory out, take a pinch of salt, and keep adding water. Anyone with even a third grade science education knows the presence of salt isn’t going to get stronger as more water is added.

However that is the entire theory behind homeopathy, and it’s unbelievable how anyone can disregard what they learned in primary school. At best, at best, homeopathy is a placebo. However if people are using homeopathy for serious afflictions, and sure enough there are people who do this, it no longer becomes a placebo. It becomes medical malpractice because the person is getting worse by receiving the treatment.

Hopefully all schools that give degrees in homeopathic medicine will stop giving them out. We need more real doctors practicing scientific medicine, not people engaging in quackery. Homeopathy is the exact same as the faith healing bullshit practiced by Christian Scientists and Pat Robertson, and may seem harmless but can have tremendously bad results for suggestable people with serious ailments.