Dave Curtis - archived blogs

Here is the response you get from the ASA if you complain about a homeopathy website. Seems fair enough to me. Dear Sir/Madam ADVERTISING CLAIMS ON HOMEOPATHY WEBSITES Thank you for your recent complaint. As you may know, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has received over a hundred and fifty complaints about over a hundred different websites for homeopathy. Complaints cover a range of issues from specific claims made by individual advertisers to general concerns about the sector as a whole. Because of the volume of complaints, we are sending this letter to everyone who contacted us on these issues to let you know what action we intend to take. The ASA has an established position on claims that can be made, and those claims that are not likely to be acceptable for homeopathy, based on the requirements set out in the CAP Code and previous ASA adjudications. Although we have not historically received many complaints about advertising for homeopathy, the Code has general requi...

There was an invitation to respond to this consultation. Here's the email I sent: Hi. This whole project is lunacy. Why are you wasting tax-payers money on it? Why don’t you waste your time licensing sunlight and lettuce? Even thinking about thinking about licenses for homeopathy is an insult to every hard-working NHS professional trying to alleviate people’s suffering using evidence-based practice. Anybody involved in such an endeavour should go take a long hard look at themselves in the bathroom mirror and then flush themselves down the toilet. There, that’s what I think. Regards -         Dave Curtis -- Professor David Curtis Consultant and Honorary Professor in Psychiatry Dept Adult Psychiatry 3rd Floor Outpatient Building Royal London Hospital

Here's an email I sent my MP, for all the good it will do. She's a LibDem minister so she'll most likely just toe the party line. From: Curtis David (East London NHS Foundation Trust) Sent: 27 December 2010 17:28 To: 'Lynne Featherstone - Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey & Wood Green' Subject: Government plans for the NHS Dear Ms Featherstone. I am writing to express my extreme concern at the government's plans for the NHS. The major reorganization proposed has not been properly thought through. The very process of reorganization will certainly strain the NHS in the short term and is being carried out at a time when the NHS is under extreme pressure for other reasons. It breaks the pledge which the Conservatives made not to subject the NHS to new reorganizations. The eventual outcome of the reorganization is quite likely to be deleterious for the NHS. There is no reason why GPs are likely to do a better job of commissioning than professional commissioners. It...

A study in the Lancet seemed to imply that large chromosomal deletions could cause ADHD - children with ADHD were found more often to have such deletions than control subjects. However there is a flaw in the argument because according to the paper the children with ADHD also had lower IQ than controls. It is already known that large chromosomal deletions are associated with intellectual impairment. So a plausible explanation is that by selecting children with ADHD one obtains a sample with low IQ and such subjects can be expected to have more large deletions by virtue of their lower intelligence rather because of any specific relationship between deletions and ADHD. Of course, at one level it is true that ADHD is associated with large deletions. But if the effect is mediated by IQ then this is somewhat different from the notion that "deletions cause ADHD". To test this, one would need to study a sample of subjects with ADHD compared with controls who had been matched for IQ....

Maybe I could use a space to put things up which will be searchable and linkable and which people can comment on. I'll try posting things here and see how it all goes.