SPECIAL REPORT

Belgium Skeptics Commit Mass Suicide

LUC BONNEUX

ast year, the major health insur- dence-based medicine." The CEOs of bull milk) will rise from the liquid, and ance companies in de- the insurance companies did not explain kill the skeptic on the spot. All important cided to cover part of the costs of to SKEPP how quackery would improve newspapers and TV stations were L the quality of medical practice. It cannot recruited to witness the terrible extermi- . "Covering" is a bit strong: only 20 percent of the costs are reim- be the idea to add, to the dangerous nation of these dangerous minds. bursed. The Belgian companies never quacks abusing modern medicine, the It would he a great loss to Belgian theless offer a quality label to quackery somewhat less dangerous quacks selling academia, a terrible blow to all these and an encouragement premium to con- water and silliness, or is it? And of course, narrow-minded people that do not vince the uninformed public that home- the final argument was that "Hom- understand the miracles of homeopathy. opathy has medicinal properties. The eopathy is cheap!" It may cost Belgium Among the twenty-three suicidais were a poor patient remains in the dark about $18 million per year, or some $1.80 for hoard of professors from medical and the real properties of homeopathy, a every Belgian, for something that does other faculties, a rightly famous publi- magic as powerful as the miracle at not work. Is $ 1,000 cheap for a car that cist and television program maker, and Cana, where Jesus Christ changed water cannot, and never will, operate? The even a few normal people armed with into wine. In homeopathy, alcohol and Belgian health insutance companies nothing but common sense. water are beaten into powerful drugs. deliver astonishing insights in economy. The guy who spawned the idea of the When SKEPP, the (Flemish) Belgian The Belgian skeptics were exhausted skeptical suicide was Joeri Mesens, skeptical organization, attacked the and overwhelmed by such well-crafted indeed an ordinary young man. Once a health insurance companies for wasting arguments. Seeing the errors of the skep- true believer he became an apostate of people's money to promote quackery, we tic's ways, they resigned themselves to homeopathic salvation after conducting got the traditional response: "People like committing mass suicide by drinking a self-designed, skeptical experiments on it." Insurance payers love to be deceived, lethal dose of terribly toxic and danger- his poor children. Several times he with- so let's deceive diem. SKEPP suggested ous drugs: snake poison, Belladonna or held life-saving homeopathic wonder reimbursing red Bordeaux wine, as peo- deadly nightshade, arsenic, dog's milk, drugs from one of his two sick children, ple love red wine, too. We were not jok- petrol, and cockroach. Dog's milk does observing that both of them recovered ing: there is a trillion times more evi- not sound that dangerous, but try milk- in exactly the same amount of time. The dence that red wine (taken in modera- ing a pit bull. To assure immediate idea of suicide came to him after an tion) is good for your health. death, these powerful drugs were argument with his mother, a true "Traditional doctors do not perform evi- immensely dynamized: the daring skep- believer in homeopathy. She was horri- tics selected the over-die-counter 30C fied when he proposed to drink all of Luc Bonneux has been associate professor homeopathic solutions (reimbursed by her drugs at once. in public health at the Utrecht Medical the health insurance, if prescribed by a The idea was taken over by Tom Centrum (the Netherlands). A medical certified quack). A dynamization of 30C Schoepen, editor-in-chief of the SKEPP's doctor and scientist, financially supported means the poison is diluted 10** times. magazine Wonder en is Gheen Wonder by the people, he says he has a duty to pro- That is a one followed by sixty zeros. The (Miracles Ain't Miracles). The son of a tect the public from quacks and frauds. whole earth (estimated at 10" molecules) once famous Belgian country and west- However, he joined the Belgian skeptics is way too small to hold a single molecule ern singer, his looks are better than (SKEPP) for esthetic reasons. "In our short in diat dilution. That is, in homeopathic Johnny Depp's. He effortlessly raises journey through Deep Time, understand- terms, an awfully powerful dilution. The highly undiluted hormone levels in fel- ing makes the trip more beautiful and immensely "dynamized" spirits of arsenic low human beings blessed widi a second more enjoyable." and snake poison (not to mention the pit X chromosome, and bewitches our

1 4 May/June 2004 (female) minister of Public Health. Alas, dency to develop wrinkles. If you feel trolled experiment showed that Randi's they fall for his looks, but they resist his that your organs arc escaping tJirough $1 million was safe: there was not a arguments. They know someone who has your vagina, or if you bark like a dog, shred of evidence that homeopathy dif- been cured by homeopathy, and even you are more of a Belladonna patient. fered from the pure solvent. It shows more, they know several people who However, if you lose gas from your that a few drips of acidic humor in a know someone who has been cured by vagina and dream of snakes, dog milk is good idea are more efficient than long homeopathy, which is obviously an your poison. serious articles. Not so many people unbeatable argument to subsidize quack- Finally the time had come. The skep- know that homeopathy attributes its ery (some jokes about the average Belgian tics on death row solemnly queued to presumed effects to ridiculously large intelligence seem true). As a matter of personally select their own toxin: "In dilutions (delusions?). course, Schoepen and Mesens were joined fields the skeppies glow, to Most of us, including Prof. Betz, who by the Fidel Castro of the Belgian anti- take their poison, row on row.' In quackery rebels, the Scourge of once followed a serious course of home- front of the assembled national press Homeopathy, professor in Medical opadiy, have "believed." Being progressive they filled their chalices and drained General Practice Wim Betz. and social, we were critical about die their drinks, fully expecting to meet modern drug industry and embraced Betz treated the press and the public their Maker (if He existed). The skep- "ecological" and "natural" alternatives. to a talk on homeopathy and on the tics didn't succeed in their suicide But diere is nothing social or progressive products selected for the skeptical sui- attempt, however. All of them sur- about deluding people. Permitting your- cide. Betz did not need a Castro diatribe vived. Those who had come by car had self to be deceived by a silly theory that of eight hours; a solid twenty minutes to wait before returning home, a bit was outdated and untenable even in the was enough to butcher homeopathy: the dizzy from the alcohol on their empty nineteenth century does not show an homeopaths were so kind to deliver stomachs. Indeed, homeopathy in alco- open or tolerant mind. It only shows you their own satirical texts. To be sure the hol at the liberal dose of a bottle a day are gullible and an easy prey to smooth suicidals knew all the risks, Betz cited might decrease your cardiovascular risk talking quacks. We hope some more peo- copiously from Kent's Materia Medico, (but a good Bordeaux is still a lot ple discovered this, thanks to our (unsuc- which covers sixteen pages on arsenic, cheaper and infinitely better). twenty-four on Belladonna, and twelve cessful) suicide attempt. The attempt was amazingly well cov- on snake poison. We learned among ered by all the national press media. Acknowledgments other things that arsenic "patients" suf- CANVAS, the equivalent of BBC 2, re- fer more at the seacoast, are restless, Luc Bonneux wishes to (hank Griet Vander- drink with small sips, and have a ten- broadcast James Randi's homeopathy masscn and Paul de Belder for assistance and documentary, where a carefully con- helpful comments on previous drafts. Q

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SKEPTICAL INQUIRER May/June 2004 15