badscience » Dreary Pro-Homeopathy Piece and Letter

So, Ive been away for the last week or so.
I've started the new job and have been running around with that. And then the big news happened.
No not my folks coming over to visit. That's actually up in the air because my neice was admitted to the hospital.
With a 4cm brain tumour.
Between the brainstem and cerebellum.
The story was long and convuluted. This is just the Readers' Digest version.
To prepare for my grandfather's internment and to begin cleaning and preparing the house for sale (which doesn't make my grandmother happy at all), my parents travelled down to Amherst again.
During the stay there, my neice complained of double vision, nausea and other problems. She was lethargic and harder to get up in the mornings than most teenagers.
When they got back up to Bourget, my sister booked an appointment for the opthamologist. Who took one look in Bailie's eyes and called the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (make note of the acronym CHEO. You'll hear it a lot. It's pronounced Chee-oh, Like Chiyonofuji.) Eye Clinic, who refused here and sent her in for X-rays and MRIs and other medical alphabet soups.
And they found the tumour.
A couple of days later she was in neurosurgery for 14 hours to have it removed. Let's just say that's dangerous. I really don't think I could describe the tension the family was under.
Cut to the middle.
The tumour was completely removed and wasn't attached to the brain, meaning there's no substantial neurological damage. There are the usual issues associated with brain salad surgery: motor function difficulties, blurry vision, moodiness (more than other 13-year old girls -- I'm almost 14!!!)
She will need extensive physio therapy to relearn walking and fine motor skills and may end up with a lazy eye out of the deal. But she'll live and be intact, both of which are important.
By the way, the treatment available at CHEO is first class. They gave this their A game and we are grateful.
In celebration of this triumph of conventional medicine, I have found a most interesting set of articles.
They guy who writes the Bad Science column in the Guardian is going to town on his own paper in this post badscience » Dreary Pro-Homeopathy Piece and Letter on his blog.
It's a response to the recent change of regulation allowing homeopathic medicines (is there a font that is ironic I could put that in?) to print their claims on the label. This was followed by the release of a study showing that most complementary medicine is bunk...yeah, I know, which one was that again. They all say the same thing....
An osteopath was narked by this and got out the typewriter to vent her spleen with this article, which is basically the same as this rambling, fallacy-ridden bit of sandwhich schmutz by, guess who, the same clown-college teacher.