Another Child Has Died Because of Homeopathy

The article below was translated from "Another child has died because of homeopathy," published online on June 8, 2019 by Professor Dr. Edzard Ernst, a leading worldwide authority on "traditional, complementary and alternative treatments."

"Homeopathy is harmless; after all, a normal homeopathic remedy contains no active ingredient!" You may frequently encounter such claims. Unfortunately, they are not true. Homeopathic remedies may be largely (but, depending on potency and proper quality control, not entirely) risk-free, yet homeopathy can kill patients. A depressing list of deaths demonstrates this risk. Here is another example:

• The parents of a seven-year-old child who died after they decided to treat his otitis (ear infection) solely with homeopathy were convicted of causing an accidental death (source 1).
• The child, named Francesco, died in Cagli di Pesaro, Italy, on May 27, 2017 from bilateral bacterial otitis.
• His parents were held responsible for the death and received three-month prison sentences.
• The parents had entrusted their son's care to Massimiliano Mecozzi, a homeopath practicing in Pesaro, who will stand trial on September 24.
• The court stated that the homeopath recommended homeopathic products instead of antibiotics that would have saved the patient.
• Francesco died after the otitis developed into encephalitis (the ear infection spread to his brain).

Another article offers further details about the case:

Francesco had otitis media (a middle ear infection). The 55-year-old doctor Massimiliano Mecozzi treated him with homeopathic remedies. When the parents brought Francesco to the hospital a few days later, it was too late: the child died soon afterward. According to the newspaper "Corriere della Sera," the parents had decided not to give their child antibiotics since he was three. Francesco's illness began with a severe cold and fever, and the homeopathic doctor Mecozzi visited frequently, encouraging the parents to bring the child to his clinic. According to his grandfather Maurizio: "He frightened them by claiming that doctors would give the child drugs that would make him deaf or damage his liver. He promised them that Francesco would soon get better."

However, Francesco's condition worsened in the following days, and the infection spread to his brain. By the time the parents brought their son to the emergency department, an inflammatory abscess had formed. Francesco was taken to a hospital in Ancona for emergency surgery. At that point, even intensive antibiotic treatment did not help, and the child died.

According to "Corriere," the doctor had a questionable career: after being temporarily expelled from the medical association, he even worked at a supermarket and as an environmental volunteer. He then contacted a religious community in Varese whose founders were accused of fraud. When asked about his work as a homeopath in Pesaro, Mecozzi said: "I am not interested in telling you about that." .

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Such cases are tragic and, I hope(?), rare!

The cause of this event is a homeopath's neglect (failure to provide adequate medical care). Obviously, such neglect need not always be fatal. I suspect that milder forms of medical neglect through homeopathy are actually quite common (no one knows the exact number). It could even be said that homeopathic treatment involves medical neglect falling into three overlapping categories :

1. In most cases, homeopathic practice has no or very few visible side effects. For example, if a homeopath prescribes a remedy for a self-limiting condition such as a cold, the patient soon recovers because the condition is benign and temporary anyway (often believing homeopathy worked). However, there is invisible harm, including the expense of remedies and the misplaced trust in a sham treatment created by this experience (which may later be very harmful).
2. In many cases, neglect causes unnecessary suffering because optimally effective treatment of the disease is withheld or delayed. Many homeopathic doctors claim that this is not generally true because they also prescribe conventional treatments in parallel. Even if that is true, however, these homeopaths still cause harm by wasting resources. 
3. In some cases, homeopathy causes very serious harm and even deaths, as the case above demonstrates.

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