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Feb. 29, 2016 episode transcript

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Trump is a threat.

VOICE 2: Yup.

VOICE 1: Because he doesn't fit in the same box all the other Republicans are in.

VOICE 2: As he said, I won't be bought off.

VOICE 3: I like his roughness.

VOICE 1: He’s not a politician.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The very things Donald Trump's opponents expect would take him down are the things that build him up among his supporters. As the US Republican party anticipates the Super Tuesday votes, everyone has a theory about who is supporting Donald Trump, why they like him, what they're thinking. So in a moment instead of talking about those supporters we'll speak to them. But there's one thing that has become clear, we're in a moment in time where the distrust of the status quo is palpable and not solely in politics. This brings us to another controversy today, the push and pull between homeopathic and traditional medicine.

SOUNDCLIP

Homeopathy addresses both mental and physical planes. It works on the cause, once the cause eradicated, the illness dissipates.

AMT: As Health Canada moves closer to a deadline forcing changes in the labeling of certain homeopathic remedies directed at children, we’re asking about the rift between trust and science in treatment. That's in an hour. Also today, Phyllis Whitsell began a search for her birth mother in the UK back when few people were making any headway.

SOUNDCLIP

Motherly love was missing from a very early age as a young child. I just wanted to understand the reason why she had to give me up.

AMT: The woman she met was incapable of giving her any answers and Phyllis Whitsell embarked on a journey where only one of them knew the others identity. The story of her secret mother, in half an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti; this is The Current.

'I don't like Donald but I am supporting him for president,' says Trump supporter

Guests: Carlo Maffatt, Lauren Martel, Jeff Scrima

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: We won with everything. Tall people, short people, fat people, skinny people just won! It was a great day and a beautiful day and South Carolina is a beautiful place with just incredible people.

AMT: That of course was Donald Trump celebrating his win at the South Carolina primary last week. The billionaire reality TV star turned Republican presidential nomination front runner is fraying nerves in establishment circles with his talk of temporarily banning Muslims from coming to the US and mass deportations of illegal immigrants among other things. Donald Trump has been called a clown, a joke, even a fascist. But a large number of Republican voters have made the bombastic presidential nominee the man to beat. Tomorrow is Super Tuesday as a number of US states hold primaries and caucuses. So today we've got a panel of Trump supporters to explore the growing popularity of the untested populist politician. Carlo Maffatt moved to the US from his birthplace in Mexico in 1990, he's an entrepreneur. Among his many businesses, he's done marketing work for political campaigns for both big US parties and most recently for Ted Cruz. He joins us from Las Vegas. Lauren Martel is a lawyer who owns her own firm. She's been a registered Republican for about 30 years since she was 18 years old. She joins us from Hilton Head, South Carolina. And Jeff Scrima calls himself a socially liberal, fiscally conservative Republican. He's the former mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin. He joins us from Washington DC. Hello and welcome to all of you.

JEFF SCRIMA: Good morning.

AMT: I want to go around the table and just ask you in a phrase, why you are big supporters of Donald Trump; let's start with you, Carlo.

CARLO MAFFATT: I don't like Donald but I am supporting him for president. And the reason is because being a conservative without a party, the Republican Party has been very disappointing to me and I believe that the only way to in some ways destroy the party and build it again is to have an independent, somebody from the outside to come in and start operation. I think he's the only opportunity that right now is available to us.

AMT: Lauren Martel.

LAUREN MARTEL: You know I have to agree with the colleague on the panel here that the Republican Party has gone so far away from the traditional values of American conservative principles of free markets, limited government, and entrepreneurial spirit in America. And I think Donald really brings those three principles to the executive office that he’s seeking.

AMT: Jeff Scrima, in a phrase, why are you supporting Donald Trump?

JEFF SCRIMA: He is the only one with real world business management experience. The other candidates are career politicians, they have not solved problems. I believe that he can solve problems.

AMT: Okay. Let's now get into some of the details of why you guys feel the way you do. First of all, Carlo Maffatt, you've done paid work for the Cruz campaign, why would you support Donald Trump instead?

CARLO MAFFATT: As I said, now it takes over a billion dollars to become president. And I believe that all these candidates, in order to raise the kind of money, they have to pretty much sell the farm and by the time they get to sit in that presidential chair they are not free to act. If for example another candidate similar to Trump, let's say a Jeff Bezos from Amazon, who is a known Democrat were to run for president I will also be tempted to have somebody like that with that kind of business experience that can actually take care of business. If Trump becomes president, he will be free to act, he can actually put his own cabinet without having to fulfill campaign promises. And this is something that happens in every single presidential campaign. One quick thing, there is of course a lot of people that get scandalised and scared about the bombastic nature of his presentation, the things he said, for some people some of it sounds crazy, even makes me nervous. But there’s a certain method to his madness. You can see that every time he does this, he achieves getting the attention and the free media to get where he wants to go. So I find his brand very, very interesting and I think that's what America could use at this point in time.

AMT: So you think that what he says that is provocative is just a campaign way of getting attention?

CARLO MAFFATT: It is absolutely out of his book, The Art of the Deal. That book is pretty much centred on one premise, and that is whenever you want something really bad, you really have to ask the moon and the stars. So by time you’re done negotiating and you settle for it, you're going to get exactly what you need.

AMT: Lauren Martel, how would you describe the Republican leadership's response to Donald Trump's candidacy?

LAUREN MARTEL: Well I think that they're a little bit concerned and I think that's a good thing. As we watch them all kind of jumping on the bandwagon for Marco Rubio at this point, I think you're seeing the disconnect between the people who are American conservatives and the people who are just establishment, more globalist agenda.

AMT: Jeff Scrima, how much of Donald Trump’s support do you think comes out of anger toward the Republican establishment?

JEFF SCRIMA: I wouldn't call it anger; I would call it just dissatisfaction. The American people in general, they're not happy with the polarization here in Washington DC. Both the Democrats and the Republicans spend most of their time fighting with each other and trying to make each other look bad rather than actually getting things done for the people. So the people are ready for someone to come in and shake things up. Someone again that has real world executive experience that knows how to get results and has the capability to compromise to get those results.

AMT: Okay. Carlo Maffatt, I want to just ask you a little more. You're an American, you’re originally from Mexico, what do you think about the wall Mr. Trump says he wants to build along the US-Mexican border?

CARLO MAFFATT: Well I think it needs to happen. I mean no other country, including Mexico, has an immigration policy as soft as the one we have. In Mexico for example, if you stay your visa, they will deport you right away. There are no ifs and buts. And as I said, no other country completely disregards their immigration the way we're doing it. So I don't know why we have been neglecting enforcing the laws because any other law that pretty much is out there we try to or at least attempt to have enforcement. But when it comes to immigration, we apparently just gave up.

AMT: Carlo, is this a debate in the Hispanic community? Your friends who are from Mexico or other Latinas, do they agree with you?

CARLO MAFFATT: It is pretty interesting in some ways I get a lot of people that whisper to me, hey, by the way I'm also all for Trump. But they don't want anybody to know it because most of the Latino community has been pretty much aligned to the left on this issue. And they consider supporting Trump some kind of bigotry and et cetera. But as I said, when it comes to that, I am for my family and for my country, I don't even call myself a Mexican-American. I came running. I came to the US running from the Mexican government. It's a system that simply doesn't work. And now we have 14 million people trying to promote the same idiotic ideas in America, it’s simply going to destroy us. And the saddest thing is that if we destroy America, there’s no other place to run. There will be no other place that we can invade after this. So we need to really make a stand here and return to what made America great.

AMT: Lauren Martel, what do you think of Donald Trump's wall proposal?

LAUREN MARTEL: I think it's a great idea. His whole art of the deal, and a lot of his books, they're great principles. But everybody who negotiates wants to ask for the sun and moon the stars. I've been doing divorce work for years and those are the kind of things that you do. He knows what to do and he knows how to do it. I actually have a different opinion of the things that come out of his mouth. I believe that they're authentic and I think that in our country, political correctness has put a little bit of a gag on the First Amendment of people to actually define the reality that they're in because they're concerned that either they're going to be sued or be considered a bigot or a hater or something. And these are all things in a society that you wouldn't want to have. In an enlightened Western educated, moral, decent society, people should be able to say things. And so a lot of what he's saying, people may consider that brash but that's only because it's so refreshing in that he's using words to define reality. And he's using words to help promote solutions that are real time solutions.

AMT: Okay. Well I have a clip I'd like to play. This is from a Donald Trump rally that took place in December. This caused a lot of outrage in America and around the world. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

AMT: Lauren Martel, are you comfortable with that campaign promise?

LAUREN MARTEL: Absolutely. I was actually standing in line to see him live at the USS Yorktown in Charleston, South Carolina, and CNN asked that question because he had just come out and said that exact press release. I have studied this issue for many years and I believe that the program itself that he's talking about absolutely lacks integrity. It's a system that incentivises potential criminal behavior, is replete with potential for fraud, it's takes federal taxpayer dollars and state taxpayer dollars and really funnels it in different places.

AMT: Okay. But he's talking about action against an identifiable religious group and you're comfortable with that?

LAUREN MARTEL: Well let me tell you this, what is not protected under the First Amendment and that is not even considered religion is rape or marrying somebody who's under 16 years old. These aren't things that if people come over here and can assimilate with the United States of America and our laws, then absolutely not. And so we're not talking about discriminating against people, we're not talking about being non-charitable; we're saying that our laws don't protect behaviours that you're claiming are religion. What he's looking at is protecting American citizens because where there's been an influx of Muslims or Islamic believing cultural people. In every single one of those refugee resettlement places or even in Germany and Sweden and some of the other places, rapes are going up. Look at what happened in Cologne, Germany. I mean there are rapes, there's high crime, and unless you want to completely destroy a civilized society you do have to put a stop to that.

AMT: Jeff Scrima, what do you think?

JEFF SCRIMA: Well if the comment is simply we should ban all Muslims and it stops there, then I believe it's clearly wrong and I would not support that. But he didn't stop there, he said until we find out exactly what's going on and until we have a better process to screen and review the matter. There's a lot of debate right now in the US about the screening process, is it adequate? Many of our own governors question it and do not agree with what our current president is doing. So in the full context of defining what's going on so that we can resume the process, I understand what he's saying. But if that first segment is taken out of context, I do not support it.

AMT: Carlo Maffatt, you came to America from another country, does what he proposes bother you?

CARLO MAFFATT: That would be a perfect example of what I was telling you. I think that's exactly what he does, he goes exactly to the extreme so then he can implement the necessary policies because, as you’re saying, it is impossible and it will be ridiculous to actually believe that he wants to close it for every single Muslim. First of all, you will not even know who is actually a practicing Muslim and there's no intelligence service that has that kind of information. But it gives him room to maneuver and apply the policies that are needed and there's a need to apply social security measures so you can protect Americans. But another issue that is important is for example, he's getting a lot of flak because in the eyes of a lot of people he’s behaving like a bigot. Sometimes you got to wonder in America what's wrong with being a bigot on some cultural issues. For example, and I'll give you a simple example, there’s apparently somebody from Ku Klux Klan who is supporting Trump and he simply declined to denounce them --

AMT: Carlo, I’ll just stop you because you're right. It's in the news today that he has essentially refused to denounce an endorsement from the former KKK leader, David Duke.

CARLO MAFFATT: Exactly that.

AMT: He says that he doesn't know.

CARLO MAFFATT: Exactly.

AMT: He says I don't know anything about David Duke. But David Duke has endorsed him. He's endorsed him.

CARLO MAFFATT: There you go. The Ku Klux Klan is just a bunch of idiots, I certainly don't agree with their beliefs. But you know what, they have the right to believing whatever they want as long as they are not breaking the law and hurting anybody.

AMT: Let me ask you Carlo, you say that everyone has a right to believe what they want; but if you're going to run a country should you actually believe things that actually identify certain groups and that support those who are racist?

CARLO MAFFATT: I told you in the beginning, I don't like Donald Trump. If I could have a proverbial beer with any of the candidates, it will certainly not be Donald Trump. I have nothing in common with the man. But I want somebody that will give us a good economy. I don't care what he believes. All I care is that he behaves in a lawful way and he creates a better economy for everybody. That's all I care. As I said, if he doesn't like green people or purple people, I really don't care. As I said, I personally don't like socialist policies. I know they create poverty, I know they're not right for our country and I certainly discriminate against those policies and I'm very proud about that. As I said, I ran away from Mexico. For example, Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico has been in the news lately, criticizing the ideas of Trump. But that is the very same man who created the mass migration of millions of Mexicans to the United States. I can only imagine how bad the unemployment would be in Mexico right now if they had another 14 million unemployed people. He created that problem.

AMT: Okay. Carlo Maffatt, even if he loses the nomination or the election, how has Donald Trump's candidacy changed US politics do you think?

CARLO MAFFATT: Well he hasn't changed my policies. I don't find him to be a very strong conservative. He has a lot of conservative ideas, but on some other things, I really don't know where he stands. In some things he may be more liberal than I would like him to be. But as I said, for me in certain ways, I'm behaving a little bit like an arsonist. I'm really just throwing a Molotov cocktail to the establishment and to the Republican Party because it needs to be destroyed and rebuilt. It's so corrupted. And that's what I need to see because right now there is no party for us conservatives.

AMT: Okay. Jeff Scrima, what do you think the United States would look like under a President Trump?

JEFF SCRIMA: Well that's a very interesting question. I believe that because of his success in the business world in perhaps the toughest city in the world to do business, which would be New York; I believe that if he applies the same skills to the White House, particularly the ability to be bold, to compromise to get things done, to negotiate, to bring people together, I believe that things could be very successful under Trump.

AMT: And Lauren Martel, what do you think the United States would look like under a President Trump?

LAUREN MARTEL: I think the United States is a great and exceptional country because of the people in the United States. And I've absolutely seen, as narcissistic as everybody saying Donald Trump is, I've actually seen him give up the platform for our United States military veterans. Some who have lost limbs fighting for what we believe in. So I have seen him take an opportunity where he could’ve completely dominated the stage but had the leadership to move back and let other people shine. I believe that he’ll get some of the oppressive overregulation that we have out of the way so that America can be free to be what makes America great which is her people. Not her president. And just on another side bar, I think that the Democrats, if anybody ever called for somebody to say, Al Sharpton should be denounced when he goes ahead and endorses some Democrat candidate for the exact same reason. I've never seen reverse racism worse than Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

AMT: Okay we have to leave it there, we have to leave it there. Thank you all of you for letting us know how you think about this.

CARLO MAFFATT: Thank you.

LAUREN MARTEL: Thanks. God bless.

JEFF SCRIMA: Thank you.

AMT: Lauren Martel, a lawyer, she was in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Carlo Maffatt, an entrepreneur in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jeff Scrima, former mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin; he joined us from Washington DC. We want to hear from you if you are a supporter of Donald Trump, what do you make of the Republican front runner? Do you find his outsider status appealing as well? Let us know, tweet us @thecurrentCBC. Find this story on our Facebook page and comment on the post, or e-mail us by clicking on the contact link, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

Phyllis Whitsell goes undercover to make a connection with her birth mother

Guests: Phyllis Whitsell

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. Still to come, the fight between alternative and traditional medicine heats up as Health Canada clamps down on some homeopathic treatments, but first, retracing an adoptee’s search for her birth mother.

SOUNDCLIP

[different sound bites, one after the other]

A Calgary woman has reconnected with her long lost brother…

And to find out I got an extended family now, it’s a great feeling…

Well it was an emotional reunion for a Susquehanna Valley teen and his birth parents this weekend…

I just kind of wanted them to be a part of it, and then having my family come together…

After 50 years of searching, Betty found her mother…here’s your daughter Mom, here’s Eva May…hi Mom… [laughing]

AMT: Well, it makes for a touching news story when adopted children reunite with their biological families but not every adopted child gets a fairy tale ending. Phyllis Whitsell was eight months old when she was left at an orphanage in the UK. As a child she was told her parents had died but she never stopped looking for a connection with her birth mother. After years of searching what Phyllis Whitsell discovered, that rooting out family secrets meant keeping a big secret of her own. Phyllis Whitsell is the author of My Secret Mother and she joins us from Birmingham, England. Hello.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Hello.

AMT: It was 1957 when your birth mother gave you up. The orphanage system was very rigid. How were you treated as a little girl at that orphanage?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: The orphanage where my mother left me was a Catholic orphanage that was run by very strict religious nuns. It was very regimented and based on bringing children up in a religious background. As a little girl you accept what your situation is, but it was very, very much a routine. You got up in the morning, you said prayers, but that sort of motherly love was missing from a very early age, as a young child.

AMT: And you were all in big rooms, right?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes.

AMT: With all the girls in one room?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: That's right, yeah. It was like four beds in a bay petitioned by glass panels and it wasn't a homely feel about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing that in any way, other than to say that those little homely touches didn't seem to be there.

AMT: Well no, and it's important to remember that that's what it was like in the late 50's right? And you had a friend there named Brendan. You really wanted Brendan to be your brother, tell us about him.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: We really got a special bond between us, he always wanted to protect me and he wanted to be my big brother. When he was adopted, he was pleading with the nuns that we could be adopted together but obviously that wasn't going to happen. It was lovely and it was very heart breaking when he was adopted and I had to say good-bye to him on the orphanage steps.

AMT: You make the point that you have such a vivid memory of him because you didn't have a mother or you didn't feel you belong to something. You felt like you belonged together with him.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I think everybody--obviously the first memory of having somebody very special in their life is often their mother and their father and it's something that they take for granted. It's the normal thing that happens to a lot of children but as an adopted child, at times you’re looking for that connection with somebody and that's what I had with Brendan. And when he was adopted I felt that loss, it stayed with me for a long time.

AMT: How old were you when you were adopted?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was four and a half.

AMT: And what was life like with your new family?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was excited to have a new family and to be finally having a mother and a father and brothers and sisters, but I never seem to make that connection with my adoptive mother. What my idea of a mother was for somebody to put their arms around me and give me that affection, but I never really got that from my adoptive mother.

AMT: How did she treat you like compared to the other…to her biological children? There were three siblings, right?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: There were three, yes.

AMT: You made four.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes I made…the youngest one, the fourth one yes. I mean I was told from a very early age when I went to see Mother Superior, when I very first met my potential adoptive parents that their daughter wanted a sister and I said couldn't I be their daughter too?

AMT: So you kind of felt that right away. You felt a little bit of a little barrier almost?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes I always said that it's almost as if the seed had been sown then, that maybe there was a little bit of jealousy. It's sort of a natural feeling really, isn’t it? It was recognizing how an adopted child may feel, especially at four and a half and to settle into an adoptive family at that age. It takes a bit of adjusting and it’s just recognizing their feelings really, and understanding them and explaining things to them rather than--there had been a lot of secrets around my adoption which there certainly was.

AMT: Well what information did you get from your adoptive family about your birth parents?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: That was the thing you see, I was told that both my parents were married. It was all to do is respectability, and that both died--my father died and six months later, my mother had died. I don't mean to be too critical about my adoptive mother. She gave me security in her—I say in her clumsy way because I think she might be having tensions. Yes she meant well in some ways but how I can say, she was so emphasizing the fact that she was married it made me feel that she wasn't. You know it's very difficult for me to say to her, I don't believe what you're telling me because obviously as a child you can't question your parents. They tell you what they tell you and you believe them. This was frustrating because I don't think she understood that I just wanted to understand the reason why she had to give me up and then maybe it wouldn't be so curious to find out my true identity because I would have been told that information and I could have moved on then from that.

AMT: Your mother had you out of wedlock. We know this now, at the time what was their view of not wanting to go there? Was that out of step with what others were thinking? They didn't want to tell you you had a mother who had a child out of wedlock, I guess?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes. It was, I suppose that the catholic religion, certainly in the 1950’s and 60’s where it was to do with respectability. Maybe they thought some of her traits would come out in me and as I grew up I would be thinking it was okay to have a child out of wedlock. I never judged my birth mother because she had a child out of wedlock.

AMT: And the world has changed, I mean people don't talk that way anymore. But there was something else though because they really put it in your head that you couldn't tell anyone that you were adopted. Tell us a little bit about the big secret in the family.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes I think that was very difficult. I was four and a half and it was as if I had to erase those four and a half years out of my life. And I was told quite sternly by my adoptive mother that must not be mentioned anymore, you’re with us now, you don’t need to tell anyone that you’re adopted.

AMT: It seems so strange now. Those kinds of secrets don't exist like that today. Well moving ahead a few years you become a nurse. One of your first jobs you're working in a rough part of town, you're actually living in residence. You're walking along one day and you see a woman outside of a pub sitting with two men. Tell us about the scene what do you see?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: They were sitting outside on stools, having a good drink and obviously they were quite drunk and they were all Irish, we could tell by their accents. I was only 17 at the time and just starting as a cadet nurse, and we were just breaking up for our summer holidays, we were just joking with each other, me and my friend. Then these men, they were sort of shouting quite rude things to us and we wanted to get away quickly from them. The lady in between the two men was obviously very drunk as well and my friend grabbed my arm and said come on Phyllis, let's go, your mom’s going to be wondering where you are, and I remember the look on the lady’s face at the time. Her facial expression stuck in my mind, she seemed in a trance almost.

AMT: That same woman that you saw at the bar, shows up at the emergency department while you are there. What's that scene like?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was doing my placement as a student nurse and one Sunday morning I started my shift. Often there were a lot of drunks brought in on the Saturday evening. I was there having reported for hand over from the night staff and they’d spoke about this 48 year old lady being brought in, a well-known alcoholic that lived in the area. She was a very noisy lady she was obviously still sort of recovering from the previous night. She had a deep cut and I was told by the staff nurse, could I go and look after Bridget, and they used her name, and I was there tending to her wound, and washing her and making her comfortable. But she was very loud, she was very aggressive and I was a student nurse with little experience of dealing with the drunken patients at that point. I was just a year into my training and I was only nineteen. But obviously it was part of my training and I cared for her…

AMT: We’re leading up to something here. We’re talking about a woman you see twice, who’s clearly got issues with alcohol abuse. Who was that woman?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: It was my mother.

AMT: How long did it take you to figure that out?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I didn't actually realize this lady we've just spoke about was my mother until I actually met her for the very first time… was the accent and name, the fact she was an alcoholic, the address that I had been given by the orphanage when I went in search of my mother. It was like a jigsaw and it all fitted into place.

AMT: And so you go through a process of trying to track down your biological mother and you make the connection through the information you get, that that woman that you saw is your mother. Tell us about your very first meeting with your mother.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was a district nurse and I decided to go undercover to meet my mother because I felt it was the only way that I would form a relationship with this lady because of her very dysfunctional life. I lived ten miles away from where my mother lived, so I unofficially put her onto the end of my rounds as a district nurse who visits patients in their own home. And I would visit her in the afternoon because she wasn't a lady to get up early in the morning. So she would always be put at the end of my list and I would have time to spend with her and build this caring and loving relationship eventually.

AMT: So when you first went as a nurse as you say under cover, to the house that you knew she lived in and you went into that house and you met her, tell us what you saw and what it was like to meet her.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: She walked down some stairs that were off the lounge, where she lived and she came through the door into the lounge and I waited there to see my mother for the very first time. She was in a very bad state. Her face was badly bruised from possibly a fall or a fight. She had a black eye, her lip was swollen, her hair was matted. She looked very neglected, shall we put it like that…

AMT: And she was living in squalor?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: She was, yeah.

AMT: And you had seen these kinds of conditions before because of the work you do, but this is the woman that you had longed to meet all your life. And I'm just wondering how you processed that?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I think that, obviously as a nurse, I think naturally you're a caring person and you don't judge people. So my training was very important. I was able to cope with and I suppose, hide behind the role sometimes to protect my own feelings, really and try not to think sometimes that that it was my mother because I think to have thought too much about it being my mother at times it would have been far too much for me to have coped with.

AMT: So you made several visits to her, you’re undercover as a nurse. She thinks you’re a nurse she has no idea who you are.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yeah. I mean lots of people have asked me, surely she questioned your visits, but she didn't. She was vulnerable and she was lonely, she was so happy to have somebody to finally listen to her because often she wasn't listened to because she rambled a lot. She jumped from one subject to the other and sometimes it was very difficult to understand what she was trying to say. So here was a person that was prepared to listen to her. She very quickly picked up that I was not judging her and I cared about her. So we made a connection very quickly because I don't know, I warmed to her vulnerability and we had that connection almost immediately.

AMT: And you were giving her care?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes. The first time I met her she just talked. She was desperately wanting somebody to talk to and within minutes she mentioned Phyllis, the little girl she had to leave at the orphanage. And that broke my heart because I knew how troubled she was by what she had to go through in her life and there I was in front of her, her daughter. That was one of the hardest times not to tell her and fling my arms around her and say I'm here mom, I’m here to care for you now.

AMT: Why didn't you?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I had my son who was eight weeks old, so he needed his mother. So I thought, I was torn really, I had a mother here that needed to be looked after but I also had a little baby that also needed to be looked after. So I had to get my priorities right and also make sure that he wasn't affected in anyway by what I’d found.

AMT: You had these fears about her? I guess she was so ravaged by years of alcohol abuse and she was also an angry woman as you had described. She was very mercurial, right? It was--that was a fear if she came home you wouldn't be able to be able to live with her or she wouldn’t be able to live with you and your husband and your child.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Absolutely, yes. I mean she was a very argumentative lady. Alcohol had taken its toll, it had affected her personality. So though I'd made that connection with her, I felt I couldn't bring her into my life as a mother and as a wife. It would have caused problems with my immediate family. Me, my husband and my little—he was only a little baby, but obviously I went on to have three children. So, over those years, I knew that the only way I could form this relationship would be for me to be in control of it really, because if I had told her, and it would have caused a problem with my personal life, then I would have had to break ties and I knew that would have broken her heart. So, I know people may find it hard to understand why I could never have told her who I was, but I never would have told her and then she couldn't have been part of my life, that would have broken her heart more than anything, so at least she had this person that cared about a person that was listening to her.

AMT: How did you finally tell your mother who you were?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was so desperate to see the smile on her face when I did tell her that I was Phyllis, but conscious of the fact that mentally she was deteriorating. As I said, she was a very argumentative lady, but this one day I visited her she was very calm and I realized I will tell her today. And I knew that it was literally now or never, so I sat beside her, I told her who I was. I told her I was Phyllis, I told her the orphanage where she'd left Phyllis, and reminded her of my birthday. And I was hoping for a trigger so that her memory would come back and she would remember. Even if she hadn’t taken it in, she would remember and I would get a smile, get a hug, as if to say yes I know you're Phyllis. But sadly I had left it too late, she was unable to take this information in. As I told her I was Phyllis there was this silence, this blank expression and there was no response from her.

AMT: Do you regret how you sought her out and how that all unfolded?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I mean people have questioned that, if that was ethical. But I always say that she was my mom, I was always invited into her home and I always cared for her in a loving and caring way. And we talk about protecting vulnerable adults. My mom was vulnerable, but nobody cared for her, nobody was really--everybody just turned the other way. I was the one person that was there to love and care for her. So, to me, my conscience was clear. I knew all I wanted to do was look after her and bring us some happiness and show love to her that she'd been denied all her life. So ethically, I have nothing to feel guilty about anyway.

AMT: What do you want us to think about when we see vulnerable people like your mother?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Well I think you need to look at the whole picture and not judge people because there’s a thin dividing line between getting it all so right, or all so wrong. And if something traumatic happens in your life and you turn to alcohol or something that you become addicted to, to deal with the pain—addiction is a difficult thing to deal with, and it may take the pain away, but obviously it causes other problems, when really there's nobody there to talk to. When my mom was younger there wasn't the counseling and the support that there is today. As a nurse I suppose that's where my training came in. I was there to sort of not judge her in any why and look after her because she was vulnerable.

AMT: When you first looked for your mother you were not expecting to find a woman so hobbled by her addictions. Is your life much better because you managed to connect with her, even if it was in an unconventional way? Even if it wasn't who you thought she was?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes. I said I’ve never regretted meeting her, not for one minute. I knew as a little girl that I had a sixth sense that all wasn't well with my mother. I knew she wasn't this ideal mother. I mean people talk about as an adopted child you have this fantasy of meeting your birth mother and her being this ideal person, I always felt she wasn’t and I—as a little girl the only thing I could ever do was light a candle to pray that her guardian angel would look after her. As I grew up and obviously qualified as a nurse, I was able to now care for her, the way she had been denied the chance to care for me. I felt privileged to have had that time with her, albeit very chaotic at times, but I can say often mothers and daughters we have that sort of volatile relationship, often we can argue with our mom or our daughter and then you know that we talk about forgiveness and very quickly and that's part of love as well, forgiving that person, that special person in your life and understanding that we all make mistakes and you don't hold that grudge continually. You move on and you just say don't worry I've forgiven you and would you like a nice cup of tea? I forgave her because to me, without her I wouldn't have been here.

AMT: Phyllis, it's really important to hear your story. Thank you for sharing it.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: It’s a pleasure, thank you.

AMT: Phyllis Whitsell is the author of My Secret Mother, she joined us from Birmingham, England.

Homeopaths and skeptics battle new Health Canada labeling policy

Guests: Stephen Malthouse, Edzard Ernst, Paul Offit

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current. Canadian homeopaths are urging the federal government to reconsider upcoming changes to the way homeopathic remedies are labeled in Canada. New label requirements come into effect in July. They will require manufacturers of homeopathic cough, cold and flu remedies to remove any labeling that suggests it's recommended for treating children twelve years of age or younger. In the past, Health Canada approved more than 100 homeopathic remedies for children. The government says it will no longer approve homeopathic claims unless they are supported by scientific evidence, the same standards conventional medicine must meet. The discussion over labeling has brought some long running tensions to the fore between the homeopathic and scientific communities over the efficacy of homeopathic remedies. Dr. Stephen Malthouse is a family physician who uses homeopathy to treat his patients. He is on Denman Island, BC. Hello.

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Hi.

AMT: Well, before we talk about the labeling changes, just give us a definition. What is homeopathy?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Well, homeopathy is often fused with naturopathy, the latter being really an umbrella term for all natural therapies, but homeopathy is very specific. It's about the use of small doses of medicine to treat disease. It's based on the idea of like cures like. There is what you can create with a large amount of substance in a healthy person, you can also treat successfully for someone who has that same pattern of symptoms by using the micro dose. So, the small dose to treat the large disease.

AMT: And the small dose is diluted, am I right?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: In many cases, it is. Sometimes diluted way beyond Avogadro's number which theoretically means there are no molecules of the original substance left. And that seems to have been a big stumbling block for many people who approach it as a so-called scientific phenomenon.

AMY: What does it mean for your practice? What types of ailments do you treat with homeopathy?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Oh, I see many things. I have children and also adults in my practice, pregnant women, elderly, and homeopathy is a very safe form of medicine that's been shown again and again. I use it for many problems that really slipped through the gaps in conventional medicine so, in my practice I use both conventional medicine and homeopathy in an integrative method which I think my patients really like. In fact, the longer I do it, the more patients come back and ask for those little sort of magic pills that made their arthritis go away, their coughs and colds in children, many sorts of minor diseases which we see every day in general practice which really don't have an effective, conventional therapy for them.

AMT: Okay, and when it comes to children, what evidence do you have that it works?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Well, I’m in the trenches so to speak. I've seen children over the years in emergency departments, walk-in clinics, rural practice, city practice. I've seen children with all sorts of illnesses from leg pains to coughs and colds to headaches to rashes, and in my experience personally, it works very well. There is evidence for example, in the literature that supports homeopathy. In fact, you could stack the evidence from the floor to the ceiling pretty much showing that homeopathy works. Recently, the study called the EPI3 came out. Just recently published peer reviewed journals, which show that among 518 adults and children, which 20 percent were children under the age of six, that treating them for coughs and colds was equally effective to conventional medicine, but in fact, reduced the use of antibiotics by about 57 percent, and also reduced the use of fever medicines by about 46 percent.

AMT: Let me just ask you, you're talking about studies. Were they randomized clinical trials?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: These are what are called cohort studies. In other words, they looked at practitioners who did not use homeopathy versus practitioners who did use homeopathy. So, there were more than 850 physicians that were involved in this particular study.

AMT: Okay, but were they randomized trials or were they just looking for what each physician’s experience was?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: In this case it was what we call a cohort study, which means it looks at experience but there actually have been some randomized controlled studies for homeopathy. Going back to the first meta-analysis of them was in 1991, published in the British Medical Journal. They looked at 107 randomized trials, which 81 were affective for homeopathy. In fact, of those, 13 out of 19 showed homeopathy to be effective for respiratory infections. Now that was probably the first one, it was done by some professors of medicine in the Netherlands when they were kind of surprised to see that homeopathy is working. And so, they thought they better check it out. There had been no randomized trials in a meta-analysis system done before. Then, in 1997, The Lancet published the meta-analysis with 89 trials which was overwhelmingly positive for homeopathy.

AMT: 89 clinical trials?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: That's right.

AMT: Randomized? Okay, because the specific change in labeling is that Health Canada will no longer let manufacturers of homeopathic cough, cold, and flu products for children 12 and under make a specific health claim on labels unless they can provide scientific evidence that shows a direct link between relief of those symptoms or conditions, and taking the product.

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Right.

AMT: Have there been scientific trials on those specific things?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Well, as I say, when you look at a scientific trial you know that's quite a broad stretch. Now, there is what is really science supporting the use of these and up to this time, it has mostly been based on the use of the pharmacopeia which states what homeopathic medicines have been used for in the past, so that's the evidence which is in use for many of the natural health products. In fact, even for conventional medicine it's very hard to do a randomized trial in children. There are a couple reasons for that. One is, you know most of them are for symptom control and not for serious diseases. In the serious disease category it's much easier to have a prospective clinical trial, but not so much when it comes to just symptomatic treatment.

AMT: I just want to clarify here because we did check and when you look at conventional medicine, there is only one way, and it's a randomized clinical trial that the one that counts for scientific

evidence.

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Well, I think it depends on what you're looking at in cough and cold medicines for conventional drugs. They were taken off the counter for children under the age of six and there was a good reason for that because there was no evidence supporting their use. In fact, they were thought to be potentially harmful for children. And that gap was filled then by other medicines that did not have perspective trials such as homeopathy, but nevertheless, many, many Canadians are using them. And in fact, changing the labeling will be I think harmful to patients.

AMT: How so?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Well, you know a lot of parents are using homeopathy. If they take that away, because certainly if you remove the labeling that indicates what they could be used for, people will not be able to use them. In other words, instead of giving them more information as to how to choose the medicines, it will actually have less so they'll move away from using these medicines. In fact, it may make them no longer available over the counter to them. So, what will they do when their child is crying or has a problem which really can't be treated with conventional medicine, doesn't require antibiotics? They’ll either let the child do nothing, or in other words, let them suffer, or they will give them an OTC that is not really suitable for their case.

AMT: Over the counter, that’s OTC. Okay, but now Health Canada says these changes are similar to what it has applied to all cough, cold and flu remedies. Why should homeopathy be different?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Well, I don't think it is similar to what they've applied to them because if you look at herbal and other types of traditional medicines which have been given the stamp of approval by Health Canada, this is specifically directed at homeopathic medicine.

AMT: And so, is that the real issue? Do you think there's a tension between those who believe and don't believe in homeopathy?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Oh, I think that tension has been around for about 250 years, ever since homeopathy first became available to people. I think it challenges people's idea of what works and often it's based on this idea of implausibility that if they don't think it can work, then it can't work. It's a bit like listening to this radio station and not believing that you're hearing it because you don't understand radio waves.

AMT: Except we're talking about curing somebody, we're not talking about a conversation.

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: No, of course not but when it comes to treating people with homeopathy, you know my personal experience, I've been a doctor for 28 years and I've used homeopathy for about 25 of those years, is that it really does work and you can look at the research, the evidence. In terms of randomized controlled trials, you can look at what's written in the pharmacopeia from the history of 250 years of treating children and adults and you can use that as evidence.

AMT: Okay, well Stephen Malthouse, stay with us. I'm going to talk to a few other people for their perspective and I'll come back to you, okay?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Thank you.

AMT: So, Edzard Ernst is standing by. He was raised in a family that used homeopathic treatments. He is now an outspoken critic. Dr. Edzard Ernst is a retired physician. He's a professor emeritus at The University of Exeter in England. He's a researcher of alternative medicine and he joins us from near Quimper, France. Hello.

EDZARD ERNST: Hi.

AMT: Well, first of all, I'll get your response on Dr. Malthouse’s concerns over changes coming in Canada to regulate labeling on homeopathic cold, cough and flu treatments for children.

EDZARD ERNST: I think medicine is one of these areas where we ought to have one single standard. Double standards are very detrimental, particularly for patients, and therefore I wonder why we have had such double standards for such a long time. It's well overdue to create single standards and I think the new regulation that you're proposing is fine.

AMT: Well, we just heard my last guest say that these treatments actually do go through randomized clinical trials.

EDZARD ERNST: Except he didn't cite them correctly. He cited systematic review of 89 trials and said the overwhelming majority of these trials showed positive results. He forgot to tell us the same set of sources has reanalyzed their own data just a year later and came to the conclusion that the more rigorous a child is, the less likely you have a positive result with homeopathy. In other words, the seemingly positive result was created by flaws in the methodology of the [indecipherable] that were included.

AMT: Talk to me a little bit about your wider view of this. There was a time when you embraced homeopathy.

EDZARD ERNST: My first job. When I had studied medicine, it was in a homeopathy hospital so there I was exposed to homeopathy. I learned how to do it and I understood how homeopaths think and it had remained a hobby horse to research these areas. Eventually I accepted a post to become a full time researcher in alternative medicine in England. For over more than 20 years, we researched homeopathy and other alternative treatments and the conclusion nowadays, contrary to what your previous speaker said, is very, very clear. Homeopathic remedies are placebos. The experience of patients, the mostly positive experience of patients, treated by homeopathy is due to non-specific factors like the natural history of the disease, placebo effects and other non-specific issues.

AMT: What made you change your mind, then?

EDZARD ERNST: Well, the evidence. As I said, we researched homeopathy for over 20 years and the evidence became more and more clear. I started out as a homeopath, so to speak, and I would have been delighted to prove that homeopathy works because at least I would have gotten two Nobel Prizes, one in physics and one in chemistry because anybody who proves homeopathy is proving several laws in chemistry and physics wrong, and therefore deserves two Nobel Prizes. I started on the pro-homeopathic foot, but the evidence is now very clear and only homeopaths who try to mislead us say something different.

AMT: In preparing this segment, we called the Canadian Homeopathic Pharmaceutical Association and the Canadian Consumers Centre for Homeopathy. Each suggested we speak with one of the world's leading experts in homeopathy, Dr. Peter Fisher. He's a physician to the Queen and the royal family. He's been watching developments in Canada. I'd like you to hear what he says.

SOUNDCLIP

DR. PETER FISHER: We know, for instance that many cough medicines are not good for children. So now in Canada, for several years, Health Canada has insisted that you have a warning incorporated in the product, don't give it to children. However, with these homeopathics, there is no evidence that they do harm to children so I think Health Canada is just bringing it into line for the sake of bringing it in to line and this is what Margaret Thatcher once called The Nanny State. This is the state interfering in consumer’s choices where there's actually no good reason to do so when there is no evidence to support that.

AMT: So, that is Dr. Peter Fisher. Edzard Ernst, should it be left to consumers to weigh the evidence?

EDZARD ERNST: I think Peter Fisher just added to the listeners of this program being misled. If standard cough medicines do not help children, that doesn't mean we ought to give them useless treatments in the name of homeopathy. This is such a classic fallacy that homeopaths love to throw at us, it's really quite ridiculous and laughable.

AMT: What kind of backlash have you received for speaking out in support of evidence based medicine?

EDZARD ERNST: Anything you can imagine. I lost my job for speaking out against homeopathy because Prince Charles, who is an advocate of homeopathy, complained about things I had never done. Even though I was found not guilty by a 13-month long investigation at my university, all support stopped and my department was discontinued and I had to go into early retirement. Apart from that, I had the usual stuff, hate mail, death threats, anything. At one stage, we had the police in Exeter come to our department to teach my secretaries how to identify letter bombs.

AMT: Help us understand. When you say that homeopathic medicine doesn't work, help us understand why you say that.

EDZARD ERNST: I said that quite simply because our research and the majority of the research weren’t right. It clearly shows that. Of course if you have 300-odd clinical trials, which we do have in homeopathy, just by chance, and by a publication, you have a proportion of positive trials. But, if you do the proper thing and you look at the totality of the evidence, and you weigh that critically, then you cannot possibly escape the conclusion that homeopathic remedies are placebos and as a scientist, I have to say that even if I originally had been a homeopath researching that because scientists ought to be honest and not misleading patients.

AMT: Edzard Ernst, thank you for your perspective.

EDZARD ERNST: You're welcome.

AMT: That is Dr. Edzard Ernst. He's a retired physician and researcher of alternative medicine, he joined us from Quimper, France. He's the author of A Scientist in Wonderland. Dr. Paul Offit can shed some light on why alternative medicines are so polarizing. He's a Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He's the author of Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine. Paul Offit is in Philadelphia, hello.

PAUL OFFIT: Hello.

AMT: Well, what is it about homeopathy that spurs heated responses?

PAUL OFFIT: I think it's a religion, and so as your first guest said, the homeopathic physician said it's something one believes in. He believes in it, you know but the fact of the matter is that science and medicine aren't belief systems, they are evidence based systems and when you then show that the evidence doesn't support this particular belief, or those who share that belief, they get angry.

AMT: And yet we hear proponents of homeopathy saying that they anecdotally believe, and I'm using belief again, believe it works and that there have been studies. They are quick to defend this.

PAUL OFFIT: Well, you know I think there certainly is the placebo response, which is they say that roughly 30 to 35 percent of people who are given something they believe is going to make them better, does make them feel better, so that there's something to be said for that. Your first caller said that homeopathy is safe, that certainly is true, Peter Fisher said that it homeopathy means that you give, say a homeopathic remedy instead of a call-for-call preparation, or instead of antibiotics, that's valuable because you’ve avoided the side effects of cough and cold preparations. I think that's all true. So, I think there are certainly safe, but when you're talking about watching rashes go away or watching coughs and colds go away, they go away anyway. The belief that it's gone away quicker is nice. What bothers me about homeopathy, obviously, it's not science based. When you dilute an active substance beyond Avogadro's number, which is to say that there's no active molecules in that product left anymore, then you’ve moved into the realm of belief and that's a slippery slope. It's an anti-science bias.

AMT: If you say 35 percent of people benefit from the placebo effect, what's the harm in letting them have it?

PAUL OFFIT: The only harm is when you avoid something that could be helpful. For example, if nosodes, or so-called homeopathic vaccines, that for example in Canada, you have the homeopathic HPV or human papilloma virus vaccine that's made by taking cervical fluid of a woman who's infected with HPV, diluting it out to the point that not a single molecule of that virus is left anymore, and that's supposed to be your vaccine, of course that's not going to induce a protected immune response. Therefore, you're going to be at risk of getting the cancers that are associated with HPV infection, so you're taking something thinking it's going to help you when in fact, it is going to put you at risk and in this case, great risk.

AMT: So, speak to me about using homeopathy to treat children for coughs, colds or flu.

PAUL OFFIT: Actually, I'm going to disappoint Edzard Ernst, who is my hero by the way, because he's put up with so much crap associated with this, but I think that Mehmet Oz for example, who is a physician on TV in our country, says that when his children are sick his wife gets a homeopathic arnica and then if they continue to be sick, she sends them to him. At some level, that's not an awful thing. I mean, it's better than the cough and cold preparations, it is certainly better than antibiotics. The placebo effect is a value to some extent, I just think you have to be careful when you cross the line. You cross a line one, wanting an anti-science bias, two, some of these homeopathic remedies are expensive and three, sometimes you really are giving something thinking it's a benefit and the child has a more serious illness and you're not you're not treating that illness.

AMT: And so, how do you explain people who are medically trained in traditional medicine who still embrace homeopathy?

PAUL OFFIT: I think sadly, it is a marketplace and I think physicians these days see to patient demand. So, our hospital is one of them. Our hospital is about to launch a division of integrative and holistic medicine, much to my chagrin. Why? because of patient demand. So, I think we sort of move from we’re doctors at a hospital trying to set a professional standard, to frankly, waiters in a restaurant and it's not to our benefit. It's certainly not to the patient’s benefit.

AMT: How much of that has to do with trust of the medical profession?

PAUL OFFIT: I think that's part of it. I think that the medical profession is sometimes seen as cold and distant and sort of hiding behind the sort of gilded robes of science, whereas the homeopath, or the naturopath, the acupuncturist are seen as really caring, you know much more sympathetic to the patient, less technological, less distant, less cold and can spend more time. You can see the draw for

that.

AMT: And of course, the medical profession is often seen as being in the pocket of big pharma, and there is concern about that.

PAUL OFFIT: Well, first of all, we’ve certainly fought the dietary supplement problem in our hospital, the mega-vitamin problem in our hospital for a long time. Realize that a lot of these dietary supplements and mega-vitamins are big pharma. Pfizer recently bought Alacer, which is a huge mega-vitamin maker, Hoffmann-La Roche has been in the business of making dietary supplements since the 1940s so, there is not a clear distinction. I know everybody sees sort of these dietary supplements and mega-vitamins as being made by elves and old hippies on flowery meadows, but it's really not true.

AMT: But, I'm talking about homeopathic treatments.

PAUL OFFIT: You know, I think again, you're giving water to make coughs and colds get better. Coughs and colds get better so you have that going for you, you are avoiding things that can be potentially harmful. I do see some value in that, with the exception of the fact that it creates an anti-science bias because you're of the notion that you can take a substance diluted to the point that it's not there anymore and it would still have an effect. Think about that. There's a limited amount of water on Earth. You don't want water to remember where it's been. Think about it.

AMT: Okay, I thank you for your thoughts on all of this, Paul Offit.

PAUL OFFIT: Thank you.

AMT: Paul Offit is a Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Division of the Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Stephen Malthouse, Dr. Stephen Malthouse is still listening in. He's a physician and homeopath on Denman Island, BC. Stephen Malthouse, let's come back to what Dr. Offit just said. He's comparing belief in homeopathy to religion. Is it a belief system?

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: No, I don't think it is a belief system. I think it's a system really of confidence. Certainly when you are in the trenches and you’ve been using homeopathy for 25 years, you start to see that it's not your overwhelmingly pleasant personality that's getting these patients better. Many of them have seen doctors before you, they've had lots of conventional medicine, and even previously they may have had homeopathy and it didn't work. But then you give them the correct homeopathic medicine that fits their case and they get better. I don't think that you can mark that up for a placebo effect or the patient-doctor relationship.

AMT: In cough, cold and flu, let's stay focused because those do get better.

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: They do.

AMT: Our last two critics are saying it's placebo, that there's nothing in the water and that it's a belief system.

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Well, I think it's the other way around, in fact. The belief system is that it's implausible and therefore it cannot be, but in fact, now that research is catching up with what homeopaths have been doing for the last 250 years with different types of science such as trans-luminescence, nuclear magnetic resonance, we're starting to see that there are actually nano-particles, nano-bubbles, electromagnetic fields and there's a very important component of homeopathic medicine to do with silica, which comes off the glass walls when the medicines are shaken in the in the process of producing them. Let me say this, if the national health products section of Health Canada starts to restrict homeopathy based on asking for evidence which is not even required of conventional medicines, we're going to have some problems. One will be that patients will start being given adult products, they’ll be using more antibiotics, they’ll be seeking a doctor's care, they'll be in the offices asking for antibiotics and if you know, in most cases when doctors are asked for antibiotics by parents with a child that sick, they will give it. Overall, I think that what's going on with the health products regarding homeopathy is a big mistake. I don't think it's good for Canadians’ health. I think it will not give them more information by taking them off the shelves but in fact, restrict their access to good products which will not only help their children to treat them for symptomatic illnesses, but also create an issue of sending them for more dangerous care.

AMT: We have to leave it there, Stephen Malthouse. Thank you.

STEPHEN MALTHOUSE: Thanks very much.

AMT: Stephen Malthouse, a physician who treats his patients with homeopathic remedies, he's on Denman Island, BC. That's our program for today. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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Feb. 29, 2016 episode transcript

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