This might be old news to some of you, but with all the things going on lately I didn’t have much time to update the blog. When I read this one it shook me hard. It has happened before of course, and will probably happen again, but it just makes me stop to think how completely unnecessary such a death is: a nine-month old baby died of eczema (!) because her parents opted to treat her with magical water instead of proper medicine!

Gloria Thomas died aged nine months after spending more than half her life with eczema.

The skin condition wore down her natural defences and left her completely vulnerable when she developed an eye infection that killed her within days of developing.

[...] the couple took Gloria to various health professionals, but while they abandoned each conventional medication she was prescribed within a short time of starting it, they solidly pursued homeopathic remedies.

The Crown said these did not work, and all the while Gloria’s tiny body required more nutrition than her mother’s milk could provide, and her immune system became ever more depleted.

By the time she died, she was the weight of an average three-month-old, her body was covered with angry blotches and her once black hair had turned completely white.

[Source: Sydney Morning Herald]

So not only did the poor baby die, she suffered all the way through too!

But the couple, who were raised and educated in India where homeopathy is accepted as equivalent to conventional medicine, were steadfast to their homeopathic remedies and ignored completely or quickly discarded other treatment.

A general practitioner booked them an appointment with a dermatologist they did not attend because they took the child to India instead, a course of action the doctor told them was “cruel”.

They also visited two doctors in India, but discarded the advice of one to return to him every second day, instead consulting a succession of homeopaths including Thomas Sam’s brother, who had recently completed his dissertation on eczema.

His dissertation on eczema was an exercise in futility. Eczema cannot be treated with magical water unfortunately…

Gloria’s miserable life proved all the more poignant by the evidence given at the trial by Dr Orli Wargon, the dermatologist with whom Gloria missed her appointment when the family went to India instead.

Dr Wargon said she would have applied an aggressive treatment program that should have seen the child recover within 24 hours: “Not completely cured, but her skin would look better very, very quickly.”

Nine days after they returned from India, Thomas and Manju Sam finally took Gloria to hospital for an eye infection they thought was conjunctivitis, and she was immediately rushed into emergency to be treated by a team of medical experts. It turned out her cornea was melting.

Her ******* cornea was melting? MELTING? Why?!? Because her parents were criminally misinformed and/or misled. Because in India homeopathy has the same stature as medicine. Because all this flexibility and health law bending to accommodate homeopathy, has resulted in magic water being available everywhere from high street pharmacies to nutrition shops.

When are they going to provide evidence of safety and efficacy just like proper medicine? When are they going to back up all their health claims they make? When are they going to get properly educated if they want to give out health advices less lethal than: “do not take the MMR vaccine; it’s very bad for you“?

The only good thing that came out of this, was the conviction of the parents for manslaughter. This might just create a precedence and make the homeopaths think twice before prescribing their voodoo and making claims about more-than-half-serious conditions. I mean, it was eczema for crying out loud!