From: Bradford Telegraph and Argus
A Respect party campaigner who died on the Bradford West by-election trail when his heart suddenly stopped had given up doctors’ orders of beta-blockers and turned to homeopathy instead, an inquest heard.
Father-of-one Abu-Bakr Rauf collapsed on March 20 in the Mumtaz restaurant car park after a heated discussion with another party member.
Bradford coroner Peter Straker yesterday recorded a narrative verdict that the 28-year-old died at Bradford Royal Infirmary despite every effort to save him.
Rauf came off beta blockers at age 14, against doctors wishes, due to side effects preferring homeopathy instead. No blame can be laid at Raufs door for this decision as it is simply a product of trusting the wrong people and the inaccurate andmisleading claims of homeopaths.
Homeopathy of course, tragically in this case, has no side effects as it has no effects.
This case highlights the dangers of taking complementary treatments as an alternative to actual medicine.
Our thoughts are with his family and we would hope that any of the homeopaths who advised Rauf might reconsider giving others or otherwise propagating potentially fatal advice.
Perhaps now is the time to review medical liability and medical fraud legislation and how it applies in the UK to complementary and alternative practitioners?
twentyfirstfloormirror 
One has to ask, what did his doctor do so wrong for him to get sucked in by a homeopathic practitioner?
I’m a skeptic and despise the practise of Homoeopathy, but if he came off beta blockers at 14 and lived until 28, I have to ask if he would have been expected to live a full lifespan on the beta blockers (barring any other illness).
I’m assuming he would, but living for 14 years on Homoeopathy alone is a figure they might deem a success! Usually, they keel over a little earlier!
The missing information here is whether or not he stayed off beta blockers because he perceived homeopathy as a viable alternative. Had homeopathy not appealed to him, might he have opted to avoid them anyway because he felt the level of risk reduction they offered (as he understood it) was inadequate to justify the side effects?
The prognosis on single cases is always a difficult calculation and made more so in this unfortunate case as there is little data to work on.
But what kind of society do we want to live in where fraudsters are allowed to convince anyone to act against their own best interest?
What also isn’t clear is whether the homeopath told him to come of the beta blockers. I would doubt it.
There is so much missing from this article, it’s meaningless. A child of 14 on beta blockers is in extremely poor health. Any claim that his death 14 years later was a result of not taking his drugs is simply absurd. No one can legitimately say that. Just as no one knows that the homeopath even suggested he go off the drugs, no one has even documented that homeopathy was involved in his decision to go off the drugs.
By the way, there’s another highly significant bit of information missing: We do not know how he died! He collapsed – that’s all we know.
Then, there are those adverse effects that caused him to quit taking beta blockers – including heart failure and liver damage.
The assumption that he died because he didn’t take his drugs is just that – an assumption. It’s just as likely that he lived another 14 years because he quit taking them.
Speaking of poor assumptions how does one know that beta blockers at fourteen is a sign of extremely poor health? Mild cardiac dysrythmia has good outcomes, can be difficult to diagnose in people who seem to be in good health and is treated with beta blockers…
Good that people above have picked up on the missing evidence in this mans case as portrayed by sceptics. There’s a lot that hasn’t been said and a lot we probably couldn’t ever know.
This does show the desperation that sceptics have in their “mission” to slurr homeopathy. They do it in many other instances too in the guise of “science” though like here, there are usually many key facts they overlook or misrepresent as they are blinded by a zeal to achieve their aims of preventing people having the right to choose.
Homeopathy doesn’t need slurring. It is ridiculous enough as it is. Water doesn’t have memory. Homeopathic preperations contain no active ingredient.
In short they don’t work.
People have the right to choose but they should have the right to make an informed choice.
The information says homeopathy doesn’t work.
Does anyone know if the inquest verdict is available online anywhere? I suspect it would address some of the questions here.
I agree with many of the people above. You are desperate to make homeopathy look bad and will twist a story in order to achieve that aim.
It is amazing that this man, who was prescribed beta blockers at AGE 14! should have lived such a long time. You could turn this around and say what a success homeopathy was !!
Are you also suggesting that such a person would have lived had he taken the conventional drugs ? ! Most people I know who have died of heart attacks or strokes were already on conventional prescriptions to prevent such events.
Did the drugs kill them ??
Endless Psych says:
“Homeopathy doesn’t need slurring. It is ridiculous enough as it is. Water doesn’t have memory. Homeopathic preperations contain no active ingredient.
In short they don’t work.
People have the right to choose but they should have the right to make an informed choice.
The information says homeopathy doesn’t work.”
“Ridiculous” – you mean you don’t understand it, science as it is today struggles to explain the process. Easy and empty to jump on the sceptic sect bandwagon and spout the rhetoric you have just done.
People DO have the right AND the ability to make informed choices. Are you suggesting the Bradford man didn’t?
“The information says homeopathy doesn’t work” – as far as I’m aware, there is no information based on science that says homeopathy doesn’t work. There is a cherry picked meta analysis by Shang that concludes there is nothing to show that it does work, but thats absolutely not the same as saying there is information beyond sceptic rhetoric that shows it doesn’t work.
There’s nothing to twist. Homeopathy is supposed to effect permanent cures for symptom clusters, which represent disruptions of the Vital Force. Plainly, it failed to do this. The sole options for the homeopath are to find a way to blame the patient or claim that the initial treatment “drove the psora inward” or some such blather.
Narad, without knowing the full details as said above by Adam, and moreso, the full details of the case, its impossible to coment on what the homeopathy process was in this instance.
Generally speaking, you have no way of knowing whether or not the homeopethy treatment was successful or not in this case. To claim it failed is showing your ignorance of the process.
It is likely that there was some problem in the case that could only be paliated by homeopathy. Thats not about driving symptoms inwards, its about supporting the patient. This may have been more successful than the drug therapy he received prior to the homeopathy, or it may have been less successful than that. What is clear is that he lived for a very long time after stopping the beta blockers, possibly longer than he would have with them – probably we shall never know, but to make the assertions that you do is way off target.
Chris Wilkinson said
‘ There is a cherry picked meta analysis by Shang that concludes there is nothing to show that it does work, but thats absolutely not the same as saying there is information beyond sceptic rhetoric that shows it doesn’t work.’
That’s really funny and a great example of the homeopath at work. Shang et al selected trials on the basis of quality, nothing else. They showed that as the power selection of the trials was increased, the effect for homeopathy decreased. Linde et al in several papers showed the same. Now the only detailed attempted criticism of Shang was Ludtke et al. They showed that selecting out the negative trials from the Shang set left a positive result. Yes, they employed the only research tool known to homeopaths, the cherry picker.
Homeopathy had 14 years to do that which it alleges it does. It did not. What is “the great, the sole therapeutic law of nature”? “Cure by symptom similarity!” (Organon 50.) What is cure? “Sure, rapid and permanent.” (Organon 47.) What is disease? “The morbidly affected vital force alone.” (Organon 12.)
Well? What happens at the homeopathic M&M?
Yes they were selected on the basis of quality, but the number of trials chosen was set at the level where it worked for Shang – and lets be clear on this, Shang et al are not unbiased in this.
Anyway, its still clear that to say homeopathy DOESN’T work is not looking at the whole picture, and you sceptics know that, unless you’re one of the ones following the party line of your guru’s.
Narad, homeopathy doesn’t stop people dying. The definition of curing is helping people, not stopping them dying. Death happens, homeopathy can help people live as well and as disease free as possible meanwhile.
Going off track here – the point is the original assumptions above are way off the mark and at best show how desperate some people are to wrongly use the sad case of a man dying to back up their poor science.
‘Chris Wilkinson said:
Yes they were selected on the basis of quality, but the number of trials chosen was set at the level where it worked for Shang – and lets be clear on this, Shang et al are not unbiased in this.
Anyway, its still clear that to say homeopathy DOESN’T work is not looking at the whole picture, and you sceptics know that, unless you’re one of the ones following the party line of your guru’s.’
So they didn’t cherry pick after all, but the critic Ludtke, definitely did. And from that your conclusion is that Shang et al are biased? Didn’t realise you diluted your logic out of existence as well.
And you forgot Linde et al, what’s the problem with his research? It can’t be bias against homeopathy, after all his conclusions were actually pro-homeopathy, they just didn’t match his results, which in the absence of his homeopathy co-workers he later admitted.
What is the reason for death in homeopathy?
It most certainly is not. Curing is the removal of miasms, and no materia peccans.
“He who imagines that there are other modes of curing diseases besides it could not have appreciated homœopathy fundamentally nor practised it with sufficient care, nor could he ever have seen or read cases of properly performed homœopathic cures…. My true, conscientious followers, the pure homœopathists, with their successful, almost never-failing treatment, might teach these persons better.” (Organon 109 fn. 1.)
This is really a very uninformed article. First off, I take beta blockers. I want to try homeopathy but its not the homeopathy that killed him, it’s the fact that he stopped suddenly. Most people on beta blockers know that if you stop this medication suddenly, because of your body’s dependence on the drug, you can potentially have a heart attack and die. which is exactly what happened to him. If i were to try homeopathy, im not an idiot i know i have to be weaned off the drug very slowly and carefully, once i find some homeopathy that works, which i’d probably go to chinese herbalism. Western medicine is really retarded. it replaces the alleviation of a symptom…with more side effects. I hate these side effects.
Anyway, be smart people. He died because of the sudden stop of the drug. So really, in essence, the drug killed him.