Look here: Britain’s National Health Service threw away £12 million on homeopathic treatments. It’s a complete waste; millions were spent on teeny-tiny bottles of ‘special’ water that could have been had for pennies from the local water tap.

But hah! America is #1! We spent $2.5 billion on remedies that don’t work! Doesn’t that make you all feel so good right now? Now one might reasonably argue that paying all that money for clear negative results really isn’t that bad; good science doesn’t begin with your conclusion, and good studies can show that a hypothesis was wrong. Unfortunately, these were studies that a) were begun with no good reason to think they would work (the principles of sympathetic magic are not valid premises for research), and b) despite the fact that the treatments were disproven, quacks will continue to peddle them, and gullible people will continue to use them.

While I’m complaining about altie nonsense, remind me to never get in an auto accident in Maryland. I might get tucked into a helicopter and flown to this:

At one of the nation’s top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient’s bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive.
They are doing Reiki therapy, which claims to heal through invisible energy fields.

Thanks, Rogue Medic, you’ve just increased my fear of hospitals.