On Saturday, Oxford played host to one of the 10:23 “mass overdose” protests which took place across the country.
Around 35 people attended the protest in Oxford which was organised to put pressure on Boots pharmacy to withdraw homeopathic products from their shelves. Nationwide, more than 400 people took part in various protests.
At 10:23 exactly, participants “overdosed” by consuming entire bottles of homeopathic medicines. They stated beforehand that they would come to no harm because homeopathic tinctures are simply water, while the pills are just sugar.
A spokesman from the campaign, Martin Robbins, confirmed on February 1st that nobody had been harmed.
He stated that the only damage had been “to their wallets – using homeopathy is a very expensive way of buying sugar.”
Rosie Olliver, a pupil at Oxford High School, organised the Oxford campaign. She commented, “We all hope that Boots will withdraw homeopathy from their shelves, or put up signs saying this is a placebo treatment.”
She continued, “They know it doesn’t work, we know it doesn’t work, they need to stop lying to their customers.”
Boots have been targeted due to the fact that they have admitted that they sell homeopathic remedies because they sell, rather than because they believe they work.
Paul Bennett, professional standards director for Boots, stated to a committee of MPs last Novemeber, “I have no evidence to suggest they are efficacious. It is about consumer choice for us and a large number of our customers believe they are efficacious.”
In an open letter to Boots, the 10:23 campaign asks the store to “do the right thing, and remove this bogus therapy from your shelves.”
As the campaign was aimed at Boots, all the protestors took Boots own-brand homeopathic remedies.
Paula Ross, chief executive of the Society of Homeopaths, took a very negative view of the protest, commenting, “This is an ill-advised publicity stunt in very poor taste, which does nothing to advance the scientific debate about how homeopathy actually works.”
