h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I got this article from an email from a physics list from a prof at University of Maryland here in the states. It's hilarious:

HOMEOPATHY: DEMONSTRATORS IN BELGIUM RESORT TO MASS SUICIDE.
A Special Report in the current issue of Skeptical Inquirer looks
into the ultimate protest by a group of skeptics. They objected
to a decision by the major health insurance companies in Belgium
to begin covering the costs of homeopathy in response to popular
demand. Depressed by the willingness of the insurance companies
to encourage quackery, the 23 skeptics resigned themselves to
committing mass suicide by drinking a cocktail of lethal poisons
including arsenic, snake venom and deadly nightshade. To the
horror of the homeopathists, they even increased the potency in
true homeopathic fashion by preparing a 30C solution of the
cocktail. That means the cocktail was diluted one part per
hundred and shaken, which was then repeated sequentially, 30
times. All newspapers and TV stations were invited to watch the
death agonies of the 23 deranged suicides, who included a number
of prominent citizens and professors of medicine, "and a few
normal people armed only with common sense." The media coverage
was excellent, but the suicide attempt was a failure.

nice to see the ars is still so hopping

Of course it failed, they did it all wrong. One of the central tenents of homeopathy is like cures like (hence the homeo, I think). So making homeopathic remedies from deadly poisons is likely to be invigorating. For a suicide attempt they obviously should have started out with substances that have an invigorating effect.

Interesting.

This must be why that weak lucozade sent me to sleep...