In 2018, Georgian College (in Barrie, ON), announced a new course in their curriculum: a 3-year “advanced diploma” in Homeopathy. The program had been approved by both the Georgian College board of governors and the Ontario Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development. But in the end, rationality prevailed, and the program was cancelled, shortly after being publicly announced.
by Edan Tasca
“This is a sad day for Canadian Education” Blythe Nilson, CFIC Science Chair
In 2018, Georgian College announced that they would be offering a course in homeopathy. According to Georgian’s website, the 3-year diploma teaches students “the theoretical knowledge, clinical skills and professional competencies to become a regulated health professional.” The skeptical community sees this as a step in the wrong direction not only for Georgian College, but for Canadian healthcare as a whole. Beyond wasting students’ time and money, Georgian will be guilty of teaching students pseudoscience that will be peddled to credulous and/or desperate people suffering from conditions that require medical interventions.
Blythe Nilson, Associate Professor of Biology at UBC, and CFI’s Science Chair explains the problem: “As Health Canada finally begins to regulate homeopathic ‘medicines’, addressing the fact that homeopathy is a pseudoscientific waste of money, Georgian is poised to offer a degree in homeopathy that will set Canadian healthcare back several steps. Great Britain has recently removed homeopathy from NHS funding and the U.S. is cracking down on false claims made by homeopathic labels. Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council declared homeopathy ‘ineffective’ in 2014. Canadian universities should join them by embracing modern science-based medicine, not 18th century debunked quackery.”
Unfortunately, Georgian isn’t alone in offering courses in magic-based healing. For the most part, such programs are rare. However, because of the marketing success of complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM), they seem to be on the rise. Many schools in Canada offer CAM curricula, including courses in “integrative energy healing” at Langara College in BC, a course in Complementary and Alternative Therapies (including aroma therapy, Native healing, chelation, iridology) at Athabasca University, and much of the curricula at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine.
Even the University of Toronto has a Centre for Integrative Medicine, as part of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, which is affiliated with The Scarborough Hospital. Though part of the centre’s mission is to achieve “the best possible quality of life and health through the integration of evidence-informed complementary therapies with conventional health care,” it nevertheless touts acupuncture, reiki, chiropractic, as well as Chinese and aboriginal healing traditions.
Until recently, most of these “therapies” have been taught in their own, tightly guarded silos of secrecy; institutions which teach only a single subject. The skeptical community has been unable to get a satisfying sample of teaching resources, textbooks, syllabi, etc., from such courses. Our fear is that, increasingly, post-secondary institutes are getting into the business of pseudoscience to lure students and their money, while forgetting or ignoring that their first priority should be offering evidenced-based learning.