Woo-icide Is Painless

Glasgow’s contribution to the 10:23 campaign began with a small bunch of unremarkable looking individuals gathering in the shadows of the tie stall in the city’s central station. As the group grew in number and started handing t-shirts and small bottles of pills marked “arsenic” to one another, it was clear that something was afoot and the attention of the rail station staff was piqued. They needn’t have worried though, and the two policemen who arrived shortly after were assured that there was no plan to attempt a mass overdose in the railway station – the woo-icide was being taken to Royal Exchange Square and the steps of the Gallery of Modern Art. The coppers were satisfied with this. After all, a pile of dead bodies outside the GoMA could be shrugged off as a piece of radical art, corpses in the railway station would probably raise a few unshruggable complaints from commuters.

On arriving at the steps of the art gallery it quickly became apparent that, as appropriate as the 10:23 monicker is, it doesn’t translate very well into a time of day to hold a protest. There was barely a homeopathic dilution of people on the streets for the group to protest to. The group (numbering around 20 at this point) were unshaken by the scarcity of potential spectators and dutifully assembled under a “Homeopathy, There’s Nothing In It” banner to begin knocking back the pills. Death did not descend. It was Saturday morning, though, perhaps he had a hangover.

Absence of fatalites was a significant advantage in executing the next part of the demonstration: distributing leaflets and engaging with the public. To the surprise of some in attendence, the majority of people they talked to were fairly sceptical of homeopathy already. “Oh, homeopathy?” commented one elderly lady “What a load of rubbish.”  The awareness of the average Glaswegian, it appears, is not in need of raising.

With the streets still relatively empty after fifteen minutes or so the group decided to take their message to those who need it most and set up stall outside of Neal’s Yard Remedies, a purveyor of all kinds of alternative medicines situated just around the corner.

As one young man in a 10:23 t-shirt reassured his father on the phone (“I’ll be fine dad! Honestly! It’s just sugar and water.”) an angry homeopathist emerged from Neal’s Yard and began berating the sceptics for assembling in front of her store. The protest, she opined, was affecting her business (that was pretty much the point) and she threatened to call the police if the group didn’t disperse. Her attention was politely drawn to the policemen standing not ten feet away, who were both aware of and happy with the demonstration.

The confrontation soured the atmosphere a little.  I felt, albeit briefly, that things were only a few misplaced words away from turning into a slagging match.  The demonstration shouldn’t be directed against any group of people, it should about education. The Neal’s Yard employee railed that her customers were entitled to their opinions and were being victimised by the protest and the sceptics objected.  Thankfully, however, the altercation was soon resolved as genially as could be expected and the group agreed to move on to Buchanan street, where there were many more passers by to engage with.

The morning’s events were encouraging, all things considered.  No-one died, which helped the message a bit.   And it seems that the vast majority of people already exercise a healthy scepticism regarding unproven medical treatments.

One final thought though: scepticism should encourage discourse and sharing of thoughts and opinions in an amicable way. Sometimes there’s a threat of fostering mutual suspicion and resentment and this is not a situation that’s helpful to any of us. The goal of demonstrations such as this should be to educate, to encourage people to think about what (in this case) homeopathy is and to explain why some of us find it worrying. It’s not about ridicule, it’s not about superciliousness, it’s not about “them and us”. “Them and us” attitudes are deeply irrational, and when you’re fighting in the name of reason, you’ve lost half your battle if you start to succumb to them.