Quackers International:It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet.

Have you ever inserted a live trout into the stomach of a cow that's been pumped full of gas? Have you put cannabis oil in a dog's ear? Performed reiki on a tortoise? Teabagged a dog's eye? Or, perhaps, you've used holly in an attempt to prevent ringworm or you've cut a lock of hair from a horse's mane to send to a lady in Wales who'll put it in a black box so she can diagnose an equine illness?

All of these, and more, fantastical stories cropped up in last night's interesting, if sparsely attended, Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub talk, ...Quack quack here:Pseudoscience in veterinary practice, with Dr Danny Chambers, a passionate advocate of real, as opposed to alternative, medicine who grew up on a farm in Devon, graduated from Liverpool veterinary school, writes for the New Scientist, and is now standing for the Liberal Democrats in northern Cornwall.

Don't hold that against him. Not in this day and age! It was a muggy night, I'd had my regulation pie'n'mash in Goddard's and, following a boozy weekend, I was clutching a lemonade nearly as tightly as my notebook. To begin with, I'd doubted the wisdom in even venturing out to hear a talk on a subject I had no specific or particular interest in.

Chris French and these Greenwich Skeptics rarely, if ever, disappoint though (and they cost you a mere £3, which is optional anyway) and last night proved to be no exception. Dr Chambers (sometimes known as 'the veterinary Ben Goldacre' which our host joked was a compliment - of sorts) kicked off with a story about a dog owner who'd related a tale about their dog being scared to go in to the kitchen because there was a ghost in there and remarked on why this particular person had gone to the vet to ask about that.

Ghosts not being a subject that tends to get covered in veterinary school. He said he heard bizarre stories and encountered fake remedies and quackery on a daily basis. Add to the list in the first paragraph a story about a rabbit that was "fucked in the head", someone who claimed they could use dowsing to determine the sex of parrots (and boasted a roughly 50% rate of success!), crystal healing for pets, and a belief held in some parts of Ireland that the seventh son of a seventh son can cure internal bleeding in livestock just by accessing their ear tag numbers and you soon begin to see that there's as much woo, misinformation, and straight out bullshit in the world of animal health care as there is in the human one.

Possibly more, and much of it is dangerous. Pet owners who choose homeopathy over vaccination are, if not directly killing their pets, shortening their lives. Dr Chambers works mainly with horses now (the smaller ones are the most dangerous, apparently) and equine operating theatres are much like human ones, except more expensive. The NHS doesn't extend to animals and that's not likely to change. If Nigel Farage and his chum Donald Trump get their way it soon won't exist at all.

As Dr Chambers, metaphorically - not literally, took up his stethoscope and talked he explained that the animals were the easiest part of the job. It was the owners that created the problems. The wealthy ones particularly felt they knew better than trained vets so often resorted to spiritual healers, psychics, chiropractors, and acupuncture.

One horse psychic refused to share what the horse had 'told' them because it would have been a breach of 'client confidentiality' and another felt the need to pass on the information that one horse had said he was planning to rape another horse. You can contact dead horses via Facebook Messenger.

Using supposed psychics of course. It's very common that people do. It's also very expensive for people to do so. There are so many online conspiracy theories about vets now that some animal owners simply don't trust them. Others go further. There are over 50,000 members of a Facebook  group that claims vets give animals cancer on purpose (via vaccinations) so they can make more money out of them.

There are other websites full of dangerous advice. Dogs Naturally is pretty much a GOOP for animals, selling overpriced and useless gadgets to the rich and easily fooled. Raw Feeding UK (33,000+ followers) promotes a conspiracy theory that pet food manufacturers design their products with the express intention of making animals sick and try to persuade people to get their pets to switch to a paleo diet.

But dogs are not wolves. They've been domesticated for something like 20,000 - 25,000 years and, when it comes to E. coli and salmonella, they're just as susceptible as humans. Try letting a pet dog wild in a park full of wolves and see how long it survives. Try letting a dog with E.coli or salmonella lick your child's face.

People have been putting dogs on gluten free diets which can kill them (dogs can be vegetarian but cats have to eat meat to survive) and in most cases people are doing this with the best intentions. Traditional vets don't, generally, get much time to speak to owners while homeopathic vets (many of whom have trained as vets so have the right to practice but have since moved over to the dark side) can devote, at great cost to the pet owner, much more time to chat to people and put them at ease.

Something of great importance when you consider how much people love their pets, how strong the bonds are. A friend of Dr Chambers once told him, when talking about this, "people don't care how much you know. They want to know how much you care".

Which is often true. But it doesn't change the fact many of the people selling these remedies are simply crooks giving false hope to desperate people. Facebook are starting to crack down on anti-vax and pseudoscience groups but still pages like the Barefoot Horse Owners Group (23,000+) exist.

They're anti-horseshoe which, to me, initially seemed like not such a bad thing, possibly even an admirable one. But much as dogs are not wolves, the horses we've domesticated and bred for thousands of years aren't Shetland ponies any more. A Shetland pony doesn't have a lot of weight to carry around, the gigantic thoroughbreds we've created need shoes to support their own weight. People have no doubt run marathons barefoot but it's generally not advised. Same for horses.

Ainsworths homeopathy website, thanks to the patronage of renowned crackpot Prince Charles, contains the Royal Warrant of Appointment so you can see how people are fooled into parting with their money for 'magic water but how do you explain the success of other, nameless due to their very litigious nature, 'ventures'?

There's a guy sells silent CDs (nearly £100) for you to play to your pets, £50 canisters of 'aerobic oxygen' that are supposed to cure lung cancer, and Russian healing blankets that seem to be able to cure pretty much everything. ASA have upheld complaints about this fellow but he's still at large and blaming 'big pharma' for trying to suppress his alternative (for which:read sham) ideas.

Elsewhere, online, anti-homeopathy vets are decried as being 'demonic illuminatists' and the 'reincarnation of Hitler'. It's the same techniques that racists and climate change deniers use. Shout down, using the most unpleasant language possible, anyone who disagrees with you, anyone who's done any research into a topic, and anyone who cares about anyone else other than themselves.

While some were charging £80 for blank CDs and his defenders were abusing people on the Internet with no censure whatsoever, Dr Chambers was out in Jaipur, India trying to make the world a better place. No doubt earning himself the right to be belittled as both a 'virtue signaller' an a 'social justice warrior'!

There's been no rabies in the UK for over one hundred years but in India and many other countries it still exists. Many Indian children still die of rabies and one approach has been to simply kill rabid, or suspected rabid, dogs. Dr Chambers volunteered for an ongoing initiative that was involved in vaccinating dogs instead.

It's cheaper to vaccinate dogs than people plus killing dogs merely leaves a void in to which move new wild, often rabid, dogs resulting in more children catching rabies and more children dying. With 85% of dogs in Jaipur now vaccinated (and the males neutered) there has not been a single case of human rabies since 2005.

Actual medicine works. Alternative medicine doesn't. When alternative medicine does start working they start calling it, quite simply, medicine. What sort of person, in a supposed nation of animal lovers, attacks a vet even if it's just online? I'd wager there are two distinct types. The misguided who need educating and the crooks and con men who need investigating by the law and their websites and businesses closing down.

A great start for anyone's education in health care and its current concerns (not just for animals, but humans too) would be to attend one of Dr Chambers' talks (and I've not even mentioned the Q&A which got into the influence of Mumsnet, homeopathy on farms, a naughty fat horse, and lots of animal diseases I've never heard of). A big thank you to him and, once again, Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub for another brilliant evening. Yet again they pulled another rabbit out of the hat - and this one didn't even have myxomatosis.