"homeopathic" treatment for infants with colic can be dangerous

With exquisite timing, three days after the 10^23 mass demonstration of how safe it is to overdose on homeopathic medicines, the journal Pediatrics published an article, which reports on: 

"11 infants who presented with an ALTE [apparent life-threatening event] after ingestion of Gali-col Baby, a homeopathic agent indicated for "infantile colic"

Three questions immediately spring to mind:

1. What exactly are apparently life-threatening events (ALTEs)?
2. What is in Gali-col Baby? Is it truly hoemopathic, or does it have active ingredients?
3. How was the comparison group selected? I.e. did the authors make a fair comparison.

I have ordered the paper from the library, as I do not have internet access to the journal, and will update this blog when I get it. 

It would be really helpful if someone who reads Hebrew, can do an internet search on Gali-col Baby and tell me what is in it.

In the mean time I would advise not concluding that homeopathic medicines can cause apparently life-threatening events: 

• there could be active non-homeopathic ingredients in the remedy
• the remedy could have misled parents into treating seriously ill children with a remedy meant for crying, but otherwise well, babies.
• the study could have picked up a spurious association 

=======UPDATE 16 February ===========


Now I have obtained the full paper from the library I can confirm:

• there were active non-homeopathic ingredients, including 3 types of alcohol that were not mentioned in the list of ingrediants on the label.
• the study was not designed to directly assess if seriously ill children had had proper treatment delayed while they were given a "homeopathic" remedy.
• the association seems genuine. 

The bottom line is that some remedies labelled as homeopathic are contaminated with potentially poisonous substances. The product appears to be sold in Israel and France.


If you are doing a degree in marketing, and have £5.00 to spend, you can buy an essay on marketing gali-col that you could use as a model for a course assignment:


http://www.coursework.info/University/Business_and_Administrative_studies/Marketing/The_problem_of_infant_colic_L29986.html 


If you do buy the essay, please let me know if the label on the essay's e-cover is more accurate than the label on gali-col baby.


It seems that people will sell and buy anything.

Reference

Use of a Homeopathic Preparation for "Infantile Colic" and an Apparent Life-Threatening Event

Shraga Aviner, Matitiahu Berkovitch, Hedva Dalkian, Rony Braunstein, Yossef Lomnicky, and Menachem Schlesinger Pediatrics 2010;125 e318-e323

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/125/2/e318?etoc