The 10:23 Campaign
The 10:23 Campaign 1 is an awareness and protest campaign against Homoeopathy organised by the Merseyside Skeptics Society, a non-profit organisation, to oppose the sale of homoeopathic products in the United Kingdom in 2010. The campaign has staged public “overdoses” of homoeopathic preparations.
The organisers state that homoeopathy is “an unscientific and absurd pseudoscience”, and that, according to their statement, “There is nothing in it.” They question the ethics of selling treatments to the public which have not been proven to be efficacious and are widely disregarded by the scientific community.
The Stunt
The aim of the stunt was to draw attention to homeopathic medicine’s lack of scientific foundation and to embarrass the British high-street pharmacist Boots into withdrawing its treatments from sale.
At 10:23 am on 30 January 2010, more than 300 activists in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US participated in a protest involving a mass overdose of homoeopathic products to demonstrate its inefficacy. Many protesters stood outside branches of Boots UK, other shops selling homoeopathic products, and other prominent public spaces and took 84 pills each of Arsenicum Album, 20 times the recommended dose. 2
No ill effects were reported by hundreds of volunteers who took part in a mass-overdose stunt around the world to demonstrate that homeopathic remedies are nothing more than sugar pills.
The 10:23 Challenge was repeated in 2011 with ‘overdose’ demonstration staged by protestors from 70 cities, across 30 countries. More than 1500 homeopathy sceptics across the globe took part in a mass homeopathic ‘overdose’ on homeopathic Belladonna to make a simple statement: Homeopathy – There’s Nothing In It.
Also read: Homeopathy is a Scam