The British royal household has its own team of doctors, who are available 24 hours a day to ensure the health of the royal family. They are led by the “HEAD OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL HOUSEHOLD” (the head of the royal house of medicine, editor’s note). Previously, this position was held by the eminent Professor Sir Huw Thomas, consultant to King Edward VII Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital, London, and Professor of Gastrointestinal Genetics at Imperial College London. After the Queen’s death, Charles took matters into his own hands and appointed a new man: Michael Dixon.
Dr Dixon is a simple general practitioner whom I know well because when I started my research at the University of Exeter thirty years ago, we collaborated on several projects. Due to his notoriously fallacious reasoning, famed American skeptic Steven Novella later called Dixon “an arsonist in a field of integrative straw men”. Before his new appointment, Dixon had been “medical adviser to the Prince of Wales” for 20 years. What binds the two men is their uncritical enthusiasm for alternative medicine. All his life, Charles has promoted alternative therapies that blatantly go against science, and Dixon has tried to follow in his footsteps as best he could.
The laying on of hands, “an effective treatment”
In 1998, for example, Dixon published a study concluding that the laying on of hands “may be an effective adjunct to the treatment of chronically ill patients presenting to general practice.” After becoming an advisor to Charles, he was appointed medical director of the “Prince’s Foundation for Integrative Health”. This organization had to close its doors in 2010 following allegations of fraud and money laundering which landed its financial director in prison for three years.
After his death, the foundation evolved into “The College of Medicine and Integrated Health”, of which Charles is a patron and Dixon the president. This organization is very active in promoting various types of alternative medicine, including those that are both implausible and unproven, such as “Neurolinguistic Programming”, “Thought Field Therapy”, Homeopathy and Reiki.
“Enemy of the Enlightenment”
Charles once said he was proud to be an enemy of the Enlightenment, but he also insisted he would end his lobbying for alternative medicine once he got on the throne. The British scientific community wondered if he would be able to keep this promise.
The appointment of Michael Dixon as head of the Royal House of Medicine partly answers that question. Could it be that King Charles, rather than pursuing his own anti-science agenda, delegates it in future to sycophants whom he himself has appointed to positions of influence?
* Edzard Ernst is Emeritus Professor at the University of Exeter in the UK, where he specialized in the evaluation of alternative medicine. He is the author of numerous books including Don’t Believe What You Think: Arguments For and Against SCAM, Exeter Ingram Book Company, coll. Societas, 2020, 261 pages (untranslated), SCAM: So-Called Alternative Medicine, (untranslated) Exeter Imprint Academic, coll. Societas, 2018, 225 p.