Activists protest homeopathy by "overdosing" on homeopathic pills
Homeopathy: Overdosing on nothing - opinion - 29 January 2010 - New Scientist
AT 10.23 am on 30 January, more than 300 activists in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US will take part in a mass homeopathic "overdose". Sceptics will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homeopathic pills to demonstrate to the public that homeopathic remedies, the product of a scientifically unfounded 18th-century ritual, are simply sugar pills.
Many of the sceptics will swallow 84 pills of arsenicum album, a homeopathic remedy based on arsenic which is used to treat a range of symptoms, including food poisoning and insomnia.
The aim of the "10:23" campaign, led by the Merseyside Skeptics Society, based in Liverpool, UK, is to raise public awareness of just exactly what homeopathy is, and to put pressure on the UK's leading pharmacist, Boots, to remove the remedies from sale.
The campaign is called 10:23 in honour of the Avogadro constant (approximately 6 * 10^23, the number of atoms or molecules in one mole of a substance), of which more later.