The long awaited homeopathy thread
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Well, I suppose we should.
So:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2125.2007.03008.x/pdf
(I think that's free to air).
Quote:One hundred and fifty-eight patients were randomized (66 in the placebo arm, 67 in the homeopathic arm and 25 in the noninterventional group). There was no difference between the treated and the placebo group for primary end-point (mean (95% CI) 48% (35.8, 56.3), and 56% (43.7, 68.3), required less than 10 mg day – 1of morphine in each group, respectively). The homeopathy treatment had no effect on morphine intake between 24 and 72 h or on the visual analogue pain scale, or on quality of life assessed by the SF-36 questionnaire. In addition, these parameters were not different in patients enrolled in the open-label noninterventional control armand interesting feature of the trial, though, was
Quote:However, inclusion in a trial that evaluates homeopathy leads to an improvement in the patient’s opinion about the treatment irrespective of the resultswhich is fascinating in itself.
The authors note that assessing homeopathy is difficult, because applications are tailored very much to individual circumstances.
Homeopathy is not effective for treating any health condition, Australia’s top body for medical research has concluded, after undertaking an extensive review of existing studies.
Well, at least homeopathy as such can't do anybody any harm. Drinking distilled water is harmless. Which makes it the least harmful of all the quack remedies. It could result in indirect harm, though, if someone with something seriously wrong with them (eg diabetes, cancer) forwent (is that the right word?) getting proper treatment in the mistaken belief that drinking distilled water could cure them.
DJP wrote:There's a good explanation of how homeopathy works on this website.www.HowDoesHomeopathyWork.comI've clicked on that site a number of times now and it still cracks me up. Thanks DJP, nice one. http://skepdic.com/homeo.html
Even drinking distilled water “ain’t necessarily absolutely harmless”.Its zero mineralisation, neutral pH, different osmotic pressure, etc. will change the conditions under which biological processes operate at the cellular level. While these processes are necessarily tolerant, conditions that depart from slightly alkaline pH, trace mineralisation, etc. might well have long-term biological consequences.It would not be surprising if demineralised water tended to leach minerals out of bodily cells, etc.
Acupuncture works too…They did a controlled experiment and results showed a slight statistical effect … Only thing was that the researchers purposefully ignored the several contradictory acu-point charts recommended by practioners and deliberately just stuck the needles randomly into the person where-ever the fancy took them. But it worked according to the maths. Homeopathy is very dangerous when some who practice it do not even follow their own 'professional' organisations recommendations and substitute homeopathic vaccinations for real ones…I am surprised it is not treated as criminal…certainly would be if i passed off my own concoction as able to stop rabies, for instance.
Nearly all quack remedies "work" in some cases in that there's an improvement however temporary. Snake oil probably does too. The point is they don't work for the reasons their supporters advance. In the case of homeopathy the reasons given (water distilled until there are hardly any active molecules left and shaken in a particular way) is just laughable. Have you heard the one about the homeopath who forgot to take his medicine and died of an overdose?To prove the uselessness of homeopathic remedies, in 2004 a hundred Belgian Skeptics attempted to commit mass suicide by taking an overdose of homeopathically diluted snake poison, belladonna and arsenic. They survived. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10:23_CampaignMore details (and explanation) here: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/belgium_skeptics_commit_mass_suicide/This thread is not really necessary unless we need some practice in shooting ducks on a pond ….
Hang on a minute ALB, let's be fair. The reason they didn't die is simple enough. They didn't shake the concoction vigorously enough.
Quote:Dynamization was for Hahnemann a process of releasing an energy that he regarded as essentially immaterial and spiritual. As time went on he became more and more impressed with the power of the technique he had discovered and he issued dire warnings about the perils of dynamizing medicines too much. This might have serious or even fatal consequences, and he advised homeopaths not to carry medicines about in their waistcoat pockets lest they inadvertently make them too powerful. Eventually he even claimed that there was no need for patients to swallow the medicines at all; it was enough if they merely smelt them. (Campbell)I think the interesting question though, is given that it has been shown again and again to not work, why do people still believe it does? The vast majority of people are still under the influence of magical thinking it seems..
One factor will be the number of people for whom it has appeared to "work" and who have attributed this to the remedy rather than to the real cause (placebo, getting better anyway, temporary remission, etc). They don't think it hasn't "worked". The same goes for all the other quack remedies, but of course the reasons advanced by those who believe in them can't all be true (in fact, some are contradictory).
It's a difficult one DJP.A little anecdote that might shed a little light into some peoples thought processes when validating alternative health practices for themselves.My partner has a friend, who had a shoulder problem. It sounded and was diagnosed, using modern technology, as an injury to a rotator cuff muscle in the their shoulder. They saw a physiotherapist for a few sessions and were given exercises to do, in order to strengthen the injured muscle, this person also had a steroid injection into their shoulder.To get to the point, they told my partner that there was no improvement using conventional treatment, but a neighbour had recommended a Bowen Technique therapist. Surprise, surprise, after a couple of sessions they reported huge improvement and are now learning the technique themselves.My partner and I both agree that it was probably the conventional treatment starting to show results, coinciding with the relaxation of the alternative therapy.To me this looks like a case of someone not knowing what to expect from their conventional treatment, a problem caused by lack of communication from, unfortunately, quite a lot of conventional medical practitioners [in my experience]. Consequently you end up feeling like a piece of meat, to be poked and prodded without being listened to. So some people go to alternative health practitioners on the recommendation of a friend etc. There you may feel more valued as a person because you're listened to more attentively, it feels more reassuring, safer and something very important, relaxation.I like to think within a socialist society conventional medicine would be able to learn from the personal approach of alternative medical practitioners. We all know that cost is a crippling factor in health care under capitalism, and time is money. As good as the NHS is in Britain, it's still a conveyor belt system of health care because of funding limitations. In such an environment, is it any wonder quack medicine exists?
This is a good story: http://www.supanet.com/homeopathy-conference-hallucination-crisis-a16480.htmlMust be a lesson somewhere.
ALB wrote:Must be a lesson somewhere.Think it's this one:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tTVf519uIk
Coincidentally, yesterday i posted a comment on this article http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/modern-science-says-homeopathy-total-bunk-so-why-it-more-popular-everOver 2000 comments posted, many more than than the average for a political piece which makes you wonder at how people think and what they consider crucial to their daily lives. Since it is too long a thread to search for what i said, briefly, one comment asked why people demand climate change denialists to accept scientific evidence based research and to ignore anecdotal proof of that the science is wrong but are willing to go along with homeopathic claims. The second was a reference to Traditional Chinese Medicine being a product of Mao's inability to build a Western – standard health service and he he revamped the village folk-medicine therapies…some good…some bad…some plain outright ridiculous…
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