It’s your civic duty as a rational member of society to denounce all anti science like Homopathy.

One little comment, on a Facebook page none of us has seen, by a person we haven’t met, reinterpreted by a stranger on the internet is having a measurable effect on this forum… Makes you think… 😉

I read over the weekend that homeopathic practitioners in India are going to be allowed to prescribe real drugs now. That did worry me.

If folk thinks it helps them leave them to it.

I would offer the same nonchalant response if the ‘practitioner’ explained “there’s no evidence for this working, but the possible positive effects you feel are likely due to the interaction you and I are having, coupled with your desire/confirmation bias for a treatment to work. Modern evidenced based medicine may be proven more effective to work, but I see you are looking for alternative ideas, which may put you off proven medical treatments. However, I’d advise a medical review if things get worse…”

But they don’t.
So I wont.

DrP

Some painkillers don’t work unless the patient knows they are taking them.

Really, which ones? At link to the published paper?

Thing is they would have had to pass medical trials including double blind trials, I.e. People wouldn’t have know they were taking them, so just wondering how they passed….

As a multiple cancer surviver with a wife who runs clinic trials, I’m a bit of a fan of “proper” medicine.

^^
RE this, I wonder if the poster got mixed up with the well recognised notion of ‘expected results’.
I.e it’s not that analgesia won’t work unless the patient knows they are taking it, but that an analgesic effect can be demonstrated by ‘giving a painkilling medicine that isn’t really a pain killing medicine‘ (i.e. saline flushes have ‘some’ analgesic properties if you tell someone it’s morphine etc. This simply demonstrates the psychological input of pain/pain pathways).

I save the NHS a fortune by simply prescribing tic-tacs and chewing gum…

DrP

A friend of mine’s father was dying of cancer a number of years ago. He’d tried every possible option modern science made available and all of them were failing to cure him. He was offered homeopathy and said he’d lived life as a man of science and would rather die before succumbing to a fear of death that let the bullshit merchants in. He did, ultimately die, but I had a lot of respect for that assertion.

I think that if someone wants to believe something heals them (like my aunt and her crystals and healing spirits that surround her) then all good. As soon as they try to pass it off as something we should all do instead of visiting doctors then they need a bit of counterbalancing.

Respect their views.

Screw their views.

Respect the person, sure, but are we supposed to be giving “respect” to any old half-witted nonsense that people spout? Homeopathy, religion, homophobia, racism?

Homeopathy gained a footing because at its inception it was often less likely to actually kill you than what the practitioners pejoratively term ‘allopathic’ medicine. That is to say, a nice cup of tea and a sit down followed by the promise of magic beans was almost certainly preferable to a bone saw to the skull to relieve miasmas.

These days, people die because they believe in this horseshit rather than seeking treatment that might actually make them better. If you find yourself asking “what’s the harm”, go read up on how many deaths Matthias Rath is responsible for and then come back to me. He’s a vitamin salesman rather than a homeopath, but it’s the same principle.

I’m very disappointed that none of you lot are paying any attention to my last homoeopathic post.

I read over the weekend that homeopathic practitioners in India are going to be allowed to prescribe real drugs now

Hang on!!!

Why on earth would a homeopathist (or however you describe them) ever need to prescribe ‘real’ medicines unless they know that their little bottles of water with smelly stuff in really don’t work?

Not sure about the specific point about analgesics being made above – but it wouldn’t surprise me. Calpol remains the biggest-selling analgesic for feverish children, despite little evidence that paracetamol is beneficial in these circumstances, and the inherent risk of overdose which is still a frequent cause of hospitalisation in children.

It is pretty widely acknowledged that the evidence base for dozens of widely-used conventional medicines and treatments is severely lacking, and while RCTs are best practice, medicines are frequently used in circumstances which do not mirror the RCTs which support their use.

Having said that, the evidence base for homeopathy takes this deficiency to a whole new level.

In reply to the OP, why interfere? Your relative is contributing in a tiny way to the evidence base with her anecdotal testimony. Even that has some limited merit, and the sum of these anecdotes, coupled with proper trials, may one day help us understand whether the placebo effect can be more powerfully achieved using different interventions.

What level of pish are we talking here is it

1. I took these little pills and felt better

Or

2. Everyone should stop taking any other sort of medicene straight away and only rely on homeopathy

If 1. You’ll sound like like a sanctimonious ****, the proper response is “glad you’re feeling better” if its 2, then knock your self out…

That’s true – if it’s option 2 “Why have chemotherapy when homeopathy can cure your cancer?” then some tactful counterbalance may be needed.

I don’t believe in homeopathy, but it has worked for me in the past and it clearly works for others.

So do you believe in it or not ❓

Un proven anecdotal evidence is the same as no evidence in any part of life, let alone the clinical world. Proper clinical trials, we can document anecdotal evidence, is the only way to go and once homeopathy passes them, then there fine by me.

I agree totally that lots of “real” medicine is used the in incorrect ways and even when used correctly it will still have different effects (and side effects) on vast sways of the population.

Unfortunately the placebo effect seems to get over played, especially by homeopathy. Placebo effect is if you think it will help (or if somebody who you trust tells you, such as DrP) then on a psychological level it may help, such as my head doesn’t hurt if I eat blue smarties. But what the placebo effect isn’t doing is effecting a physiological condition, such as if I eat blue smarties my head hurts less because my brain tumour is shrinking (not suggesting DrP is prescribing them for that, just using it for a point), which is what gets claimed by some homeopaths on a regular basis (well if you dilute the smarty in a million gallons of water first), which is a dangerous stance to take and does prevent people seek real medical advice. Because if eating blue smarties did shrink your brain tumour, you could prove it in a trial and it would become a real cure.

Explain to you aunt how it “works”

It difficult for any even semi rational person to countenance it actually being medicine once you explain how its made.

I explained it to a colleague who said she uses homeopathy for colds. I explained the 30 dilutions by 100 process and how in the end there was no active ingredient left.

Here response was “that’s a bit rubbish then”

Just show her this video:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KX8C3H4Oaw[/video]

Because if eating blue smarties did shrink your brain tumour, you could prove it in a trial and it would become a real cure.

Exactly, and then it would become a ‘medicine’, and no doubt shunned by the alternative medicine brigade.

As Tim Minchin says in that video posted earlier: ‘Alternative medicines that have been proved to work are called medicines’

Leave it.

Seems the “STW way” is to be anti-religion or anti anything vaguely faith/ideology led, unless it’s socialism.

I’ve never really understood why medical mumbo jumbo seems to hold some sort of privileged position as something that “it’s not the done thing” to challenge

If someone posted on facebook that the earth was flat, the the sun orbited the earth or that dinosaurs still lived in the hollow centre of the earth you would quite rightly point out this was nonsense.

Yet with “medical” forms of bullshit we have to take a whiff and pretend it smells of flowers

it has a 50% success rate for me…

cured my eczema after years of normal doctors creams and stuff never worked, the eczema stayed away for about 5 years, then returned. I went back tot he homeopath I used before, for about 6 months, and she couldn’t get rid of it again.

was the eczema cured the first time by something else? possibly… would I go back and spend 20 quid a session now? probably not tbh.

Seems the “STW way” is to be anti-religion or anti anything vaguely faith/ideology led

That’s not the “STW way” that’s the “rational logical evidence-based thinking” way. It just happens that quite a few on here favour such thinking because they have backgrounds in science, engineering, medicine or Post-It notes. 😀

Leave it.
Seems the “STW way” is to be anti-religion or anti anything vaguely faith/ideology led, unless it’s socialism.

😆

I don’t have a background in science, engineering or medicine – always been an arty farty type. I’ve even visited more than one homeopath and my mother is a believer.

Listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe has had a big influence on me though.

Home

Have you thought of selling her some magic beans?

Or a normal bean from a whole farm growing beans where once a magic bean was supposed to have passed by on the road.

I’ve got some magnetic wrist bands here she might like. Well they’re not actually magnetic, but before sending them out I subject each one to several days in a 50 micro Tesla magnetic field in order to provide them with a memory of being magnetic.

Respect their views.

Except that this isn’t a matter of opinion, it’s a science.

Let’s assume we think homeopathy might work. What would we do to try and find out for sure? Maybe we could give the pills to load of people and see who gets better? Maybe we should also give some dummy pills to some of them, to see what proportion get better on their own. But we should not tell them which they are taking, to disguise any psychological tricks. And we’d better make sure the people giving the pills also don’t know which is which, so they can’t give anythign away inadvertently.

Does that sound good? Would that prove for sure if it works? Well the medical profession IS doing this every day, all over the world, for loads of different things. So that’s why we listen to them.

I’ve deleted most of my relatives from facebook for their constant pish-posting nonsense. Older people especially take everything literally, they think all these pictures and heart-breaking stories are real people and current. They don’t understand what trolling, spamming and conning are.

There’s a simple button ‘stop receiving notifications’. Press it.

Have you thought of selling her some magic beans?

While I say she believes in it – I think she knows deep down it’s probably all bollocks, but chooses to do it anyway. She worked in a senior position in public health and never tried to promote it anyway.

If shes posted that silly stuff up on the internet for all to see
I say

flame away!

Not sure about the specific point about analgesics being made above – but it wouldn’t surprise me. Calpol remains the biggest-selling analgesic for feverish children, despite little evidence that paracetamol is beneficial in these circumstances, and the inherent risk of overdose which is still a frequent cause of hospitalisation in children.

My first reaction was to think you were wrong, but a bit of googling turned up this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12076499 – it seems there’s little evidence that paracetamol is of use with fevers. Interestingly, though, it is of use after an initial dose of ibuprofen: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528896/

Here’s a nice image you could post on her Facebook feed:

jon1973 – Member

She feels better. Leave her to it. Why go to pains to try and undo any good it might be doing her, even if it is just some sort of placebo effect? Life is too short.

Because taking imaginary medicine sometimes discourages people from taking real medicine.

I’m totally down with the placebo effect- I’m quite comfortable that a lot (most? Some? Possibly all?) of the pain in my hip is psychosomatic or habituated. I reckon that if you gave me a packet of fake painkillers there’s a decent chance it’d work, at least some of the time. But that doesn’t make it a good alternative to medicine for actual real conditions.

I remember people getting upset a while back about fake homeopathy products- they were just water! That was genius.

I was coughing my lungs out (unbeknown to me at the time I had whooping cough) and mrs iolo has a friend whose a surgeon by day and consultant doctor something or other by night.
We went to see her and she gave me sugar pills. It worked for about a week then the coughing came back with a bang. I got antibiotics. I stopped coughing for a week.
This was about 4 months ago and still have the cough.
To qualify as a doctor in Austria you must know homeopathy as well.
Do I believe?
It had as much effect on me as antibiotics ie 1 week of no coughing.
At least the antibiotics sopped me being infectious.

Do trading standards test for that?

Homeopathy has not virtually eliminated the risk of death from dozens of terrible virulent diseases though. Antibiotics have.

It had as much effect on me as antibiotics ie 1 week of no coughing.
At least the antibiotics sopped me being infectious.

You’re stating that as fact – you have no idea whether the homeopathy had any effect and for that matter, you don’t know that the antibiotic did either.

The key thing is that antibiotics have been demonstrated to work in proper tests so it’s reasonable for you to think that they had an effect. Homeopathy doesn’t have that backing so you’re making an observational deduction.

I took the sugar pills, I stopped coughing. Fact. I couldn’t care less about proving it. Fact.
Just worked for 1 week. Fact. Antibiotics only worked for 1 week. Fact. I still have whooping cough now .Fact.

That’s a sequence of events. That doesn’t prove those events are linked. But then I’m sure you understand that. Fact 😉