[Closed] Homeopathy!

See the religion thread further down the page 🙂
But yes it works.

a sliding scale: superstition - religion - homeopathy - insanity

So you think it doesn't work?

MrNutt - I have just read the book "Trick or Treatment". The authors report on clinical trials of homeopathy which have only recently been carried out in the last few years. Homeopathy shows no significant benefits above and beyond that of a placebo. In fact it can be dangerous in instances where patients decide to take homeopathic treatments instead of regular ones.

Of course it doesn't work (by which I mean that it's no better than a placebo). For it to work would require a few physical laws to be re written.
[url= http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Homeopath-Thomas-Sam-And-Wife-Manju-Jailed-In-Australia-Over-Their-Baby-Daughter-Glorias-Death/Article/200909415394076?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_8&lid=ARTICLE_15394076_Homeopath_Thomas_Sam_And_Wife_Manju_Jailed_In_Australia_Over_Their_Baby_Daughter_Glorias_Death ]The Dangers of homeopathy![/url]

It's an imaginary cure and therefore works well on imaginary illnesses. 🙂

So you think it doesn't work?

oh, I'm quite prepared to believe it works, just not for the claimed reasons. Your body is good at healing itself, particularly if you have a good attitude.

[url=

chap[/url] sums it up quite nicely.

Ah good qualifier gonefishin,
So given that placebos can be very effective at curing people, you'd agree that homoeopathy can also be very effective at curing people?
[url= http://article.wn.com/view/2009/09/22/Woman_died_after_overdose_of_chemotherapy_drug_inquest_told/ ]The dangers of 'proper' medicine[/url]
[i]oh, I'm quite prepared to believe it works, just not for the claimed reasons. [/i]

Phew!, that's ok then 🙂

[url=

also covers it nicely at about 2:50! And again at about 6 minutes. Well worth a listen

Ah good qualifier gonefishin,
So given that placebos can be very effective at curing people, you'd agree that homoeopathy can also be very effective at curing people?

Now you really don't expect me to bite at such an obvious troll now do you?

It was worth a try 🙂

given that placebos can be very effective at curing people

That depends very much on what's wrong with them!

[url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/000728487X?ie=UTF8&tag=singletrackma-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=000728487X ]Bad Science by Ben Goldacre[/url] Is a must read IMO. And for the purposes of balance he totally savages some supposed mainstream 'proper' science research as well.

Like lots of conventional medicine, homeopathy works on people who believe it does. Many modern conventional medicines, when tested in double blind trials against placebos have been proven to have no chemical effect on the ailment they are supposed to fix, yet they do still work, and continue to be prescribed.

So Homeopathy can work also, it's a very good placebo, and it's cheap. What's wrong with that? - It fixes some people without resorting to any sort of chemical medicine.

Personally it wouldn't have any effect on me, but then I try not to get ill!

I feel a little disadvantaged when it comes to homeopathy. The fact I know it's bollocks prevents me from ever gaining any benefit from it. My loss I spose!

Don't get me started 😉

Second the recommendation of Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, the [url= http://www.badscience.net ]eponymous blog[/url] is very good as well.

Has anyone been on a Homeopathy course?

someone click the links I posted. I was expecting to see some Tim love happening here!

I love it! Same suspects on here as are on the "alpha course" thread. I love a good de-bunking!!

I sent this thread to a colleague of mine who has a degree in Homeopathy. He sent me this reply.....

A familiar argument!

If you want to throw the cat amonst the pigeons I can give you a link of a recently published study from Cuba involving 2.4 million people that were given homeopathy instead of vaccination against leptospirosis (a nasty tropical disease). The results were spectacular. 10 illnesses rather than 1000s

Just thought I'd mention it!

http://www.homeopathyeurope.org/news-and-press/news/stunning-cuban-experiences-on-leptospirosis

I can't do the linky thing though.

the [url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/may/26/you-ask-neals-yard-remedies ]Neils yard[/url] article in the Guardian summed it up for me very nicely

Hi Beaker,

That is indeed impressive. How much of it was down to the public health campaign and increased awareness (which obviously would have accompanied the treatment), and how much down to the treatment itself? - How many took the treatment and continued to drink ugly contaminated water?
Perhaps we will never know.
Ultimately it doesn't matter, because it worked, which is the whole point.

Beaker

Hi - tell me if I am reading that study incorrectly, but the trials did not seem to include a control group. Also, the study was carried out by someone who is an advocate of homeopathy.

I am particularly interested not just in the placebo effect which in medical trials is something to be "controlled" and which also affects regular medicines, i.e. the efficacy of regular medicines also very much shows the placebo effect. One excellent book is called "Getting Well Again" which shows the impact of guided meditations and imagery on cancer patients. So the results from the Cuban trial for me do not prove homeopathy, but priovide evidence for other explanations and are therefore not definitive.

I would be more conviced by the Cuban study if they had used a control group.

I sent this thread to a colleague of mine who has a degree in Homeopathy.

And who is offering a degree in it?

Oh and another really good book I have been reading is "Molecules of Emotion" if anyone is interested in these areas in particular. That provides more scientific back-up as to how our emotional states physically affect our health, due to the interactions of our neurophysiological, limbic and immune systems.

These are the guys who have done the most intensive studies of homeopathy
http://sites.pcmd.ac.uk/compmed/index.html

They are also a part of Plymouth University, and I am hoping to have their head as one of my mentors, fingers crossed. Even if I do not have a mentor, I will at least be able to meet up with them and they will be able to help guide and make suggestions for my own research in these particular areas.

I believe it's the placebo effect. But since the placebo effect works, I suppose that by that argument homeopathy works too.

We have a small bottle of anti-nausea drops which seems to work brilliantly if you feel sick. Placebo effect? Probably.

Many modern conventional medicines, when tested in double blind trials against placebos have been proven to have no chemical effect on the ailment they are supposed to fix, yet they do still work, and continue to be prescribed

Do you have any examples mountaincarrot?

Homeopathy can work also, it's a very good placebo, and it's cheap. What's wrong with that?

Placebos only work if quacks lie to their patients about the efficacy of the treatment they are prescribing. The patient cannot know they are taking a placebo if it is to have any effect. That's not terribly ethical, how could patients be in charge of their own health if they are deliberately deceived by their would be therapists?

And it's not cheap
[url= http://astronutrition.com/headache-homeopathic-relief-for-headache.html?source=googleps ]Homepthathic headache remedy[/url]

[url= http://www.boots.com/en/Paracetamol-Caplets-500mg_32929/?CAWELAID=334492536&cm_mmc=Shopping%20Engines-_-Google%20Base-_---_-Paracetamol%20Caplets%20500mg ]Conventional headache remedy[/url]

An important point is that most people who get ill, get better again. So unless you have a control group, you cannot claim that any improvement in health is due to the medicine, placebo, or homeopathic remedy that the patient is taking.

Beaker,

very impressive looking results, but where is the actual study this is reporting on? [url= http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2009/01/hasta-el-absurdo-siempre.html ]Alternative view[/url], giving some alternative explanations. Given that there have been multiple studies showing the effectiveness of homeopathy, and all of them have been ripped to shreds by people with the necessary background, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

BTW Leptospirosis isn't a tropical disease, but it can be particularly nasty. It's spread in Rat's urine, and better known as Weil's Disease.

The Bad Science book above does make interesting reading. Dismissing homeopathy because of the placebo effect is one thing, but homeopathy reveals something quite interesting about placebos.

Placebos are more effective if[b] both [/b]the patient and doctor believe that a real drug is being administered. Big fake pills work better than small one, colourful pill work better, injections work better still. But both the doctor and the patient need to believe in it. But only if the doctor isn't lying, they have to be convinced themselves that they are giving a genuine treatment. That said the large proportion treatments available on the NHS (ie of the range available, not the ones most commonly used) are unproven.

Placebos still aren't a patch on the drugs themselves, but the placebo and it use (or homeopathy or anything else) show that the emotional commitment made by both the treater and the treated have some role to play in recovery. That said some ailments - pain, bloating, feeling a bit blaahhh can be pretty subjective in their reporting (compared to dying) so faith may be a big part of how someone reports their improvements. What placebos reveal is that care is as much a part of treatment as chemicals

[url=

ER[/url]

The mash sums it up nicely..............

Break your dependence on homeopathy by drinking a litre of water with a trace of gullible moron dissolved in it. See? You're cured!

Then again I disagreed with* my medicinal chemistry lecturer on a few things so no-ones percfect.

*She was argueing the case that cannabis should be legalised on the grounds that the relative doses between it having an effect and killing you (theraputic index) were 10x that of alcohol. My counter argument was that both with knock you out cold well before you could ingest suficient ammounts to kill yourself. Yet alcohol is much less damageing to the body than weed.

n.b. I know there will always be idiots who down 3 bottles of vodca or eat an entire ounce in a giant space cake and never get to wonder why they'r not waking up.

Chaps chaps chaps.... I haven't read said report. I'm firmly in the camp of its all a sham. I just thought I'd add a little fuel to the fire.......

The purpose of healthcare, surely, is ultimately to make people feel better. Clearly if they've got a massive malignant tumour then the options for dealing with that are fairly limited and whether what you're doing to the patient "works" in an objective sense matters enormously. But for a huge range of tiresome but ultimately self-limiting ailments, simply being looked after makes people feel a lot better.

I'm not sure that I'd be comfortable with diverting large amounts of the NHS budget, say, to providing treatments which can be proven to have no effect, but I don't see much need to burst anyone's bubble if they are convinced that sipping something diluted until it no longer exists makes them better. 🙂

I have on two occasions (about 6 months apart) treated a fox with sarcoptic mange with homeopathy, which I obtained from [url= http://www.derbyfoxes.org/mange.htm ]Derbyshire Fox Rescue[/url].

On both occasions, despite heavy hair loss and bald patches, all the fur grew back and there were no further signs of sarcoptic mange on the fox.

I do not know if homoeopathy was the cause of the cure. But all the mange did disappear after the homeopathy treatment. That is why I did it a second time several months later.

[url= http://www.birdvet.co.uk/ ]Alan Jones[/url] who is one of Britain's most renowned avian vets (past Chairman of the Parrot Society UK, and currently its Vice-Chairman. A former Chairman of the European Committee of the Association of Avian Veterinarians) has used homoeopathy on birds claiming that it has been successful.

The placebo effect argument is weak when it comes to animals. And incidentally, my GP claims that homeopathy has been successfully used to treat mastitis in cattle.

Viagra is an interesting case study to look at the placebo effect, especialy seeing as it was tested twice, once to treat heart problems and once to improve sexypartytime for old people.

The number of people reporting "side effects" 😉 after taking viagra in the first trial (heart problems) was less* than the number reporting rock-ons in the placebo group in the second trial.

*someones going to have to check that, it may have been a statisticly significant number rather than actualy less. It was a good 3 years ago i studied this.

so what's the effect of a little bit of poo diluted over and over in our drinking water? How come good stuff has an effect but poo and wee don't?

" beaker - Member

Chaps chaps chaps.... I haven't read said report. I'm firmly in the camp of its all a sham. I just thought I'd add a little fuel to the fire....... "

Presumably by dipping an unlighted match into a bucket of water and then throwing the water on the fire...

[i]I have on two occasions ... treated a fox with sarcoptic mange with homeopathy[/i]

This is a remarkable image. 🙂

And incidentally, my GP claims that homeopathy has been successfully used to treat mastitis in cattle.

A quick google suggests that such claims have not been verified.

Ernie I don't doubt any of what you say but there is anecdotal evidence for many treatments in medicine, (leeches and flogging for example) that don't stand up to real scientific scrutiny with a properly designed trial. If a substance has a genuine therapeutic effect it's not that hard to setup a trial that will prove it.

[i]I just thought I'd add a little fuel to the fire.......[/i]

Be careful before sticking it near flames as I've diluted the fuel 10 billion billion times with water to make it much much more potent.
/bollocks, just saw Mr. Woppits post 🙂

Leeches definitely work:

[url= http://www.****/tvshowbiz/article-544588/Demi-Moore-admits-bizarre-beauty-secret-I-let-leeches-suck-blood.html ]"The other thing I found out is that leeches don't like hair so if you are hairy be prepared to do some shaving or waxing - they much prefer a Brazilian."[/url]

Bonkers Daily Mail Madness... 🙂

Big LOLs at Ian Munro/ Whoppit

I've been weeing in the petrol tank of my car for the same reason. [s]It goes like[/s] stink

From Tim Minchin's Beat poem "Storm" which i think makes a good point.

“By definition”, I begin
“Alternative Medicine”, I continue
“Has either not been proved to work,
Or been proved not to work.
You know what they call “alternative medicine”
That’s been proved to work?
Medicine.”

Has the Mail come to a conclusion yet as to whether leaches are cause cancer or cure it though?

Ian, I don't know yet, but you could always check the [url= http://thedailymailoncologicalontologyproject.wordpress.com/ ]Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project[/url] to see.

I know that homeopathy is bunkum.

I also know that if you give a kid an arnica tablet when he's trapped his fingers in a car door the pain goes away.

(I don't believe in an interventionist god either, in case you should ask)

I also know that if you give a kid an arnica tablet when he's trapped his fingers in a car door the pain goes away.

Arnica has been shown to work in some circumstances: http://www.springerlink.com/content/30225667517u7tr5/

I'm not a vet, but I understand that mange goes away naturally if the animal is otherwise healthy. And animals get the placebo effect too - many like being fussed over and given attention.

I see that the Cuban study mentioned above hasn't been published yet, and probably never will be. Still, that hasn't stopped it being widely reported as an amazing breakthrough by tonnes of homeopathy websites. Have a read of the prelimanry report and see if you can detect any bias in the language used. 🙄

http://homeopathyresource.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/successful-use-of-homeopathy-in-over-5-million-people-reported-from-cuba/

I'd also like to throw in "nocebo" which is the voodoo doll effect. It's the range of unpleaseant side effects brought on in people who are given a innoccuous substance who believe it to be toxic. (New Scientist a couple of months back).

These are the sort of people who might die of an overdose of Paracetemol, even if they were really only sugar pills.

I understand that mange goes away naturally if the animal is otherwise healthy. And animals get the placebo effect too - many like being fussed over and given attention.

Believe what you like, the mange was deteriorating and spreading when I started the homeopathy on both occasions. After about one week there was a marked improvement, all the fur quickly grew back soon after that. He received no extra fuss or attention. I do not know if the homeopathy cured him.

He received no extra fuss or attention.

I take it that you were looking after the fox at the time, and not just checking up on him when he came to go through your bins? 😛

I also know that if you give a kid an arnica tablet when he's trapped his fingers in a car door the pain goes away.

Ice cream also works

pain has a gating mechanism, thereofre so does slamming the kids other hand in the door.

The story of me and Basil, is a long and touching one, with sadly a tragic end Mr Agreeable. I have already told it on here, so I will resist repeating it.

Here you are Mr Agreeable, if you're interested :

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/got-some-new-unrequested-pets#post-373694

That's very sad. Even growing up in the country I saw far more foxes dead on roads than running around alive.

My mate has a fox that comes to see them whenever they're digging at his pump track.

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Many modern conventional medicines, when tested in double blind trials against placebos have been proven to have no chemical effect on the ailment they are supposed to fix, yet they do still work, and continue to be prescribed.

Proof please, this is useless with out peer-reviewed work, possibly with meta-analysis don't band it about.

John Diamond's book Snake Oil is also worth a read on this subject.

SSP