"It's a miracle! Take physics and bin it! Water has memory! And whilst its memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is infinite, it somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it."
The water forgets the previous substances that were in it, when a trained homoeopath hits it with magic paddle. Yes, that's really how it's suggested to work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy#Preparation
The saddest thing is that in some countries (like France...) Homeopathic medicines are actually reimbursed by social security (and therefore paid for by everyone who pays taxes). We're still waiting for double-blind, vs placebo, clinical trials to show how efficacious they really are.
The idea is that they are as good as placebos (which are proven to be useful in some cases) so they are actually somewhat useful.
While I think that "real" placebos would be better for this than de facto placebos with bullshit pseudoscience attached to them, it's still not completely stupid to reimburse them if they do provide the same level of relief as active medicine through placebo effect.
Of course they're not effective at killing bacteria, but there are some domains in which placebos have their place.
Edit - to be clear, the reason given for reimbursing them is explicitely that they are good as placebos, they are not claimed by the French social security to be useful as active medicine.
You have to be very careful when endorsing placebos.
The research I've heard about basically says "placebos only have subjective effects". The classic study was on asthma. Participants receiving the placebo reported feeling better, but had no measurable improvement in lung function.
So relying on a placebo for a subjective feeling of improvement could be dangerous whenever what's needed is an actual, objective improvement -- ie, "whenever something is actually wrong".
"Would you go to a doctor who you knew dispensed ineffective sugar pills to the sick?"
It depends a little on what else they could dispense. I would rather they give out homeopathic medicines then give out antibiotics, in the face of unreasonable demands from their patients. I'd more rather they successfully educate their patients. I'm not sure the degree to which that's typically possible.
Would that not logically justify reimbursement for anything taken for its placebo effects - which would be literally anything as research[1] showed placebo effect occurs even when the subject knows they are taking a placebo? It feels more like justification after the fact.
It's available on the NHS in the UK too. There was an evidence check into it. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-respon... - which found it to be without evidence. However, the government changed as the report was published and they decided not to act on the findings.
Not sure. I have not seen the data myself, but I have heard more than one that acupuncture has had demonstrated benefits in clinical trials. And chinese medicine usually fares relatively well when put in clinical trials as well. I wouldn't discard everything out there, but homeopathy is, for me, clear BS - from the theory to the data generated.
>With an eye to the enormous Chinese market, pharmaceutical companies have explored the potential for creating new drugs from traditional remedies.[126] Successful results have however been scarce: a 2007 editorial in Nature said that while this may simply be because TCM is largely irrational pseudoscience, advocates have argued that it is because research had missed some key features of TCM, such as the subtle interrelationships between ingredients.[126]
I am not saying there might be merit in some of the practices, however to say "usually fares relatively well when put in clinical trials" is incorrect.
Oh, I was not talking about the principles of Chinese Medicine itself, more about the plants they actually used. I know several of them have been put in clinical trials contexts, and while some did fail, several of them showed actual efficacy as medicines.
Stopped clocks put in clinical trial contexts have been shown to occasionally tell the actual time, too.
Mercury sulfide, asbestos ore and lead oxide might give you an erection thanks to the placebo effect, but pornography has been proven to be much more effective with fewer side effects, and can be delivered efficiently over the internet.
The amount of failures eclipses the amount of successes by a lot. I didn't say we shouldn't still study them, but the idea they are "pretty good usually" is false.
I believe OP is saying IF "alternative medicine" can pass the proper clinical trials, then it no longer deserves the "alternative" label, and is just medicine.
Let homeopathy go through trials. Let it fail & put these discussions to bed.
How can you possibly not be aware that homeopathy has gone through trial after trial and has always failed? Have you ever used google or wikipedia? There are NOT two valid sides to this argument.
Oh, I know, I have seen the studies. I meant, we are still waiting for clinical trials to prove that they work, because so far all trials show it's just like placebo.
But if there's trials that show they don't work, then you don't need to wait for positive results. The question isn't open, the question has been answered with a "no".
Absence of evidence where you should expect evidence is evidence of absence.
I used to think chiropractors were charlatans, but in desperation I saw one for TMJ, vertigo, and tinnitus, and within 4 sessions of targeted treatment, I haven't felt this good in about 6 years. The TMJ is gone and the tinnitus has subsided. I don't think they're a cure-all, and I'm just a random guy on the internet, but I think there are legitimate treatments.
If a doctor that administers a number of effective and proven treatments also practiced "vertebral subluxation" or bloodletting I would classify that doctor as a charlatan.
Quackery runs amok in their industry, as evidenced by their major trade groups' stance on vaccination,[1] and genetically modified plants.[2] Ironically, while also supporting "alternative elective course of action" in lieu of vaccination they also support "enforcement efforts against quack medicines...that endanger the public health..."[3]
If I implied that I did not mean to. Effective "alternative" treatments are absorbed in to mainstream medicine and become standard practices. I could see chiropractic being on-par with orthopedic physical therapy if they were to disavow the pseudo-science plaguing the field.
Two years ago, I injured my back. I'm not sure exactly what did it, but I had trouble walking across a room while using a cane -- it was bad.
Despite the recommendations of friends, I DIDN'T go to a chiropractor and within a month I was much much better. Today my back has never felt better. I'm not sure that this proves that one shouldn't go to chiropractors, and I'm just a random guy on the internet so what does this prove?
I've also had tinnitus, and it too subsided WITHOUT chiropracty. I'm glad that not going to a chiropractor cured me.
The efficacy of any kind of treatment is hard to determine, and the subjective interpretation of our own experiences is always hard to keep in perspective. Anyway, I'm glad that you're ailments abated (with the chiropractor's help).
I understand what you're saying, and I appreciate the logic, but I had constant pain for years and this was a sudden, dramatic improvement within HOURS of seeing this chiropractor. Maybe it was all just a coincidence, I'm not making a scientific claim, only that the success should garner further study. If you read the case study I linked to above, you'll find I'm not the only one.
Allow me to come to your defense and congratulate the skeptics in the audience for completely missing the goddamn point.
There is no need to be afraid of the idea that a chiropractic procedure might have possibly worked. If an alt-med procedure works, and there are rigorous scientific studies to back it up, congratulations, it is now science-based medicine. Science-based medicine is not particularly picky, and if physical manipulations or sticking people with needles is shown to work as a treatment for a particular condition, it's no worse a modality than any other.
The reason to reject chiropracty and acupuncture as fields despite their occasional successes because of their lack of rigor, and tendency to keep using treatments after they have been shown to be ineffective or dangerous or both. Some practitioners still adhere to the original, discredited foundations of their fields (sublaxations, nonallopathic lesions, qi), some practitioners will happily treat for conditions for which their methods have been proven completely ineffective, and some practitioners will happily injure patient after patient with fractured vertebrae and punctured lungs. And their professional organizations have shown no ability or desire to regulate their practitioners.
Both of which are scientifically proven to work in some cases. Acupuncture can actually relieve pain[1], and as long as a point of going to a chiropractor is to give muscles a massage rather than to pray and inhale incense sticks, then it helps as well.
People report relief from chronic pain after taking placaebo. Cancer patients have relief from pain after cognitive behaviour therapy - a psychological intervention.
I have no problem accepting that someone feels pain, has acupuncture, and then no longer feels that pain. I do have a problem with the bullshit mechanisms that acupuncture suggests.
Since acupuncture has reasonable few side effects and long term pain medication has some scary side effects it's not so easy ro just dismiss it out of hand even though we know it is nonsense.
> I do have a problem with the bullshit mechanisms that acupuncture suggests.
Correct. No arguments from me on that. However, as noted in the Wikipedia article, few modern day acupuncture therapist actually incorporate the original concepts of qi and meridians in their practice.
What I was saying was the actual insertion of needles can release endorphins and that's a plausible explanation for reduced pain besides just the placebo effect.
A lot of communication is non-verbal, body language, tone of voice, etc. It is incredibly easy to misinterpret when you are only given a small part of the communication. :)
That is correct, however one "rational" explanation I've heard for this fact is that homeopathic remedies have a placebo effect and sometimes manage to replace actual medicine to cure minor ailments. Apparently homeopathy is less expensive than the real stuff so social security has less to reimburse.
I'm not sure if that's true or just a clever excuse to keep homeopathy reimbursed though. An other element to consider is that Boiron, the largest homeopathic manufacturer in the world is a french company.
> An other element to consider is that Boiron, the largest homeopathic manufacturer in the world is a french company.
Yeah, and they have actually moved their site to my home town in France, and they have detestable practices. They grab all the land around them to expand their operations (even though it used to be land reserved for agriculture) by threatening the mayor to leave the city if they don't get everything that they want. They're just a bunch of bullies and I wouldn't be surprised there's some shady thing going on with them and politicians at the national level.
> pparently homeopathy is less expensive than the real stuff so social security has less to reimburse.
Then we are really reimbursing a very expensive form of sugar. I'm not sure who we are kidding but there is no science behind that kind of policy - and if placebo can make such claims, then it should be Open-bar for products making health claims all across the board, from supplements to food items. Yet these are actually controlled, while the regulations on homeopathics benefit from special provisions. No need to prove anything.
Years ago, I dated a French woman while she was here (in the USA) for a couple of months. She took homeopathic medicine and said that she knew that it worked because it was provided by the national health service! (One night she saw a full moon and remarked to me that it meant it would rain. When I said that I didn't think so, she was surprised and said "All farmers know the full moon brings the rain.")
I have no idea on how they do those clinical studies which say that there is no difference between a placebo and actual homeopathic medicines. And what I read of USA, I have doubts that these studies are really done by independent personnel and not by those who get directly/indirectly paid by companies like Merck, J&J, etc.
I myself take homeopathic medicines for various ailments (small or big) and have seen improvement in my physical condition every time. Also a lot of people I know rely on homeopathy and not one has ever said that it did not give the desired results. The only factor is that the doctor should be able to diagnose the patient properly and have enough knowledge to understand how each chemical interacts with the body and with other chemical to be able to make a compound that will help the body in overcoming the disease. Homeopathy is as much about the medicines as it is about the knowledge and experience of the doctor.
You and the people you know are being scammed, spending your money for nothing. You see improvements because your body is recovering all on its own - it's pretty good at that.
Homeopathic "medicines" contain no chemicals that interact with the body or form compounds, which is exactly why anyone who isn't a complete idiot should immediately understand that it's all a bunch of bullshit.
Your homeopath peddler (who does not deserve to be called "doctor") understands absolutely nothing about your body, he has merely memorized a bunch of arbitrary meaningless rules.
>I have no idea on how they do those clinical studies which say that there is no difference between a placebo and actual homeopathic medicines.
So read up on them. Here's a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy it is very well researched and you can review the papers yourself.
>I have doubts that these studies are really done by independent personnel and not by those who get directly/indirectly paid by companies like Merck, J&J, etc.
Oh come on!! Do you really think the National Science Foundation[1] is a Merck shill? or the scientific journal Bioethics?[2]
>have seen improvement in my physical condition every time
Please note, the types of things homeopathy is prescribed for are self limiting. Your body will heal over time without intervention, so yes! You will feel an improvement! The remedy you took has nothing to do with it though.
"Please note, the types of things homeopathy is prescribed for are self limiting. Your body will heal over time without intervention, so yes! You will feel an improvement! The remedy you took has nothing to do with it though."
Not exactly. The medicine course brought the illness down to a level where i could really not make out if I still have the problem or not. The problem again surfaced to a very lesser extent after 3 years of finishing the course. What I am talking about is Sinusitis and there is no treatment of it in allopathy apart from operation and the allopathic doctors themselves say that after operation it will again return in 1-2 years.
Why I said that I do not believe the tests that are done by US agencies because most of the tests that are done by US agencies come out to be heavily influenced by the private sector companies who have their business interest in those studies incase the result come out that go against what they claim after few years when skeletons tumble out.
I do not reside in US so my opinions are based on what I read in major newspapers.
So you can downvote me to any extent but I have experienced the results on myself and have seen the difference and hence highly doubt those studies. And when I say the doctor really matters that is because you can go for the same illness to many doctors and the medicines that some will give you will show less/no effect at all. So the experience level and understanding of different chemicals and their bonding really does matter.
First of all, I accidentally omitted the word "generally" which was meant to be there. What I meant to say was "Please note, the types of things homeopathy is prescribed for are GENERALLY self limiting. Your body will heal over time without intervention, so yes! You will feel an improvement! The remedy you took has nothing to do with it though."
> What I am talking about is Sinusitis and there is no treatment of it in allopathy apart from operation and the allopathic doctors themselves say that after operation it will again return in 1-2 years.
>The best treatment, first line, is nasal irrigation with saline solution to just move the stuff along. If you took all the people in the world who say they have chronic sinusitis, and you put them all on nasal saline irrigations, a big proportion would not have any symptoms anymore.
>After that would be medications, like steroids, which are anti-inflammatory drugs. And if you can actually culture bacteria from a patient’s sinuses and know what you’re treating, antibiotics are appropriate. Decongestants, when appropriately used for a limited duration, are incredibly effective at relieving the obstruction and letting the sinuses drain.
>The sinusitis patients who do well are the ones who really abide by using the neti pot or the saline irrigation bottles. And whether we add additional medications or not to the saline, it’s that mechanical flushing and lavage that really has a tremendous effect. Because it’s getting rid of the mucus, getting rid of all the inflammatory cells and whatever bacteria are there.
The vast majority of sinusitis cases resolve on their own within 10 days. The cause of most cases is a viral infection.
Chronic sinusitis can be caused by asthma or allergies, which are known to spontaneously reverse with age. Or pollutants, etc, which can be removed from your living environment, even on accident.
Sinusitis surgery is far from the first line of treatment.
Sinusitis surgery isn't just one surgery, it is tailored to the individual patient and their causes and symptoms. for example, removal of infected, swollen, or damaged tissue if that is what is causing it. Can remove some bone if the sinuses are unusually small, or polyps if that is what is causing it. While it is true that sinusitis can reoccur after surgery, it is far from guaranteed. "Will again return in 1-2 years" is absolutely stupid and false. It depends a lot on the patient, their immune system, the type of surgery, the cause, and importantly, post-op care. Not to mention luck!
I had a chronic cough for years, caused by post nasal drip. No medications helped at all, I tried all of them. Nobody could figure out what was even causing it. One day though, it resolved completely by itself. I still do get mild flareups once in a great while for a week or two though. People have even been known to spontaneously recover from cancer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_remission
The other interesting thing is in the case of cervical cancer. The Human papillomavirus virus (HPV) can cause precancerous changes in the cervix. Mostly, these changes just reverse themselves. When you get an abnormal pap test, as long as the changes aren't very advanced, the course of action is "wait and see" to see if your body fixes the problem. In the vast majority of the cases it does, only a few with abnormal pap test will go on to develop cervical cancer. I had an abnormal pap with "low grade changes" several years ago. My heart skipped a beat when I heard the news. Guess what? We just retested me in a year and I was good to go. My body fixed itself.
>I have experienced the results on myself and have seen the difference and hence highly doubt those studies.
For example, if everytime I had a cold I did 25 situps in the morning. My cold always went away. I can not then conclude that 25 situps in the morning is a cure for the cold.
Please review the cited studies (See the GP) for bias.
My problem was not that developed in a month or two but was there from a long time and it took couple of months after I started taking the medicine to get cured and I could see the effect on myself on a weekly basis (It wasn't that one day I woke up and found that I am cured).
And you mean to say that just because my mind thought that what I am taking is real medicine hence my body developed the immunity to fight back the bacterial growth by itself? It is not necessary that what people do not understand now does not mean that it is wrong/flawed/fake. We are not so advanced to know each and everything about chemistry and biology and human body.
I have seen multiple results and have also tested myself by stopping the medication and again starting it and seeing the results for numerous other ailments, hence my belief stands.
>My problem was not that developed in a month or two but was there from a long time
Yes, and this is called chronic sinusitis, which is what I posted about.
>It wasn't that one day I woke up and found that I am cured
Real medicine is the same way.
>We are not so advanced to know each and everything about chemistry and biology and human body.
Correct, however we know enough to know that homeopathy is bull-fucking-shit.
>I have seen multiple results and have also tested myself by stopping the medication and again starting it and seeing the results for numerous other ailments, hence my belief stands.
As I said before, this is false reasoning. See my GP.
So if I was taking Fake/No medication, then I should believe that my body developed the ability to fight and stop the disease without any the help of any external agent just because my brain was thinking that I am taking real medication?
Homeopathic remedies have been shown to be no more effective than placebos. The thing is, placebos actually are effective to some degree. So the problem isn't that homeopathy isn't effective, it's that the entire premise of why they are effective is total BS, and people are getting ripped off.
Understand that you are drinking plain water when you take a "homeopathic medicine". It is indistinguishable from the stuff that comes out of your tap.
Nice and true, obviously. But I do think that hard-sciences folks, when it comes to this very issue, sometimes refuse to understand what it is that they're seeing; worse - they refuse to examine it. It's understandable as unscientific views are infuriatingly ignorant, but that's no justification!
Why is it that in an age of science and technology and their palpable, measurable advantages, do so many people intentionally choose to "hate on" science? What is it that's missing, at least for them?
As an imperfect product of nature, rather than perfect observers of it, we are subject to illusions and delusions, that from a phenomenological perspective are as real to us (or as important to us) as gravity. People have the ability to never consider walking out the window but to believe in astrology at the same time, and that's probably not going to change. And yes, people are going to die as a result of intentional ignorance, but people die of many things, many of them are just as stupid.
Instead of constantly trying to fight this, I've been trying to open myself to these views, not because of any physical reality they possess (as they possess absolutely none), but because of their phenomenological reality, and what they teach us of human nature.
Thought I agree with the message, this site is terrible. It essentially collects anecdotes and treats them as data. You could do the exact same thing with "real" medicine as well (so and so died during this operation, so we shouldn't do it anymore? no.).
> Why is it that [...] so many people intentionally choose to "hate on" science?
My impression is that people miss the Devil. You know, the horny guy with the pitchfork: something well identified, to hate personally, almost anthropomorphically, for everything that goes wrong with their lives, with the world, and with their lack of control and understanding of it.
Disclaimers:
1) the ravings that follow are grounded in anecdotal and mostly Western-European observations. They only partially and imperfectly apply to the USA, but that you'll find significant similarities.
2) I'm intentionally caricaturing to get my point across. Just keep the grain of truth deep inside.
Consider the caricature of the homeopathic believer: ecologist, liberal, anti-vaccine, anti-big-corps, who might have graduated in humanities but probably not in sciences, who sort-of believes in astrology, completely believes in every alternative medicine that either uses a couple of greek-sounding big words to explain its "theoretical foundation", or draws from extreme-oriental mysticism. Easily sympathetic to conspiracy theories, especially when it's about big money colluding to destroy the ecosystem or maintain suffering populations into poverty.
This person is typically defiant of organized religions, be it Catholicism or conservative protestantism. But although she--she seems to be majoritarily female--rejected organized religions, she still needs identifiable, if possible anthropomorphic, incarnations of Good and Evil to worship and hate respectively. Ecology is her Pachamama, a thinly veiled reboot of the Mother-Goddess cult. Science, this mysterious and powerful thing that's used by corporations to shape the world and sometimes dehumanize it, is the instrument of Evil. And her reactions to science at large, including medicine, are uncannily similar to her (great-?)grand-mother's reaction to the Devil. First she'll pretend it doesn't work; if it's too obvious that it does, then she'll be convinced that nasty side effects are going to haunt those who use it, and she'll be desperate to believe in any hollier alternative. And when her religious views contradict her obvious immediate interests, she'll use science, but first she's temporarily unplug any part of her intellect that might see the contradictions between her faith and her acts.
This could probably be fixed, by offering less counter-productive ways for people to indulge into their religious feelings. Established mainstream religions don't cut it anymore for most people in Europe, and for increasingly more people in the USA, especially those of liberal inclination. They need a better alternative religion than anti-scientific new-age cults. The difficulty in engineering such an alternative is that in order to work, it must be non-obvious that cults are manufactured by humans...
It's getting popular. The other day, my wife and I were looking for some teething gel. All we could find was homeopathic ("contains no benzocaine!") shit. Including products from brands I previously considered reputable.
This really ought to be hilarious; but then you realise that they're talking about penicillin. If one batch of one type of snakeoil distributed by one pack of charlatans has turned out to contain an antibiotic, how many others do too? And how many people out there are merrily munching down a couple of homeopathic sugar-pills when their piles flare up and making amazing new antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains?
I really don't see how accidental contamination during production makes Homeopathy more harmful than anythign else that can be contaminated. Would you also conclude that "Chinese food is actively harmful?" because someone somewhere made some dim sum that contained things it shouldn't?
Homeopathy is harmful because it's a bunch of patent nonsense that does nothing and people spend billions on it that could be used for something productive.
Sure, but that can happen to an individual with any substance - I might take any given medicine that I haven't had before and turn out to be viciously allergic. But if I take a homeopathic 'remedy' that contains an antibiotic previously usable to treat, say, E. coli, and have no noticeable reaction to it, then I just silently create a new strain of E. coli in my gut that happens to now be immune to the antibiotic, just itching to be caught by someone else when I forget to scrub my hands thoroughly... nothing bad happens to the individual, but the species suffers for my gullibility.
> Sure, but that can happen to an individual with any substance
It's particularly common with penicillin. This is why people who are allergic to penicillin know about it and check their medication so that they don't get some accidentally.
This is IMHO probably the reason for this recall: it is an immediate danger to a significant number of people. Sadly increased antibiotic immunity in the environment is not viewed with the same level of concern as a sudden medical crisis that causes next of kin to sue.
It's "actively" harmful in that it's indirectly harmful, if that makes any sense.
The fact that it exists (and in such force) means that it is being used to replace modern medicine by several individuals. That is the true crime.
Supplementing with some snake oil typically won't kill you. But using it to replace a real doctor's visit very well might. And that's basically the attitude that this industry has bred.
1. Homeopathy is probably less harmful than whatever was prescribed as placebo in the past, and whatever would be prescribed in its absence. That is, in many cases it's literally replacing antibiotics in this role. That's makes it a net positive on this point.
2. Putting anything in your body is actively harmful in the sense that you describe. Most foodstuff/most everything contains pretty nasty bacterial strains and any number of contaminants. Anything is potentially allergenic to a proportion of the population.
3. That one homeopath made a mistake is bad, but does not damn the whole industry. We would not judge any other industry on the basis of one bad actor/one mistake.
That's something I don't understand, how can homeopathic remedies even be sold? The manufacturer can't prove the health benefits they claim and the product don't contain the element on the bottle.
Of course, homeopathic "remedies" are uniquely adapted to our litigious society--since they can have no effects, they can have no side effects, and thus you'll never see ads from lawyers looking to sue over side effects of homeopathy.
In medicine, a nocebo (Latin for "I shall harm") is a harmless substance that creates harmful effects in a patient who takes it.
Basically, you think "I'm taking medication, that could cause side effects," that thinking it and of itself can causes side effects!! It's like a reverse placebo.
Actually, they're not sold as supplements all the time either. They're in some sort of weird gray area that is in between medicine and supplements:
"The legal status of homeopathic remedies in the United States is unique. In 1938, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was sponsored by Senator Royal Copeland who also happened to be a homeopathic physician. The senator wrote wording into his bill that recognized all products listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States as drugs and made them subject to regulation by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The legislation passed, and as a result, homeopathic products are legally sold in food stores, pharmacies, and elsewhere as a unique category of drug.
Despite such widespread use, the FDA regulates homeopathic preparations much less stringently than conventional drugs. Homeopathic products are not required to prove effectiveness or safety. Some regulations do apply. For example, homeopathic products can only be sold without a prescription if they are specifically for self-limiting conditions such as the common cold. Products marketed for severe conditions such as cancer are prescription-only."
Not really. Most homeopathic placebos are diluted to the point that you'd need to take anywhere from billions of doses up to get even a single molecule of the 'ingredient'. They are literally just water. Not ot mention that in most cases, the 'cause' is based on a speculative or outright fictional 'link'. For example, one of the most well known placebos is Oscillococcinum, which claims duck liver/heart 'causes' flu. It is also diluted to the point that, to quote, "As there are only about 10^80 atoms in the entire observable universe, a dilution of one molecule in the observable universe would be about 40C. Oscillococcinum would thus require 10^320 more universes to simply have one molecule in the final substance."
I took some homeopathic 'marbles' as a kid. Probably the best placebo ever designed. The only pill I'd never forget to take. While everything else is sour and alien in taste, this instead, is a doctor approved crunchy candy.
Icing on the cake, the dispenser http://goo.gl/xsT3IM would be vetted by Steve Jobs, cute squary bottle, press the cap to fill it with a dose, open, ingest, close. Genius ?
yup. at 12C you pass the avogadros number and beyond that theres no possibility any of the original substance is left. I wonder if Homeopaths believe water retains the memories that our shitting gave it
Only in some case, a "nosode", i.e a trace of the disease, is used. But it is not systematic. For example, oscillococcinum [0] which is sold as a flu remedy, is famous for containing some cells from a duck liver.
If I remember correctly a single duck is raised every year, and due to the dilution, is enough to produce the millions of dose.
I am not sure what makes more sense, the nosode or the duck liver...
A Dutch TV programme ('de Keuringsdienst van Waarden') did a show on oscillococcinum, they went to the factory and actually got a tour. When they started asking about the duck they were quickly taken to lunch (also no Duck).
They went to duck farms near the factory but none of them had ever provided the factory with duck liver/heart...
I'm sure it causes a lot of bad things to happen to people too.
>"Marshall says that cases in which trusting vulnerable consumers have believed the claims of homeopaths and "forgone real medicine" in place of "these overpriced sugar pills" are "too numerable to count" and "often with unnecessary and tragic consequences."
I knew someone who took homeopathic remedies instead of going to a doctor and she nearly died (saved by actual doctors). She still believes in homeopathic remedies....
If you are to blame homeopathy for the death of Steve Jobs, might I remind you that he was the person who chose to pursue such quackery?
Personally if you were to ask me about his death, i'd blame the cancer for killing him, not the 'science' he investigated in an effort to fix the problem.
Of course it was the cancer that killed him, however by using homeopathy as a cure it certainly fasten the process by not actually curing him.
But I don't hate cancer, it's a natural thing, but I do hate homeopathy because it's 100% man made quackery.
If one of my relatives died sooner because they had been let to believe to use this nonsense I definite blame the salesman of scamming my relative of money, trust and a longer life.
It is the same as the Christian church in the middle ages selling salvation for money to dying people. Despicable.
Jobs had a relatively benign cancer that has something like a 90% survival rate. Jobs's case was not unusually deadly, and there is every reason to think he would have been cured if he had received proper treatment reasonably soon after being diagnosed.
It goes beyond simply wishing he hadn't died, too. He managed to finagle a healthy liver transplant in the process, which might have gone to someone with a better chance of surviving with it longer.
I just keep being amazed that literate people buy this stuff. What also bugs me about this (apart from their stupidity) is that people look at me strangely when I decline 'medicine' on the basis that it is homeopathic. The reaction is similar when someone is refusing to drink alcohol. "Really, why not?"
That's harsh. The average consumer doesn't have the time/expertise to go through scientific research on homeopathic medicine. Someone tells them "this is going to work" and they believe them. It might be sad, but not all humans are skeptical nor to they have the time or energy to invest in research. They may not even be aware they are buying homeopathic medicine. Homeopathic medicine is sold near the real medicine, once I picked up a pill bottle on the shelf (while buying another thing) because it caught my eye. I was like "I didn't know they could treat this." I turned it over to read the ingredients and that's when I noticed it was homeopathy. If I was in the store looking for a cure, I could have easily just picked up whatever I saw that was a "remedy" for what I was experiencing. My mother even once bought some homeopathic medicine because of a marketing campaign, having no idea it was homeopathy, and actually, I didn't know at first either, I didn't look closely at the label, it wasn't until later I saw it was. While purchasing medicine, do you turn over the bottle, examine each ingredient, then look up the science behind them? For example there "no good evidence for or against the effectiveness of OTC medications in acute cough"[1] and is probably just a placebo,[2] yet people take cough syrup all the time. Even heroin was developed to be a non-additive cough suppressant, and was marketed as such. [3]
I have never taken homeopathic medicine but I am fascinated by the placebo effect.
It is one of the best researched effects (because most studies have a treatment group just with placebo) with very real results. Homeopathy for some people just seems to be a good vehicle for tapping into placebo. So yes, even if you're 'smart' and 'educated' it pays to reap the benefits of that mechanism. It would be shortsighted to paint these people as lesser than.
The irony is that people who feel compelled to discredit alternative approaches that have little scientific consensus are actually campaigning to take away an approach that works for some people, purely because it doesn't sit well with their beliefs.
Different story, of course, is criticising the way alternative medicine is practised. I believe there is as much malpractice and fraud there as there is in mainstream medicine and the food industry, which is a pity. This story just points out a very troubling production problems. Worser still is that this is not unique to one homeopathic production company, you can find similarly outrageous problems in other industries as well.
I don't believe homeopathy works. However, I have seen studies mentioning that a placebo effect (which has a real measurable impact) can be triggered just by knowing you are taking a remedy, even if you know the remedy is bogus. So somehow, you are tricking yourself that you are going to get better. So in a way, you could get better by taking homeopathy even if it has nothing to do with what is (or rather is not!) in the pills.
I don't see much harm in taking homeopathy for a common cold for example, however for anything more serious, you are probably endangering yourself.
But if you can feel better, without having any possible dangerous side-effect, it is actually a powerful effect we should leverage for minor ailments. Most drugs are not trying to cure you anyway, but are only bringing you some relief.
I am not trying to defend the efficiency of homeopathy there, but I am saying that triggering the placebo effect is beneficial.
Ultimately, the goal of any cure is to make you feel better. And there is lots of evidence that psychology can have very powerful effects on your body.
Indeed. Even if we dispose of any debatable improvements in recovery from various illnesses that may be caused by reducing stress, etc., that still leaves the rather broad category of physical ailments that are largely psychosomatic (that is, the physical distress, though very real, arises as a result of or is greatly exacerbated by mental state). That being said, the purely psychological effect needs to be used responsibly, scientifically (that is, the patient needs to be monitored on the basis of more than just feeling) and in conjunction with real medicine - the peddling of woo-woo on its own by people who are essentially answerable to no-one and who believe in the woo-woo (or at least disbelieve in or pathologically distrust scientific medicine) is dangerous and deadly, and it's just about time to put a permanent stop to it.
When building our site/engine, I struggled with what to do with product categories such as Homeopathy.
I find that much of it is actively harmful to users, especially when they truly need real medical care. It's the indirect consequences (not seeing a real doctor for your ailments) that are far worse than the potential direct side effects.
But at the same time, people are searching for it, so they might as well get it from us / through us.
So my solution was to write a negative analysis of the homeopathy category, drop it so that it can only be found if you are actively searching for it, and kind of never speak of it again.
Won't spam, but you can see the link to my site in my profile if you care and search for the category.
At the end of the day, I do love the supplement/nutrition industry, but this kind of stuff makes my blood boil.
Why? It is almost entirely unregulated and unsupervised. They have been known to contain unlisted ingredients, none of the ingredients they say, and dosages that differ wildly from what they are labeled as. I saw a movie where they just put some random shit into a pill (flour and stuff) and started marketing it as a supplement. This was apparently legal.
> In the study, nearly 60 percent of herbal products tested contained plant substances not listed on the label. In nearly a third of products, the main ingredient was substituted with a different product. More than 20 percent of products contained fillers such as rice, wheat and soybeans, in addition to the main ingredient.
>Overall, out of the 12 companies that produce herbal supplements included in the study, just two had products with no substitutions, fillers or contaminants, the researchers said
> Such unlisted ingredients may pose health hazards for consumers, the researchers said. For example, one produced was labeled as St. John's wort, but actually contained the laxative plant Senna alexandrina. The laxative is not recommended for long turn use, and can cause serious side effects, such as chronic diarrhea and liver damage.
> 2011 study of 131 herbal tea products found that 33 percent were contaminated.
>Nearly all of the herbal dietary supplements tested in a Congressional investigation contained trace amounts of lead and other contaminants
>The levels of heavy metals — including mercury, cadmium and arsenic — did not exceed thresholds considered dangerous, the investigators found. However, 16 of the 40 supplements tested contained pesticide residues that appeared to exceed legal limits, the investigators found. In some cases, the government has not set allowable levels of these pesticides because of a paucity of scientific research.
> Among the witnesses at the hearing will be Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com, a company that has tested over 2,000 dietary supplements made by more than 300 manufacturers and has found that one in four have quality problems. According to Dr. Cooperman’s written testimony, the most common problems are supplements that lack adequate quantities of the indicated ingredients and those contaminated with heavy metals.
> Travis T. Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, wrote a letter to the committee saying that some athletes have been rendered ineligible for international competitions because they took supplements that contained steroids not listed on the products’ labels. There are thousands of supplements available for sale that contain steroids or other harmful ingredients, he wrote.
> A 54-year-old woman was referred to the University of California, Davis, Occupational Medicine Clinic with a 2-year history of worsening alopecia and memory loss. She also reported having a rash, increasing fatigue, nausea, and vomiting, disabling her to the point where she could no longer work full-time. A thorough exposure history revealed that she took daily kelp supplements. A urine sample showed an arsenic level of 83.6 μg/g creatinine (normal < 50 μg/g creatinine). A sample from her kelp supplements contained 8.5 mg/kg (ppm) arsenic. Within weeks of discontinuing the supplements, her symptoms resolved and arsenic blood and urine levels were undetectable.
>These investigations showed that nutritional supplements contained prohibited stimulants as
ephedrines, caffeine, methylenedioxymetamphetamie and sibutramine, which were not declared on
the labels. An international study performed in 2001 and 2002 on 634 nutritional supplements that were
purchased in 13 different countries showed that about 15% of the nonhormonal nutritional supplements
were contaminated with anabolic-androgenic steroids (mainly prohormones).
>In 2005 vitamin C, multivitamin and magnesium tablets were confiscated, which contained crosscontaminations
of stanozolol and metandienone. Since 2002 new ‘designer’ steroids such as prostanozol,
methasterone, androstatrienedione etc. have been offered on the nutritional supplement market. In the
near future also cross-contaminations with these steroids are expected. Recently a nutritional supplement
for weight loss was found to contain the b2-agonist clenbuterol. The application of such nutritional
supplements is connected with a high risk of inadvertent doping cases and a health risk.
This actually worries me a lot, since I am required to take an iron supplement because of chronic iron deficiency. If I get the tablets from the pharmacist (I have a prescription) they just repackage the over the counter stuff and charge me triple the price. There's no way to tell if I'm getting medical grade iron.
To everyone commenting on the insanity of homeopathy and how it has no scientific basis (which I don't believe it does), I'd point out that surely it's just a form of placebo -and placebos have been scientifically proven to work, even when you know about them [1].
However for conditions where a placebo is not suitable, homeopathy may well keep people away from real medicine. There have been several high-profile examples of homeopaths keeping folks away from 'allopathic' medicine, eventually killing them. But even in the more passive sense this can be true - the simple existence of snake-oil, even without the homeopath persuading the patient to stay away from mainstream medicine, can delay treatment.
I see this happen once in a while, and I've always believed that this is how they can keep the whole scam running - put some real medicine in them, so that it does have a beneficial effect, and the users will continue to preach about its efficacy. Add just enough to have a real effect, but e.g. not to all batches, so you don't (easily) get caught.
Not the first time this has happened. Zicam was marketed as homeopathy, but recalled because it had real active ingredients in it. (slightly diluted zinc acetate and zinc gluconate) They caused some people to lose their sense of smell.
Yes, I actually did read it, but I seemed to have a brain fart and didn't actually notice it mentioned Zicam. Or I most likely just didn't retain the information.
Unfortunately - given the OP article - through misuse of antibiotics the consumer of homeopathic treatments is playing lottery with more than just their health. A lottery where the losers also cause society to lose.
"Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is resistance of a microorganism to an antimicrobial medicine to which it was originally sensitive....The misuse of antimicrobial medicines accelerates this natural phenomenon."[1]
Does anyone know why homoeopathic remedies are so common in India? Even my very educated Indian friends seem to use them with a surprising frequency, sometimes over actual medicines.
In India, homeopathic remedies are considered to be in the same category as herbal medicine and any discovery of effectiveness of some aspect of herbal medicine is counted in favor of all 'alternative' medicine. Many of these herbal remedies do contain an active ingredient, and so such discoveries are frequent. Vague stuff like turmeric being anti carcinogenic also reinforces the idea that there are secret remedies in nature far more effective than the stuff man makes.
In addition, primary health care is poor in India, so everyone knows of a story of some member of the family having a poor experience in the organised health care sector. This leads to many people's search for 'something better' at a time when they're particularly vulnerable.
I would also be remiss if I did not mention that at least some degree of cultural chauvinism is responsible. To some, the West has ignored Eastern knowledge of medicine, and there is, at least among some, a belief that there are secrets unknown to modern science.
My parents are surgeons in India, and while what I've said is my opinion, it is derived in part from what I remember to be their experience.
"This medicine is effective because it contains salicylic acid, which suppresses the activity of cyclooxygenase (COX), an enzyme that is responsible for the production of pro-inflammatory mediators."
versus
"This plant is effective because it's 100% natural!"
7 out of 10 times, people will go for the explanation that's easier to understand.
Salicylic acid is natural! It comes from the bark of the willow tree. It has been known since ancient times, presumably they used to consume willow bark. We then figured out the active ingredient in willow bark. However, asprin is acetylsalicylic acid, which is produced form salicylic acid to remove the side effects of salicylic acid.
If I didn't know better, "salicylic acid" sounds like one of those chemicals that scientists keep putting in our food as part of their ongoing efforts to KILL ALL OF US, while "willow bark" sounds oh-so-natural and wholesome and makes me think of green meadows and chirping birds. So despite the fact that we know aspirin is a lot more effective than willow bark, I'd still feel a lot more comfortable eating willow bark. If I didn't know better.
Basically, evidence-based medicine faces a big marketing problem, thanks to the "evidence" part.
I am from India and I also am a regular user of homeopathy. In case it was all placebo and fools your brain in thinking that you are actually taking some real stuff in and not just sugar and water and you see the effect physically on your body then you would have found mention of this in Ayurveda and Yoga since both stress on meditation which is a way to control your own energy and mind state and by doing meditation you would have been able to cure your body of every disease.
And allopathy is a major money earner for a lot of corporations and they go to every effort to tell the people that any other medicine system be it unani, ayurveda, acupuncture, acupressure, homeopathy, etc are false and bad.
In case you have not tried homeopathy then give it a go for small illness like fever, diarrhea, body pains, etc and test it for yourself. Also go to a doctor who is recommended by someone. Doctor's knowledge is the most important part in homeopathy as it is in all other non-allopathic systems.
>And allopathy is a major money earner for a lot of corporations and they go to every effort to tell the people that any other medicine system be it unani, ayurveda, acupuncture, acupressure, homeopathy, etc are false and bad.
Incorrect to a large degree. If alternative medicine was proven to work, then it would just become medicine. (or "allopathy" as you call it) We are always studying alternative medicine and some make the cut and get promoted to medicine. Some don't have enough research yet, and we are working on it. Is asprin "allopathy"? Well it was derived from an ancient practice of chewing/eating bark from a willow tree. We found the active ingredient, and isolated it. Now it is just known as medicine.
That being said, there are political and economic reasons to treat/not treat study/not study, but that isn't the 100% norm.
I am waiting for the moment where those people realize that a lot of food contains salicylates, acetylsalicylic acid (Aspirin) among them. Just by habit of nature.
I lived with a person that had an intolerance (sometimes called "asprine intolerance") and it is basically impossible to keep your diet free from that.[1]
I don't understand the question. I am allergic to penicillin. I just tell the doctor when they are perscribing antibiotics. I can still take medication.
Some substances, due to their large adverse reactions in some, can and are restricted.
I just skimmed the article but I didn't see any mention that the company was being punished for this. As someone allergic to penicillin that's quite concerning. I'd never take homeopathic remedies but not only was this a stupid abuse of antibiotics it could hurt people.
Why do so many homeopathic remedies contain ingredients? I mean they have multiple things listed on the label that are actual things. Doesn't that make them not homeopathic?
But "listed on the label" is not the same as "contained in the pill" when it comes to homoeopathy. Could you also check how much of the active ingredient is actually present in the pill? ;)
The idea that homeopathic medicine doesn't contain any ingredients is just a lie propagated by HN and other websites. It's just something that people who are too dumb to read actual books like to repeat to make themselves feel smart.
The article ends as a crazy agressive criticism of homeopathy in general, mixing the issues of manufacturing that also happen to normal medicine with real concerns and conflating the two, but what really ticks me off is leaving in the closing paragraph a phrase that use age of a practice as an insult.
Saying that something should have been left in some old era implies that people of that era are inferior to us, the fact that all past eras are targeted, make me think there is some sort of superiority thinking tied to being in the current age, like if current humans are inherently better.
As someone that has some practices and beliefs that were actually more common in the past, I personally hear that sort of argument a lot, and I think lots people don't realize that when they diss the past, they also diss lots of things important to them ( like, printing press... Created to print the bible no less... )
EDIT: alright, I get it, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, criticising the writing style of someone criticising something you dislike, even if I dislike it too, is reason to get blasted with downvotes.
Unlike some natural remedies which are later proven to be right based thousands of years of use in ancient times, Homeopathy is completely and totally bogus. It's based on absolutely nothing. Not science, not observation, not tradition. It's based entirely on one guy, who, in ~1800, thought that 'like cures like'. So, if you have a fever, why not take something else that causes you to get hot? It's also based on the idea that water has a memory of things it comes in contact with. So, they dilute it thousands and thousands of times until the water or sugar pill has no molecules at all of the thing that is supposed to be treating you. In the end, it's a sugar pill that has a placebo effect on some people. There's no logic, science, or medicine to it at all.
Pro tip: If water really did have a memory and diluting things made them stronger, then all water everywhere would cure everything. Including terrorism since Bin Laden was buried at sea.
I don't disagree with that, I disagree with how the article was written, I am not defending homeopathy, I am among other things criticizing for example the conflating of the issues you mentioned with manufacturing issues that also happen with normal medicine.
Before its formal discovery, people were already treating it correctly (with dissecated thyroid from pigs).
In the 70s it was found how to track TSH and T4 hormones in the blood, and in the light of this discovery there was a push to adopt it, and that diagnosis should be based only on that, not in patient symptoms.
Also the manufacture of synthetic T4 started since then.
This resulted in two problems: One, most doctors now use a protocol where you don't treat the person until the blood test show he HAS to (if you read the official guidelines, the ones that doctors use as "confirmed" disease, in the guidelines are instead listed as critical state and you must treat), the second is that for many patients, the problem does not manifest as T4 production, but in the conversion of T4 to something else, and to that people, synthetic T4 obviously don't work.
The personal result to me, was that I struggled 11 years to find a medic willing to treat me and ignore the blood tests, I've been being treated since 1 month and a half ago, and feel MUCH better, and I am sad that I had to go some extremes (including threatening to beat up a medic if she refused to order the exams I thought was needed).
For others, the result is that people created whole associations of thyroid patients, that has as major ethos defend practices of the 1960s, several countries has groups of patients and lawyers specialized in launching lawsuits to force medics to treat them like people were in the past, in hope that this will fix the problem (And whey they DO succeed in the lawsuit and the medic treat them like in the 60s, the disease DO get fixed).
There are lots of information on this site, mind you, despite the at first seemly crazy conspiratorial tone, I must say from personal experience, and from personal experience of all other people I know with the same disease, that this site is absolutely correct, and modern medicine that is wrong: http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/
I plan in writing a blog post in some months, comparing my coding performance before and after taking the medicine (one of the symptoms of the disease is "foggy mind")
I don't see that paragraph as implying that people of the 19th century are inferior to us. Rather, I see it as stating in a cute and short way that people figured out that homeopathy was bogus long ago, and it should have stopped then.
In other words, it's not "this from the 19th century and therefore stupid," but rather, "this was debunked a very long time ago and it's ridiculous that anybody continues to use it."
This could probably be explained by a sufficiently detailed computer simulation of human society.
Some people, those with the lowest amount of faith in unsubstantiated beliefs, debunked homeopathy according to their own standards. They proved that it did not work better than the placebo effect, one of their existing and well-substantiated beliefs, resulting from a through examination of the simple question: "What if the effects of this treatment are all attributable to the patient believing that it should work?"
A large fraction of humanity, probably an overwhelming majority, has not been trained to examine the world scientifically. Many have been indoctrinated into religions or nonscientific pedagogies from a very early age. For those people, it is not sufficient to prove that a treatment does not work better than placebo to stop using it. It must be proven to not work at all.
Clearly, homeopathy activates the placebo effect. Thus, scientifically minded people reject it as a treatment. For everyone else, they find that it either works for them, or they can move on to a different placebo that does work. They may be wondering why scientific people work so hard to debunk placebos, because they are really just limiting the number of placebos they could be using.
