Interesting Stuff Thread

kleefarr wrote: »

I don't recall ever seeing much about homeopathy being over priced and of no benefit?

You must have missed every single peer reviewed study on the subject then. Homeopathy is ONLY over priced and of no benefit. It has no other qualities whatsoever. See recent Australian law for details.

Oh dearie me. Do you also believe vaccines are bad?

kleefarr wrote: »

Ok, I would think it doesn't do as much harm as the pharmaceutical stuff though.

It parts people from their money for no benefit, and it's promotion of sugar pills with varying "strengths" of non-existent active ingredients by people unqualified to examine illnesses can and does cause great harm by encouraging people who may need actual medicine to avoid taking actual medicine. And takes money off them for the privilege.

And wouldn't it be the case that the more powerful pharmaceutical companies will do all in their power to make sure homeopathy is seen as worthless.

Sadly for you, it doesn't take a powerful pharmaceutical company to make homeopathy seem worthless - a child with a basic grasp of mathematics could work out it's worthless.

In my opinion, as stated above, it can't be as bad as the most of stuff peddled by chemical companies these days.

I think you meant "it can't be as effective". That much is true. Homeopathy is definitely not as effective. You do realise that the last antibiotic you had to take for an infection wasn't homeopathy, don't you? You do know that the reason you and your children aren't dying from common diseases or living lives crippled by polio is because medicine is NOT ALWAYS A BAD THING?!

They say that the mind is a powerful thing, if homeopathy helps and does little harm while doing it, it must be a better solution.

Yeah, good luck with using it as an anesthesia when you next visit the dentist.

So what you're saying is that if you have a serious illness, then taking a placebo is a better solution to taking a medicine that directly treats it? OK. Grand. Knock yerself out :rolleyes:

I firmly believe that the mind can play some very strange tricks on the body, however I do not accept any virtue in homeopathy. If science can show any evidence that there is a reason (beyond psychological) for it working I am willing to listen.

However. Some years ago we had a cat that had a problem with its fur, it was falling out, looked a bit like mange. It had various treatments with drugs that made no difference whatever. Eventually we went back to the vet and he said, I have a homeopathic treatment, I can't think of anything else to treat it with. So it was given the homeopathic treatment and within 5 days its skin was healed and fur starting to regrow. I am still mystified by this. It did die some time later, from a related illness, some kind of immune system breakdown. The coat was fine though.

looksee wrote: »

Eventually we went back to the vet and he said, I have a homeopathic treatment, I can't think of anything else to treat it with. So it was given the homeopathic treatment and within 5 days its skin was healed and fur starting to regrow. I am still mystified by this. It did die some time later, from a related illness, some kind of immune system breakdown. The coat was fine though.

Interesting. I wonder do placebo effects work on animals?! I wonder if it was coincidence or some kind of "quantum" effect (where the word quantum denotes the entire mystery of the multiverse, ie. we cannot prove any of it)?

On the subject of animals and homeopathy, a dear friend of mine (who also objects strongly to woo-mongering) was looking after a house, 2 dogs and a cat for a homeopathic "vet". The cat managed to knock a random selection of the little pill bottles and they scattered everywhere, much to the delight of the dogs, who like sugar pills. My friend rang the "vet" immediately in a (rather tongue in cheek) panic - what should she do? Would they be poisoned? Should she rush them to another vet? "Ahh no.....it should be fine..." was the vague answer. :rolleyes:

Shrap wrote: »

Oh dearie me. Do you also believe vaccines are bad?

Not going to get into an ongoing discussion about vaccines. There are issues with those as well in my opinion. A money making web, enough said.

Shrap wrote: »

It parts people from their money for no benefit, and it's promotion of sugar pills with varying "strengths" of non-existent active ingredients by people unqualified to examine illnesses can and does cause great harm by encouraging people who may need actual medicine to avoid taking actual medicine. And takes money off them for the privilege.

Sadly for you, it doesn't take a powerful pharmaceutical company to make homeopathy seem worthless - a child with a basic grasp of mathematics could work out it's worthless.

Where as pharmaceutical medicine does not cost much and has no side effects that are harmful in themselves?

Shrap wrote: »

I think you meant "it can't be as effective". That much is true. Homeopathy is definitely not as effective. You do realise that the last antibiotic you had to take for an infection wasn't homeopathy, don't you? You do know that the reason you and your children aren't dying from common diseases or living lives crippled by polio is because medicine is NOT ALWAYS A BAD THING?!

I did indeed mean 'not as effective' and I am discussing more the chemically manufactured medicines and not the naturally occurring ones like penicillin etc.

Shrap wrote: »

Yeah, good luck with using it as an anesthesia when you next visit the dentist.

So what you're saying is that if you have a serious illness, then taking a placebo is a better solution to taking a medicine that directly treats it? OK. Grand. Knock yerself out :rolleyes:

I don't use painkillers as a general rule. Again, the mind can over come pain, but as you say there is some pain like tooth extraction where you would find great benefit from a strong painkiller.
Yes, medicines do help in the treatment of serious illness but not without having to run the gauntlet of side effects that would create a problem in another area of your body.

One of the most natural painkillers on the planet Marijuanna is illegal in most countries. Why is that I wonder? Why the mad panic for pharmaceutical companies to try to replicate the effects of that amazing plant, with little success? Money.

It's all about money and they are more concerned with making money than caring for the people in my opinion. ( And we are talking about the manufacturing companies here not the employees in the care industry) )There are suggestions that in fact pharmaceutical companies don't make medicine as effective as it could be simply to insure that the money keeps rolling in.

I guess in each individuals case they will take whatever action they see fit for any illness they have, whether that be homeopathic or medicinal or religious.

oscarBravo wrote: »

Penicillin is mass-produced in deep fermentation tanks. It's "naturally-occurring" in the same way that Guinness is.

Perfect!!

looksee wrote: »

However. Some years ago we had a cat that had a problem with its fur, it was falling out, looked a bit like mange. It had various treatments with drugs that made no difference whatever. Eventually we went back to the vet and he said, I have a homeopathic treatment, I can't think of anything else to treat it with. So it was given the homeopathic treatment and within 5 days its skin was healed and fur starting to regrow. I am still mystified by this. It did die some time later, from a related illness, some kind of immune system breakdown. The coat was fine though.

The placebo effect has been observed and studied in animals.

Placebo effect in canine epilepsy trials.

It's certainly a more persuasive explanation for your cat's recovery than giving it a pill which contains sugar and does literally nothing.

kleefarr wrote: »

Ok, I would think it doesn't do as much harm as the pharmaceutical stuff though.

Well, something that has literally no effect at all isn't going to have side effects is it?

kleefarr wrote: »

And wouldn't it be the case that the more powerful pharmaceutical companies will do all in their power to make sure homeopathy is seen as worthless.

You're right, it wouldn't. Pharmaceutical companies have to invest a lot of time and money in getting their own drugs through the various clinical trial stages in order to get to market, it would be pointless to spend time and money trying to debunk something that doesn't work in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, pharmaceutical companies are responsible for a great many problems in medicine, manipulating comparative trials, not publishing negative results but targeting homeopathy isn't one of them. There are enough individual scientists and doctors out there who are aggrieved by the quackery and fraud of homeopathy who are prepared to invest their time in showing it to be useless.

kleefarr wrote: »

In my opinion, as stated above, it can't be as bad as the most of stuff peddled by chemical companies these days.

This is a very odd statement, given your quote below:

kleefarr wrote: »

I did indeed mean 'not as effective' and I am discussing more the chemically manufactured medicines and not the naturally occurring ones like penicillin etc.

It does seem that you're railing against something which you have very little knowledge about. There are a lot of medicines which are naturally occurring, or at least are derived from natural products. Products like these:

Colchicine (Anti-gout medication) - Derived from autumn crocus
Codeine, Morphine, Diamorphine (Analgesic) - Derived from Afghan poppy
Aspirin (Analgesic) - Derived from willow
L-Dopa (Anti-parkinson's medication) - Derived from velvetbean
Scopolamine (Anticholinergic) - Dervied from Jimson weed

There are two further points here.

Firstly, because of the actions of pharmaceutical companies you can go into a pharmacy and buy a ready supply of all of these medicines (with prescription) and get only the intended pharmacological effect. For example, velvetbean from which l-dopa is derived to treat Parkinson's disease also contains chemicals such as nicotine, bufotenine and dimethyltryptamine which means that eating the plant itself would have mild psychedelic and hallucinogenic effects, something that a Parkinson's patient might not want.

Secondly, because of the actions of pharmaceutical companies you can buy these remedies in a neat little box any time you want. You don't have to go on a trek through the African tropics (for l-dopa) or the mexican wilderness (for scopolamine) or risk getting shot by Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to get some poppies. In fact, this last example raises another interesting point. The world's supply of codeine, morphine etc. has always depended to a large extent on the political situation in the Kashmir region and so efforts have been made since the 1920s or so to come up with an alternative that could be synthesized. Although these efforts have been largely unsuccessful, they have resulted in the development of pethidine which is a very effective epidural.



Finally, that long list of side effects you keep banging on about is a side effect itself of the clinical trial process. Because of the nature of the process any side effect experienced by patients in clinical trials, regardless of their true cause must be recorded. So, if you're in a clinical trial and you feel nauseated from a dodgy chinese the night before, the doctor still has to list nausea as a possible side effect. It doesn't mean anyone taking the medication will suffer nausea though.

kleefarr wrote: »

They say that the mind is a powerful thing, if homeopathy helps and does little harm while doing it, it must be a better solution.

Yes, the mind is a powerful thing and the placebo effect is possibly one of the most fascinating phenomena in any field of science but homeopathy is dangerous and irresponsible. The "medication" itself does absolutely nothing but telling people that they shouldn't go to a real doctor or that homeopathy can cure a serious disease like malaria is completely irresponsible and absolutely harmful.

Shrap wrote: »

I don't often quote from Wikipedia, but in the case of homeopathy the article is interesting and well researched.

This is an especially fun fact - "A popular homeopathic treatment for the flu is a 200C dilution of duck liver, marketed under the name Oscillococcinum. As there are only about 10 to the power of 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 to the power of 320 more universes to simply have one molecule in the final substance."



* the raised figures didn't copy over, so I put them in words.

Isn't it a 10C solution that not only requires more water than occurs on earth but a actually requires a globe of water with the same diameter as our solar system?

Shrap wrote: »

Interesting. I wonder do placebo effects work on animals?! I wonder if it was coincidence or some kind of "quantum" effect (where the word quantum denotes the entire mystery of the multiverse, ie. we cannot prove any of it)?

:

No, but it does work on the humans observing the animal.

I used to get bent out of shape about doctors prescribing homeopathy but then I remembered that they're not allowed prescribe a course of Placebonol. Still irks me that it lends such nonsense credence though.

MrPudding wrote: »

I suppose this is understandable, it needs to be the worst case, and it could be difficult to work out the cause, but it does open drugs up to (potentially) unwarranted criticism and suspicion.

MrP

Just on the placebo effect again, and the quandaries that can arise from a belief in homeopathy versus the potentially ghastly side effects of some medicines....my eldest has a great friend who often stays here and he suffers from epilepsy that came on in his teens. The actual and potential side effects of the conventional medicines for epilepsy are SO awful, that he is now depending on homeopathic "treatment" for it, having taken the quite rational decision not to live his life on epilepsy medication. I cannot in all conscience tell him about all the evidence to the contrary of homeopathic treatment efficacy, for fear it might actually do his belief (and therefore the placebo effect) some harm.

So far, since he started with the homeopathy, he continues to have frequent myoclonic fits, but has had no grand mal seizures to report. However, he has woken up on the pavement a few times after going clubbing. Hard to know if the placebo effect extends to convincing oneself that the notion of a seizure is less preferable to the notion of passing out drunk on the street. I worry about that boy (now adult), but I can't tread on his toes to try and convince him to go on medication that would genuinely dramatically alter his life for the worse (until maybe the seizures make that choice for him). Tough call, and not mine to make Genuinely feel like my hands are tied to even talk to him about it....

From patheos.com

Catholic Bishop: We Must Stand Up for Persecuted Atheists All Over the World

Confronted with these injustices we must not stand by. Moreover we should recognise that the oppression of atheists does not only violate the human rights of people like [Palestinian poet Ashraf] Fayadh, [Indonesian atheist] Alexander [Aan], Alber [Saber] and Karim [Ashraf Mohamed al-Banna], but represents a degradation of the fundamental principle that people should be free to hold their own beliefs without fearing for their life or liberty. History has shown time and time again that when one minority group is oppressed with impunity, others soon face the same fate.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Only religions which are minority groups care about religious freedom, odd that isn't it.

It certainly seems at odds with

Catholic Bishop: We Must Stand Up for Persecuted Atheists All Over the World

unless Catholics have become a minority group?

pauldla wrote: »

Well in terms of 'All Over The World', then yes, they are. :pac:

Do you think? 1.7 billion Catholics out of 7.4 billion people; 23% is a pretty sizable minority group then ; the next biggest is Islam (1.3b so 18ish%), then you're down into the hundreds of millions for the other major religions. Atheism (or at least non-belief) overall is estimated at somewhere between 10% and 22% of the world population, so maybe if atheism stretches a bit then Catholicism could be a minority group amongst Catholics and Atheists? Maybe.

Ah but he is only talking about persecuted atheists, which, other than people being nagged by their mammies when the census form is being filled in, is not that big a grouping.

Absolam wrote: »

Well, what are they a minority of? They're not a minority religion; they're the majority religion. They're not actually the smaller part of anything; anything that they are a part of, they would seem to be the biggest part of it? Is there anything that actually is classed as a minority simply by being less than everything?

Majority implies greater than 50%. Anything less than 50% is a minority.