Homeopathy; the new wallet inspector.

kylith

Jawgap wrote: »

Let me ask you - if you were unfortunate enough to break a bone, rupture an internal organ, rip a ligament or suffer some kind of laceration would you prefer a fully trained, all singing all dancing homeopath of 40+ years experience or a mid-career non-consultant doctor with a couple of years A&E experience?

....or another one - you experience chest pain, as you are blacking out which would you rather hear "out of the way, I'm a homeopath" or "out of the way, I've the defibrillator"?

I think Harika was saying that a medical Doctor would be the best person to have a [whatever BS qualification] in Homeopathy so they could hang the cert on the wall and use it on patients who didn't actually have anything wrong with them except a case of hypochondria.

Harika

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Not sure what part of it you think morally wrong. Certainly it is often morally wrong to prescribe a placebo, like homeopathy, without medical training.

<-snip->

But no the basic idea of allowing trained medical doctors to use placebo is not something I think you should be stoned for. In fact I have a suspicion a condition I had as a young child....... where I seemed unable to swallow meat..... was treated with a placebo and cured within 2 weeks. I must go back and ask my mum about that one actually. Always meant to, never got around to it.

That is the issue, on one hand it is not ethical to sell or prescribe something that you know is not working, and a studied doctor should know that.
On the other hand, as my partner is working in a pharmacy, a great chunk of issues can simply be cured by doing nothing. But people are pissed off when you tell them that they won't die from the cold, and seven day rest and paracetamol will be enough. It has to be an anti-biotic. Neil Prendeville suggested that pharmacies give out anti-biotics on the radio and my partner got highly upset by that suggestion. As in my 30 years before Ireland, I was given anti-biotics twice and in ten years Ireland five times at least as here seems to be such an expectation to it. In my opinion I would have simply taken a week in bed, with chicken soup and rest until I am fine, but when you are not paid this is not always an option.
To come back to the opening statement, a placebo is working by its effect, people should be taught about that, so they won't fall for snake oil merchants.

nozzferrahhtoo

Harika wrote: »

That is the issue, on one hand it is not ethical to sell or prescribe something that you know is not working, and a studied doctor should know that.

That is the crux of the ethical dilemma about whether we should include placebo in the arsenal of doctors. The fact is placebo DOES work. For many many people. The fine line for me lies between medical professonals using that fact ethically, and charlatans exploiting that fact economically.

And as another user pointed out, even when we ethically say doctors should not prescribe placebo, they do it anyway. They do it because there IS recognized treatments like homeopathy that are nothing but shaken tap water and placebo.

And as you say, when patients are demanding anti-biotics by name even when their condition does not warrant one (I have heard doctors diagnose a virus and have patients still demand an anti-biotic) then that is a problem. A big one.

So it seems to me there has to be a deeper conversation had there. And it is not as simply as saying that doctors using placebo is unethical and should not be allowed. And I guess the people to have that conversation are way above both of our pay grades

mcmoustache

TheAnalyst_ wrote: »

We've all decades of experience with water.

Same here. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that it's mathematically provable that I have had homeopathic treatment for every human-borne disease that has ever existed and that includes ones that have not yet been identified.

mikhail

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

If you have it you will probably see "30c" written on it.

For anyone curious, here's Ben Goldacre explaining what 30c actually means.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZiLsFaEzog
The punch-line is about a minute in, so it won't take long.

Harika

mcmoustache wrote: »

Same here. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that it's mathematically provable that I have had homeopathic treatment for every human-borne disease that has ever existed and that includes ones that have not yet been identified.

Maths was done and we are guaranteed of drinking dinosaur urine, but not human one. https://www.quora.com/How-many-times-already-has-my-tap-water-been-recycled

Other people?

Potentially, not even once, since there are about 300,000,000,000 gallons of water on earth, per person who has ever lived (~110 billion). (Total gallons of water on earth is estimated to be around 330 million trillion gallons, or 330,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons!)

Effects

kylith wrote: »

I think Harika was saying that a medical Doctor would be the best person to have a [whatever BS qualification] in Homeopathy so they could hang the cert on the wall and use it on patients who didn't actually have anything wrong with them except a case of hypochondria.

I'd highly doubt hypochondriacs would accept homeopathic remedies.

Kurtosis

There was a report a couple of years ago from the Australian Governemnt National Health and Medical Research Council that systematically reviewed all of the evidence on homeopathy. It was covered at the time in the newspapers, but their own statement sums things up very concisely:

Based on the assessment of the evidence of effectiveness of homeopathy, NHMRC concludes that there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective.

Homeopathy should not be used to treat health conditions that are chronic, serious, or could become serious. People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness. People who are considering whether to use homeopathy should first get advice from a registered health practitioner.* Those who use homeopathy should tell their health practitioner and should keep taking any prescribed treatments.

The National Health and Medical Research Council expects that the Australian public will be offered treatments and therapies based on the best available evidence.

Sleepy

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

In particular I would understand the terminal cancer patient's diatribes on here if he tried homeopathy and was promised the earth and it failed but where the established treatment has not been successful may I logically suggest he give homeopathy a go via a good homeopath rather than bashing those of us who politely recant that we have found it useful.

Post reported.

I hope you get a site-wide ban for pushing such quackery on a poster brave enough to be open about the fact they have a terminal and incurable disease.

Disgusting behaviour.

Mrs Shuttleworth

Sleepy wrote: »

Post reported.

I hope you get a site-wide ban for pushing such quackery on a poster brave enough to be open about the fact they have a terminal and incurable disease.

Disgusting behaviour.

He has nothing to lose trying it alongside his conventional treatment, everything to gain and I hope he does.

quickbeam

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

He has nothing to lose trying it alongside his conventional treatment, everything to gain and I hope he does.

Just *her* money!

Akrasia

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

He has nothing to lose trying it alongside his conventional treatment, everything to gain and I hope he does.

If homeopathy had any effect it would be dangerous to recommend that someone who is already on strong medication should take it without proper medical supervision. Negative drug interactions can be very dangerous. The fact that homeopathy is nothing but water means this isn't a risk, but also means it is a total scam that wastes peoples time energy and money and enriches quacks and charlatans

kylith

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

He has nothing to lose trying it alongside his conventional treatment, everything to gain and I hope he does.

Except that if the conventional treatment works then people like you will be claiming it as a win for nonsense treatments.

If it actually worked it wouldn't need to be used alongside actual medicine. No doctor ever says 'Well, antibiotics definitely work, but you should put a pea up your bottom, just to be sure'.

Things that work, work. Things that don't work, the deluded will make up excuses for.

Akrasia

There's also the fact that Homeopathic manufacturing facilities are not properly regulated to anywhere close to the requirements of pharmaceutical plants and often dosage and quality control is inadequate.

Nelsons was warned by the FDA for allowing broken glass to enter their final product, and babies have been poisoned with belladonna from homeopathic products that had much more of the ingredient than there was supposed to be

https://www.google.ie/amp/amp.irishexaminer.com/ireland/warning-over-unlicensed-homeopathic-teething-products-426222.html

kylith

Akrasia wrote: »

Nelsons was warned by the FDA for allowing broken glass to enter their final product, and babies have been poisoned with belladonna from homeopathic products that had much more of the ingredient than there was supposed to be

https://www.google.ie/amp/amp.irishexaminer.com/ireland/warning-over-unlicensed-homeopathic-teething-products-426222.html

Part of me wants to joke about how dangerous that belladonna would have been when it was diluted. The other part of me wants to point out that it was the stuff with detectable levels of belladonna that did the harm. Most of me is horrified that parents would give anything they thought contained deadly nightshade to their child.

The Rape of Lucretia

c.p.w.g.w wrote: »

All Homeopaths are con artists by the very definition of the practice

Like priests? Though at least they work on a more reasonable fee structure, with the no-foal-no-fee system allowing contributions into a basket to be according to the results achieved over the previous week.

_Dara_

Kurtosis wrote: »

There was a report a couple of years ago from the Australian Governemnt National Health and Medical Research Council that systematically reviewed all of the evidence on homeopathy. It was covered at the time in the newspapers, but their own statement sums things up very concisely:

They were all paid off by Big Pharma, doncha know? :P

SATSUMA

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/15/homeopathy-works-scientific-evidence

Just another view...

kylith

SATSUMA wrote: »

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/15/homeopathy-works-scientific-evidence

Just another view...

From the links in that opinion piece (emphasis mine)


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1668980/pdf/bmj00112-0022.pdf

At the moment the evidence of
clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw
definitive conclusions because most trials are
of low methodological quality and because of
the unknown role of publication bias.

http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(99)00048-7/fulltext

Studies that were explicitly randomized and were double-blind as well as studies scoring above the cut-points yielded significantly less positive results than studies not meeting the criteria. In the cumulative meta-analyses, there was a trend for increasing effect sizes when more studies with lower-quality scores were added. However, there was no linear relationship between quality scores and study outcome. We conclude that in the study set investigated, there was clear evidence that studies with better methodological quality tended to yield less positive results.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs002280050716

There is some evidence that homeopathic treatments are more effective than placebo; however, the strength of this evidence is low because of the low methodological quality of the trials. Studies of high methodological quality were more likely to be negative than the lower quality studies. Further high quality studies are needed to confirm these results.

Zaph

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

In particular I would understand the terminal cancer patient's diatribes on here if he tried homeopathy and was promised the earth and it failed but where the established treatment has not been successful may I logically suggest he give homeopathy a go via a good homeopath rather than bashing those of us who politely recant that we have found it useful.

Giving medical advice on Boards can be a bannable offence. But that applies to credible medical advice, I don't know what the penalty should be for giving advice about quackery.

donspeekinglesh

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

He has nothing to lose trying it alongside his conventional treatment, everything to gain and I hope he does.

Well it is important to stay properly hydrated.

Jawgap

SATSUMA wrote: »

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/15/homeopathy-works-scientific-evidence

Just another view...

Another view, that largely concludes research into homeopathy should continue......from the person who would benefit from such research continuing?
(she's the "Chief Executive of the Homeopathy Research Institute (HRI), an innovative charity dedicated to promoting high quality research in homeopathy").

She also runs a business called Integrated Homeopathic Training. On that site you can buy ‘Matmedcards’ (stg£95 for the full set). One blogger noted that the card for Conium maculatum



Effectively, this is saying hemlock cures breast cancer. Who knew!!!!!

Do you still want to cite her as an argument in support of homeopathy? Or let me put is this way......I sincerely and honestly hope you don't have or never have the experience of having anyone you know get breast cancer diagnosis (two relatives and a friends spouse have, but thankfully are in remission)......if you did know someone would you plead with them to sup on hemlock or take the chemo-therapeutics?

So anyway, there's also this....

Homeopathic remedies are 'nonsense and risk significant harm' say 29 European scientific bodies

EDIT: The Homeopathy Research Institute is in a shared building along with "Bolton Estates" (estate agent) and "FindDigs" (a company that specialise in finding student digs.......

Mrs Shuttleworth

Jawgap wrote: »

Or let me put is this way......I sincerely and honestly hope you don't have or never have the experience of having anyone you know get breast cancer diagnosis (two relatives and a friends spouse have, but thankfully are in remission)......if you did know someone would you plead with them to sup on hemlock or therapeutics?

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. Large lump in right breast. Doctors said she wasn't a candidate for surgery or radiation, no conventional treatment. Took homeopathy daily and acupuncture twice a week since 2012 lump vanished in 2014.

Army_of_One

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. Large lump in right breast. Doctors said she wasn't a candidate for surgery or radiation, no conventional treatment. Took homeopathy daily and acupuncture twice a week since 2012 lump vanished in 2014.

wow what a lucky family..having homeopathy cure stuff when normal medicine/treatment doesn't work.

Odd that all studies of homeopathy say otherwise...................

Hotblack Desiato

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

Like priests? Though at least they work on a more reasonable fee structure, with the no-foal-no-fee system allowing contributions into a basket to be according to the results achieved over the previous week.

Really? I'm not aware of any of them offering a refund when the markfaithful fails to enter paradise.

Hotblack Desiato

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. Large lump in right breast. Doctors said she wasn't a candidate for surgery or radiation, no conventional treatment. Took homeopathy daily and acupuncture twice a week since 2012 lump vanished in 2014.

That's great but it's still just an anecdote. If she did nothing she would have had the same effect, because medically speaking she did nothing.

Canis Lupus

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. Large lump in right breast. Doctors said she wasn't a candidate for surgery or radiation, no conventional treatment. Took homeopathy daily and acupuncture twice a week since 2012 lump vanished in 2014.

Curious, what type of breast cancer was it and why couldn't they surgically remove it, give her rads or chemo?

Mrs Shuttleworth

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Curious, what type of breast cancer was it and why couldn't they surgically remove it, give her rads or chemo?

She is disabled and wheelchair bound and they didn't think her immune system would be up to it.

I'm not sure of the exact type of cancer but it was a slow growing type and largely confined to elderly women from what we were told.

Jawgap

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

She is disabled and wheelchair bound and they didn't think her immune system would be up to it.

I'm not sure of the exact type of cancer but it was a slow growing type and largely confined to elderly women from what we were told.

Isn't that type normally treated with hormones? No need for the brutality of chemo or the risk of an anaesthetic?

I'm glad she remitted.

Cancer Research UK has this to say about homeopathy.....

Many clinical trials have looked at how well homeopathy works in treating various illnesses. None of them give any evidence that homeopathy can cure or prevent any type of disease, including cancer.

pleas advice

Zaph wrote: »

Giving medical advice on Boards can be a bannable offence. But that applies to credible medical advice, I don't know what the penalty should be for giving advice about quackery.

She's gonna need ice for that ...

oh wait, never mind