Homeopathy?

Facts:

1) Actually Homeopathy has been proven to work.

2) A properly made Homeopathic remedy will have *NO SCIENTIFICALLY DETECTABLE* trace of the orginal substance.

3) Placebos are scientifically proven to work and can give improvement in up to 30% of cases of some illnesses and symptoms.

4) Homeopathy in statistically significant trials performs just as well as a Placebo.

Surely if what is claimed by Alternative Practicioners is true, for really bad headache I should dissolve half the normal remedy in pure water.


I worked in a Semiconductor R& D lab for a while. Pure Water is nearly a contradiction! Everything, even the glass beaker and the atmosphere dissolve in it.

Diluting even with Semiconductor Fab Lab "pure water" (I know none purer) according to Homepathic recipe and you are drinking H2O with added Quartz, Oxygen, Nitrogen , CO2 and hundreds of trace minerals and gasses from the glassware and atmosphere. Even occasionally the odd ameboa and algae. (Plessey in late 1970s made junk for a few weeks because of such "organic contamination" of the process water).

Semiconductor Fab lab Process water is the purest most expensive water in the world. I'd be interested in what previous substances "diluted" in the water used to make the remedies. Or how or where they get the water.

http://www.biopsychology.com/newsletters/vol5no1item8.htm

The world average for placebo healing effects in these ulcer studies was 36%, and results for the United States were close to this value, yet placebos were effective in 59% of the patients in Germany but 22% in the neighboring counties of Denmark and the Netherlands, and only 7% in Brazil.

Also scarily for those that beleive in Voodo etc (same source):

The concept of effects of expectations on bodily processes has been extended to include the "nocebo effect" (from the Latin, I shall harm). This is the concept that an inactive substance or treatment can cause distress, illness, or even death (such as have been asserted to occur as a result of “voodoo” curses). Understandably, there has been much less research on the nocebo phenomenon than on the placebo effect. In one study, 48% of 40 asthmatics who were exposed to water vapor and told they were inhaling irritants or allergens experienced substantially increased airway resistance (Luparello et al., 1968). The twelve subjects who developed full-blown attacks were relieved by the same saline solution when it was presented as a therapeutic treatment. Thus, the same substance, presented differently, was either a nocebo or a placebo.

Also
http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/pubs/ClinicalMedicine/0305_SeptOct_ed1.htm

Some chilling thoughts
http://www.sustainedaction.org/Explorations/more_on_the_placebo_effect.htm


So I think we can conclude that Homeopathy does work in a usefull number of cases, but not for the reasons advanced by Alternative Practicioners.

Using Occam's Razor, which explaination is more likely?

EDIT: Oh I really have to add this here!

Another simplification:

For things placebos DO work for, belief/expectation is required. If you don't believe in them, they don't work. So skeptics are usually "right," but probably more often sick. :-)

Though oddly, evidence now suggests that a "real" therapy may work less well if you don't beleive it.

Or

to say that Homeopathy doesn't work may trigger negative responses in certain people with certain conditions in certain contexts.

looksee wrote: »

or if it was coincidence (some coincidence though!)

Why is it such an amazing coincidence?
Sicknesses only ever do 3 things, get worse, stay the same or get better.

So which is more likely do you think: your cat just got better by itself or water can be magically made to remember a substance?

looksee wrote: »

It was an amazing coincidence if the cat got better in the week following the homeopathy having failed to get better over the previous 12 months.

And again why is that so amazing?
Where other treatments ongoing at the same time?
What was actually wrong with it?

looksee wrote: »

Of course he might have heard us discussing that he would have to be put down if he didn't get better this time!

Not as ridiculous as it sounds.
There is some evidence to suggest animals can feel a placebo effect.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=263

looksee wrote: »

I have no strong feelings about homeopathy one way or the other, though I would tend to be negative, I am just relating something that happened.

The thing is you're not really relating what happened. You're relating what you remember as happened. Often there is a large difference in between them.
Is it possible that you are misremembering bits?

hipchick wrote: »

First things first, the reason i quoted that homeopathy works for breast cancer is because when a friend visit her gp he found a lump, she is 37. The doc wanted her to get it removed, but rather then have the breast removed she wanted an alternative. Over a years treatment by an indian homeopathist she no longer has a lump. I think that if it works then yes people should be made aware of an alternative to a masectomy.

Placebo effect yes i do understand all about it but do not beleive that Homeopathy is like it at all.

Sound like a bad diagnosis rather than a cure.

I willing to consider a lot of alternative medicine , but homeopathy is way too far out there for me.

Might as well use holy water.

A group of people gathered around a car crash.
Someone was pushing through .....

"Step back please, let me through, I'm a herbalist "

It amazing what some well placed parsley and thyme will do for compact fractures !