Once Again, Scientists Conclude That There's No Evidence That Homeopathy Works

Does homoeopathy have a place alongside the practice of medicine? The world of homoeopathy has a history of being a divider of science and alternative medicine, and confusing everyone along the way.

A debate has been recently published in the British Medical Journal about whether doctors should practice homoeopathy alongside evidence-based medicine. The debate came out in response to a study from the Australian Government's National Health and Medical Research Council, which was released this March. It concluded that there was no reliable evidence that homoeopathy was effective in treating a range of health conditions.

Peter Fisher, from the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine, thinks that the review omitted key pieces of evidence. He points out that the reports state "there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homoeopathy is effective." Fisher responds to this by saying that "the fact that one homeopathic treatment for a condition is ineffective doesn't mean that another is also ineffective."

This seems like an exceedingly weak statement since medicine doesn't work on the basis of "it hasn't shown to be effective yet so let's keep using it anyway."

Edzard Ernst, professor of alternative and complementary medicine, is adamant that the practice has no place in modern medicine, stating that "the axioms of homoeopathy are implausible, its benefits do not outweigh its risks, and its costs and opportunity costs are considerable. Therefore, it seems unreasonable, even unethical, for healthcare professionals to recommend its use." He thinks that training professionals to use homoeopathic solutions, even if they confer the same benefits as a placebo, is detrimental in the long term as it promotes a confusing message. This can have serious consequences if people start replacing effective therapies (for example, vaccines or antimalarials) with homoeopathic alternatives, which are essentially sugar and water and therefore inert.

At the same time that this study was released, a BBC feature revealed that the contents of some high street natural remedies actually had none of the allegedly beneficial ingredient in them at all. A team of researchers tested the content of 30 ginkgo products, available on the high street or by online retailers, that are often used for memory disorders. Shockingly, eight of these products had little to no ginkgo extract in them whatsoever.

These new findings, which expose how herbal food supplements are sometimes labeled misleadingly, also identified one milk thistle product that contained no milk thistle. Instead of milk thistle there were some suspect, unidentified substances. The findings were reported by University College London and BBC Health for the series titled "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor," which examines the state of the healthcare system in Britain.

These findings seem fairly outrageous. It seems shocking that products, sold under the guise of being beneficial for your body, actually contain none of the advertised ingredients. Products that had the ingredients advertised were under the regulation of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA), whereas the products that had no trace of the advertised ingredients slipped under the radar under the regulation of the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

By implementing homeopathic remedies alongside medicine, consumers are vulnerable and at risk of buying deceptive products, the BBC argues.

http://www.iflscience.com/there-enough-evidence-practise-homeopathy-alongside-medicine

Good thing I collect my own herbs and make my own stuff..

Oh, the horrors we unleash when we let other's think for us..

Good thing my best friend owns an apothecary and gives me high quality stuff.

Buying herbs off of Amazon feels super weird to me. hahaha.

Wow, I think the point was largely missed...

Khaos wrote: Wow, I think the point was largely missed...

Either that or they're trolling.

There are many intelligent, responsible people who choose to utilize homeopathy.

I am not in disagreement with most of what was conveyed in that article, though for those of us who recognize potential risks and the likelihood that we are employing the placebo effect in some cases, homeopathy can (at the very least) act as a catalyst for mental/emotional well-being.

For many years I dealt with chronic tailbone pain. I went through CT scans, various unsuccessful treatments and minor surgeries, and swallowed a vast selection of pills that did nothing to improve my condition. When my doctor suggested that I see a homeopathic practitioner I was skeptical, but I eventually did so and was offered a homeopathic remedy that began working almost immediately and has been totally effective since.

(Note: When I stop using the remedy for a period of days, my tailbone pain returns.)

I still think of homeopathy as more of a "health accessory" than "alternative medicine," but I no longer reject its value or benefit outright.

homeopathy
noun ho·me·op·a·thy \ˌhō-mē-ˈä-pə-thē, ˌhä-\

: a system for treating illnesses that uses very small amounts of substances that would in larger amounts produce symptoms of the illnesses in healthy people

The medication I've been prescribed for IBS contains Donnatal, which is itself a mixture of small amounts of phenobarbital (a barbituate), and belladonna (also known as Deadly Nightshade). One of the small group of approved treatments for gastroparesis (of which I also suffer) is Botox injections into the pyloric valve to release pressure in the stomach and allow contents to move into the duodenum and intestine. Botox injections consist of small amounts of a paralytic toxin created by potentially deadly bacterium (which often doesn't work I might add).

It would seem to me that modern medicine has no problem with the concept of homeopathy as long as they can demonstrably profit from it.

from what ive seen on the web since this thread was opened it looked to me like homeopothy is not real medicine

its not even.herbal medicine as i understand it

and so far it apears that its got more instances of definitely being responsible for causing harm (infant death and vitamin deficiency, and allegedly one guy lost his sense of smell because of a homeopathic formula) than of definitely having cured a substantiated illness

ive only just started looking into it and if anyone has a source theyd like to share i would be interested

I wasn't responding to you, Khaos. I was talking to Jacob.

It annoys me greatly when people can get treatment for things that only exist in their mind (that'swhat homeopathy treats -- just like any other placebo) ON THE NHS while others, with actual issues, some actually really serious, have to shell more money than they'll ever earn in the private sector in order to get treatment.

Because I take a wide variety of meds, I've noticed that many of them, no matter how powerful, only work as well as you allow them to. If you've made up your mind that they won't work, then they won't. If you think they will, then they will (though that's not to say that they don't work on their own, but rather that one's focus DOES determine the reality).

I say, whatever works, works. If it's a placebo and it still works, then so be it. The result is the same (as long as there aren't unwanted side-effects).

So long as people don't start using homeopathy to replace medicines which are proven to work, like some of the anti-vaxxers have done, and so long as the remedies aren't causing people harm, I don't have a problem with homeopathy. The concept of homeopathy reflects a simplistic view of how the body works, but at least it's consistent, and there are some prescription drugs which work on the same principle. Klonopin, for example, will induce seizures in healthy individuals, but for those who are already experiencing seizures, the drug has the effect of reducing the severity of seizures.

The question we face is whether or not to consider homeopathic remedies safe until proven dangerous, or dangerous until proven safe. As far as chemicals and food go in the USA, our government sides with the first standard, not the second. I am suspicious of unregulated industry, but I also have to ask Juvenal's famous question, who watches the watchers? All we'd have for 'proof' that drugs are safe or unsafe is the word of the scientists who conducted the studies on these remedies, and modern medical science is vulnerable to the effect of monied interests. A large proportion of studies done on drugs are funded by pharmaceutical companies, or are written by ghostwriters, who pay physicians to publish it in their name. Big Pharma wants to keep Pharma big.

People are using it in place of proper medicine though, and they are harming themselves and their families with it, both directly because of the unhelpful stuff and indirectly by propagating the idea that it is indeed helpful, when really, it isn't. The debate is not in medical science, where homoeopathy is understood as a scam to sell sugar or water in small dosages to laughably high prices whilst pretending that it has a medical effect of its own and independant of the patient's opinion (you know, just like real medicine has!). The debate is among lay people like ourselves crying conspiraceh on those that have labs at their disposal filled with tools the worth of which would be measured in units of harley-davidsons and who have spent lifetimes studying the subject we speak so confidently about. Indeed, the only reason those studies are still being conducted is because of the public debate and the poor communication between the experts and the lay people.

Oh, and when I say selling sugar and water, that I mean. Pharmaceuticals containing small or weakened versions of the pathogen are called vaccines and are a strictly preventive drug. The ones that cure diseases we call antidotes and they don't contain that. However, homoeopathic "drugs" contain not just small amounts as the definition would have it. We are talking about drugs dilluted so much that in the dose you get not one particle of the initial drug can reasonably be expected. Not only that, traditionally in homoeopathy the idea is (completely contrary to either reality, or common sense, or the findings in medical science throughout the centuries, or any combination hereof), that a drug is more effective the more dilluted it is, i.e. the less of it you introduce to your body. While the basic principle may be based on the premise that water has memory, a premise that is evidently very false (and indirectly admittedly so, since they fail to mention that more particles of a glass of their medicine have been through Hitler's bladder than through the tube with the medicine they claim is dilluted in their drug, yet somehow that the water won't remember), I am unaware of the reasoning behind the latter claim short of it being incredibly convenient for the sharlatan who wants to sell magic cure water.

Now, big pharma has long lost the trust it once held and I shall leave it up to the conspiracists to judge whether it can even be viewed as one entity with one interest when there are so many individual companies among them. To me it sounds like a medical drug variety of the NWO World Government nonsense, but I have been wrong before and this is not our subject matter here. What I can say however, is that homoeopathy is not a viable alternative to anything, and whether "Big Pharma", who ever that is, is lying to us or not or to what extent, at least what they say does not always and openly and unapologetically contradict everything we learned from our very own home kitchens.

When I had cancer, chemo, radiation, surgery. . .
The oncologist said use whatever wholistics you are attracted to, you are young for this type of cancer.
So I did homeopathy, essiac tea, QiQong, accunputure and maybe other things.

Also, I was given books by different friends and I opened them.
In one book, there was a question to ask yourself . . with the assumption first You will die, from this or that.
The question was . . what is my fear of death?

The answer to my question to myself was. I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of laying the body down now because I am not done living.

So, when people ask me what did you use, what helped? Or if a care giver asks me for advice?
I tell them I don't know exactly what cured the cancer?
Maybe just the desire to be alive?????

I've got to disagree with that. Let's take alcohol for example.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/alcohol/art-20044551

In small amounts, it will:

Reduce your risk of developing and dying from heart disease
Possibly reduce your risk of ischemic stroke (when the arteries to your brain become narrowed or blocked, causing severely reduced blood flow)
Possibly reduce your risk of diabetes.

But in large amounts, whether you're healthy or sick, alcohol can kill you. Is that not what homeopathy is? Small doses of a substance producing good effects while large doses of the same substance produces bad effects?

TheDude wrote: ...
Is that not what homeopathy is? Small doses of a substance producing good effects while large doses of the same substance produces bad effects?

Yes, exactly. The more appropriate comparison however would be water. Excessive amounts of it can be highly damaging, but most reasonable amounts have little to no effect. Of course, that comparison also falls short since water is necessary for survival, too. So while homoeopathy pretty much is water, they charge you specifically for the medical-sounding label on the flask. But yea, the kinds of amounts it would take for homoeopathy to be harmful, chances are, you are never going to take, so most of its harm comes from using it in place and to the exclusion of genuine medicine - not from an overdose.

The logical fallacy that is inherent in this is in assuming that because the homeopathy for water or alcohol is sound, that homeopathy as a whole is sound - "what the hey, small enough amounts of plutonium can be healthy for you!". Unfortunately that's something that a lot of people fall victim to (not necessarily that exact example, mind).

CryojenX wrote: The logical fallacy that is inherent in this is in assuming that because the homeopathy for water or alcohol is sound, that homeopathy as a whole is sound - "what the hey, small enough amounts of plutonium can be healthy for you!". Unfortunately that's something that a lot of people fall victim to (not necessarily that exact example, mind).

Ah, but the topic says that there's no evidence that homeopathy works. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of real medicine recognized by doctors and all that. But my response was really more "Here's an example of homeopathy working", meaning that it may not be the case that homeopathy as a whole is great, but neither is it the case that homeopathy as a whole is rubbish.

Likewise I'd say the statement "Homeopathy works" would be valid only if followed by "in some very specific cases".

TheDude wrote:

CryojenX wrote: The logical fallacy that is inherent in this is in assuming that because the homeopathy for water or alcohol is sound, that homeopathy as a whole is sound - "what the hey, small enough amounts of plutonium can be healthy for you!". Unfortunately that's something that a lot of people fall victim to (not necessarily that exact example, mind).

Ah, but the topic says that there's no evidence that homeopathy works. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of real medicine recognized by doctors and all that. But my response was really more "Here's an example of homeopathy working", meaning that it may not be the case that homeopathy as a whole is great, but neither is it the case that homeopathy as a whole is rubbish.

Likewise I'd say the statement "Homeopathy works" would be valid only if followed by "in some very specific cases".

Touche, your point is duly noted my good man. :laugh:

TheDude wrote: I've got to disagree with that. Let's take alcohol for example.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/alcohol/art-20044551

In small amounts, it will:

Reduce your risk of developing and dying from heart disease
Possibly reduce your risk of ischemic stroke (when the arteries to your brain become narrowed or blocked, causing severely reduced blood flow)
Possibly reduce your risk of diabetes.

But in large amounts, whether you're healthy or sick, alcohol can kill you. Is that not what homeopathy is? Small doses of a substance producing good effects while large doses of the same substance produces bad effects?

No. Homeopathy would be more like:

1. Too much alcohol is deadly.
2. If I dilute it by a factor of 10⁻¹² (one part in one trillion or 1/1,000,000,000,000), one can get the body used to the alcohol with each dosage.
3. The higher the dilution factor, the more potent the dosage.

Now, aside from the first assertion, which part makes sense? An oversimplification, I know, but pretty close, imo.