Poll: Homeopathy

[Kikosemmek]

So here comes another thread about CAIM where most everybody doesn't seem to have gotten much education on the subject.

#1: from all the alternative or integrative medicine courses I've taken, I haven't seen convincing evidence that homeopathy is anything more than placebo.
#2: many CAIM (complimentary, alternative, and integrative medicine) modalities are similarly ineffective, relying only on placebo: prayer, spiritual rites, spells, Reiki (my own mother swears by it, but I'm really not convinced- I even went on and centered a research paper on Reiki, and still found no substantial evidence as to its credibility).
#3: most importantly, NO, we do not simply add all of working CAIM to standard medicine. Why? Western medical schools have tried-and-true pathology and treatment protocols that they are very reluctant to change, especially with regard to the inclusion of techniques not developed by the modern scientific establishment. Many effective CAIM modalities, such as Chinese medicine, acupuncture, some Ayurveda, and yoga, to name a few, simply don't make it into the curriculum and thus are not represented by conventional biomedicine.

Any time someone presumes that we just automatically include everything that works into our scientific paradigm or our health establishment, they really underestimate how resistant large institutions are to change from the outside. In the US, NIH really has most of the controls when it comes to what gets funded for research and what gets to be taught to conventional doctors. Its budget share for CAIM research is about 2%. I can't comment on whether that is too high or too low, because I can't presume to be an expert. I can say that that is by all means a marginal amount. As long as working medical modalities remain marginal, the term "alternative medicine" has credence.

There are institutions that try to combine conventional biomedicine with non-Western alternative techniques, such as the Center for East-West Medicine at UCLA. I recommend you check them out if you want to learn more about this kind of stuff.

 

[MrCollins]

Okay, well Homeopathy is nothing more than snake oil, pure and simple.

As for other alternatives medicines, some of them do seem to work. But I dare-say, it will be the work of the placebo effect, in most, if not all, cases.

Funily enough, snake oil has been shown to genuinely have medicinal properties (double blind tests have proven this), but because it was sold by Chinese Merchants after mass immigration to the US, the local buisnessmen encouraged people to believe it was a scam, thus the expression.

As for natural remedies, they work, of course they do, those that work are simply now called medecine.

 

[Burst6]

So here comes another thread about CAIM where most everybody doesn't seem to have gotten much education on the subject.

#1: from all the alternative or integrative medicine courses I've taken, I haven't seen convincing evidence that homeopathy is anything more than placebo.
#2: many CAIM modalities are similarly ineffective, relying only on placebo: prayer, spiritual rites, spells, Reiki (my own mother swears by it, but I'm really not convinced- I even went on and centered a research paper around Reiki, and still found no substantial evidence as to its credibility).
#3: most importantly, NO, we do not simply add all of working CAIM to standard medicine. Why? Western medical schools have tried-and-true pathology and treatment protocols that they are very reluctant to change, especially with regard to the inclusion of techniques not developed by the modern scientific establishment. Many effective CAIM modalities, such as Chinese medicine, acupuncture, some Ayurveda, and yoga, to name a few, simply don't make it into the curriculum and thus are not represented by conventional Western biomedicine.

Any time someone presumes that we just automatically include everything that works into something like our scientific or health establishment really underestimates how slowly large institutions tend to change. In the US, NIH really has most of the controls when it comes to what gets funded for research and what gets to be taught to conventional doctors. Its budget share for CAIM research is about 2%. I can't comment on whether that is too high or too low, because I can't presume to be an expert. I can say that that is by all means a marginal amount. As long as working medical modalities remain marginal, the term "alternative medicine" has credence.

There are institutions that try to combine conventional biomedicine with non-Western alternative techniques, such as the Center for East-West Medicine at UCLA. I recommend you check them out if you want to learn more about this kind of stuff.

Or maybe they have't accepted it because it doesn't work. Your testimonial doesn't mean much and the placebo effect can be very powerful. There are a lot of tests out there that can remove the placebo effect and actually prove if the medicine works or not. The reason none of these have been added to standard medicine is that they don't work. If they did work pharmaceutical companies from all over the world would push to have it accepted.

Look at medicine commercials. More than half of the commercial is listing off side effects. Actual medicine takes a lot of time and money to produce and people work hard to design complicated chemical structures so that they work properly with the human body. A little problem in the formula could have massive consequences and cost the company a lot of money. If they could go for a side-effect free cheaper alternative they would do so instantly.

Homeopathy flies against everything we know about chemistry. I'm not saying modern chemistry can't be wrong, but it does so without any proof. All we have is testimonials, and they're very unreliable.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I'm gonna go against the grain and the vast medical expertise of posters in this thread and say: homeopathys got a bad rap but there are existing effective treatments within it for light ailments, natural remedies that have proven to be effective for generations (ex: to cure a cough, try a spoon of honey. Forgot the mechanics of why it does, only that honey contains tons of good stuff, and is better to deal with a cough then cough medicine at your local pharmacy), but well when you say homeopathy you're basically putting under the same label everything from crystals to voodoo, course a lot of its gonna be daft, doesn't mean ain't some things that work.

I mean another example, when having an upset stomach have any of you tried sugary water? If its placebo then don't tell me cos i've never had to take tummy medicine in my life ^^

Course I'm heavy biased as the best doctor I know, uses homeopathy and explained to me there is a reason why doctors avoid using them (nothing to do with effectiveness, more a question of money and earnings) and how pharmaceutical and drug companies are involved in the trainning of doctors and their education to raise them to give drugs to deal with light cases that could be dealt more effectively with homeopathic treatments. Course this sounds rather conspiracy theory like and none of you know the guy so this isn't much of a support for my view, but was just to explain where I was coming from

You DO realise what homoeopathy is? It is a EXTREME dilution of an active ingredient (a ratio of 1-1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 was recommended by the creator, some MODERN solution ratios are many times bigger) and giving it to someone.

The entire premise of homoeopathy is that the active ingredients that were once present in the water leave a "memory" that the substance leaves an enduring effect on the water and this produces an effect on the patient.

Don't get me wrong stuff like honey and bee pollen can do wonders for people if they are sick, its just telling me that water that may have at some point been in contact with water which may had been with contact with some water which may had been with contact with some water which may had been with contact with some water which may had been with contact with some water, which may had been with contact with some water (repeat a few hundred times) which may have been in contact with a compound which could help me, will make me better and sick people should pay for it.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

My culture has literally a catalog of natural remedies for just about any form of injury and minor to mild sickness. I have to admit that some actually work, but compared to modern medicine, they usually take much longer to cure whatever ailment that troubles you (i.e. natural remedy might cure you in 1-2 weeks while prescription medicine could cure you in 1-2 days).

 

[Frankster]

snippy

I am 100% serious thought starting to wonder if i'm talking about same topic as everyone else.
People keep mentionning dilluted water and such but that's not what I'm on about, I'm on about softer alternatives to treatment such as herbal remedies or more old skol treatment such as the aforementioned taking honey instead of cough medicine.
Is that not part of homeotherapy? If I'm wrong then guess what I was actually defending is alternative medicine.

Hahahaha, come on. If you do have that opinion then don't openly admit you take it from some quack who asserts themselves as some sort of great moral force in the medicine world.

Shame telepathic communication isn't available to us, but the guy is anything but a quack, he really is the single best doctor i've known in my life. It's easy for ya to sit back and call him a quack from your established preconceptions but from where I sit, this doctor's given better advice then any other doctor i've known and the times we did not listen to him in favor of other doctors (such as the treatment of my sick grandma...who died because of all the nasty strong substances she was given) turned out to be bad calls.

And he pushed homeopathy (or alternative medicine if i've been misusing the term all this time as might be the case) not out of desire to make a profit, nevermind that the french system works differently then in other countries, but because it is his honest belief there is no point prescribing hard drugs with possible side effects dependent on the person when an existing natural remedy can do the job just fine. Profit wise he actually loses out this way

Edit: Just looked up homeopathy in wiki, yeh not quite what I was defending xD Darn, so all these times i've been standing up for homeopathy in front of my classmates i was actually bigging up alternative medicine? Well, better i learn this now then keep living with my ignorance i guess. Apologies all round for the misunderstanding.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

-snip-

'Sigh'

Homeopathyalso spelled homoeopathy or hom?opathy; is a form of alternative medicine originated by Samuel Hahnemann (1755?1843), based on the idea that a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure that disease in sick people.

Homeopathic remedies are prepared by serial dilution of a chosen substance in alcohol or distilled water, followed by forceful striking on an elastic body, called "succussion". Each dilution followed by succussion is supposed to increase the remedy's potency. Homeopaths call this process "potentization". Dilution usually continues well past the point where none of the original substance remains

(pulled from wikipedia article Homeopathy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy])

THIS is what people are calling quackery, not alternative medicine.

Herbal remedies aren't the problem, nature has been playing chemist for longer then humanity has existed. People using logic that would mystify trolls to make money off other peoples sickness is.

Edit: I read your edit, it pays to know what you are talking about and defending.

 

[Sethzard]

To quote Tim Minchin "Do you know what they call alternative medicine which has been proved to work? Medicine."
The only way in which homoeopathy can work is if you think of it as magic. The usual explanation is that the molecules "dent" the water permanently deforming it's shape, which is totally absurd.
No double blind randomised control trial has ever shown an advantage of Homeopathy over a placebo without significant methodical flaws.

 

[Frankster]

snip

Rest assured, I feel suitably embarassed.

 

[Hoplon]

Edit: Just looked up homeopathy in wiki, yeh not quite what I was defending xD Darn, so all these times i've been standing up for homeopathy in front of my classmates i was actually bigging up alternative medicine? Well, better i learn this now then keep living with my ignorance i guess. Apologies all round for the misunderstanding.

No problems, most useful herbal remedies where the basis for drugs we use all the time. Willow bark gave us aspirin for instance.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

snip

Rest assured, I feel suitably embarassed.

Don't worry about it too much, you realised you were confused as to what homoeopathy was and admitted it, and I for one applaud your courage to do so.

Ok, now lets talk about alternatives that work. I use honey (specifically manuka honey) instead of cough drops.

 

[The White Hunter]

So, what are your opinions on Homeopathy, alternative medicines and natural remedies? I'm just going to write more crap here now, personally I believe in the fact that alternative medicine is either medicine that has been proved not to work or not properly tested. So, please, go play with this topic.

Yes, I think it's bogus. I could explain why, but instead a standup comedian has already done so for me, observe (skip to around 1 minute in if you want but it's all relevant):

 

[Jark212]

Pretty much my opinion on Homeopathic medicine:

 

[mental_looney]

Homoeopathy is fraudulent, the stuff is so diluted you are just taking sugar pills, any stories of it working can be seen as the placebo effect.

 

[Nevrim]

Well it worked for me.
I spent five years sleeping about six hours a week (I think i was more dead than alive, mainly because i barely remember anything from that time), and they keep giving me diferent medicines, but the meds didn't work.
I don't know if it is placebo or not but at least I'm sleeping

 

[Sight Unseen]

However, that doesn't mean that diluting something so much you have about three molecules of the stuff in a bottle actually works. Heh, imagine how much cheaper health care would be if that was the case. So yeah, it's pretty much like a dude who heard about surgery and proceeds to perform surgery on people by cutting them to pieces with a chainsaw. But not as lethal.

Actually it's even worse than that. At the level of dilution used for homeopathic treatment, it is statistically unlikely that there is even a single molecule of the "active ingredient". Even if you made the volume a hundred times larger there wouldn't be any in there. It's just pure water and nothing else.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

What's Homeopathy?

 

[RustlessPotato]

What's Homeopathy?

It's the belief that something becomes more powerful the more you dilute it. Homeopaths believes that whatever makes you sick can also cure you. For example, if you're having trouble sleeping, they'll give you homeopathic pills. These pills contains caffeine (because that is what causes your trouble sleeping), but diluted so much that it is statistically improbable that there is even 1 molecule of caffeine in it. Their argument is that water has a "memory" that becomes more powerful if you dilute it. If that was true, we would never become sick, because we could just drink tap water that also has tons of diluted molecules in it. Children have died from simple diseases that are easily curable, but their parents gave them homeopathic pills. You hear tons of stories about parents of children that have incurable diseases, like cancer, and turn to this quackery out of desperation. These pills are very expensive and the fact that these vultures would scam money out of desperate parents is repugnant.

 

[Animyr]

Like everyone has said, it's just water. You'd think that in these days we'd at least demand higher creative standards for the stories our snake oil salesmen hawk, but no. They're still using empty mumbo jumbo to sell their stuff.

I'd post a James Randi clip but I see we already have a few.

 

[Naeras]

If homeopathy worked, the pharmaceutical companies would be all over it. I mean, they could cure people with water, meaning there would be no side effects and no real production costs.