Homeopathy is quackery. There, I’ve fulfilled my normal requirement to start out all posts that I write having to do with homeopathy with a simple, declarative, and, most of all, true statement about what homeopathy is. I also like to mention briefly homeopathy’s two major “laws.” The first is the Law of Similars, a totally pseudoscientific “law” without basis in science that proclaims that the way to treat a symptom is to use a substance that causes that symptom in healthy people. The second “law,” of course, is the Law of Infinitesimals, which further states that the more you dilute a remedy the more potent it becomes. This leads homeopaths to dilute remedies to 30C (C = one hundred-fold dilution) and beyond. Given that a 30C dilution equals a 1060-fold dilution and Avogadro’s number is only approximately 6 x 1023, such homeopathic remedies are unlikely to contain a single molecule of the original substance, other than perhaps contamination carried over from one dilution to the next. Either way, homeopathy is basically water or ethanol or whatever diluent is used to dilute the substance, and any effects from homeopathy are placebo or nonspecific effects. Indeed, I like to think of homeopathy as the Rorschach test of quackery in that quacks see in it whatever their nature leads them to see.
I normally don’t blog about Facebook memes (although I have been guilty on occasion of spreading them around), but the other day I saw this a screenshot of this Tweet:
I've noticed Homeopaths without Borders aren't lining up to treat the Ebola outbreak..
— Rayne (@rayne_2) July 31, 2014
Upon seeing this, I thought: Good point! Why aren’t there homeopaths trying to treat Ebola victims in Africa? After all, there are, unfortunately, homeopaths out there treating AIDS victims in Africa, a truly terrifying incursion of quackery into Third World countries.
First off, does anyone remember Homeopaths Without Borders? It’s not a joke. (Well, it is a joke, actually, but Homeopaths Without Borders does nonetheless exist.) There really are homeopaths out there who, thinking themselves capable of doing anything more than getting in the way of real doctors and rescue workers, for example in Haiti after the earthquake of 2010. A year and a half later, the results were not exactly what I would call a smashing success, although homeopaths bent logic, language, and medicine to portray it as such. Homeopaths have also claimed to be able to treat malaria, although malaria isn’t nearly as “sexy” a disease (i.e., frequently in the media) as HIV/AIDS or Ebola.
The meme made me curious though? Is Rayne correct? Is it even completely fair? After all, even the Peace Corps is temporarily removing volunteers from West Africa in the face of the spreading Ebola outbreak. On the other hand, While it’s true that Homeopaths Without Borders appears not to be rushing to the areas in Africa where there are currently Ebola outbreaks and hundreds of fatalities, what about other homeopaths? It’s not as though homeopaths don’t claim to be able to treat or even cure Ebola, as you’ll see.
Ebola, of course, is a horrible virus causing a horrible, horrible disease. It’s also very contagious, being spread through the secretions of the infected in much the same way Hepatitis B and C are. The disease the Ebola virus causes belongs to a subtype of viral diseases known as hemorrhagic fever, because in addition to the usual viral symptoms of fever, joint aches, muscle aches, nausea and vomiting, Ebola victims often develop diffuse dysfunction of their clotting system, leading them to hemorrhage from suffer from hematemesis (vomiting up blood), hemoptysis (coughing up blood), melena (GI bleeding leading to gross blood in the stool) and bleeding from mucous membranes (gastrointestinal tract, nose, vagina and gingiva).
Healthcare workers are particularly vulnerable because of their close contact with victims and can contract the disease if they don't use protective gear, such as surgical masks and gloves, and even if they do use them can still catch Ebola if there's a break in protection. Presumably the two American doctors who have been infected with Ebola used adequate protection. Nonetheless they acquired the infection. After all, easy to slip up when you're in prolonged contact with patients with Ebola, as any physician knows how easy it is not to be 100% anal 100% of the time about universal precautions. Indeed:
Sierra Leone’s top Ebola doctor fell victim to the virus and died. Two American health-care workers, volunteers with the Christian aid group Samaritan’s Purse, have contracted the virus. The group has since evacuated some workers from Liberia, but medical staff have been left behind to treat patients.
Given the symptoms of Ebola virus disease, here’s what two homeopaths have proposed a a homeopathic remedy for Ebola:
Dr. Gail Derin studied the symptoms of Ebola Zaire, the most deadly of the three that can infect human beings. Dr. Vickie Menear, M.D. and homeopath, found that the remedy that most closely fit the symptoms of the 1914 "flu" virus, Crolatus horridus, also fits the Ebola virus nearly 95% symptom-wise! Thanks go to these doctors for coming up with the following remedies:
1. Crolatus horridus (rattlesnake venom) 2. Bothrops (yellow viper) 3. Lachesis (bushmaster snake) 4. Phosphorus 5. Merc. cor.
If you are not in the U.S., you must locate your closed homeopathic practitioner and ask him or her to order these remedies for you from Hahnemann Pharmacy, (510) 327-3003 (Albany, California, a suburb of Oakland). If your country's laws allow you to call a homeopathic pharmacy directly, do so. In any case be sure to find a homeopathic practitioner you can work with. Do not try to take care of yourself without the further education and experience that a homeopath can give you.
If you're not sure where to find your closest homeopath, call the National Center of Homeopathy, (703) 548-7790, Take this article with you and let a homeopath read it and instruct you on how to use the remedies.
You know what they call an Ebola victim foolish enough to use these five homeopathic remedies in the hope of curing their disease? Almost certainly dead, that’s what! While it’s true that Ebola disease can result in up to a 90% case fatality rate, which is what the Zaire Ebola virus can do, even with good medical care. Basically, all science-based medicine can do right now is to try to support the patient and keep him alive until the body can clear the virus, if it can manage to do so. Of course, homeopathy can’t even do that, which would not only increase the chance of death but prevent even the palliative care that can be given to the suffering.
Unfortunately, Derin and Menear are not the only homeopaths recommending this nonsense. Homeopathy has been proposed by clueless homeopaths as a valid means of combatting bioterrorism, chief among the bioterrorism agents being Ebola. For instance, Joetta Calabrese has suggested:
In the case of Ebola, no conventional treatment or vaccine is available. Fortunately for us, homeopathy has great renown for its healing ability in epidemics.
Calabrese proposes a variant of Derin and Menear’s delusional treatment:
The following remedies would be considered by a homeopath for any of the viral hemorrhagic fevers that match this symptom picture.
As a preventative if an outbreak happens nearby, Crotalus horridus 30C, one dose daily, until the threat is out of the area is the method many homeopaths familiar with this disease suggest.
If a person is infected, the remedies most commonly used would be the following. One dose every hour, but as the severity of the symptoms decrease, frequency is reduced. If no improvement is seen after 6 doses, a new remedy ought to be considered.
Crotalus horridus 30C – Is to be considered for when there is difficulty swallowing due to spasms and constriction of the throat, dark purplish blood, edema with purplish, mottled skin.
Bothrops 30C – Is the remedy to think of when nervous trembling, difficulty articulating speech, sluggishness, swollen puffy face, black vomiting are present
Lachesis mutus 30C ,– when there’s delirium with trembling and confusion, hemorrhaging in any area, consider this remedy. Often, the person cannot bear tight or constricting clothing or bandages and feels better from heat and worse on the left side.
Mercurius corrosivus 30C, – For copious bleeding, better when lying on the back with the knees bent up, delirium, headache with burning cheeks, photophobia, black swollen lip, metallic, bitter or salt taste in mouth.
Secale cornutum 30c,– For thin, slow, painless oozing dark hemorrhage with offensive odor, cold skin and tingling in the limbs. The individual wants to be uncovered and feels WORSE from motion.
Echinacea 30C – For when there’s sepsis or blood poisoning, fetid smelling discharges and enlarged lymph nodes.
Homeopathy is an ideal medical stratagem for survivalists, homesteaders and anyone wanting to be self-reliant in any situation.
I thought this might be a joke, given its proximity to April 1 this year, but it’s not. All you have to do is to peruse the rest of Calabrese’s website to realize that she actually believes these things. Calabrese also pimps her forthcoming book, The Survivalist Guide to Homeopathy. In any event, all of these remedies, being 30C dilutions, are nothing more than water, likely soaked into sugar pills. (I still can’t figure out why homeopaths take their water, press it into sugar pills, and then let them dry out. Why not just administer the water with a bit of salt? In that case, it might at least have a chance to contribute to the rehydration of a vomiting and bleeding patient.
Of course, these recommendations aren’t just the delusional ravings of pseudoscience-believing homeopaths? They’re based on science, maaaan! There’s even a paper in the British Journal of Homeopathy (OK, so it’s not actually science) entitled Sicarus (Six-Eyed Crab Spider): A homeopathic treatment for Ebola haemorrhagic fever and disseminated intravascular coagulation?. Shockingly, I found this ridiculous paper hosted on a personal page on the Indiana University website. In any case, it’s not just Ebola. Homeopaths are deluded enough to think that they can treat potential bioterrorism agents such as anthrax (Anthracinum and Arsenicum album), smallpox (Variolinum, Malandrinum, Sarsparilla, Thuja, Baptisia (Pestinum and Crotalus horridus for hemorrhagic plague; Lachesis, Arsenicum album for bubonic plague; Phosophorus for pneumonic plague), and Botulism (Botulinum and Gelsemium, Arsenicum album, Belladonna Alternate).
I never thought I’d say this (I really didn't), but this is a case when that font of all quackery, New World Order conspiracy theories, and utter lunacy, NaturalNews.com, is less deluded than these homeopaths, albeit only marginally. There appeared today a post from Mike Adams expressing concern—well panic, actually—that the CDC is bringing a victim infected with Ebola to Emory University Hospital for treatment. At least Adams realizes that Ebola is a disease that is contagious and deadly. On the other hand, it is amusing to see his panicked rant, given how NaturalNews.com has previously published rank germ theory denialism. After all, if microorganisms don’t cause disease, then why worry? Of course, it’s not long before Adams dives into rank conspiracy theories about big pharma wanting this patient to develop Ebola drugs and thereby make massive profits or the Army wanting the body after the victim dies in order to use what it finds to further bioweapons research
The only reason that Adams’ rant is marginally less delusional than homeopaths believing they can cure Ebola is because his rant doesn’t rely on a system of “medicine” that postulates principles that violate the laws of physics and chemistry, but that’s the only reason. The bottom line is that, with increasing outbreaks of Ebola, the fear mongering is going to reach extreme levels, and the quacks always take advantage of that. What they don’t understand is that Ebola is unlikely to spread very far because it is so fatal. Outbreaks of diseases that are this fatal this fast tend to burn themselves out very quickly because the infected can’t travel far or come into contact with enough people to allow wide dissemination. That’s not to say Ebola is not a threat, but it’s certainly not a threat that homeopathy can do anything about.
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They'll invest in research and develop drugs that will successfully treat Ebola and ultimately make a profit?
OMG! The horror, the horror!
When I heard the news about the infected physician being brought back, I immediately thought of the book The Hot Zone (great book, absolutely terrifying). I wondered why they would do such a thing, and then I hoped that they took very, very good precautions with this patient.
I should perhaps point out that the digs at Homeopaths Without Borders and other individual homeopaths only began after some of them started wittering on, on Twitter, about treating Ebola with homeopathy.
Naturally, a few of us have suggested that if they're so confident in the efficacy of their remedies then they should consider flying out to Africa to deal with the current epidemic but, thus far, we've had no takers...
Right, it's amazing if you survive using homeopathy.
This is a golden opportunity for the homeopaths to demonstrate the efficacy of their nostrums to us nasty sceptics. I wonder why they aren't rushing in there to help.
In light of the recent and serious gaffs in pathogens handling by some CDC staff, it appears to be legitimate concern.
I just thought up a new verb for what Mikey does**:
he *conspirafabulates*, i.e. he confabulates conspiracies.
At the drop of a hat. All day long.
** no, not THAT- we already have MANY verbs for that.
OK, I'm uninformed.
What the pluperfect heck is "mercurius corrosivus" in its day job? Are we talking about mercury fulminate, or ...?
Echinaceae, OTOH, makes perfect sense. A bouquet including coneflowers ought o cheer anyone up.
fusilier
James 2:24
"...ought _to_ cheer anyone up."
Can we have an edit button, please?
fusilier
James 2:24
if they’re so confident in the efficacy of their remedies then they should consider flying out to Africa to deal with the current epidemic
That would make for some interesting and/or awkward conversations with customs inspectors along the way. Depending on who he's talking to, it may be to the courier's advantage to admit that he's carrying a bunch of specially prepared distilled water. I would expect MSF et al. to work with brokers to deal with customs issues in the countries where they operate (usually, medicines have to be declared to customs). If Homeopaths Without Borders neglects this step, that's where things get interesting.
"It’s also very contagious" - Can someone clear up my confusion? I was under the impression that Ebola whilst highly virulent (nasty) was not particularly contagious (easy to transmit) because it requires physical contact. Yet I see this 'very contagious' all over the media and now here.
Obviously 'very' is a relative term. But Ebola is a lot less contagious than the common cold...probably less contagious than flu...presumably more contagious than SARS...just where does it sit overall? Is it reasonable to call it 'very contagious'?
@ScienceMom
My concern arose from the fact that they know this physician is a patient, which means they've probably started showing symptoms. If they're already bleeding, I hope they do a damn good job cleaning the plane and every area that person passes through. Lots of bleach.
I recall the incident in The Hot Zone where a patient coughed blood right into a doctor's face, as well as leaving fluids all over the waiting room. Very scary disease.
@fusilier - Google says mercuric chloride
Why do homeopaths get to use diluted mercury? Aren't we afraid of them causing autism? I mean if it is way more potent than anything in a vaccine?
Maybe "very contagious" for a blood- and secretion-borne pathogen would be a better way of putting it. After all, presumably the American doctors who became infected were using universal precautions. Their being infected implies that it doesn't take much of a break in protection to acquire the virus. African families frequently catch the disease caring for their loved ones and transmission through embalming the bodies of those who have died of the disease has been described. Also, given all the hemorrhage that is so frequent in severe Ebola disease, it's very easy to come into contact with the blood of the infected, even as tiny droplets that you don't notice, and all it takes is contact of that blood with mucous membranes or an open cut. I liken it to Hepatitis B, if Hepatitis B caused such bleeding.
@Adrian Simmons
Well, ebola isn't an airborne/respiratory virus like measles, so it's hard to transmit like that. You do need to have direct contact with infectious fluids, but if that fluid gets into your system through cuts or contact with your mucous membranes, there's a really good chance you'll be infected.
That said, since the virus induces coughing and vomiting, it's possible to be infected pretty easily if, like that doctor I mentioned above, the patient coughs in your face. Have to take a lot of care when dealing with contaminated surfaces, too, especially during cleanup. It's easy to miss little droplets of blood, which can travel quite far.
"A man's got to know his limitations". Homeopaths don't know theirs. Homeopaths without Borders? More like Quacks without Qualms.
If those bozos actually get to lay their mitts on someone with ebola, I predict no better survival rate than no treatment at all. And also some misguidedly infected quacks.
"Can we have an edit button, please?"
Scienceblogs can do a RCT with a placebo control. They can put an "edit" button on your post and you can press the button. Nothing happens. You will then be tested to see if pressing the button made you feel better. For the homeopathic version of this test they make the button less than 1 pixel wide.
I followed more of the link, and possibly you did the same. But http://www.indiana.edu/~psychag/cam/ contains some sort of weird CAM game. SMH...
As a preventative if an outbreak happens nearby, Crotalus horridus 30C, one dose daily
Presumably Crotalus horridus has a 100% match against the symptoms caused by a rattlesnake bite, and is therefore very effective against it. Perhaps a homeopath would care to demonstrate this effect by taking this 30C preventative for, say, 10 days, and then picking up a rattlesnake.
Only joking. I would hate to see the poor rattler upset.
"gross blood in the stool" There are times when medical and vernacular language coincide.
@Chadwick: This is the link, and it is properly linked in the post:
http://www.indiana.edu/~psychag/cam/interview/long_lost_manuscript.pdf
@13 " If they’re already bleeding, I hope they do a damn good job cleaning the plane and every area that person passes through. Lots of bleach."
they have a self-contained transport pod (like the "Bubble Boy's pod), so the inside of any transport stays uncontaminated.
The main problem seems to be the customs for burial are propagating the virus - and the "you only go to the hospital to die" idea that keeps ill people at home where they infect the rest of the family.
@Tsu Dho Nimh
That's good. Still makes me very nervous, though. Need to take a lot of care to make sure there are no breaks in the protective barriers. And still a good idea to wipe areas down with bleach.
Certainly education about how the virus is spread and how traditional burial customs could be modified to reduce the risk would be good. I worry, though, about people going into a hospital that is not prepared to receive them properly. Don't want someone hemorrhaging all over the waiting room, where there are other patients/visitors.
I am constantly amused by Homeopaths' infatuation with language that implies scientific legitimacy, as in Latin/Latiny names for remedies.
Here's a game, figure out which of these are homepoathic remedies and which are Harry Potter spells:
Sectumsempra
Malandrinum
Thuja
Riddikulus
Verdimillious Duo
Bothrops
Wingardium Leviosa
Lumos Maxima
Specialis Revelio
Anthracinum
Mercurius corrosivu
Protego Maxima
Secale cornutum
Pestinum
Lachesis mutus
Expelliarmus
Locomotor Mortis
Variolinum
Baptisia
Crotalus horridus
Orchideous
Arsenicum album
LW,
To be pedantic, and having dealt with more stool samples than I care to remember, melena refers to black, tarry stools (the mel- part is from the Greek for 'black' as in melanin), from bleeding further up the GI tract (the digestive system partially digests the blood.
Frank, visible red blood in the stools, from bleeding further down the GI tract, is called hematochezia. Depending on transit time, the presence of one or the other gives an idea of where in the GI tract the bleeding is occurring.
I would imagine ebola gives rise to both melena and hematochezia, making Orac's description even more apt.
I think a general surgeon knows what melena is. I was just boiling it down for the audience. I could easily have waxed poetic about the difference between melena and hematochezia, having unfortunately seen them both many times myself up close and personal back before I specialized in breast surgery, but I chose not to because it would only muddy the descriptions of the symptoms that mattered to most readers: Bleeding out of mucus membranes and various orifices, which is a pretty nasty picture in itself.
Karl @26: An interesting game. I'll take a stab.
"Riddikulus" is one I specifically remember as being from Harry Potter. I'm going to guess that the three others that seem to involve first person verbs ("Specialis Revelio", "Protego Maxima", and "Expelliamus") are also from Harry Potter, and the rest are homeopathic remedies.
How did I do?
Sectumsempra
Wingardium Leviosa
Also from Harry Potter.
Lumos Maxima, Locomotor Mortis, and Orchideous are also Harry Potter.
Bothrops would be a great name for a shop on Knockturn Alley, but...
obviously mike adams is a complete tool, but seriously you can't infer that because quacks don't want to go over and try to cure ebola, that this disproves homeopathy. if you were the manufacturer of hazmat suits would you go try to prove how good your product was by hanging out with ebola pts? they're an easy target, and I actually don't think they are saying they would treat or cure ebola. I also think homeopathy is ridiculous, and its place is only for those who have no other option. I wouldn't deny someone a little placebo effect though, without capitalizing on it of course...
anyways we don't know that the infected providers had the proper equipment to protect themselves...I think it is shameful the panic going around about this disease solely because the US is taking care of their own..
Something something sandwiches something.
P.S. Am I the only one for whom the comment fields are no longer being remembered?
I could easily have waxed poetic about the difference between melena and hematochezia
If you're taking requests, a sonnet would be nice.
@ Narad:
No, it's not only you.
-btw- I read Orac's comment 'waxed poetic about the difference between.... ' JUST as I was about to take my grilled Norwegian salmon out of its pristine container to eat but decided then to delay that action for an hour or so for some reason.
Now it's fixed.
I KNEW Narad was magic.
I just got a message from Rayne_2 that he was just being snarky. He didn't actually know that Homeopaths without Borders was a real organization. Too funny. It's kind of crazy that our snark is reality. That's just sad.
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/homeopathy-stop-…
You're sure it's a British journal? I would have thought German - the most important thing for the very end of the sentence. And such a lot of weight that "?" is carrying...
Now it's gone again.
Easy come,easy go.
@ Spirochete, great 'nym by the way having had one a few times. But on topic, I don't think that is quite what was being inferred, rather it's interesting to note that the homeopaths themselves don't even have faith in their nostrums to travel to such a horrible outbreak scenario. They stay where it's "safe" and then toot their horns triumphantly about the assistance they provided. They're low-hanging fruit and we already know their majik water doesn't work.
Well yes they did actually. One actually being an M.D. if you read the full post.
Actually, in a way that's what they kind of have to do to make sure their products will stand up under field conditions.
No we don't or several other possibilities but they are all independent of whether homeopaths should be making bold claims about their Ebola "cures".
According to Sayer Ji at Greenmedinfo (really Greenmedmarket where they sell supplements and woo):
"Natural Treatments for Ebola Virus Exist, Research Suggests."
Read at your own peril.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/natural-treatments-ebola-virus-exist-r…
What really makes these terrible is that these 'remedies', even at full strength, would not cause Ebola-like symptoms when taken as directed.
Snake venom is digested when swallowed with no ill effect. It must be injected to cause problems.
Sayer Ji ought to volunteer to care for those patients in Africa.
You're all wrong. Ebola Virus disease is actually Acute Induced Scurvy and curable by massive IV doses of ascorbic acid.
http://vitamincfoundation.org/www.orthomed.com/index2.htm
That settles it.
Noted scientist, infectious diseases specialist and epidemiologist, Donald Trump, doesn't think the two Americans who have been diagnosed with Ebola virus, should be brought to Emory Hospital for treatment:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/495182739310936064
P.S. "Melena" is not Donald Trump's current wife; her name is Melania Knauss Trump.
The writer here is an idiot. I am from the Philippines and we only go to our homeopathic doctor who has healed my children of diseases from pneumonia to dengue hemorraghic fever.
lilady - the vitamin C site is an amazing toxic blend of god-awful site design and brain-bleeding idiocy. I guess if you can't get evidence on your side, aim for shocking your reader into stupidity?
IMPLY! The word is imply. I imply that you are a mouth-breathing cretin. You sound out the preceding sentence and infer that I think you aren't very smart.
@ Putang...You are either a troll or a fool. We have 578 confirmed cases of measles in the United States, YTD...most of them associated with travel to the Philippines, where ~ 40,000 cases have been reported, causing hundreds of deaths.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm6330md.pdf
Tapetum: I "depend" on The Vitamin C Council to provide a wealth of material for infectious diseases, alternative "cancer cures"...and cures for every other disorder known to man.
I cannot take vitamins (words with the letter "v" are sinful), so I think I'll get some essential oils for all my ebola needs.
http://www.essentialoilsforthewin.com/ebola/
SMH
Karl Withakay: Oh, that's cheating. I'm sure those are all from Harry Potter.
Narad: Oh, I thought it was just me.
SpaceTrout: If you cannot take vitamins...you can make money, plenty of it...by becoming part of the MLM pyramid scheme which the Baileys are selling on their essential oils website.
Oregano oil? Oregano works on pizza, not on Ebola virus.
I don't think Mike Adams is that far in front of the homeopathy. He has been advocating Chinese herbal remedies, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, zinc and selenium.
http://www.naturalnews.com/046260_Ebola_natural_cures_medicinal_herbs.h…
No, it’s not only you.
Just now, the Scienceblogs website has for some reason decided to fill in the Name field with "NZ Sceptic", and not satisfied with that, has also filled in the Email field with NZ Sceptic's e-mail address. What? I am not NZ Sceptic and I don't really need to read his or her identification details.
I was reading a NBC report which reported some boofheads as criticising the idea of repatriating the sick US doctors for treatment in the US. I confess, straightaway I leapt to unworthy conclusions about the kind of people who would voice these criticisms, and their likely political alignment. However, I can't claim credit for specifically predicting Trump as spokesman for the idea that you should lose all rights as a citizen if you contract scary diseases while overseas.
Whoops, that last comment was from me, except Scienceblogs software had other ideas.
Forbes science blogger David Kroll, has attracted some of those trolls. Those trolls have attracted me to their comments.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2014/08/01/should-we-be-concerne…
Let's see if they come back. I'm just in the right mood to post back and shame them for their colossal ignorance.
Feel free to post comments back at them. I'm not an early riser, but a night owl and it is 4:30 AM Saturday morning for me. :-)
So the nimrods want some kind of veto power over which diseases a hospital should be allowed to treat? Clearly the hospital staff are happy to look after their sick colleagues, and whose else business it it?
Eeek! I am the real NZ Sceptic and I can't imagine what's going on here!
Orac,
Of course I know you know; I was expanding on what you wrote, for the audience. Some commenters here enjoy delving into the precise meaning and origins of words, as I do, and I thought they might find a bit of scatological etymology interesting. No criticism was intended, and I apologize for any offense caused.
@lilady, my question on bringing the American Ebola victims to the States for treatment is the timing. Given their grave condition, bringing them in one at a time with several days in between doesn't make sense to me. Who gets to stay behind for several days? I would think for purely medical reasons it would make more sense to send equipment and staff to them there or in a nearby country so they can both get treatment as fast as possible.
I don't think they pose any risk of starting an epidemic here (the "pandemic" comment on the Forbes site was hilarious) but I do wonder about the well-being of the patients. Better some good treatment available immediately than superb treatment available after the patient has succumbed.
Homeopathy saved my life. Discounting something without truly knowing what you are talking about is not true science. Homeopaths were able to pretty much cure most all of their patients of the 1919 flu epidemic, where regular medicine could not. I wish my grandmother had homepathy then, but she probably caught it in the hospital where my mother was born and died there. My cat had severe diabetes which was being cured in three years with homeopathy, whereas when I looked online about giving insulin, I just saw people having trouble adjusting their dose properly and just getting worse and worse untill they died.
Adults are (and generally should be) free to dose themselves with whatever quackery they want.
Inflicting homeopathy on animals with treatable illnesses is grotesque abuse.
@Marthw
You know homeopathy is just water, don't you?
@Marthw,
OK, please show that you know what you are talking about.
1. What are the two underlying principles of homeopathy?
2. What life-threatening disease or medical condition did you have?
3. What homeopathic item did you receive? (What were the ingredients and dilutions?)
4. Can you cite a published study demonstrating that the item you received is effective for treating your illness?
Note: Homeopathy didn't work very well for my sister-in-law's cancer.
*KOFF* Perhaps the "effectiveness" of homeopathy was responsible for the increased virulence of waves 2 and 3.
P.S. And the autofill is gone again.
Marthw, homeopathy were not able to cure most of their patients in the 1919 flu pandemic, because all they gave them were sugar pills.
That is all homeopathy is, dried water on sugar pills.
If you treated your cat's diabetes with homeopathy, then that is animal cruelty.
I'm a member of "Things antivaxxers say" on Facebook.
One of the damn fool antivaxxers claimed she'd cured herself of Ebola.
Yes, she actually said that.
Julian Frost: Thanks for that post. That wouldn't happen to be the "New Professor", who is convinced that selenium and the Vitamin C cure all, made that comment, would it?
https://www.facebook.com/656716804343725/photos/a.660980460584026.10737…
BTW, Doctor Brantly has arrived at Emory Hospital. A local TV station's helicopter news crew shows him walking out of the ambulance to enter the hospital, in full hazmat garb.
HOMÖOPATHIE eine irre medizinische GLAUBENSLEHRE
Aufklärung und Bildung im Gegensatz zu den Grundlagen der Homöopathie
Die Betreuung, Erziehung und die Schul- und Universitätsbildung von Kindern und Jugendlichen hat zum Ziel, diesen nicht nur eine berufliche Ausbildung, sondern auch eine Bildung im klassischen Sinne der Aufklärung angedeihen zu lassen. Das beginnt schon im Kindergarten. Hier können bereits emotionale und intellektuelle Anlagen gefördert oder unterdrückt werden, die für die Entwicklung der Persönlichkeit einerseits und für die berufliche Zukunft andrerseits bedeutend sind. Allen Kindern sollte ermöglicht werden, später als Erwachsene mündig, selbstbestimmt und verantwortungsbewusst leben zu können.
Wirklich verantwortungsbewusst kann aber nur dann gehandelt werden, wenn die Folgen von Entscheidungen mit hinreichender Gewissheit abzusehen sind. Diese hinreichende Gewissheit setzt ein naturwissenschaftliches Basiswissen, Skepsis und Verständnis für mündige Erwachsene voraus. Daher gibt es keine Bildung und Ausbildung ohne Naturwissenschaft bzw. naturwissenschaftliches Grundwissen.
Das Gegenteil wäre der Fall, wenn eine bloße Betreuung und Verwahrung der Kinder im Kindergarten und nachfolgenden Bildungseinrichtungen gefragt ist. Auch könnten Kindern und Jugendlichen lediglich bestimmte Verhaltensweisen und/oder Fertigkeiten angelernt werden, um sich später zu bewähren und selbständig leben zu können. Dazu wird in aller Regel nur eine entsprechend qualifizierte Ausbildung oder ein Anlernen notwendig sein, um eben beschäftigt werden zu können. Das ist jedoch nicht „Bildung“ im klassischen Sinn. Bildung und Ausbildung sind nicht das gleiche. Sie sollten einander ergänzen.
Die Kriterien, Ansichten und Lebensphilosophien, mit denen die Welt erklärt werden kann, können sehr unterschiedlich sein. Die selektive Wahrnehmung und die Eigenheit unseres Gehirns, aufeinanderfolgende Ereignisse zwingend nur als Verknüpfung von Ursache und Wirkung anzusehen, erlauben es jedem eine private bzw. subjektive „Logik“ zu entwickeln. Diese Logik ist nur scheinbar aber praktisch vorteilhaft. So kann man sich die Welt auch mit den verschiedensten magischen, esoterischen und abergläubischen Vorstellungen „subjektiv“ erklären und hinter den Dingen Zusammenhänge sehen, mit denen man mehr oder weniger erfolgreich sein Leben bestreiten und auf die Zukunft schließen kann. Der Mondkalender und das Tageshoroskop sind so verführerische simple und daher besonders einleuchtende Regeln, um ohne weiteres Nachdenken entscheiden zu können. Besonders attraktiv sind anscheinend einfache, klare, alles erklärende „Grundsätze“, die jeder versteht und die nicht so kompliziert und unverständlich wie Wissenschaft sind. Auch Religionen, besonders fundamentalistische, geben ein Weltbild mehr oder weniger zwingend vor. Wenn man darüber ernsthaft nachdenkt, sind Konflikte mit den Erkenntnissen der Naturwissenschaften unausweichlich und auch nicht wirklich auflösbar. Rational aufgelöst werden diese Konflikte nicht, sie werden nur teilweise oder überhaupt nicht wahrgenommen. Eine naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis wird einfach zur beliebigen und persönlichen Meinung erklärt, die man teilen kann oder auch nicht.
In der Vergangenheit, in vorwissenschaftlicher Zeit, war es auch gar nicht anders möglich, als sich die Welt irgendwie beseelt und zweckgerichtet vorzustellen. Die Tücke des Objekts war existenziell ernst zu nehmen. Alles schien beseelt zu sein und das Unerklärliche wurde „sinnvoll“ durch zahlreiche gute und böse Geister und zuletzt durch den unerforschlichen Ratschluss eines Gottes. Es immer noch so zu sehen und sich so zu verhalten, als ob es keine Entwicklung, keinen gesicherten naturwissenschaftlichen Wissenszuwachs gäbe und auch heute noch fest an unmögliche, magische Zusammenhänge zu glauben, bedeutet unseren heutigen Wissensstand zu ignorieren, zu negieren und zu verkennen. Anstelle einer wissenschaftlich gesicherten Kausalität auf dem Fundament der Naturwissenschaften wird das magische Wirken von Geistern und dergleichen mehr angenommen. Diese alleskönnenden guten oder bösen Geister von ehedem werden hinter modernen Begriffen versteckt. Man spricht jetzt von Energien, Kraftfeldern, Quanten, Blockaden usw.
Wer heute noch die „Theorie“ vertritt, die Erde sei eine Scheibe, wird mehrheitlich als Narr angesehen, aber wer heute noch nach der antiken 4-Säfte-Lehre therapeutische Maßnahmen setzt, hat keine derartige Ächtung zu befürchten, obwohl die 4-Säfte-Lehre als Erklärungsmodell genauso überholt ist wie die Theorie, dass die Erde eine Scheibe wäre.
Homöopathie ein versteinertes Relikt überholter vorwissenschaftlicher Vorstellungen
Niemand kann zur Annahme eines rationalen Verständnisses gezwungen werden. Praktisch lässt sich das an der ausufernden esoterischen Szene und vor allem auch in der alternativen, komplementären und ganzheitlichen Medizin- und Heilszene, an Wunderheilern und dubiosen Heilpraktikern beobachten. Hier herrschen immer noch und schon wieder unwissenschaftliche Überzeugungen und Erklärungen vor, die heute im Lichte der Naturwissenschaft einfach als magisch zu bezeichnen sind. Die Homöopathie ist das Paradebeispiel einer solchen Irrlehre. Sie steht mit ihren magischen Vorstellungen im Gegensatz zu allen gesicherten medizinischen Erkenntnissen und wird trotzdem im modernen Medizinbetrieb allgemein akzeptiert. Sie ist keine abstruse Randerscheinung, sondern fixer Bestandteil im medizinischem Alltag und der Ausbildung bis in die Universität hinein. Man könnte fast meinen, dass sich Aberglaube und Esoterik vorzugsweise in die Medizin zurückgezogen haben und von dort aus sich anschicken, die Errungenschaften der Aufklärung und der Naturwissenschaften rückgängig zu machen. In den Naturwissenschaften wie z.B. in Chemie und Physik sind überholte Vorstellungen aus der Alchemie oder das Perpetuum mobile längst passee aber nicht mehr in der Medizin. Hier ist das Mittelalter wieder eingezogen. Die Folgen reichen über das Gebiet der Medizin hinaus.
Auf nach unseren heutigen Kenntnissen unzweifelhaft magischen Vorstellungen fußen die Homöopathie und viele andere Verfahren und Mittel der alternativen, komplementären und ganzheitlichen Medizin. Hier boomt moderne Pseudowissenschaft und mit ihr das Kauderwelsch aus verfälschten und verdrehten Begriffen, die aus Wissenschaft und Forschung zum „Eindruckschinden“ entlehnt werden. So wird eine Wirkung erklärt, die gar nicht vorhanden ist und puren magischen Phantasien wird ein moderner wissenschaftlich scheinender Hochglanz aufpoliert. Die Existenz von Feen, Elfen, Schutzengeln etc. erscheint vielen plausibel. Der Glaube an Symbolisches, wie die Erschaffung der Welt buchstäblich in 7 Tagen, erfreut sich steigender Beliebtheit. Das Markenzeichen und die Attraktivität von Scheinmedizin und Pseudowissenschaft ist, dass hier alles einfacher, verständlicher, biologischer und natürlicher ist. Um Anerkennung bemüht, wird jedoch Wissenschaftlichkeit und Bestätigung durch angeblich positive Studienergebnisse behauptet.
Homöopathie verweigert sich allen gesicherten medizinischen Erkenntnissen
Auch nach mehr als 200 Jahren existieren keinerlei einwandfreie und stichhaltige Beweise für eine spezifische Wirksamkeit. Sowohl die historischen Vorstellungen als auch die gegenwärtigen Erklärungen zur Wirkung der Homöopathie stehen in fundamentalen Widerspruch zu allen gesicherten naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen. Die Lehre des Herrn Hahnemann ist eine für die Medizin unfruchtbare Theorie, eine Irrlehre. Es gibt daher keinerlei Erkenntnisse, die mit Hilfe der Homöopathie gefunden wurden. Alles, was wir heute über „Leben“, „Gesundheit“ und „Krankheit“ im weitesten Sinne wissen, wurde mit Hilfe der Naturwissenschaften erforscht und aufgeklärt. Der Beitrag der Homöopathie zur Entwicklung der Medizin ist null.
Das Credo der Homöopathie „similia similibus curentur“ („Ähnliches werde durch Ähnliches geheilt“) ist ganz in der Tradition der magischen Signaturenlehre. Nach dieser Signaturenlehre zeigt uns die Natur durch Ähnlichkeiten die z.B. heilende Wirkung einer Pflanze, eines Steines oder eines Tierorgans an. Dass hier die angesprochenen Ähnlichkeiten absolut willkürliche Annahmen aus menschlicher Sicht und menschlicher Erwartungen sind, bedarf hoffentlich keiner weiteren Erläuterung und liegt auf der Hand. Die Signaturenlehre ist nichts weiter als eine esoterische Pseudowissenschaft, die durch nichts belegt werden kann und allen Erkenntnissen widerspricht.
Das homöopathische Potenzieren hat seinen Ursprung in der magischen alchemistischen Vorstellung, dass in den Ausgangsmaterialien ein geistartiges Wirkprinzip, eine Heilkraft ähnlich der immateriellen Lebenskraft , der „Vis vitalis“, existiert, die durch bestimmte Prozeduren wie etwa dem wiederholten Verdünnen mit nachfolgendem Schütteln herausgeholt werden kann und muss, um so in reiner immaterieller Form noch besser Heilung zu bewirken. All das ist, wie wir heute wissen, esoterischer vernunftferner Nonsens. Im Klartext: Es gibt keine kausale Wirksamkeit der Homöopathie. Alle Nachprüfungen ergeben immer wieder, dass es egal ist, welche Mittel welcher Hochpotenz gegen welche Krankheit auch immer wie oft eingenommen werden. Homöopathie wirkt nicht mehr und nicht weniger als ein Placebo. Und die Wirkung eines Placebos bzw. der Homöopathie beruht lediglich auf der Erwartungshaltung, dem Image und dem Brimborium rund um die Verschreibung. Es wirkt der persönliche Glaube an die Homöopathie, der durch die allgemein verbreitete Ansicht induziert wurde. Die Hoffnung auf Heilung war immer schon stärker als jede Vernunft und zu allen Zeiten daher eine hervorragende Geschäftsbasis für alle Ärzte und Wunderheiler, die in gutem ehrlichen Glauben einerseits selbst daran glaubten bis hin zu den Scharlatanen, denen bewusst war, dass ihre Therapie und ihre Mittel nicht wirken.
Harmlose Homöopathie - gefährliche Magie?
Entgegen landläufiger Meinung ist Homöopathie keine grundsätzlich harmlose medizinische Modeerscheinung. Homöopathie beruht auf veralteten, transrealen Vorstellungen, die religiösen Dogmen gleichen. Ihr die gleiche Kausalität, den gleichen Stellenwert wie den sonst gültigen medizinischen Erkenntnissen zuzuerkennen ist fatal über die Medizin hinaus.
So birgt die Anwendung der Homöopathie mannigfache indirekte Gefahren. Der unbedingte vernunftferne Glaube an die nebenwirkungsfreie Wirkung der Homöopathie und die geschürte Angst vor konventioneller Medizin und Medikamenten, verführt oft genug, notwendige Behandlungen mit entsprechenden Folgen zu unterlassen. Die Angst vor konventioneller moderner Medizin wird subtil ausgenützt und ist ein wichtiger Faktor für die Scheinwirkung. Warum sollte man sich konventionell medizinisch behandeln lassen, wenn es doch eine angeblich bestens wirksame und sanfte Alternative gibt? Durch dieses irrationale Verhalten müssen immer wieder Kinder unnötigerweise Schmerzen und Leid erdulden. Sie können sich dagegen nicht wehren, und nicht selten kommt es zu bleibenden Schäden. Davon erfährt man nichts. In die Medien kommen nur diesbezügliche tödliche Zwischenfälle.
Mütter wollen für ihre Kinder das Beste und viele greifen deshalb nach Homöopathika, weil es von überall her heißt, diese Mittel seien sanft und ohne Nebenwirkungen. So werden alle Wehwehchen und Krankheiten der Kinder mit Globuli behandelt. Das stört interessanterweise Homöopathieanhänger nicht, aber der konventionellen Medizin wird gerade von ihnen gerne der Vorwurf gemacht, sie behandle zu viel.
Es ist unglaublich, was Mütter, die von der Homöopathie überzeugt sind, glauben behandeln zu müssen. Kinder haben offenbar wie Uhrwerke zu funktionieren und dem entsprechend wird der Tagesablauf mit der Einnahme von Globuli strukturiert. Sie sehen zur Freude der Homöopathieindustrie „Krankheiten“ und „Störungen“, die kein verantwortungsbewusster konventioneller Mediziner als behandlungswürdige Krankheit ansehen würde. Diese Behandlungssucht ist zwar gut gemeint, kommt aber einer Medikamentierwut gleich. Die Folge ist, dass die Kinder geradezu zum Pillenschlucken trainiert werden. Sie lernen, dass es nichts gibt, was einfach wieder vergeht und keiner besonderen Beachtung oder Behandlung bedarf. Die Wirksamkeit eines magischen Rituals wird sich und den Kindern antrainiert.
Homöopathie ist ein Betrug an hilfesuchenden Patienten
Die aber ohne jeden Zweifel auftretenden und beobachtbaren Wirkungen der Homöopathie vermag die moderne Medizin sehr wohl zu erklären. Es mögen hier die Stichworte Placebowirkung, Erwartungshaltung, Zufall, Selbstheilung, falsche Diagnosen und das Auf und Ab chronischer Erkrankungen genügen. Darüber gibt es mehr als genug Studien und Belege und es gibt darüber in seriösen Kreisen keine Diskussion. Diskussionen kommen durch die Verfechter der Homöopathie auf, die immer wieder Studien nach Wunschergebnissen abklopfen, die negativen Studien außer Acht lassen und ständig neue wissenschaftliche Studien trotz negativer Sachlage verlangen. Aber die Homöopathie ist nicht scientabel, wie im Buch die Homöopathie-Lüge (Christian Weymayr, Nicole Heißmann) ausgeführt wird. Homöopathie ist genauso unwissenschaftlich wie Handlesen und Kartenlegen und daher auch nicht naturwissenschaftlich beweisbar und erforschbar.
Homöopathie wirkt nicht ursächlich kraft chemisch physikalischer Eigenschaften. Den Hochpotenzen kommt keine Wirkung zu. Es wirkt das heilige Hahnemannsche Brimborium, das die Homöopathen mit ihren Gläubigen zelebrieren. Wenn ein Medizinmann ein verrenktes Knie mit einem Affenknochen beschwört, gibt es auch nichts zu beforschen.
An der Wirkungslosigkeit unter Berücksichtigung der Placebowirkung etc. ändert auch die gesetzliche Zulassung homöopathischer Behandlungen und Mittel nichts. Die Homöopathie ist per Gesetz davon befreit, ihre Wirksamkeit gleich anderen Medikamenten und Verfahren nachzuweisen. Im Weltbild der Homöopathie hat der Placeboeffekt logischerweise keinen Platz. Wenn die Homöopathie den Placeboeffekt in allen seinen Facetten anerkennt, dann widerlegt sie sich selbst.
Homöopathie ist ein Verrat an den Grundlagen unserer aufgeklärten Zivilisation
Mit der keineswegs mehr stillen Integration der Homöopathie in die moderne Medizin wird abergläubisches Gedankengut für durchaus real gehalten. Die Folgen gehen über den Bereich der Medizin hinaus. Die fundamentalen Gegensätze zwischen Naturwissenschaft und magisch-mystischen Annahmen bereiten kein Kopfzerbrechen mehr. Transreale Vorstellungen ziehen sogar in die Universitäten ein und geistern durch Medizin, Veterinärmedizin, Biologie, Bodenkultur und Pharmazie. Mittlerweile gibt es eine Studenteninitiative für Homöopathie auf der Medizin-Uni Wien. Ein Medizinprofessor in Graz richtete das Erdmagnetfeld mit Plastikchip schlaffördernd aus und im „Interuniversitären Kolleg für Graz / Schloss Seggau“ wurden unter Mitarbeit des Departments Pharmazie der Universität in Graz Kaulquappen homöopathisch kuriert. In Salzburg wird ein ganzes Landesspital durch eine an der Decke im Eingangsbereich montierte Aluminiumskulptur von allen erdachten Erdstrahlen geschützt. Ein Umweltmediziner fabriziert Studien über die krebsauslösende Wirkung von Handystrahlen. Pech war nur, dass die als ursächlich ausgeforschten Funkmasten nachweislich nie in Betrieb waren. Fazit der famosen Studie: Wenn aber gefunkt worden wäre, dann hätte es so sein müssen. In zahlreichen Spitälern fließt Granderwasser. Aber auch bei den Benediktinern in Admont fließt Granderwasser. Der Erfinder erklärte vor Gericht, dass ihm die Technik von Jesus im Traum vermittelt wurde. Der alpenländische Paradigmenwechsel „Vom Weihwasser zum Granderwasser“ lässt grüßen. Leider haben diese Sensationen das Nobelpreiskomitee noch nicht beeindruckt.
Quer durch die Lande erfreuen sich Wunderwasserquellen steigender Beliebtheit. Wunderquellen werden wieder entdeckt. Kraftplätze werden ausgependelt. Straßenkreuzungen werden mit Energiesteinen entstört. Die Liste an Skurrilitäten und absurden Anwendungen ist unerschöpflich. In Traunstein im Freistaat Bayern sollte mit Billigung höchster staatlicher Stellen eine eigene Hochschule für die vernunftferne Homöopathie eingerichtet werden. Das begleitende Medienorchester ergeht sich in Beifallshymnen. Der Lehrbetrieb wurde nicht aufgenommen. Dies ist den kritischen Stimmen vor allem aus den Reihen der GWUP zu verdanken. Behördlicherseits war alles entsprechend vorbereitet und abgesegnet. Aber Deutschland wird seinem historischen Ruf gerecht, es immer besonders gründlich zu machen, sicher noch gerecht werden. Voraussetzung für solche Sensationen ist der Verlust kritischen Denkens gepaart mit der Salonfähigkeit transrealer und vernunftferner Phantasien. Man kann es sich aussuchen, ob überlegte Regie oder Tollheit diesen Hype vorantreiben.
Homöopathie - eine moderne Gesundheitsreligion
Die Homöopathie kann aber nur so lange wirken, als der Glaube daran verbreitet ist. Daher sind Werbung und Imagepflege für Homöopathie mehr als unbedingt notwendig. Homöopathie greift dazu geschickt verbreitete Vorurteile und Ängste auf und verspricht Erlösung von allen Übeln der Medizin, ja der Zivilisation überhaupt. Nur wer glaubt wird selig, pardon gesund! Zuerst wird das berühmte Bauchgefühl gegen konventionelle Medizin aktiviert und dann mit Homöopathie beruhigt. Nach wie vor zieht der Begriff Schulmedizin, der mit unpraktischer weltfremder Wissenschaft und kalter Technik assoziiert wird.
Die Mantras der Homöopathiereligion, die unaufhörlich beschworen werden, sind die Begriffe „biologisch“ und „natürlich“ neben „sanft“ und „nebenwirkungsfrei“. Das positive Bild der Homöopathie wird nicht durch Tierversuche, Chemie und Technik beeinträchtigt. Selbstverständlich wird die Homöopathie im Gegensatz zu konventioneller Medizin und Pharmazie als humane „non-Profit-Medizin“ angesehen. Das alles ist selbstverständlich ganzheitlich. Aber ganzheitlich ist lediglich das Fehlen jeder Ratio in der Homöopathie
Und weil es ein Glaube ist, wird das Marketing entsprechend gestaltet. Besonders Schwangere und Kinder betreuende Mütter zählen zur Zielgruppe und werden umworben. Für diese Zwecke ist ein Kindergarten ein besonders geeigneter Ort um Anhängerinnen zu rekrutieren. Die werdenden Mütter sind von vielen Sorgen und Ängsten erfüllt. Das sind genau die psychologischen Umstände, die notwendig sind, um den Glauben an die Wirksamkeit zu induzieren und Skepsis und Nachdenken für immer auszuschalten.
In aller Regel kommen die Kinder heute gesund zur Welt und wachsen gesund heran. Trotzdem, Schwangerschaft und Geburt sind einschneidende und außergewöhnliche Ereignisse, die umfangreiche körperliche und seelische Belastungen nach sich ziehen können, auch dann wenn es nicht zu besonderen Komplikationen kommt. Dieser im Vergleich zu früheren Zeiten weitgehende „normale“ Verlauf wird aber nicht der modernen medizinischen Fürsorge (Schwangerenbetreuung, Geburtshilfe, Neonatologie, Kinderheilkunde etc.) zugeschrieben sondern der ebenfalls allgegenwärtigen begleitenden homöopathischen Betreuung. Logisch, dass unter diesen Umständen alles und auch die Magie des Hahnemann wirkt. Eine echte kausale objektive Wirksamkeit ist für die subjektive Heilungsempfindung nicht notwendig. Der Gedanke an Hahnemann genügt wie der heilende Blick von Braco.
Gerade im Vorschulbereich können den Kindern Werte und Tugenden vermittelt werden. Auch Glauben wird den Kindern als Tugend vermittelt. Homöopathie wird in vielen Bildungseinrichtungen als eine bessere Medizin vermittelt. Ihre Anwendung ist grundsätzlich eine Tugend. Das ist der Anfang eines Glaubens, der dann an Hochschulen für Homöopathie seine Priester und Priesterinnen mit einem scheinintellektuellen akademischen Grad weiht.
Politiker und Politikerinnen waschen sich in Unschuld
Die Politiker und Politikerinnen halten sich zurück. Werden sie mit den magisch abstrusen Inhalten der Homöopathie konfrontiert, dann hüten sie sich wie auch die überwiegende Mehrheit der Journalisten und Journalistinnen vor einer klaren Stellungnahme. Eine Diskussion über die Inhalte und Vorstellungen der Homöopathie meiden sie wie der Teufel das Weihwasser. Nichts wäre gefährlicher und negativer für das politische Vorankommen als ein eindeutiges Engagement in einer Frage, die eigentlich nicht nur die Medizin betrifft sondern auch eine Weltanschauung berührt. Am einfachsten entgeht man diesem Dilemma, wenn man erklärt, dass man darüber nur eine persönliche Meinung hat, die selbstverständlich nicht relevant ist, weil sie persönlich ist. Dann kommt der eigentliche taktische Befreiungssprung. Man verweist auf die geltende Gesetzeslage. Die Konfrontation wird damit auf die „Beamtenschaft“, die für die Einhaltung der Gesetze zuständig ist, übertragen und schon haben sich Politiker und Politikerinnen ihrer Verantwortung entledigt und waschen ihre Hände in Unschuld wie einst Pontius Pilatus. Als Waschbecken dienen dann Paragraphen Gesetze, Vorschriften, Anweisungen und dergl. mehr in Bund und Ländern. Hier endet dann die Diskussion im Paragraphendschungel und im Wildwuchs der Zuständigkeiten. Selbstverständlich werden die Behörden bzw. die Beamten alles daran setzen nachzuweisen, dass alles paragraphengerecht und nur paragraphengerecht umgesetzt wird. Eine Diskussion über die Wirksamkeit der Homöopathie ist damit schon beendet, ehe diese begonnen hat. Es steht ja auch nichts drinnen in den Paragraphen über in Wissenschaft, Naturwissenschaft oder Medizin zulässige Inhalte oder Heillehren. Die Diskussion geht ins Leere und genau das wollen die Politiker und Politikerinnen. Sie wollen lediglich Mehrheiten erreichen. Zu viele Wähler und vor allem Wählerinnen schwören auf die Homöopathie und mit Wählerstimmen sollte man es sich nicht verscherzen. Ob die Homöopathie überhaupt wirkt, ist völlig nebensächlich. Angedacht und umgesetzt wird nur, was in der Wahlzelle wirkt.
Das Schweigen der konventionellen Medizin
Der Medizinethik fehlt der Begriff einer unwirksamen Therapie oder eines unwirksamen Mittels. Für Ärzte gilt die Therapiefreiheit. Sie dürfen, mit Einschränkungen natürlich, wenn Patienten dies ausdrücklich wünschen, auch mit erwiesen unwirksamen Methoden behandeln. Kein Wunder ist, dass unter solchen Bedingungen das Geschäft mit Wundermitteln blüht.
Unübersehbar prangt – sprichwörtlich – in jeder zweiten Ordination das Schild „Homöopathie. Scharlatan kann aber nur sein, wer über keine Berufsberechtigung verfügt. In Deutschland ist das Spektrum der „Homöopathen“ durch die Heilpraktiker noch bunter.
Kritische Stimmen aus dem niedergelassenen ärztlichen Bereich gibt es nur wenige. Lediglich aus dem Kreis der wissenschaftlich forschenden Medizin, von Pharmakologen, Biochemikern, Biologen etc. kommt fundierte Kritik ohne Wenn und Aber. Wenn medizinische Allgemeinplätze in die Medien kommen, dann sind sie mit Homöopathie garniert.
Apotheke quo vadis?
Noch trauriger sieht die Situation in den Apotheken aus. Wozu überhaupt noch ein Pharmaziestudium, das sich an Naturwissenschaft orientiert, gut ist, ist nicht mehr erkennbar. Wer sich heute in Apotheken umsieht, wird feststellen, dass ohne Homöopathie nichts mehr geht. Für die Wirkung - genauer die Placebowirkung - der Homöopathie ist die Apotheke von größter Bedeutung. Die noch wissenschaftlich ausgebildeten Apotheker und Apothekerinnen sind der sichtbare Beleg, dass bei der Homöopathie alles mit rechten Dingen zugeht. Es muss etwas dran sein, wenn in allen Apotheken Homöopathie angeboten wird und in einschlägigen Ratgeberpostillen der Gesundheits- u. Wellnessbranche die Homöopathie quasi als Erlösung von allem angepriesen wird. Aber damit sind die Möglichkeiten für Aberglauben in der Apotheke nicht erschöpft. Dr. Bachs Blütentropfen und Schüsslers Salze, ebenso vernunftfern wie Hasenpfoten, stören das Bild einer modernen rationalen Pharmazie nicht, um es einmal pointiert auszurücken. Wo sind die Zeiten, als über die Zulässigkeit von Kosmetik in Apotheken im sogenannten Nebensortiment debattiert wurde?
Ergänzt wird dieses umfassende Marketing durch z.B. die Österreichische Apothekerkammer, wenn diese als Sponsor bei Homöopathieaktionen auftritt. Zahlreiche Ärzte erteilen „gute“ homöopathische Ratschläge in den Medien. Es ist naiv anzunehmen, dass hier nur Reklame für die eigene Ordination gemacht wird und hier gezieltes Sponsoring oder Entschädigung durch Homöopathieproduzenten keinen Platz hätten. Ärztliche Berufsvereinigungen bieten Diplome in Homöopathie an. Damit wird Seriosität und unabhängige Information vorgegaukelt. Dem ist aber nicht so.
Alles zertifiziert!
Berufsvereinigungen sind keine Einrichtungen für den Patientenschutz sondern Interessenvertretungen von Ärzten, Apothekern etc. Ein Zauberwort, mit dem das ahnungslose Publikum verschüttelt wird, lautet „zertifiziert“. Niemand ahnt, dass praktisch jeder noch so unsinnige Kurs und jede noch so abstruse Ausbildung und auch die vernunftferne Homöopathie zertifizierbar sind. Zertifizieren hat nichts mit den Inhalten und der Sinnhaftigkeit einer Ausbildung zu tun. Das Internet ist voll von zertifizierten Ausbildungen zertifizierter Institute und Akademien. Es gibt nichts an verqueren Methoden, Mitteln, Diagnosegeräten und auch Ausbildungen, die nicht zertifiziert werden können. Selbstverständlich ist die Herstellung von Globuli in allen Phasen bis ins Fläschchen zertifiziert. In Punkto Zertifizierung unterscheiden sich Apotheker, Homöopathieärzte, Astrologen und Energetiker nicht, sehr wohl aber vom schwarzafrikanischen Medizinmann. Seine Künste sind noch nicht zertifiziert. Das kann aber noch kommen. Angeblich wird jetzt den Chinesen von dt. Ärzten die TCM erklärt. Diese Magie wurde hierzulande „wissenschaftlich“ veredelt und wird nun reexportiert. Nach Indien ist Homöopathie seinerzeit jedenfalls sehr erfolgreich exportiert worden. Warum sollen dt. Universitäten Medizinmänner in Afrika nicht betreuen und deren Heilkunde zertifizieren?
Vielleicht entsinnen wir uns wieder der traditionellen bayrisch-österreichischen Heilkost. Beuschel (Lungenhaschee) gegen Asthma, Hirn mit Ei gegen Lernschwäche, geselchtes Herz gegen Infarkt, Kalbszunge gegen Stottern und Stiergoggerl (Hoden) gegen Impotenz. Geräuchertes Kuheuter wird in der Steiermark als Osterspeise geweiht und gegessen. Schmeckt - ich verbürge mich dafür - wie feine Käswurst. Gemäß Symbolismus und altem Wissen könnte es durchaus auch den Milchfluss steigern. Vielleicht gibt es das alles demnächst in ihrer Apotheke auf Rezept als Instantsuppe mit ausgependelten Bachblüten gewürzt. Wenn es zu wenig wirkt, könnte als Ergänzung die Verordnung eines TCM- Mediziners bestehend aus gerösteten Regenwürmern in Schneckenschleim an Nashornraspel ganzheitlich weiterhelfen. Auch diese Mittel lassen sich zertifiziert wie auch Homöopathika herstellen.
It's just absurd to suggest that if you're bleeding, you should take something that makes you bleed as a cure. By that logic, we should start thrombolysing in haemorrhagic stroke. Except maybe the tPA isn't strong enough because there's not enough water added? Or something..?
By coincidence, I was reading a programmer's story recently of a bug that manifested in a fashion very similar to this: users getting presented with values that were relevant to what some other user was doing. The culprit was a variable that should have been declared local but, lacking the "var" keyword, it was instead declared global. What that means is that the server would make a note to itself during a transaction - "oh, this guy is User A, who wants to be notified if we have any news relevant to pork belly futures" - but it would be using THE SAME NOTE for every user who showed up, and frequently "remembering" data about one user when the transaction was actually with a different user. Might be a similar problem at work here.
Although I am on my way out the door -
earlier, I had no remembered name/email so I hit 'd' and *Voila* it worked
BUT THEN I tried again and accidentally hit 'a'
and lo and behold it said- ( no joking- I wouldn't joke about something like this) ........ ann dachel
Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Marthw: One doctor in Italy prescribed alcohol to all his patients and didn't lose a single one. Yet, somehow, doctors now don't prefer to pickle their patients. And for Bog's sake, get your cat a better owner.
All: you guys should read the list of treatments for the 1919 flu sometimes. It ranges from the ineffective (homeopathy) to the usual anti-biotics, to garlic hung around the neck. Although on second thought, the garlic would keep people from getting infected, since no one would want to get close.
And just because I'm morbidly curious, anyone got a translator for that verbal dirreahea the Dutch gentleman dropped on us?
No antibiotics then.
It's German and you might want to get the gist of it before going off cocked again. It may be a tad logorrheic but it's an anti-homeopathy rant.
I can't read German, but I must say that I like this line:
"Homöopathie – eine moderne Gesundheitsreligion"
Science Mom: they were treating the flu as a bacterial disease, which is why I assumed it was treated with anti-bacterials. My bad. Also, my bad for the misunderstanding; I speak neither German or Dutch, though I can usually guess individual words.
Dr. E Berndt: Million pardons.
Actually, I have used homeopathy for flu and it works great. This is my personal experience. I went to a homeopath a couple of months ago because for 8 years I have had severe PTSD with nightmares and flashbacks due to multiple crimes and assault plus TBI. After years of torture and no luck from western med or therapy, the nightmares were totally gone within 2 weeks and flashback reduced 90% . I have been in hospital 3 times because they have been so severe. I will be going back to work on the next level of healing in a couple of months. My balance and pain from the TBI is better too. I used to walk into walls and many day refused to drive. There is still some pain and fatigue but I'm sticking with the process, cause for me getting rid of the flashbacks and nightmares is life changing and nothing else worked, except sometimes when it got super bad, if I went for acupuncture 5 days a week, there would be a reduction of symptoms for a few months, but never as complete a cure as what I am now experiencing.
It wasn't called Must Call Somebody Else for no reason.
Homeopathy a classical method of treating illness of many kind. It is a desciplined study. People who have taken proper treatments under good homeopath knows the real value and power of this system. Erratic comments of some people without knowledge is unscientific. There is history of prevention in out breaks of epidemics.
Homeopathy born when other science branches yet to born. But even today most science branches are in its infancy stages. People generally having tendency to criticize all most unknown topics. All required to think how homeopathy is wonderfull in the process of cure. Truth can not be killed by any tactics. Find homeopathy in its real form when you are sick. Contribute positively in bringing out its real core. Let human kind benifit largely.
Politicalguineapig, try https://translate.google.com/ .
Homeopathy a classical method of treating illness of many kind. It is a desciplined study. People who have taken proper treatments under good homeopath knows the real value and power of this system. Erratic comments of some people without knowledge is unscientific. There is history of effecprevention in out breaks of epidemics.Threr is much need to understand and explore nature. It is a hidden tresure. Among one is homeopathy. A vast medical study of its own kind, heals most of disease process ,provides natural cure. Feel free, laeve prejudice alone, experiance homeopathic treatment with a good homeopath, then only comment.
To be fair, it is only through accident of history that the Dutch are deemed to be speaking a separate language, while the extraordinary noises they make down in Swabia are considered to be a dialect of German.
Well, the idea that Dutch is just a German dialect, seems to be quite wrong, as is demonstrated by the lousy German language-skills of most Dutch.people. They often think it's just a dialect and fail to speak the language.
Some words might look, or sound a bit simular, but they have a different meaning.
The long winded piece of our German doctor, was quite interesting.
I still don't "get it". If Dr. E. Berndt read Orac's post and saw all the replies are in English, why did he post his comment in German?
Most Germans I know and I have met in Germany are quite fluent in English.
@lilady,
I suppose Dr. E. Berndt just copied something that was already written for another website, or a magazine. Instead of going through the whole proces of translating the full article, he decided to put it here untranslated, which might not be the correct way to do. The article is a bit to long for me to translate, besides, I'm not a doctor, nor is German or English my mothertongue.
Renate,
Numbers are very similar, but with significant differences. I still remember the look I got in a bar in Amsterdam when I accidentally ordered "zwei bieren" (German) instead of "twee bieren" (Dutch). I didn't make that mistake again.
Nagesh,
Homeopathy was developed in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann. It is based on the concept that "like cures like" - if a concentrated substance causes a symptom in a healthy person, a diluted form of that same substance will be an effective treatment for that symptom in a sick person. It further believes that the more dilute the solution the stronger a treatment it is. It further believes that shaking the solution a special way where it smacks against an elastic substance helps make the solution effective.
Due to the nature of the dilution process and fundamentals of matter, any remedy marked 12C or higher is very likely to have none of the original active substance left and will only contain water or alcohol, plus any impurities introduced from the sides of the vessels used to create the solutions or acquired by exposure to the environment. As such, there is no plausible explanation for why it should have any significant clinical effect. There are no high quality studies that show a significant clinical benefit to homeopathic remedies, particularly for diseases that are not self-limiting.
Since multiple substances can cause a symptom in a healthy person (say, a runny nose), a practitioner is left to choose which is likely to be most effective in a particular case based on criteria which seem arbitrary.
If you are aware of good, double blinded, repeatable studies that show that homeopathic remedies beyond 12C dilution are good for anything, please share. Likewise, if you have any significant evidence to support the underlying principles of homeopathy, please share.
Nagesh: "Erratic comments of some people without knowledge is unscientific."
Ironic comment from someone who just used "argument from blatant assertion."
If you want us to believe that homeopathy is scientific, you need to bring in some actual scientific evidence that it works for a non-self-limiting disease like syphilis or rabies.
Orac's old friend Sayer Ji elaborates on other natural cures for ebola: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/natural-treatments-ebola-virus-exist-r….
@ Dorit Reiss:
Interestingly enough, Sayer Ji is now also listed as a contributor to Fearless Parent. There's also something about a 'venture' with them and/or Louise Kuo Habakus.
Homöopathy is only one from many other superstitious and Magic methods and remedies for instance.
Becaues it is a belief it is impossible to find a striking scientific Argument against it.
For more than 2000 years bloodletting and the use of mummies were good working procederes.
Nobody was forcerd to bloodletting or to use mummiepowder, but many many People spend a lot of money for that hokuspokus.
In former tomes People have been cured by touching holy bones in churches e.g.and now they are sufficient treated by succkling Little sugar balls. Of coure the Story now for that Kind of hokuspokus has been modernizes. Religious and magic explanatiions are translated in pseusoscientific phrases like quantumhealing or informationmedicin, which sounds noe a days more common.
I was at my parents for Sunday lunch (I brought the meat) and they were watching Sky News. At one point they had an item about a doctor going off pop at "Big Pharma" for not making an Ebola vaccine.
Here is Sayer Ji's link on the soy isoflavones to help protect against viruses.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19596314
The abstract doesn't give any specific numbers or mention hamsters (at least not specifically) and concludes:
And, genistein and tyrphostin are being investigated as antiviral drugs, so something may yet come of that. But, since they're still just doing in vitro studies, any useful results are far in the future. And you're unlikely to protect yourself from any bad virus just by eating lots of soybeans.
And, of course, Sayer Ji can't resist jumping off the deep end (or, since he's already in, just swimming further out) by saying ebola is like scurvy so vitamin C should help. And, oh by the way, don't forget your homeopathic spider venom.
@lilady
It is a difference to read or to write in english.
Be sure, that my post is not easy to translate. The meanings and the associations are quite complicated .
Even it is more easy to write something directly in english but then it tends to be too simple.
I hope there are some peaple who are able to read it. If You have questions, let me know.
@ Dr. E. Berndt: Thank you for your excellent (second) post. Too bad that I don't speak or understand German, to appreciate your first post.
Orac and other commenters here have stated that when they talk about homeopathy with colleagues, some of those colleagues have confused homeopaths with naturopaths. When it is explained to those colleagues that there is none of the original substance remaining in a homeopathy "medicine" after 30 c dilutions, they then realize it is plain water. Water does not have "memory" and like does not cure like. :-)
This was even worse than the time I tried hanging sausage to dry on the porch and it beamed a message to every wasp in the vicinity.
P.S. Autofill's still broken. Is it really that difficult to fix a cookie?
^ There are actually two links, etc.
@Narad,
I haven't tried a soy sausage, but I found a fairly decent recipe for vegetarian burgers using mashed black beans and quinoa with some flour to make it about the right texture. It didn't taste much like beef, but with enough seasoning it tasted fairly good and had the right texture for hamburgers. My son ate four of them!
I see William S Burroughs was in the movie for your second link.
Why hasn't Doctors Without Borders sued the hell out of 'Homeopaths Without Borders'? If ever there was a case of trademark infringement just begging, pleading, and dying for a lawsuit, that is definitely the one.
Mephistopheles O'Brien @ 90: Exactly the right approach to take. Describe what it is, how it's supposed to work, why it doesn't, and then ask for peer-reviewed papers if any. IMHO that works much better than telling believers in homeoquacky that they're delusional.
Somehow it doesn't surprise me that a bunch of crass arses are seeking to profiteer on the Ebola outbreak. The only thing missing is email from a Nigerian prince seeking to get out of Nigeria to escape the outbreak, if only someone would help him get his money out with him.
For skeptics of homeopathy, please read:
http://www.homeopathyforflu.com/dewey.pdf
This happened just a 100 years ago. Then also, the science based medicine was killing people.
"such homeopathic remedies are unlikely to contain a single molecule of the original substance, other than perhaps contamination carried over from one dilution to the next."
This could be a new sales pitch for them.
Homeopathy - more contaminant than "active" ingredient.
Or is it "anti-active" ingredient, or non-ingredient, or . . . ?
.
@Narad - 34:
Surely; "Something something oranges something" ?
:-)
@Lurker: there's a group calling themselves Acupuncturists without Borders, too.
(I can't imagine anything more useless in a war-torn, drought-stricken country with an epidemic raging than someone showing up to align my qi).
On the front page of that site, I read...
If they don't believe they can cure the flu, why should any of us believe they can?
Off the top of my head (and before I read further for hints)
:
Sectumsempra: Potter (a curse)
Riddikulus: Potter (repels boggarts)
Wingardium Leviosa: Potter (levitates objects)
Lumos Maxima: Potter (summons light)
Specialis Revelio: Potter (reveals enchantment)
Protego Maxima: Potter (protection spell)
Expelliarmus: Potter (disarms)
Locomotor Mortis: Potter (paralysis curse) (poor Neville)
(Although Croatus Horribilis does sound like something a Parseltongue would throw at you, he'd probably be carrying a live one in his pocket.)
nagesh, Iqbal: I invite you to support your claim that homeopathy actually represents an effective medical intervention.
Please provide a citation for what you would consider the single most compelling piece of evidence (preferably in the form of a ciation to an appropriately designed and controlled study published in a reputable first or second tier peer-reviewed journal) demonstrating homeopathy is effective at treating a non self-limiting injury or illness.
I mean, you do have actual evidence in support fo your claims, right? Not just collections of anecdotes, or "post hoc ergo procter hoc" handwaving after a self-limiting illness has run its course?
Iqbal: 100 years ago, there were no effective remedies for flu. Did you note my post above about the Italian doctor who prescribed wine for all his patients?
Iqbal: "This happened just a 100 years ago. Then also, the science based medicine was killing people."
So how much in the last hundred years has homeopathy progressed with type 1 diabetes, bacterial infections like syphilis, and preventing diseases like rabies, measles, etc? How well did homeopathy fare after the 1910 Flexner Report?
Be specific, with actual documentation.
I was really just singling out Brother Ron's; the cooking of soybeans is something that should be limited to industrial settings as far as I'm concerned.
But there are plenty of good recipes for veggie burgers. If I'm going to be mashing beans and forming them into patties, though, my inclination is to go straight for falafel.
The ignorance displayed in this thread is more frightening to me than Ebola!
By all means please enlighten us oh certified homeopath
In the event of actual snake-bite, the consensus among homeopaths seem to be that you don't arse around with Crotalus horridus or Lachesis mutus or Bothrops... you get the appropriate antivenom, FAST, because it's IMPORTANT.
You are a complete and utter moron that knows nothing about homeopathy and the miracles it can perform... Anyone that had a clue about what its capabable of wouldn't be so inane when discussing it... I'm sick of Big Pharma hacks (that are killing people daily with their dispicable drugs daily) always chiming in about homeopathy.... I'll bet homeopathy could cure ebola better than pharmaceuticals... My daughter had whooping cough and the only thing that could get rid of the lingering effects of it was homeopathy... the doctors had nothing for her. I've seen homeopathy do miracles and that's better than any clinical trial...performed by self-serving Big Pharma companies....
I note that Ms. Igel has a slightly different Quack Miranda Warning.
Shorter version -
Homeopathy is just water, it won't cure anything, so if you're sick, see a real doctor. But buy my stuff anyway, please.
Maybe it's time to start asking the supporters of homeopathy to defend the assertion that like cures like. It's such a flagrantly idiotic idea, at least as a generalization, that it should be hard to defend. What is the cure for trauma from an automobile accident? A burn? Poisoning? Apparently only human ailments of unknown cause (prior to the year 1800, remember) are subject to this rule.
We might also remind people that the fundamentals of organic chemistry didn't even begin to emerge until the early 1800s, and the core finding of tetravalent carbon and its ability to link up with other carbons is from the late 1850s (just looked it up on Wikipedia).
And no, I don't actually expect people who have a strong vested interest in homeopathy to give it up just because we reason with them. On the other hand, reminding people who got through high school chemistry that homeopathy denies not just Avogadro's number, but every other part of chemistry may catch a few of the otherwise uninterested. Then we should start pointing out the importance of high school chemistry to the politicians who feel some need to defend alternative medicine.
By the way, there is an emerging story about how the two Americans were treated with a monoclonal antibody cocktail that has only been tried in animal studies previously. According to the story (you can find it on CNN online), it worked pretty well to get the two patients less sick, and capable of being transported. The monoclonal antibody (previously called the hybridoma) was only invented in the 1970s, so this suggests how far we have come in short order.
Julianne Igel is primarily an interior designer. Yes, an interior designer who "liked the idea of mind/body medicine" so much that now she dabbles in hawking magic water. She has a plan to . . . wait for it . . . combine the two practices. I shit you not. If she didn't exist, I'd have to make her up.
@nmx
[citation needed] for your assertions, or we can assume that you are pulling stuff out of thin air, like the usual trolls.
Regarding the "laws" of homeopathy, I dunno if it's a trend, but I've come across a number of people lately using "homeopathy" in a very wide sense. Frex, from the WP page on theriac:
Note that there's no Hahnemannian dilution here.
Maybe the word's evolving to mean nothing more than "quack remedy".
"Miracles" aren't within the general scope of clinical trials, as I understand them. Could you constrain the general landscape? For example, could a homeopathic nostrum (if misused) in a sufficient dilution cause or allow me to levitate? If not, then why?
^ One might also note that one term dominates the signal in a naive comparison. Let's zoom in.
One can clearly see that levitation has been of much greater general interest during the 20th century than has homeopathy, aside from the final decade. I should think that there must be some specific, perhaps theoretical, response to this disparity.
Think carefully.
In fact, if one takes an even longer view, it seems clear that (1) homeopathy, like gold, runs in boom-and-bust cycles and (2) levitation has been a more steady investment over time.
So, NMX, do you have a financial investment in this racket? Have you shorted homeopathy on the futures market?
Just read through the article above and all the comments..it is interesting that not one of these clever guru's on Ebola is in Africa...its like the best players sit on the side line. To come back to the article about the 6 eyed crab spider. It causes the same symptoms as the bite of a Boom"tree" snake in South Africa. I have been maintaining that there is a similarity between the bite of the spider and the snake and the Ebola virus ....the bleeding. Therefor if there is any treatment that can stop the bleeding it should be tried. To close....look at the anti-venom of the snake and the spider and maybe just maybe....a treatment can be found to stop the bleeding. The other symptoms can be treated in the conventional way.
If there is any homeopathic company that is willing to sponsor me I will travel to one of the countries where there is Ebola to administer the medicine and monitor progress. Somehow my gut feeling tells me there is method in what they say. behrjan@gmail.com
Levity is just gravity in a homeopathic dose,
Julian Frost - thank you so much for the path to the things anti-vaxxers say. sums up homeopathy quite nicely.
link botch. obviously my coffee isn't weak enough.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/t1.0-9/1800440_7…
Sorry
@Jan
There is a similarity between wood and witches. They both float on water. What else floats on water?
Sure, if there is some rational for it.
"This stuff causes bleeding, so we should try it to stop bleeding" isn't rational.
TV is up to date. But homeopathy is not mentioned here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymUhH7nxxZQ
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/04/study-growing-guinea…
To close….look at the anti-venom of the snake and the spider and maybe just maybe….a treatment can be found to stop the bleeding.
Seems to me that blood has two natural states: (1) clotting, and (2) bleeding out. So our bodies have all sorts of systems to maintain a balance between these two extremes. Lots of things can go wrong with these systems, and many different conditions can cause bleeding in different ways.
NMX
Before accepting your wager, what are your terms and what are the stakes? For terms,
- what are you classifying as homeopathy and pharmaceuticals for the purposes of this wager?
- how will we determine what constitutes a cure?
- how will we determine which produces a better cure?
Always up for a wager,
Mephistopheles O'Brien
Julianne Igel
Please, do go on and try to be specific. What statements are ignorant? In what ways are they ignorant? What are the corrections you would make?
I think we should be sending as many homeopaths, chiropractors and other quacks to treat an ebola outbreak as we can fit into a plane. It's their time to shine.
HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES
Crotalus horridus
Bothrops
Lachesis mutus
Mercurius corrosivu
Secale cornutum
Anthracinum
Arsenicum album
Variolinum
Malandrinum
Thuja
Baptisia
Pestinum
HARRY POTTER SPELLS
Wingardium Leviosa
Verdimillious Duo
Specialis Revelio
Sectumsempra
Riddikulus
Protego Maxima
Orchideous
Lumos Maxima
Locomotor Mortis
Expelliarmus
How did you do?
Well, I do speak a few words of German: 'gesund' is 'healthy' in German, and '-heit' is a suffix to convert adjectives to nouns describing a state of being, much like the English '-ness'. So 'gesundheit' just means 'healthiness'. It's a wish for good health after a sneeze.
So 'Gesundheitsreligion' is basically a religion of healthiness... though using 'wellness' would probably get more of the implications across in English for this line.
And 'glaubenslehre' in the title... glaubens is 'faith', lehre is 'teaching', so glaubenslehre is doctrine or dogma. Yeah... we're seeing some of that belief system from the homeopathy supporters here.
Ebola can apparenlty be cured by nano silver. I dont think so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7wNfRCuOZE
Relax, everybody and rest assured - once you start doing the Personal Virus and Cancer Killer, you will not give a damn what sort of viruses stalk out there - Ebola, West Nile, HIV-AIDS, etc. I got a deadly weapon against the deadliest type of Ebola Virus. Ebola Virus Disease is not a problem at all and can be erased from the face of the Earth along with any diseases, known on the planet once and for all - everybody can be his own Jesus - by doing the Personal Virus an Cancer Killer - those infected will be cured and will join all the rest in staying absolutely healthy all the time - by doing just an exercise for a minute a day for prevention and for 3 minutes a day for the cure - any infections [Ebola, West Nile (even if one is bitten by hundreds of mosquitoes), Colds, Flues, HIV-AIDS, HPV, H(B)CV, TB, Malaria, Yellow Fever, etc.] are cured for max. 7 days and any cancers (Leukemia, Breast, Cervical, Ovarian, Bone, Brain, etc), Diabetes and Strokes - for max.30 days - no metastases or recurrences of any cancers are at all possible - the Virus/Cancer Killer is their devastating destroyer. Even bio-terrorism is much too weak against everybody (kids and adults) doing the Virus/Cancer Killer - any bio-terrorist bugs are killed the moment they touch us.
I leave to everybody to estimate how much the greatest discovery in more than 2 million years of humankind on the planet should be paid for. Then I will disclose the Personal Virus/Cancer Killer to everybody on Earth. That will keep all the people absolutely healthy all the time, all their lives - never getting sick of any diseases even for a second.
@cancerkiller - I will give you two dollars....now reveal your secret....
I am so glad that you hate homeopathy.. I feel this is a form of natural selection.. The really stupid people will die off, from things like ebola, while those who use it, will survive... It worked during all previous epidemics in the USA IF YOU ACTUALLY DID ANY RESEARCH.. But that is against the credo of bigots and arrogant people not interesting in either science or truth, only in ego boosting...
I am so glad that you hate homeopathy.. I feel this is a form of natural selection.. The really stupid people will die off, from things like ebola, while those who use it, will survive... It worked during all previous epidemics in the USA IF YOU ACTUALLY DID ANY RESEARCH.. But that is against the credo of bigots and arrogant people not interesting in either science or truth, only in ego boosting...
That's good, Greg. You use homeopathy for anything that ails you. Never ever darken the doorstep of an allopath. Show us all the error of our ways.
It's worth remembering that the reason homeopathy seemed like a miracle cure in the 19th century is simply because pre-scientific medicine was actually worse than doing nothing.
Cancerkiller - to paraphrase Johnny Cash, I want my own personal Virus and Cancer Killer. Please don't tell me it's a bullet, because everyone knows that a bullet will kill cancer cells in vitro.
Greg,
I don't hate homeopathy, I just think it's based on nonsensical principles, not demonstrated to work, and an utter fraud. Other than that, it's OK. If you've got evidence to support the underlying principles of homeopathy, please share.
Is this the same troll we had before?
PGP - I have to believe it's a different Greg.
That would make number 3:
- the chiropractor, natural hygiene advocate Greg Fitz-----
( a/k/a Emily , Peg) from Oz
- Gergles ( banned)
- le Nouveau
The copy-paste spam from "Cancerkiller" is elsewhere credited to "Kevin Worldsaviour" who is totally not a crank or a grifter.
Is this a markdown from the previous asking price of $2.25 trillion?
BTW, once the SB tech monkeys are done not fixing the credentials issue, maybe somebody could remind them not fix the part where "comments on this article are closed" instead barfs up the "this site is currently under maintenance" message.
^ "not to fix"
The price seems to be in the tank:
DW:4, actually. We did have one that wasn't a troll.
Narad: Cancerkiller sort of comes off like a supervillian. Or is it just me?
PGP, Cancerkiller comes off to me as a Poe. However, I've been wrong before.
@ PGP:
I didn't count the other new one because he wasn't a troll.
At any rate, today is Saturday and I generally rejoice because I have something interesting to do that involves day trips, art, cuisine, conversation, alcohol etc.
BUT being aware of my duties to sceptic-kind, I first do my rounds and report on what seems worst:
today, Dan O. announces that he, being un-impressed with our own Prof Reiss' explanation of association by temporal contiguity, is personally seeking stories by parents ( and others) who observed vaccine injury and regression themselves. They will be interrogated by this canny journalist and will not remain anonymous. All of this will be publicly available via AoA. So the world can see.
Like Kennedy, he doesn't get the obvious: sample size is important, observers can be biased, large numbers tell you incredible things, statistical analysis is not the enemy, tarting up old ideas doesn't make them any more attractive, eyewitnesses mis-remember, gossip is an unlikely source of scientific advance... I could go on but won't.
Also, it appears that TMR is undergoing an overhaul of sorts wherein most of the tales of w... I mean *posts* are by the new set of TMs, although today's is by a veteran.
"Even bio-terrorism is much too weak against everybody (kids and adults) doing the Virus/Cancer Killer"
Sounds like a dance step. Could the "Virus/Cancer Killer" be a modern variant of the dancing mania of the Middle Ages?
Sounds more like the time warp to me. But it's got to include a step that's like squishing a bug on the sidewalk
The strange part is that he seems to think this is a novel approach.
I'm curious to know what this means. ("Everybody can suffer and die for his own sins"? "Everybody can ascend bodily to heaven"? "Everybody can predict his own betrayal"? What?)
Everybody can consider himself to be perfect and without sin.
@ann 165 - or maybe the set up for a Jewish mother joke.
Lollll! So hilarious how most people believe in ONLY mainstream medicine, which kills thousands of people everyday through symptom only treatment with surgery/drugs! The woman who made a Harry Potter game out of remedies is poor! If anyone took the time to research what's in your food, water, drugs..you would be a lot better off than chuckling about
something that's been around fot 180 years!
The hemorrhagic Ebola virus was invented and there is already a vaccine for it! If you contract the virus, will you get vaccine, which you don't know what's in that injection, or will people find out how to prevent themselves from contracting the virus! I'm not laughing..I know what to do next!
..
Bucktooth: How do you know LW's gender and financial status? For that matter, why would you assume Karl Withakay is actually a woman?
Never mind, you're a conspiracy theorist.
I have to say that whenever I find myself noticing how most people believe exclusively in some thing or other that kills thousands of them every day, I don't find it hilarious.
Takes all kinds, though.
@LW --
Isn't perfect sinlessness already the natural state to which everybody -- or everybody Christian, at least -- can consider him- or herself born, though?
I thought you got that one for letting Jesus be your own Jesus. (Buncha heretics on this here internet.) But maybe I'm confused..
.
ann @171 No:
Original Sin isn't just an INXS song title.
Certainly.
Wasn't that redeemed?
ann 173: Infant baptism.
It struck me as insipidly obvious from a Madhyamaka standpoint, but I suppose immanent is better than transcendent if you're going to half-ass it.
Except that this guy is likely genuinely mentally ill.
Next to the homeopaths, some other quack salesman seem to get their share of attention, like collodial silver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7wNfRCuOZE
And in the reactions someone mentions several other quackeries. They never seem to die, or to be replaced with something better.
And of course MMS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5yhoPs8p58
This one is in German, I think. Haven't watched it. Comments are disabled. I suppose they guy doesn't like critism.
An usual alt-med canard from Bucktooth:
This is a very strange criticism to aim at mainstream medicine if you are going to be touting homeopathy as an alternative.
Isn't homeopathy based on treating symptoms by a strong dilution of something giving similar symptoms, according to the "like cure like" rule?
Also, there are plenty of cases where treating the symptoms is a very efficient approach: the human body has some great self-healing capabilities, it just need time to do it. Alleviating symptoms reduces the patient's discomfort and give the patient's body time to patch itself.
It's like a matryoshka doll, if one punishes oneself with the Organon. Because, see, there will be other symptoms that will Herx up arise and have to be Remedied in order to remove the 5000 Spirits, or Layers of the Onion.
Just don't smell any mint, because that antidotes things. Coffee is iffy, but Weed is OK if necessary.
@174 --
Again, certainly. That's what I meant by "everybody Christian."
("Natural state" is what shouldn't be there; I meant that:-- as I understand it -- people born in the Christian Era already have the option of starting life in a perfectly sinless state, whereas BCE people did not. And it'd just be throwing that away to take yourself rather than Jesus as your own Jesus. Ergo, if Cancerkiller meant something sensible, it can't have been that, I feel.
But that's kind of a big "if," as Narad observes.)
_________________
/ignorant off-topic confusion
Probably just means something non-specifically Übermensch-y.
On consideration.
Hilariously enough, our friend Lawrence manages to comment at Dan's post ( and is joined by Rebecca **@ Jake's place- re AJW- where he maintains that they are NOT the same person and asks Jake an intriguing question about his own family connections, turning his 6 degrees back on him).
Take a bow, Mr MacN ( IIRC)
Risibly as well, I asked someone who hasn't a degree in science but who has always worked in business about their new "study"- I described it in detail, being very cautious not to either start laughing or to represent it as truly ridiculous. Therefore, it presented it as neutrally as I could ( which was quite a chore, let me tell you) to someone who only studied science in secondary school.
Then I asked if he thought it worthwhile- would we learn from it?- he thought that they were fishing for people who agreed with them in advance."setting the stage" as it were.
If your entire *raison d'etre* is' vaccine damage' your readers are most likely already steeped in this belief and influenced by stories presented there that assist them in their elaboration of their own original tales.
** they possibly let these two shills in because they may believe that they are a certain journalist from London.
So, Bucktooth, what should we do next? Also please provide evidence that a vaccine for Ebola exists and that the Ebola virus was manufactured. Thanks.
@Denise - as it has been pointed out before that Jake's family has direct ties to Pesticide interests (which even Jake posits as a "cause of autism), based on that alone, using his usual Standards, Jake himself is hopelessly compromised and obviously his continued railing against "Mercury in Vaccines" is merely a distraction or "dodge" to protect his own family's interests.
Again, what is good for the goose is certainly good for the gander.
Sadly, 44% of the people responding to a recent poll by a UK tabloid (not the Daily Mail, for a change) said they believed Ebola was deliberately manufactured, and only 41% believed that it has spread from bats and monkeys. The article it accompanies describes Leonard Horowitz as "an international authority on public health education", which made me laugh; I think "deranged dentist" is a more accurate description.
When Horowitz isn't spreading disinformation about AIDS, Ebola and SARS, he spreads lies about vaccines; he persuaded the Nation of Islam to boycott vaccines which he claims are targeting African-Americans in a Tuskegee-style experiment in genocide.. He also promotes ludicrous quack remedies for SARS and other illnesses (Google "Solfeggio frequencies" if you are interested).
I'll omit the usual speculation about what mercury from amalgams does to dentists' brains.
I'd really like to see Nancy Hokkanen try this level of shіtbaggery over at Popehat.
They're not a particularly hard sell when it comes to conspiracy theories. There used to be a fair number of the Fruits of Islam wandering the neighborhood.
And, believe it or not, Lawrence continues @ AoA with John.
Hats off to Lawrence!
@ Narad:
I'd enjoy seeing her attempt her tomfoolery *here* or even better, @ PZ's place.
You sound surprised Narad. Nancy Hokkannen is posting her shitbaggery on this blog (a review of Robert F. Kennedy's new book):
http://blog.ucsusa.org/new-vaccine-misinformation-book-gets-the-science…
Eh, I file PZ in the same category as Philip Glass. I found her immediately trying to connect a suicide to dental fillings profoundly offensive. Even the meager follow-up by the commentariat seems to have a glimmer that this was misplaced.
Narad, like the rest of the crew- including woo-meisters- she wants to believe that serious conditions and illnesses like ASDs, LDs, mental illnesses, CVD, cancer etc. all come from WITHOUT ( toxins, poor diet, meds, doctors, hexes) rather than seeing them as conditions inherent to human life and, to a degree uncontrollable, by our own actions.
Dammit, I got stuck in moderation for using Narad's word "sh!tbaggery" for Hokkanen's activities. Hokkanen has been active on this blog, posting under another 'nym (a great review of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new book on Thimerosal):
http://blog.ucsusa.org/new-vaccine-misinformation-book-gets-the-science…
@DW:
I take it that you can infer when I'm taking something personally.
@lilady:
It's simplest to cut and paste. Sometimes the insane "design" of Unicode coughs up a feature.
Oscar Wilde would have envied that.
For a while, Mr Glass and I travelled in the same circles.
The person or a group of persons not understanding homeopathy are talking all this rubbish. There is no pseudoscientific in this. The thing not comprehensible for blockheads can't be classed as pseudoscientific. Germans had always been creators. Homeopathy has its German origin. It's results are spectacular. Where allopathy ends, homeopathy starts giving its initial results. When allopathy reaches its ends, homeopathy starts its work.
Mr Gaur, if homeopathy has such spectacular results, please explain why large scale trials have shown no difference in efficacy between homeopathy and placebo.
@Jitender Kumar Gaur,
Please see my comment #90 above. If you have high quality data to show that there is any basis for the underlying principles of homeopathy, please share. Likewise, if you have any high quality data to show that a homeopathic remedy at a dilution of 12C or higher has any clinically significant benefit over a placebo for a condition that isn't self limiting, please share. Also please describe what is "not comprehensible for blockheads" and explain it for us. Thanks in advance.
http://blogs.naturalnews.com/treating-ebola-homeopathy/
Even Mike Adams got panicky about the quackiness of this and pulled the article. The reason even Mikey freaked are preserved in the comments:
The remedy apparently required taking "an Ebola sample, spit or other disease product such as blood."
Sure, just look at Heinrich Harrer.
Well, you know what I mean.
Dr. E Berndt,
What the heck does blood-letting have to do with homeopathy ? It doesn't.
Thank you for sharing YOUR ignorance.
Let me explain to others about homeopathy.
Einstein contended that every thing has a frequency.
Whether it be a table, chair, person or disease.
Is it possible that every disease has a frequency ?
Of course !
So when you have an herb or plant or metal or poision, then
you are working with all these different frequencies.
As my Jr High teacher once pointed out...a +7 is as powerful
as a -7.
So lets say, this Ebola disease is very unique and has just
a high a frequency as the Aids virus.....Its at 100M potency
(frequency) so you would need to select the CORRECT plant
and dilute it to 100M. It would negate the disease.
Tobacco plant is a well known remedy among homeopathic
drs and those who practice it. But this is NOT the plant I would have picked as it will fall short.
I hope the two Americans can completely recover...but unfortunately I have my doubts. Watch how long they stay in
confinement. It will be for a LONG time.
Here's a tip to all you homeopathic drs....
the remedy is a flowering plant. If you search for it in the
medicas....you will find it. It covers ALL symptoms of Ebola.
And make it to a CM remedy. (100M)
Also, I would people to know I believe in many methods of healing....not just homeopathy.
If you were building a house, would you pick up a screwdriver to pound a nail. Would you pick up a hammer
to tap in place a mirror ? No.
I believe in allopathic meds...(particularly the antibiotics),
herbs, chiropractic, acupuncture, vitamins, greens, healing
foods, homeopathy, essential oils, the Bach remedies, etc.
If you pick the right remedy, you can cure or at least --slow
down the death process.
The problem is....when the doctors in the US at at least 90%
allopathic, then they have a "trained" patient from birth to death and the patient is trained to think they have to take
a pill daily....or even the rest of their lives.
Even homeopathy was difficult for me to understand in the beginning because I had an allopathic mindset.
But if you are in the KNOW, then you are aware that more
Drs and nurses are learning alternative methods into their
allopathic practice. NOT so much the other way around.
Please keep in mind, through the centuries, people always pushed science, even if it was incorrect science.
And they called many concepts bogus, when they simply didn't understand.
Remember what my jr high math teacher said....-7 is just as
powerful as +7.
Shame you didn't listen to what your science teachers told you eh?
No, he didn't, at least not in the sense you're trying to make this.
You seem to be confusing concentration, frequency, and phase.
What is the frequency of a disease of your choice? How is this measured?
If you're assuming that a disease has a waveform, the way to nullify that waveform would be to generate a wave with the same amplitude but opposite phase. How does serial dilution of a substance do this and how do you know? Please be specific.
Would you like to lay a wager on that one? I'm going with by next Saturday for Brantly.
Einstein contended that every thing has a frequency.
Whether it be a table, chair, person or disease.
Please refer us to a letter or lecture or publication in which Einstein made this ludicrous claim. In the absence of a source, I'll be forced into the uncharitable position of thinking of you as a fabulist or bullsh1t artist. Thanks in advance.
If you pick the right remedy, you can cure ... the death process.
Mostly dead or all dead?
Remember what my jr high math teacher said….-7 is just as powerful as +7.
Remember what the Dormouse said! Feed your head!
"If you were building a house, would you pick up a screwdriver to pound a nail. Would you pick up a hammer
to tap in place a mirror ? No"
If I was asked to help a starving family, I wouldn't send them a photo of a Thanksgiving feast.
Think about it a bit, and you'll see the analogy to homeopathy.
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that homeopathic 'remedies' are a solid 0.
Dangerous Bacon wins the internet today. Or maybe yesterday, as time stamps aren't Pacific.time
whoever has written this blog mentioning that basic laws of homoeopathy are pseudotheories, is just a completely foolish rather a moron.
Homoeopathy does wonders not only in flue caes but in n no of other pahologies n law of similars n law of potentisation whcich states that the more u dilute the medicine the more potent it becomes.
yes after dilutions beyond 200 medicine doesnt content single molecule. but it has the energy of that molecule, the impression of that molecule which acts n cures the disease
a moron person like you shoul; give a thought to nanotechnology which explains hoe homoeopthy works in spite of diluting the actual substance.
Homoeopathy is in accordence with modern research n the fastest ever actin pathy provided the right medicine is prescribed by the doctor.
Had the allopathy been the successfull science thousands of patients wouldnt have died with H1N1 IN SPITE OF TAKING ALLOPATHY.
Dr Mugdha Patil, homeopathy is simply water (or alcohol) mostly dried onto a sugar pill. It has no ability to cure anything.
The law of similars is simply bunkum. It has no basis in fact. The law of potentisation runs counter to everything discovered about chemistry and physics for the last 200 years.
Nanotechnology does not explain how homeopathy works. Firstly, it is entirely different to homeopathy because large numbers of molecules need to be present. Secondly, homeopathy does not work.
I was disappointed you didn't cover the law of leather bible bashing in your ill-written comment, but you can't have everything.
Good evening, as I see a lot of people here not knowing anything about allopatic medicine and homeopathy, but are absolutely against homeopathy, I highly recommend all of you to reeducate yourself before posting your socalled "opinions".
Homeopathy and the 1918 Flu (spanish flu which killed between 50 and 80 million humans)
Lets start here:
WW I was the first time that USA military personnel were ordered to receive vaccinations. There was and is a strong suspicion that mandated vaccinations used on troops actually created the initial infections for this pandemic. It`s recorded that many died after being vaccinated, while most who did not receive vaccinations survived.
Those factors did not affect or alter what homeopaths managed to put together during this pandemic. Understanding symptoms which have been closely scrutinized and categorized are the determining factors for administering classic homeopathic remedies, including the follow up remedies for complete recovery as symptoms change.
Undisclosed to the public at large, despite the strange and unusually virulent flu strain resulting in the "White Plague", the cure rate of homeopathy during the 1918 so called Spanish Flu has been reported as 98%.
Read more here:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18885.cfm
or google also Margret Thyler e.g.
Dont be brainwashed please, as the truth is the strongest tool of mankind.
Dont be a sheeple to repeat, what the system wants you to believe.
Like in 1918 homeopathy will be the only cure for Ebola, check it out before you say NO and will die for sure! As this is the goal of "Ebola", killing million of humans. I even doubt that this Virus is really the Ebola Virus and not the one, which was created by the netherland "scientist" Ron Fouchier. Google him please!
All the best and be open minded
ooookayyy...a conspiracy nutcase. Please explain the physical processes, in your own words, of preparing a homeopathic substance and how you would verify that it is present in the finished product.
Dear Dr Mugdha Patil,
thank you for your try to explain the majority of this blog, what are the basic of homeopathy. Ignore comments and insults like that from ChrisP, my deepest apology in behave of him. I study Homeopathy also in India and in Russia and TCM in China. My deepest respect to your indian knowledges and homeopatic hospitals. Keep your great work and dont put to much effort in brainwashed and on top very unpolitely I say people, as a real humanbeeing would never act like CrisP.
To give some more information to this blog here:
1.
Do you know how many homeopathic hospitals exist in Europe, do you? I bet NOT:
Here is the Royal London Hospital:
http://www.uclh.nhs.uk/ourservices/ourhospitals/rlhim/Pages/Home.aspx
or just do your homework and google homeopathic hospitals
2.
If homeopathic remedies dont work, please explain me, WHY they are only can be sold by law in farmacies??? If they are only water or result =0, why are farmacies selling them, loosing their face selling next to allopatic remedies somehing, which they "know" has no effect? Do you think they are stupid, not knowing it may be??? OR switch on your brain....
3.
Why not selling it like thousands of socalled suplements in the supermarket or other stores? Think about it.
4.
Why there is nearly a media-war against homeopathy? Ok, if you believe in massmedia, stop reading further, as you are still manipulated, got deceived.
5.
If vaccination is a proper medical response to diseases, explain me, WHY 50 -80 million vaccinated humans died from the spanish flu? Google the danger of vaccinations
Get yourself reeducated, dont repeat the massmedia and to ChrisP and others, thats NOT the way, we should communicate.
All the best
OK, here's the explanation: You're wrong.
HTH. HAND.
TO:
brewandferment
August 21, 2014
ooookayyy…a conspiracy nutcase. Please explain the physical processes, in your own words, of preparing a homeopathic substance and how you would verify that it is present in the finished product.
Dont know what homeopathy has to do with conspiracy? But ok, I can give you also some explaination on that, shaking my head here!
. Allow me to re-educate you...to remind you of the original meaning of the word,"conspiracy".
A conspiracy is the same thing as a deception.
A conspiracy is simply a deception being orchestrated by more than one person.
So looks to me like you are a victim of them.
And we have to study years medicine and "alternative medicine), which is already a study e.g. in the university of Graz. (sure, you didnt know that!)
Quote:
Please explain the physical processes
May be, if you dont mind, educate yourself, I am NOT your teacher, as you are NOT my student. I will only show the way and take it from there please. Seems that you want everything on a silvertablet, but you have to work on yourself. If you want physical processes, GOOGLE and find the sources yourself. Sure, that is work, that takes a lot of time, reading a lot of books, buttttttt...that is up to you,if you really want to know the answer of your question.
All the best
"Boiron products are available nationwide at CVS, Rite-Aid, Safeway, Superfresh, Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Wegmans, Whole Foods and independent health-food stores."
To Narad:
hmmmmmmmmmmmm, I am wrong? I dont know where are you located. In Europe you can buy them only in farmacies. And the next time please be more accurate and tell your sources.
Thanks and all the best
Do you see that blue text? Try clicking on it.
To Narad:
Boiron is a french company, selling some homeopathic remedies. I guess you refer on
http://www.boironusa.com/homeopathic-medicines/
No way that we would use them, as the most remedies of them are a mixture, means not really homeopathic remedies at all, supplements.
Anyway I checked that out and I saw that you can buy Boirons products in USA over the shelter. When I see Walmart ...............yes, because they are not in our terms homeopathic remedies.
All the best
Uh-huh. Given that you asserted that this is "by law," howsabout you provide them?
ORLY?
Oh, dear oh dear, it sure looks like Helios will ship anywhere.
To Narad:
Please, read the whole information I gave before.
Not worth talkingabout , that complex remedies like that from Boiron, which is avaiable in all the supermarkets in USA. Thats exactly what I was always talking about the "complex" = mixture remedies from Boiron. No value at all
Be sure, thats why you can buy them in nearly all the stores ( yes, blueprinted, sorry didnt see that)
And really thats absolutely !!!!! not important
read the other topics or leave it... and again....yes, there is a law...google it.....................
All the best
will go to bed, usually I dont reply to any blogs, but this blog makes me feel scary...........blindfolded eyes
All the best
to Narad.
and ufff, we dont talk about internet suppliers.......................yes, yes
helios.co.uk will ship to anywhere
thats NOT the topic at all
to Narad.
and ufff, we dont talk about internet suppliers.......................yes, yes
helios.co.uk will ship to anywhere
thats NOT the topic at all
Wilding: "May be, if you dont mind, educate yourself, I am NOT your teacher, as you are NOT my student. I will only show the way and take it from there please. Seems that you want everything on a silvertablet, but you have to work on yourself. If you want physical processes, GOOGLE and find the sources yourself"
It doesn't work that way. If you make a claim then you must provide the evidence to support that claim. Telling someone to Google it is an incredibly lazy way to get out of producing something you know does not exist.
If you want to be taken seriously you will provide actual PubMed indexed studies showing homeopathy works for non-self-limiting diseases. For instance, Andre Saine claims that homeopathy works better for rabies than the standard modern vaccine. If that is so, then provide the animal studies proving that homeopathy works better.
"1.
Do you know how many homeopathic hospitals exist in Europe, do you? I bet NOT:"
How many were left in the USA after the Flexner Report?
"2.
If homeopathic remedies dont work, please explain me, WHY they are only can be sold by law in farmacies???"
Because homeopaths, like Royal Copeland, become politicians.
"If vaccination is a proper medical response to diseases, explain me, WHY 50 -80 million vaccinated humans died from the spanish flu? Google the danger of vaccinations"
There was no influenza vaccine before the 1940s. No one was vaccinated against any influenza in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
I suggest you work on your knowledge of history and medicine. I would suggest you read The Great Influenza by John Barry.
"And we have to study years medicine and “alternative medicine), which is already a study e.g. in the university of Graz. (sure, you didnt know that!)"
We know all about it, it was a farce. See how it was handled here:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/07/02/homeopathy-in-thecringeicu…
Now, do you have any evidence that supports Andre Saine's contention that homeopathy works better for rabies than the standard modern treatment based on Pasteur's work?
Dr.Ilona Wilding #1 (when questioned as to sources of bullsh1t):
May be, if you dont mind, educate yourself, I am NOT your teacher, as you are NOT my student. I will only show the way and take it from there please. Seems that you want everything on a silvertablet, but you have to work on yourself.
Dr Ilona Wilding #2 (when shown to be a liar):
And the next time please be more accurate and tell your sources.
Perhaps there is more than one Dr Ilona Wilding commenting here.
Protip: When you make an assertion that is trivially demonstrated to be false, the correct response is not to start making up dumbass shіt about how it's only "mixtures."
There are no restrictions in the U.S. on where this crap can be sold, because nobody gives a fυck about magic water.
Moreover, assuming that there is some place in the world where said crap is only sold in pharmacies, the next question is whether it's only by prescription, because if it's not, then it doesn't make a fυcking difference, now does it?
"It"? For all of Europe? Listen, toots, you're the one running around with a "Dr." tacked onto your name, and you don't even know the fυcking law? That's not exactly something that inspires confidence from someone purporting to engage in the practice of medicine.
Is this the same Ilona Wilding who claims the title of Doctor of Law?
In Europe you can buy them only in farmacies.
I guess this is some special definition of "Europe" which does not include England.
The magic word "buy" escaped my attention earlier. Yet:
I'll be damned if I know where to "google" this weird blanket continental EU import restriction.
New definition of "Europe"- a place where they use euros.
As this is the goal of “Ebola”, killing million of humans. I even doubt that this Virus is really the Ebola Virus and not the one, which was created by the netherland “scientist” Ron Fouchier. Google him please!
Actually this is what I meant by conspiracy nutcase.
Asking how you would make and verify the contents of a homeopathic preparation was to see if you understood what was in the finished product. I have NO intention of making or using homeopathy. But say, if you're so convinced of its value, how about you go volunteer to care for Ebola patients in Africa? You may only use homeopathy for yourself, and no personal protective gear like masks and gloves.
whoops name input fail
@Dr.Ilona Wilding,
I know there are several. I presume pretty much everyone who posts here, particularly those in Europe and Great Britain, were aware of that as well. It does not prove they provide effective treatments.
I can think of several reasons they might only be sold in pharmacies including a) that the politicians who made the laws were truly convinced that they should be controlled substances, b) that the lobbyists for the homeopathic industry believed that they had a better cachet if their sales were limited and convinced politicians of same, or c) that it's one of those historical flukes, like the fact that in certain states of the US one can buy distilled spirits in one place but not mixers, or that one can buy beer above 3.2% alcohol in liquor stores and beer 3.2% alcohol or below in grocery stores. If you have a particular significance for this factoid, please share.
How about because they are extremely profitable? That fits all of the observed facts nicely.
There is no such war that I've seen, perhaps you could supply examples?
@Dr.Ilona Wilding,
Did you realize that Evian, a brand of water from the French alps, spelled backwards is "naive"? Does that have any significance here?
Department of things that SB will blackhole without explanation (the real first link):
"Think about it."
No, really.
Dr.Ilona Wilding, that is exactly the way I communicate. It is called "telling the truth".
As for the rest of your posts, really an appeal to popularity is not a worthwhile argument. Just because a pharmacy sells something, does not mean it works. Most pharmacies sell beauty aids for example.
"Materialistic values are associated less happiness"
Sweet (PDF).
As far as why only pharmacies get to sell homeopathic remedies in Europe.....(which I'm assuming is correct; I dont' really know).
My first instinct would be that it's for the same reason the FDA is barred from regulating anything that the homeopaths decide to officially call "homeopathic": because as medicine started to be regulated and also started to actually *work*, homeopaths realized they needed to protect their interests, and lobbied legislators and so forth to see that they got protection that would prevent them from being regulated like drugs (which have the unfortunate detail of needing to actually prove they do something useful) and also ensure they'd have a controlled, protected stream to their customers. In other words, they did precisely what Big Pharma wanted to do, but could quite manage before regulations kicked.
I do not see this as any sort of endorsement of the discipline. Quite the opposite, in fact.
As far as I can tell, it's a thoroughgoing crock of undiluted nosodes. The only thing I can figure that would even be in the ballpark is some sort of regulation for the equivalent of a compounding pharmacy.
Strangely enough, the supermarkets in my area don't sell "thousands of socalled suplements." Nor do the bookstores sell broccoli.
As far as why only pharmacies get to sell homeopathic remedies in Europe…..(which I’m assuming is correct; I dont’ really know).
The Neals Yard chain is the first counter-example to come to mind. But it is a weird way to argue. Conventional medicine is sold through pharmacies; proving (by Ilona Wilding's reasoning) that conventional medicine works; so why fluff around with homeopathy?
Should note that the Ilona Wilding who claims in one place to be a "Doctor of Law" uses the same e-address as the Ilona Wilding identified by Narad who claims to be "Medica de Medicina Alternativa e Psicóterapia".
The e-address is actually in the name of Wilding's colleague in the practice, Alexandra Lazuk, who is a holocaust-denying sh1tweasel and Illuminati conspiracist.
Evidently the professional training to be a "Doctor of Law" and “Medica de Medicina Alternativa e Psicóterapia” does not cover the concepts of 'research ethics' or :plagiarism', for large parts of Ilona Wilding's essay on "The Role of Ethical Education for Economists and Businessmen" turn out to be repeated verbatim from news reports, but without attribution.
Oh dear.
No doubt her own contributions were strengthened by diluting them with other people's work.
Only if she succussed them on a leather Bible. Otherwise the magic would not happen.
Also a Skype handle, just by the by.
One might wonder whether this is misleading:
It would be straight-up hilarious if this actually connects to Fort Lauderdale. Anyway, one just can't pay for this kind of crazy (PDF):
I really must thank "Dr." Wilding for popping by.
Oh, no, there's a reply (PDF):
And so on. A mere day ago, it never would have occurred to me that becoming a homeopath would be a logical fallback position from the seemingly gray-market raw-diamond trade.
Fixed link. Apparently, it's leaving off the Hotel Tango Tango Poup-poup that causes the weird site self-reference.
Well, having visited the Teamroyal LDA website (precious metals & petrol exchange, and Dr Ilona Wilding's previous scam), I can only hope that website design is not her day job.
Hey, s wood:
I win.
Gonna repeat things which have already been said, long after the accused has left, but I had to react.
@Dr.Ilona Wilding
Woaw, you are one of the best arguments against homeopathy I have seen in a long time. And you are a DOCTOR ?? (I read the other comemnters' findings after. Just wow if it is really you.)
- "yes, there is a law…google it" ; "if you want physical processes, GOOGLE and find the sources yourself" ; "Google the danger of vaccinations". I am a librarian and I weep every time I read this. A doctor is supposed to write a thesis with at least a few of these little things we call citations.
(If only to ensure you are far closer to the right of this drawing than to the left...
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 )
Same reason that I don't care about your "media-war against homeopathy". Did you ever talk about peer-reviewed papers, which should be the most important part ? If you did I missed it.
- "And we have to study years medicine and “alternative medicine), which is already a study e.g. in the university of Graz. (sure, you didnt know that!)"
"Do you know how many homeopathic hospitals exist in Europe, do you? I bet NOT"
Actually, a lot of the articles here deal about "quackademic medicine", when a therapy is taught in universities without good evidence on its efficacy. Same in hospitals. So yes, regular readers of this blog do know about this. (see Chris @230 and lots of others)
Just use Google the search box. /sarcasm
- Not to mention this gem about the spanish flu, as explained by Chris @229. I actually stared at my screen, saying "... What ?"
Orac, thank-you for opening my eyes to the futility of homeopathy. What an incredible waste of time and resources it would be for me to spend under twenty dollars and to online to order a couple of the top remedies for Ebola mentioned on your list! I certainly won't go to the effort of printing out the detailed lists of suggested homeopathic remedies and dosage regimes you have provided, since it could take 2 minutes of my time and a sheet of paper. There is simply no point in keeping these remedies on hand just in case the prediction of the 1 in 5 chance of Ebola reaching North America is true! It would surely be a terrible thing to take these pellets that have absolutely no side effects and don't interfere with any medical conditions if I or my family members developed any signs of Ebola. Although these remedies keep indefinitely and require only a couple of inches of storage space in my closet it would be admitting defeat as a scientific person, and not playing fair to the pharmaceutical companies who will surely have vaccines and the latest drug treatments by the time the disease reaches us! After all there are no double blind studies showing the value of homeopathy in the treatment of Ebola, and we would be uneducated fools to think that homeopathy could possibly work without proof from these studies. Surely the tales of the 1918 world influenza epidemic being successfully treated by the homeopaths and not by the conventional medical doctors are greatly exaggerated! All I can say is we must stay strong and resist any means to help ourselves with alternative means through any sort of illness. The pharmaceutical companies will take good care of us and give us the medicines to make us all better, even if we have Ebola. I am as sure that they will find a cure for Ebola as I am that they will find a cure for the common cold or cancer. So I won't worry about this too much or try to prepare at all for this disease. There is no need. Science will come to my rescue.
First US Ebola Case Diagnosed In Texas!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDit41N3Ncc
In case of emergency: start breaking your prejudices:
http://www.monalle.com/images/pod/2512.jpg
I remember when I was learning about homeopathy.
It was at first a difficult thing to grasp because we were taught
the allopathic way.
I embrace both medicines because they both work....however
if you will trust me, I will tell you that a homeopathic remedy is not as limited as an allopathic med. Seriously.
But...here's something to try to get you introduced to homeopathy. Its cheap and effective and I've used it for over 3 yrs. now. Its called Sambuccol. Its comes in a purple/white/black box and available at Walgreens. Buy it now...before you get the flu, so that you will have it. Be sure and take it as soon as possible. Make sure the box is MARKED "homeopathic near the bottom of the box as they do make an herbal in a similar box.
Now when you get the flu, and use Sambuccol several times during the day....come back to this web site and publish your results.
And when you guys can can crawl...before you walk, I will teach you how it actually works in even a way blockheads can understand.
Make sure the box is MARKED “homeopathic near the bottom of the box as they do make an herbal in a similar box.
Gosh, it's almost as if they are trying to pull a fast one on herbalists and naturopaths by selling them a useless product. Good thing they're not trying to scan the homeopaths!
Sherry: "Now when you get the flu, and use Sambuccol several times during the day….come back to this web site and publish your results."
Actually I was thinking of getting the vaccine to prevent the flu.
"And when you guys can can crawl…before you walk, I will teach you how it actually works in even a way blockheads can understand."
Certainly. I am most interested in Andre Saine's contention that homeopathy works better for rabies than the modern vaccine. Can you provide the randomly controlled tests on rodents to prove Saine right?
I've used homeopathic remedies before for various illnesses, including diarrhea and vomiting due to food poisoning, chills and fever due to influenza, sinus headaches, various symptoms from allergic reactions (black mold), and pain resulting from extraction of wisdom teeth. The remedies tend to act quickly, within 15 or 20 minutes of administration. Usually one dose is sufficient, although I've had to take two or three doses in some cases - wisdom tooth extraction and sinus headache.
I'd suggest giving the people who have Ebola a dose of the Crotalus Horridus and see if there's any change - if it's going to work, it should work quite quickly, and if it doesn't no harm done. Of course the life support (IV rehydration, etc) should continue - and the research into a vaccine is of very great importance, the quicker such a vaccine can be found the better, and since there are now survivors in the US with antibodies chances are very much better that vaccines can be made in sufficient quantities.
I’d suggest giving the people who have Ebola a dose of the Crotalus Horridus
Why are you telling us here, when you should be dispensing your helpful advice to extremely sick people and their families? I'm sure they want to know.
"And when you guys can can crawl…before you walk, I will teach you how it actually works in even a way blockheads can understand."
Unfair teaser, SHERRY baby. I wanna know how it "works" now. I should be able to understand - I have a Masters degree in Science!
But it doesn't actually work. It's water and sugar pills that have no active ingredients. There is no scientifically plausible way homeopathy could possibly work, and numerous studies confirm that it doesn't. I do find it amusing that you accuse people who are familiar with the scientific evidence of being blockheads when you have clearly fooled yourself into believing a placebo is having some real effect.
Have you read Is homeopathy a quack - Homeopathic dilutions. This is well researched scientific which has not received even one negative comment including people like you. Go back to high school, educate yourself ere you criticise others and praise yourself. How much do drug companies pay you Sir?
"Dr." Harris, please show us how "well researched" homeopathy is by providing links to those animal studies showing homeopathy works better for rabies than the modern vaccines.
Also, Dr. Harris, I second Chris's request, but I have an easier one for you.
Since people like us apparently don't understand how well researched scientific homeopathy works, please explain the law of similars and the process of potentiation in your own words.
Also, a question has been nagging me for three years since my sister-in-law's boy friend brought her lots of homeopathic medicines to help cure her. These were real ones, not the sugar pills, in little glass bulbs she had to break open to take them. And, I noticed on one of the boxes three different potentiations of the same ingredient in the same medicine.
According to standard chemistry, which has been well demonstrated by millions of people for hundreds of years, the lower number potentiation (which is a higher concentration of the ingredient) would overwhelm the other two, which are a tiny or negligible fraction of the total ingredient.
According to homeopathic principles, it's the other way around. The largest potentiation is the most powerful. The "effects" of the others are much smaller.
So, why put three different potentiations in the same medicine?
Please, enlighten us.
Sherry, your evidence that homeopathy is more effective at treating non-self-limiting illnesses or injuries than are placebos would be...what, exactly?
Be as specific as possible.
I looked up Sambucol on the Walgreen's web site, and find:
Active Ingredients
Zinc Gluconate2x, 6x HPUS , Sambucus Nigra (Elderberry) 3x, 6x HPUS , Gelsemium Sempervirens6x, 12x, 30x HPUS , Bryonia Alba (Wild Hops)6x HPUS , Sulphur12x HPUS
6x means I take 1 ml of substance, mix it with 9 ml of water, shake vigourously, and repeat with the solution 5 more times. Depending on how much was actually in the original sample (which I've never seen well defined), then that would be 1 part in a million of active ingredient. 30x would mean one part in 10^30, which effectively means "none".
I would be willing to concede that some substances may have noticeable effects in these dilutions. I do not know if these particular substances in these concentrations would have any useful effect.
However, I would like to know by what principle these ingredients were picked for this remedy. Do elderberries cause influenza or flu-like symptoms?
By the idiosyncratic definition of 'cause" homeopathy adopts, perhaps. They've got that whole concept of 'proving', remember. Apparentlyat some point some healthy homeopath ate an elderberriy, and thought "Gee, how wouldI decribe how I feel? I'll pick 'Flu-like'".
As far as i can tell, that's really all it would take.
It's the other way around. Elderberry has some antiviral effect.
So a homeopathic preparation of elderberries (must...not...channell...John...Cleese!) should have the affect of increasing the virulence of viral infections.
First, could you provide some compelling evidence that it works? Thanks.
Why no, I have not read "Is homeopathy a quack – Homeopathic dilutions", but only because there is no trace of such a publication or website anywhere on the Internets. I cannot find your "well researched scientific". If no-one else can find it either, this would explain the absence of "negative comment including people like us".
I looked up Sambucol on the Walgreen’s web site, and find:
Active Ingredients
This is a very special definition of "active".
For me, the funniest part of SHERRY's comment was her advice not to buy "an herbal in a similar box" from the same manufacturer, as it does not work. Her acceptance that the manufacturer and pharmacy are defrauding gullible customers by making and selling a placebo does not shake her faith in their homeopathic product.
"Dr." Harris, at # 272, UN, October 3, 2014, instructs:
Gee, it was in high-school chemistry (A+, both courses) that I learned Avogadro's Number, and its meaning. I also learned how unlikely it is to be able to dissolve a gram-mole (Avogadro's Number of molecules) of an arbitrary "active ingredient" into a liter of water or other water-miscible solvent. Most techniques for making this possible deactivate or even destroy the "active ingredient". This means that the homeopath is starting well behind the Avogadro 'curve' from the very beginning even with a fully saturated starting solution. In other words, it was high-school chemistry, where I learned that homeopathy's basic concept of 'potentiation' actually is a pile of nonsense.
It was in high-school biology that I learned how the other basic concept of homeopathy, 'like cures like', is just as much nonsense as 'potentiation' is.
Perhaps you can find a high school that still teaches chemistry and biology. If you do, perhaps you should go back, take these classes, and pay attention this time.
It is really really sad to see how pre-conceived notions can blind people so much that they are not willing to even encourage patients to try out alternate means of cures. These pre-conceived notions are so deeply ingrained that they would have you believe that dying a comfortable death is better than trying something else.
I have been on homeopathy from childhood. I have first hand experience that it works, not just works, but most of the time is more efficacious than your so called medical science that has been useless against so many diseases, ebola being just one of them.
If 'like cures like' is such nonsense, why would they use explosive to put off oil well fires?
If 'potentiation' is bull crap, how is it that so many people died because of the splitting of atoms at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Homeopathy is powerful medicine, while allopathy is powerful marketing.
By the way, thank you for the portion of your write up that is in Italics. Was searching for the homeopathic remedies for ebola and found all of them in one place on your blog. Thank you once again!
FDA APPROVES HOMEOPATHIC EBOLA CURE
http://johnbenneth.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/fda-approves-homeopathic-eb…
Stanly, the FDA doesn't "approve" HPUS (heh) entries. Benneth's site is so crufty that about the most signal I can extract from this is a recommendation for "Crot-h."
@Stanly,
Perhaps you would care to answer my questions back at #274 since Dr Harris declined to reply and you seem to know so much about homeopathy?
Stanly Silveira, from the link you provided...
"If you suspect you have Ebola consult a homeopathic physician at once"
Can you explain how you would confirm the diagnosis, what your recommended treatment (and state it's proven real-world efficacy against Ebola in particular) would be if it was indeed confirmed to be Ebola, and how would you have protected yourself, your staff and your other patients from possible exposure to Ebola?
Thank you.
Stanly Silveira, India, October 7, 2014 #284 proposes to entertain us with nonsense questions:
In what respect is the rapid decomposition of a self-contained chemical explosive at all "like" the relatively slow combustion of crude oil combining with atmospheric oxygen?
In what respect is fission of a few grams of uranium or plutonium into atoms of other elements plus sub-atomic particles plus mucho released kinetic energy in any sense "potentiating" anything?
In what sense is fission comparable to diluting a solution well beyond the point of vanishing of the "active" constituent of the solution?
It is true that Hahnemann's 'potentiation' idea sounded halfway plausible for the first twenty years, until Avogadro showed that it didn't work in this universe.
It's also the case that Hahnemann's ideas were based mostly on 'allopathic' concepts that real medicine outgrew over the years. Real medicine no longer deals in 'allopathic' magic, while homeopathy is firmly rooted there, with no possibility of recovery.
Well, since you brought these up...
(From Wikipedia) "In fighting a fire at a wellhead, typically high explosives, such as dynamite, are used to create a shockwave that pushes the burning fuel and local atmospheric oxygen away from the well. (This is a similar principle to blowing out a candle.) The flame is removed and the fuel can continue to spill out without catching on fire."
So, please explain how blowing a candle is like fighting fire with fire?
And I'll answer your second question in technical detail if you can show to me that a 30C dilusion of uranium will detonate with greater force than if undiluded.
Oddly enough, someone who also goes by the name Stanly Silveira seems to be marketing stock picks.
In 291, obvious typos are hopefully obvious.
Stanley Silveira: " I have first hand experience that it works, not just works, but most of the time is more efficacious than your so called medical science that has been useless against so many diseases, ebola being just one of them."
Has it cured you from rabies? I have asked multiple times for verifiable proof in the form of animal studies for conformation of Andre Saine's claim that homeopathy works better for rabies than modern vaccines. Could you provide us that data?
That would explain why the local fire department has been putting out fires in burning houses by tossing in one match. After all,if a lit match can start a fire burning, an unlit one tossed in should put it out under the general principle of "like cures like".
Frankly, I just gained a new appreciation for the hazards inherent in being a homeopath. That would explain all the radiation shielding used when succussing! I can't imagine how anyone lives past 10C - the gamma rays alone would kill you. My hat is off to the profession for taking such extraordinary risks through the last 200 years - it puts Marie Curie to shame.
Oh, wait, are you not actually saying that the process of creating a homeopathic remedy causes atomic fission? You're only creating a rather lame and totally inaccurate analogy? Never mind.
God you are Uneducated!!! Prior to 1930 ALL Physicians in the U.S. practiced Homeopathy and Merck was a Homeopathic Pharmacy! If you don't believe this, then go online and purchase the 1899 Merck Manual the Bible of treatment for M.D.'s Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia is named after the father of Homeopathy. nThen Rockefeller stepped in and told the Medical Schools he would only fund them if they switched to his pharmaceuticals and that started Big Pharma to this day!
@dr steve, i sense a homeopathy & quackery pushing woo meister, or is it poe's law?
@Dr. Steve
Citation needed. And, actually, I can prove your assertion wrong quite easily. All I need to do is show that there was one physician who did not practice homeopathy to show that you are full of s***.
I give you Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. who described homeopathy as a delusion in his essay Homoeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions. That was in 1842. Care to revise your made-up claim that "ALL physicians" prior to 1930 practiced homeopathy?
Actually, come to think of it, Hahnemann's own made-up words show that there are physicians who did not practice homeopathy. Why else did he invent the terms "allopathy" and "homeopathy"?
Prior to 1930 ALL Physicians in the U.S. practiced Homeopathy
Since the AMA explicitly refused membership to homeopaths from 1845, and worked tirelessly to suppress homeopathy with the 1904 Council on Medical Education and the 1910 Flexner Report, i am led to the melancholy but unavoidable conclusion that Dr Steve is spouting horsesh1t.
go online and purchase the 1899 Merck Manual the Bible of treatment for M.D.’s
The 1899 edition of Merck's Manual of the materia medica is searchable, courtesy of the Great Gazoogle.
It doesn't mention 'homeopathy'.
So off to my shelf I went and pulled my copy of the 1899 Merck's Manual
PART FIRST.
Absinthin
Acetanilid (Dose 8-10grn.)
Acetyl-phenyl-hydrazine (-Sol in 50 prts water)
Acid, Acetic, Merck.-Glacial.-U.S.P.-99.5%.-C.P. (not used internally)
...
Agentamine. (8% solut. silver phosphate in 15% solut. ethylene-diamine ... Uses: Chiefly gonorrhea
Caffeine and Sodium Benzoate (45.8% caffeine...Uses" By injection, 2-10grn.) I have an ampule of that kicking around somewhere, but I think its from Parke-Davis.
And on and on it goes, with many things conforming to U.S.P. Dosages in quantities sufficient to do something. No silly mock-Latin names.
So, I'm calling flat out liar!
Botched my italic close tag on the title.
Here's one that probably would be used by homeoprats, though much diluted and spanked:
Tincture, Nux Vomica "Assayed. - Containing 0.3 gramme of combined alkaloids of nux vomica in 100 cubic centimetres. ... Dose: 5-15 (minims)
So, no silly name and, and a "real" dose, not a long washed away memory.
Background: Engineer, cursed with allergies with most drugs, who successfully uses homeopathy based on the physics theory of resonance (when modern medicine is useless, you don't give up and die)
Scientific Method: To prove a hypothesis, you must both PROVE the hypothesis and DISPROVED whatever would show your hypothesis to be false. It isn't enough to just prove your point. You also have to prove that prevalent points that disagree with you are false.
Evidence: Modern medicine has failed to treat my hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Homeopathy has succeeded. However, the Law of Large Numbers from Statistics precludes me from generalizing these results.
Turn instead to the 1918 flue pandemic. In the USA, regular hospitals has approximately an 80% death rate. Homeopathic hospitals, more common at that time, had approximately a 20% death rate.
After the pandemic, regular doctors form the American Medical Association (AMA), then lobby congress to grant them a monopoly in health care by controlling licensing for doctors. This puts homeopaths and their hospitals out of business. (If homeopaths were quacks, why would regular doctors fight so hard to remove them as competitors?)
At any rate, the scientific method is met (proof that modern doctor's methods failed and proof that homeopaths methods succeeded) as was the Law of Large Numbers (millions of instances, well above the 30 required for generalization). Each doctor or homeopath got to tailor treatment to the particular patient, so no individual treatment was forced, but rather the basic concept of medicine espoused by each group was tested. As pure a test of the conceptual frameworks as you can get.
Conclusion: Scientific evidence supports the effectiveness of homeopathy, but no one knows for two reasons: 1) the AMA effectively destroyed homeopathy in this country, limiting fact-based experience and data collection in this country; and 2) the AMA and the pharmaceutical companies contributed to the FDA developing a method of approving treatment methods that: a) only financially reward "new" treatments, thus makes it cost prohibitive and impossible for a company to recoup the expense of getting an existing treatment approved, as no patent protection can be gained; and b) require that only ONE treatment be tested, which is biased towards the concept of a single drug (traditional medicine) and automatically puts homeopathy at a disadvantage (more complex considerations are taken into affect to choose the right remedy among several possible alternatives). In other words, the FDA requirements for health claims prohibit homeopathy from being practiced correctly to achieve the desired health of the patient. The deck is stacked against homeopathy by the very nature of the test.
By the way, the USA is the only country to use this particular "scientific method" to approve medications. Japan, for instance, requires that a treatment proves it is BETTER than the most common current treatment (not just better than a placebo), so has a higher standard than the USA. Of course, since it isn't the "scientific method," drugs approved in Japan are not approved for use in the USA, even though they have passed a higher standard.
Which goes to show you, the standard you set for "success" exactly defines what will "look" successful. The good old AMA, along with the FDA and pharmaceutical companies have made sure that homeopathy will always fail it's tests rigged to work for their concept of medicine, that no one can ever make a claim that vitamins and minerals are good for you (although doctors will tell you deficiencies cause disease, apparently there is no benefit to healthy levels of vitamins and minerals), and that great drugs from Japan will never see the light of day in the USA.
It didn't take ObamaCare to marry medicine to politics. By the 1920's, the lobbying system and the AMA already has their first "victory" to control the health care of the American people.
Oh, yes, if I break my leg, I will take Arnica and Hypericum for swelling and infection. I will then go to the hospital to have my leg set and cast. Like other surgeries I have had, the doctors will be astounded at how clear the surgical field stays with the reduction in swelling and blood, making their jobs easier and more accurate. Afterwards, I will take symphytum to help knit the bones together more quickly, both Arnica and Bellis to minimize the normal types of swelling that impede healing, and based on my symptoms, perhaps another remedy as needed. Two weeks later, my doctor will be predictably astounded at the speed of my recovery and my lack of need for pain medication. I will smile and thank them for their excellent work. Not surprisingly, the cast will come off early and I will be back to normal safely and earlier than normal. Life is good when you take the best that each profession has to offer. :)
By the way, homeopathy is not based on chemistry, so it doesn't matter if "one molecule" of the original substance remains.
It is based on resonance theory on physics. The process of dilution with vigorous agitation is used to align the resonance of the water with the original substance, with the number of dilutions done deliberately to guarantee not one molecule of the original still exists. This is why you can make a remedy from Arsenic (Arsenicum) that is effective AND truly safe.
It is based on resonance theory on physics
I speak Physics. Please tell me of this "resonance theory".
Some thoughts:
Yet there appears to be no evidence at all that homeopathy can successfully treat anything but self-limiting illnesses or those with a large subjective component that are vulnerable to placebo effects. Even in those cases, the better designed and more robust the study, the less the apparent effect of homeopathy. The inescapable conclusion is that homeopathy is nothing but an elaborate placebo.
I have seen claims elsewhere that there was a 1% death rate at homeopathic hospitals, but never any actual evidence that this was the case. It may be that more serious cases were taken to regular hospitals, that the medical interventions of the day were actively killing people - the use of mercury and arsenic was still widespread in the absence of antibiotics to treat secondary infections. It's also possible that homeopaths lied about their success rate in an attempt to resist their downfall - the past exclusively homeopathic hospital closed just two years later, which seems odd if the extraordinary success stories of homeopathic treatment of influenza were true.
Here, just out of interest (PDF), is what a surgeon wrote about homeopathy in 1848:
Also worth quoting from the same article, are the words of the President of the College of Physicians (interesting comma use, for those students of the history of punctuation, by the way):
Here we are, 166 years later, and homeopathy is still around, and professional men are still defending "a doctrine that contradicts all facts, and confounds all opinions".
That's not true. New drugs are generally tested against the current standard treatment, where such exists, in the US as elsewhere.
Perhaps you could refer us to a physics text book or website where this theory is explained. I studied physics at high school, but perhaps I missed the class on resonance theory. There are resonance theories in chemistry, but they don't seem to have any relevance to homeopathy. Do you mean the phenomenon where two tuning forks nest to each other will tend to vibrate at the same frequency? If so, how does that works with a water molecule?
Are you suggesting that the water molecules in the remedy are vibrating at some frequency associated with the original substance? How does this work, when every liquid water molecule is in constant motion anyway? How does this resonance get transferred to a sugar pill? What happens when a patient dissolves this pill on his tongue, or swallows it? How do a relatively few water or sugar molecules vibrating at the remedy's frequency, swamped by saliva, gastric juices and blood, transfer this frequency to the body? How does this have any therapeutic effect?
Silly questions, really, since the evidence shows quite clearly that there is no therapeutic effect to be explained.
"Turn instead to the 1918 flue pandemic. In the USA, regular hospitals has approximately an 80% death rate. Homeopathic hospitals, more common at that time, had approximately a 20% death rate."
Is there actual evidence we can turn to that shows this was the case, as opposed to unsupported claims on pro-homeopathy websites?
"(If homeopaths were quacks, why would regular doctors fight so hard to remove them as competitors?)"
The same major reasons that physicians have always fought against quackery - it harms people, either directly or indirectly through not seeking effective care in a timely manner. Having a soup of quacks mixed in with evidence-based providers diminishes the overall reputation of health care. And as with other professions and businesses, when people buy inferior products and services they spend less on quality ones, so the quality providers have an economic motive too.
Too bad that's the only motive you'll allow yourself to see.
As for being allergic to "most drugs", I call bullsh*t. It's like what the claim made by posters opposed to artificial sweeteners in a current thread on another site - that any such sweeteners cause "throat burning" and so are "poison".
It's amazing what people can talk themselves into.
If Brenda's figures are to be trusted, it seems as though the same logic would dictate that both homeopathic and regular hospitals should have been eschewed, as the overall CFR was 2.5%, compared with 20% under homeopathic care.
Ms. Milton: "It is based on resonance theory on physics."
So what are the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of Nat Mur and Nux Vomica?
Brenda:
First off, I'm happy to see another woman engineer! We need more of us. ;-)
"Evidence: Modern medicine has failed to treat my hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Homeopathy has succeeded."
Question: how do you know homeopathy has succeeded? I'm not trying to be patronizing here; I just feel you may have missed a step. Speaking in engineering terms, if you are conducting a formal test, and the unit under test experiences a failure, you will probably make some sort of modification and then retest. If the test does not fail this time, do you conclude that the defect has been fixed, or have you noticed the crucial steps that I have skipped in this example?
I'll give you a real-life example.
Mars Pathfinder was the first spacecraft to use the VxWorks operating system in deep space. As such, there was considerable attention. During a test of the main computer in a lab on Earth, before system integration, the computer suddenly reset. This is not a good thing in a spacecraft; depending on what the spacecraft is doing at the time, a reset could be mission-ending. And so the problem was looked at. But they couldn't reproduce it. This occurred at a particularly rapid point in development, and it was believed that a change made in hardware after the observed reset had somehow fixed it.
They weren't entirely comfortable with that (an engineer in space processing doesn't like not know why a fault occurred, since after launch you'll have no ability to go look at the damn thing so you need to know as much as possible before launch), but the fault didn't happen again. Since it had only occurred when using surface-ops software, and a reset wouldn't be fatal during that phase of the mission, they decided it wasn't that big of a deal anyway, and hey, it *looked* like hardware mods had made it go away anyway. Besides, they had the landing software to worry about, and that was vastly more critical given how deadly an error during landing would be.
So the issue was closed out, the computers delivered and integrated, the spacecraft put into its rocket, and the whole thing delivered to Mars. The landing software performed flawlessly. The spacecraft opened up its petals, started charging its batteries, fired up comms with Earth, and then promptly reset. It booted up, and reset again. And again. And again. And again.
Clearly, the hardware mods had *not* fixed the problem. They'd just been lucky all this time. Controllers managed to get Pathfinder to stop doing this and get into a safe mode, which at least saved the batteries from draining completely before night fell, and the problem was looked at again. Debug code was still active on the spacecraft, so they were able to get traces of all the function calls and work out the problem. It was a condition called a "priority inversion", which allows a lower priority task to interrupt a higher priority one.
On Pathfinder, a low-priority meterology task grabbed the mutex for the system's information bus so it could publish its meteorology data. Then, before it could finish executing, a high priority task came along -- the information bus thread, which would read data that had been published on the information bus and distribute it to wherever it needed to go. It was unable to acquire the mutex, so it waited for the low-priority task to finish. That's what mutexes are for.
So now the low-priority task is the running task. During this very short window, a medium-priority communications task came along. It had priority over the meteorology task, so VxWorks dutifully suspended the low-priority task and let the communications thread run. At this point, this has effectively allowed a medium-priority task to preempt a high-priority one, since now the information bus thread has to wait for the communications task to complete before the meteorology task can finish its work and release the mutex. Which means we have a problem. The watchdog timer will notice that the high-priority information bus thread has stopped. Once its timer has expired, the system will conclude Something Bad Has Happened and reset in an effort to clear the condition. And that works -- a reset will, 99 times out of 100, clear this condition, since it takes very precise timing to cause it. Unfortunately, the program for Pathfinder's first day on Mars was extremely intense, with huge amounts of data needing to be moved around the computer's bus and lots and lots and lots of telemetry going back to Earth. This caused the timing error to happen every single time they booted. On Mars, anyway.
It took a hours for engineers to finally reproduce the fault in the lab. At that point, coming up with a fix was simple. But the whole thing would have been unnecessary if they hadn't earlier on decided that the hardware changes must have fixed the problem.
Never ever assume that because problem A went away after you did B that B actually fixed problem A. Problem A might still be there, waiting to screw you up. The one on Pathfinder very nearly ended the mission.
Dr. Steve,
http://www.corbettreport.com/meet-william-rockefeller-snake-oil-salesma…
Calli Arcale,
I'd just resolved a 'similar problem' today. For years, I've been plauged by an obnoxious intermittent in my truck. High 'throttle pressure' on the automatic tranny had caused a $1500 repair a few years back. A 'buck' like a misfire everytime I went through torque to coasting throttle -- Which I'd attributed to loose timing components (cam 'retard angle' shifting out of range), bad hard shifts and loose shifts depending on gear, random 'revvng up' to 2000 rpm which could drag me down the road at some 50 mph at some significant tourque without my foot on the gas and causing brake fade/ruin (I can't think how an idle air mixture pintle could possibly open up that far except as a built in way for *they* to have a way to off somebody discretely), and on and on.
These 'anomalies' seemed to only occure during the cooler months but was not related to block temperature. I *assumed* it must have been the air intake temperature sender so I added a rheostat to it. <--- That went over like a lead ballon. Not it.
I'd attributed all these events to a much earlier unfortunate event on a curve covered with iced fog leading to me 'kissing' headon an embankment at around 35 mph some 5 years previous and somewhat displacing/compacting wire routing under the hood -- there just had to be a wire messed up into the ECM somehow. Had to be. I never found a problem there; All I was doing by tightening up connections and whatnot was rebooting the ECM. The OBEII scanner did not reveal the problem; It kept wanting to stop giving data at unrelated 'problems' I had introduced intentionally before continuing.
I did note a couple years ago that when the truck was running flawless it would still always screw up in the same manner after I was parked at a certain other location which was different in elevation which lead me to *suspect* the Manifold Air Pressure sender. I *checked* it. It seemed fine.
Finally, after gaining such an oscillation between high idle and nearly zero, I couldn't keep it running without a 'reboot' proceedure to the ECM which would fix it for some time. Only then did a mechanic friend immediately recognize that as MAP. I obtained one today and noticed that it was not just a simple piezoelectric sender but that it had embedded electronics -- 5v out. <-- That explains alot.
$70 tiny part, 10 seconds to replace, truck runs like new with a finely tuned 'whine' like a cobrajet valve train. Who Knew??
In Hindu mythology there is a Narad who is supposed to be a messenger but is mainly known to be a trouble maker.
A simple test ... lets see how many of you actually take it
Pick any homeopathic remedy ..say SULPHUR 30C
you can easily buy a Dr Reckeweg or Schwabe liquid dilution and dose for week if you like at your own risk ofcourse as you may end up what is called "proving" the remedy.
This is how you dose: one or two drops of sulphur 30c in about a 100 ml of water stirred take one small sip... repeat for a week if you like
That shouldn't be too hard for you as you all believe homeopathy is just sugar pills or water or alcohol
@mann
Yawn, another pathetic "challenge" from a true believer.
Tell us then, how does homeopathy reconcile itself with physics and chemistry, because the whole of homeopathy violates basic tenets of these sciences.
Second of all, have you heard of Avogardro's number? Because it seems by your fact-free rant, you haven't.
A simple test … lets see how many of you actually take it
What the feck is this supposed to test? The readers' ability to swallow drops?
@ Sunil Mittal:
OUR Narad doesn't function merely as a messenger: he has his own wisdom to dispense to those who have the capacity to understand him.
Troublemaker? Be serious.
All hail Narad!
@MANN,
So you think someone should take 30c homeopathic sulfur mix a drop of it in 100 ml of water and take a sip (how often? Hourly, daily?). What does one do with the rest of the solution? Pour it out? Save it for the next dose? Why dilute it rather than drinking it directly? My local Walgreen's has tablets rather than liquids in 30c - should I expect the same results from those as from a liquid, whatever you think they are? If I use the tablets, should I dissolve one in 100 ml of water and take a sip, or should I down the whole thing?
Let's do the math once again. Suppose that the original substance was 1 mole (16g) of sulfur. Assume for the sake of discussion that you manage somehow to dissolve all of it in 100 ml of water and succuss. That's 6x10^23 atoms of sulfur in water to make 100 ml of solution, and let's pretend that's 1C. If you take 1 ml out of that and mix it with 99 ml of water and succuss you'd have 6x10^21 atoms of sulfur in 100 ml solution, which we'll call 2C. If you do the math, at 12C you'd have 60 atoms in the solution. At 13C you'd have a 60% chance of having 1 atom in the solution. At 14C you'd have a .6% chance of having one atom of sulfur in the solution. At 30C you have a .000000000000000000000000000000006% chance of finding a single atom of sulfur in 100ml of solution. At that concentration, I would be willing to bet real money that you could not find a single atom of sulfur in an entire case of remedy, much less in a sip taken from a solution of about 100 ml of water with one small drop of 30C remedy, unless someone deliberately contaminated the bottle or it picked up an impurity during production, packaging, or shipping.
It is inconceivable that someone could see those numbers and think that any potency beyond, say, 13C had even the slightest chance of having any effect assuming that anything we know about chemistry or physics is, in fact, correct.
In fact, anything above 14C should be indistinguishable not only from plain water but also from any other remedy at 14C or above. It should be impossible to distinguish, say, 14C sulfur from 30C sulfur or 200C duck liver. If you have some means to reliably distinguish these from each other without reading the label, you could win the Randy million dollar prize.
I credit the powerful succussers' guild' strong organizing efforts and threats to strike for keeping all of those indistinguishable products on the shelf. If we could reduce succussion by half (or more!), we'd only need half as many succussers, and the guild cannot allow that. But I digress.
BUT - you may smugly contend - it's not the chemicals at all but the WATER that remembers the sweet, sweet kiss of sulfur and passes that information on to the next generation of water! As you go through successive dilutions, you get greater and greater converts to the cult of sulfur with the result that at 30C you've unleashed the power of sulfur in a way that could never be seen in the pure element. If that is the case, how do you explain the pills - is the trace of sulfur like the Cheshire cat, where the smile remains after the water is gone?
But just for the sake of curiosity - suppose I take your challenge and take 30C sulfur every day for a week. What's in it for me?
MANN, please provide the PubMed indexed animal study showing that SULPHUR 30C works to cure rabies. I ask because Andre Saine claims that homeopathy works better for rabies than the modern vaccine.
Maybe it's an intelligence test.
Is anyone dumb enough to spend money buying water that is mixed with water that is mixed with water that is mixed with water that is mixed with water that is mixed with water that may have touched a sulfur atom because some random poster in a blog comment said it might do something?
I could see how a scam artist would like to know the answer to that question.
About that challenge:
It would require going out, spending money and assiduously sticking to a protocol ( taking the woo for a week):
people who spend time,money and effort at something are MOTIVATED to find some value in their actions and may attribute any positive outcome - like feeling alright- to the formula/ woo which they have invested in.
OTHERWISE they might feel mighty stupid for having wasted time, money and effort on magic water..
There might be some face-saving as well - like those who follow altie protocols for extended time periods.
I tbink that this flu epidemic/homeopathic hospital success tale is mentioned in one of Ben Goldacres books. Something along the lines that Homeopathy doesn't work, so patients at homeopathic hospitals were looked after but basically left to fight the flu on their own as any remedy given them was worthless. On the other hand the standard of medicine in normal hospitals at this time was so bad it actually made it worse. Hence normal hospitals had a higher fatality rate as opposed to the natural fatality rate of the disease at homeopathic hospitals.
There might have been something about a better standard of hygiene at homeopathic hospitals... I really must read Bad Science/Bad Pharma again.
I'm well aware of, ah, Sunil's allusion. I'm pretty sure that he wasn't aware of mine, though, although the author almost certainly was also aware of Sunil's, if you get my drift.
"No, never! I didn’t love you in the sixteenth century and I don't love you now!"
I would assume that taking homeopathic brimstone, based on the like-cures-like notion, would either rid your body entirely of sulfur or perhaps thoilry thoroughly drive out demons reeking thereof. The former would seem to be a means of sealing your (sul)fate and committing suicide. Maybe it just cures mercaptan breath,
Oh, phlegm! That was supposed to be thiolry, and it was supposed to have been struck out.
That not withstanding...
Warum, pourquoi and why immer 30C? Why niemals 29C or 31C? Were I ol' Sam, ida been gettin' some prime number mileage.
why immer 30C? Why niemals 29C or 31C?
I'm sure that is based on rigorous empirical trials.
When conventional/pharmaceutical/allopathic medicine fails, why is it so difficult for those conventionally trained practitioners to allow others to make suggestions? It is a sign of a great person to be open-minded. I have seen homeopathy have amazing results, and would rather be treated homeopathically and have a chance of surviving, than to be treated conventionally and almost surely die.
If you get Ebola, you can take homeopathy for it, provided you keep yourself under STRICT quarantine.
I get pissed when folks like you start suggesting giving it to others, though, as if they're some kind of guinea pig for you to toss totally ridiculous therapies at. Seriously, we're talking a disease with a 70% mortality rate, and which is terrifyingly infectious if you get exposed to body fluids. I'm not interested in screwing around trying to protect the feelings of homeopaths. There are *lives* at stake.
It is completely true that there are some times when science-based medicine simply does not have a solution for a given problem.
In such a situation, the idea that a solution has ANY realistic chance of coming from some self-deluded nitwit who has proven themselves gullible enough to swallow the codswallop that is homeopathy is absolute and utter malarkey.
If there is ANY condition for which homeopathy RELIABLY produces results that are even FAVORABLE, John, then for God's sake set up a study so that it can be documented. You'll make worldwide news.
Of course, that only applies if the homeopathic treatment produces results RELIABLY. If what you mean by "I've seen homeopathy have amazing results" is "I've got some anecdotes", save the trouble. Anecdotes are of extremely limited value; you may THINK that you know why someone had "amazing results" but the fact is that you don't. A sports fan may have "seen" his rituals have amazing effects on his team's performance - but do you think he's ACTUALLY responsible for the team's victories, even in part?
Yes, and I'd like Santa Claus to give me a big pile of presents and a stocking full of candy. The question is, is it REALISTIC to think such a thing is going to happen? NO. It is not realistic to think a jolly elf is going to come and give me presents from nowhere. Neither is it realistic to think that a doctor-wannabe will succeed where actual real doctors fail.
John: "I have seen homeopathy have amazing results, and would rather be treated homeopathically and have a chance of surviving, than to be treated conventionally and almost surely die."
How does that work for rabies? Andre Saine claims that homeopathy works better than the modern rabies vaccine. So if you are bitten by a rabid bat you would be quite willing to take homeopathy instead of a rabies vaccine?
Top to bottom nonsensical declamations of someone who doesn't know much. SEE this: http://goo.gl/dUrds8
I read Dr. Gail's claims and was intrigued, but found her claim of the survival rates of Spanish Flu victims treated with homeopathy unsatisfying as she provides no source for this data. While intriguing it fails to satisfy the scientific mind.
I know only one thing, I have turned to homeopathy at the onset of flu season and have not been ridden with flu since 2007. This being a subjective experience of course, thus leaving me intellectually unsatisfied. For if we are to arrive at laws and principles, there has to be a collective experience to some degree.
Yet again this post above posing as scientific does little more than label homeopathy quackery and does little or nothing to support its claim. Once again, it's not science. It is a materialistic dogma speaking.
I would recommend to anyone willing to be truly objective, a rare quality these days, that maybe they try these "sugar pills" next time they are coming down with a minor cold or flu and decide for themselves. Nothing ventured nothing gained, and certainly noting to lose by taking a "sugar pill". Otherwise we are simply saying we do not understand the laws and principles that are operative in homeopathy and therefore concluding they must "quackery" since they do not conform to what we currently as knowledge.
It is personally difficult for to be interested in the opinions of people who simply dismiss something in advance of any attempt to investigate it or those of the "new age" who blindly accept every "alternative" means of as a superior model without any scrutiny whatsoever.
@Reverend Boone,
What evidence besides your own anecdote do you have for the effectiveness of any homeopathic remedy? Can you point to rigorous, double blinded, randomized, placebo controlled studies of significant size that show that any homeopathic remedy has a significant clinical benefit?
How can someone tell the difference between any two remedies at a potency of more than 12C, or between those and either distilled water or a sugar pill, as appropriate?
Do you have any evidence to show that the underlying principles of homeopathy are anything other than sympathetic magic and wishful thinking?
Suppose I were to try your challenge - what would it prove?
For what it's worth, I have never taken a homeopathic remedy and have not come down with the flu in at least 7 years I can think of.
Thanks.
@Reverend Boone,
If you use the search function over in the top right hand corner, you'll find that Orac has previously discussed why he considers homeopathy quackery. It is not necessary to rehash that every single time.
Reverend, I've read a lot of trials where people tried homeopathy and it did absolutely nothing for them. It's not a good idea to just pick the anecdotes you find most appealing and draw conclusions from that. Anecdotally, I have turned to the influenza vaccine at the onset of flu season and have not been ridden with flu ever in my life. The gal who sits across from my at work does basically nothing for the flu, apart from handwashing, and she's never had it either. So your anecdote isn't very useful to me. If I wanted to believe in homeopathy, I might choose to accept it and toss out all the others, but I'd prefer the truth to self-justification, personally.
To each their own, though.
Oh, and:
"It is personally difficult for to be interested in the opinions of people who simply dismiss something in advance of any attempt to investigate it or those of the “new age” who blindly accept every “alternative” means of as a superior model without any scrutiny whatsoever."
Did anyone else find this sentence really hilarious? :-D Oh, the irony....
Ahh, VED. Tell us all again how "“Homeopathy does not work on placebo effect" but instead because there are "‘Codes which control reality (reality codes)" and "homeopathy more or less visualises human body as a software entity".
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2014/08/14/beware-of-fraudulent-…
Because that one never gets old...
Just as a rule of thumb homeopathy works it's not meant to be understood like many things in life, also it is tailored to every individual differently every person experiences different symptomology. Therefore a remedy could change but if the similimum is right the patient will be cured, the problem is we don't have the time to mess up and there are so many remedies but it could work these honeopathic doctors only put it to symptomology and neglected the emotional and constitutional aspects of the ebola "patient" it's a art as well as a science that takes much time to become great at.
"Homeopaths cure people but they cannot show any evidence that they cure people so take their word for it."
And your evidence that homeopathy, when tailored to every individual, actually works (i.e., is more effective than placebos at treating non-self-limiting ilness or injury) such that with sufficient time and study one can 'become great at it" would be...what exactly, Corey? Be specific.
I mean, you do have some--right?
JGC, you are missing Corey's point that homeopathy "is not meant to be understood like many things in life". When you ask for "evidence" that it "works", you immediately demonstrate that you are thinking in the wrong paradigm. There are other ways of knowledge, dude, by which homeopaths know that their patients are better.
Seems to be so smart on why alternative meds won't work yet does not realize how quickly it can spread and how many people it can effect. If you do not know the cycle you should not be ripping on anything about it, it is people like this that make the internet an unreliable source of information. I am not sticking up for homeopathic medicine although I see where it has it's place, not sure why some of the homeopathic things in the US are quackery when they are actually prescribed and shown to work in foreign countries, maybe to much GMO? The real question is why people are over looking the obvious treatments, or maybe all you dip shits just need some kind of pill, yeah, just give me a pill doc and I will be OK. Cancer is the biggest business in the health care industry, that is why you do not know the cure even when many have been developed, not that I know, I have only been in the medical field for 49 years, so I might prescribe your pill for acid reflux, but I myself just eat an apple a day until it stops and has rebalanced my systems ph, just can't get any patients to do that, just give me a pill, a pill, or a shot, yeah a shot, instant fix. People need to look for the balance, everything has a balance, you get fat, stop eating so much, walk daily, there are no special I am fat because I have something, no, you are just fat because you consume more than you burn. Now think of balance as this, for everything in nature there is a positive and a negative. If it is made by nature, like say a virus, you need to find it's balance to stop it. It is there or the doctors who used homeopathic medicines to cure themselves from the outbreak in the 80's would have died and not be here writing you to let you know how stupid you all are. The balance has been provided...
@Corey:
Your comment would be easier to understand if you didn't indulge in homeopathic punctuation.
Trying to approach/understand Homeopathy through Science is a fruitless/foolhardy effort.
SCIENCE is so DUMMY, except for here and there where it married Maths well.
An hypothetical creature from a 2-D world can never able to understand a 3-D world with any amount of analyses and it's past experiences. Only after stepping out of it's 2D world & experiencing the 3rd dimension first hand, then only it realizes. Still then, it won't able to make it's 2-D brethren understand the existence of this 3rd dimension. Some things are open just for experience, while the all other lot is for endless analyses and rhetoric.
@Corey - I am extremely concerned for your welfare. Are you feeling OK? Do you have a headache, blurred vision, or nausea? Is it possible you've suffered a head injury?
I ask because I find it impossible to believe that someone in the 21st century would say some of the things you've said if they were in full possession of their faculties.
I mean, you can't possibly mean that you'd let someone treat you with something that neither s/he nor you understood and for which the question of evidence wasn't even a valid question. What's more, what keeps them (or you) from neglecting some critical yet non-obvious factor like the phase of the moon or your shoe size or your feelings about your mother and instead of getting a cure for Ebola you get turned into a newt? You say that's never happened, but how can you know that if homeopathy's not meant to be understood?
Best to leave those things that Man was not Meant to Know alone! That way lies angry mobs with torches and pitchforks.
And in all seriousness, if you are suffering from some of those symptoms or there's the possibility that you miscounted when taking medication earlier today, please call a doctor.
This appears a discussion between Alchemists and others.
Clearly based on the interaction between chemicals for curing a disease or cause a change moleclar presence is required. However since Homeopathy workssWITHOUT molecular presence something else could be at work. Many causes some unknown hitherto could be at work. Known causes could be the transfer of DISLOCATIONS in the atom from one substance to another which could cause Dislocations TO GET IMPRINTED without any molcular presence.Remember that this is possible as the original Homeopathic Sustance was there to start with. However within the limited field of our knowledge we do not mostly really undersatnd things
Kumar C: "However since Homeopathy workssWITHOUT molecular presence something else could be at work."
Prove that it works, period. Provide the animal studies showing that homeopathy works better than the modern vaccine for rabies.
Alchemists, eh?
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1992/dept_alchemy/alchemy_door.html
Please provide data that this occurs, and if it does, that it has any significance whatsoever in the physical or chemical properties of the substance.
That certainly seems to be the case for many people who advocate for homeopathy.
" Known causes could be the transfer of DISLOCATIONS in the atom from one substance to another which could cause Dislocations TO GET IMPRINTED without any molcular presence."
Since homeopathy has NOT been shown to work, either through molecular DISLOCATIONS or ANY OTHER MEANS WHATSOEVER, it is FRUITLESS to engage in such SPECULATIONS in the absence of EVIDENCE.
If I read Kumar C right, then he thinks one possible way homeopathy works (assuming it does) is that the water molecules bump into the original substance and take on the impression of that substance (kind of like throwing wet clay onto a mold). Then in each successive dilution and succussion the unimprinted water molecules bump into the imprinted molecules and rather than the imprinted molecules snapping back to their normal shape, the unimprinted molecules take on the shape of the imprinted water molecules (like slapping wet clay onto the wet clay you slapped onto a mold will create a perfect replica of the original mold.... What?).
Or maybe it's something stranger than that.
Yeah, it seems these homeopathy apologists forget that in order to explain homeopathy works, they must first provide actual verifiable evidence that it does works.
They have yet show it works for any non-self-limiting condition.
One of Hahnemann's "miasms" was syphilis, but will they provide proof that it cures that bacterial infection better than antibiotics? No.
Then Andre Saine claims homeopathy works better for rabies than the modern vaccine, but do they show any animal studies showing it cures rabies? No.
@tbruce #343 - English majors applaud you.
This would be the homeopathic subluxation theory, right?
MOB @ 354
Which of course brings up the question of why the water only remembers the imprint of all the good things that have been in it--the ones that 'cure' dis-ease--and not everything else those molecules have bumped into along the way.
Known causes could be the transfer of DISLOCATIONS in the atom from one substance to another
It would be nice to have a source for this phenomenon of single-atom dislocations, but I will not hold my breath.
... the water only remembers the imprint of all the good things ...
It's blocking out the bad things. I'm sure Oprah could find someone to help it remember.
What i am thinking is you are taking homeopathy very lightly. I have been experimenting and treating myself with homeopathic medicines and i know they work. I am having ibs with gallbladdet pain for a while and my intestine once was bleeding my stools were black i ate arsenic album 30c and my stools started to get normal but when i left it after 2 days it started to come back and i continued it for a month with a higherdose and now that problem is solved what do you say about this...
@Nik - so, you drank a glass of water & it made you feel better?
You do know that homeopathy violates several well known laws of physics, right?
Nik: "What i am thinking is you are taking homeopathy very lightly"
Sorry, but tummy aches, funky stools and hemorrhoids are not Ebola. Most of us get that, and it usually resolves in a few days.
So, if you want us to not take it lightly then you will provide the verifiable evidence that it works for non-self limiting viruses like rabies. Just provide the PubMed indexed studies on animals that prove Andre Saine's contention that homeopathy works better on rabies than the modern vaccine.
Strange, I was thinking that by dosing yourself with something with no substantial idea of whether it actually works or can work would be taking it lightly.
For clarification, was that taking more pills of the 30C remedy or did you switch to the "stronger" 200C remedy?
Could you please tell us:
1. In everyday terms, what is Arsenicum Album?
2. How much Arsenicum Album is in a 30C pill? How much in a 200C pill?
3. How could a lab differentiate between a 30C pill, a 200C pill, and a lactose/sucrose pill of the same size and shape?
Thanks.
what do you say about this…
This Yale has completely run out of fvcks to give.
what is Arsenicum Album?
The latest release from a rock group who were not clear on the concept of "heavy metal".
Was their first album titled "Funky Stools"?
i continued it for a month with a higherdose
I like the concept of "a higher dose of nothing". At least it is hard to over-dose.
One of the claims made by homeopathy supporters is that there are no side effects. This is why. You can overdose as much as your wallet will allow and still not get ill.
Yes, I do take homoeopathy very lightly. Very lightly indeed.
One might say homooeopathically...
Umm, "homooeopathically"?
Is that what altie vets use on cows?
ChrisP,
I'm not sure that's true. Ben Goldacre has described a homeopath threatening him with a homeopathic poison:
The video is worth watching too, if only to marvel at Goldacre's patience in the face of a crowd of True Believers.
I believe homeopathic provings can sometimes make the prover very ill too, supposedly, either through suggestion or coincidence, no doubt.
How would homeopathic poison work, assuming that the homeopathic laws are true? Like cures like. How is something that poisons you curing anything?
As Dara O'Briain noted: you can feckin' drown.
So to make a homeopathic poison you take something that makes you feel really healthy, vibrant and robust at normal doses and dilute it?
Can I get the recipe for that. I mean if you could sell that at full strength one could make a fortune.
It's all about vibrations. A homeopathic remedy that can rebalance a dis-eased person can wreak havoc with a healthy person's vibrations, like giving insulin to a non-diabetic. Or something. I don't expect consistency, or any other signs of rationality, from homeopaths.
Good point. The LD50 of water for humans is only something like six liters and while I couldn't find a human LD50 for glucose, there is one for rats, so I suppose all homeopathic preparations are toxic.
Hey, if the cure and the disease aren't exactly the same frequency, won't that produce disease/cure beats? That would be interesting to see.
Hi, does anyone know if Ebola produces high fever over 38,5°C or only low fever.
That is important for knowing how it can spread.
If you read the descriptions of homeopathic provings, you can find all manner of weird and wonderful symptoms described. I particularly like these provings of LSD, using a 30C preparation almost 30 years old that would not have contained a single molecule of acid even when fresh.
@Stephan - since we know exactly how it spreads, yours is an unusual question, to say the least.
I wonder how that "proving" of LSD would have gone differently had the prover been told that it was made from lollipops.
I was hoping for oscillations between diseased and cured states, preferably at a low enough frequency that we could measure the oscillations and determine what the relative difference between the two frequencies was. :)
To all the non-believers of homeopathy, if you get stricken with Ebola, I pray that you have as nice and comfortable a death that allopathy can grant you. To the rest of us believers, let's have a great and wonderful life ahead.
Prove homeopathy works. Let all homeopaths travel to ebola infested countries and not return till all patiënts are cured and proven ebola free.
@Sunil Mittal - That's all you've got, a combination of schadenfreude, mock pity, and blind faith in a unproven and unlikely treatment? What next, you'll pray that God does not judge us too harshly for our beliefs and will not punish us as we deserve?
I was hoping for a better class of troll.
@Sunil,
When are you planning to set up your homeopathic Ebola clinic in Africa and which country?
On the reality front, most people are very bad at estimating probabilities of unlikely but dangerous events.
So, I liked the graphics in this article.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/23/358349882/an-answer-fo…
Sunil Mittal: "To all the non-believers of homeopathy, if you get stricken with Ebola"
It is not a matter of belief, but of evidence? Where is your evidence that homeopathy works for viruses?
Here is one you can try: Andre Saine says that homeopathy works better than the modern vaccines for rabies. If that were true, then there would be definitive animal tests proving that. Where are they?
Ha! If homeopathy is a sure cure for Ebola, how come Dr. Kumar (of Kumar's Homeopathy and Mental Health Clinic) doesn't mention it? It seem to be good for virtually everything else, including:
"Neurofibromatosis, Neurofibroma, Tremor, Trembling, Chorea, Epilepsy, Fits, Seizers, Neuralgia, Epilepsy, Paralysis, Multiple sclerosis, Myasthenia gravis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Writer's cramp, Tics, Huntington’s Chorea, Stammering, Speech problems, Migraine, Headache, Brain Tumor, Brain Cancer, Post Traumatic syndrome...Thyroid Diseases:...
Immunity Problems: Sarcoidosis, Cystic fibrosis, SLE, Allergy, Weak Immunity... Acidity, Gastritis, Ulcer, Ulcerative Colitis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome / IBS, Duodenal Ulcer, Esophageal Reflux, Oesophagitis, Colitis, Piles, Hemorrhoid, Jaundice, Liver Cirrhosis, Gall Bladder Stone...Cardiac and Blood Disorders: Angina, Hypertension, Palpitation, Anemia, Thallasemia, Leukemia, Blood Cancer, CML, Leukemia, Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma..
Respiratory Disorders: Asthma, Bronchitis, Pneumonia, Tuberculosis, Bronchiectesis, Sarcoidosis, Cystic Fibrosis (Dr. Kumar also lists sarcoidosis and cystic fibrosis as immune disorders)...
Eye Disorders: Cataract, Blindness, Hemiopia, Diplopia, Double Vision, Hypermetropia, Myopia, Color Blindness...
Child Disease: Delayed Dentition or Teething problem, Slow Walking, Slow Learning, Bed wetting, Mental retardation, Developmental disorders, Nail biting, Temper tantrum, Thumb Sucking,..
Female Diseases: Menstrual irregularity, Amenorrhea, Menorrhagia, Metrorrhagia, Dysmenorrhoea, Leucorrhoea, PCOD / Polycystic Ovary Disease, Fibroid, Frigidity, Orgasm (!), Nymphomania, Libido, Pregnancy, Infertility, Ovulation Problem, Cervical cancer, White Discharge, Candidacies, Breast Tumor, Breast cancer, Milk problems / Agalactemia, Premenstrual Syndrome, Menopausal syndrome...
Male Sexual Diseases: Prostate Hypertrophy / BPH, Impotence, Erectile Dysfunction, Sexual weakness, Premature Ejaculation...
Skin Diseases: Pimples, SLE / Systemic Lupus Erythmatosus, Psoriasis, Eczema, Lichen Planus, Warts, Corns, Scar Marks, Chicken Pox, Nails, Fungal Problem, Acne, Acne Rosacea, Skin Allergy, Drug allergy, Pigmentation, Cloasma, Pigmentation... Hair Fall, Hair Graying, Dandruff, Hair growth, Baldness, Alopecia...
ENT: Aphthous, Sinusitis, Nasal Polyp, DNS, Post nasal drip, Deafness, Tinnitus, Giddiness (wheeee!!!!)...
Joint and Bone: Cervical Spondylitis, Cervical Pain, Arthritis, Joint Pain, Backache, Knee pain, Rheumatoid arthritis, Osteoarthritis, Sciatica, Gout, Ankylosing spondylitis, Lordosis, Kyphosis, Scoliosis..
Infectious Diseases: Typhoid, Dengue, Chickengunia, Filaria, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Influenza (but not Ebola, hah!)...
Kidney and Urinary Problems: Kidney Stone, Hydronephrosis, Kidney Failure, Nocturnal Enuresis, Bed wetting, Urinary Tract Infection / UTI, Urinary Incontinence, Calculus, Stone...
Weight Management: Obesity, Weight loss, Weight Gain
Miscellaneous: Cyst, Tumor, Diabetes, Lipoma, Cancer, Hepatitis, AIDS, Hodgkin’s disease, Hypertension, Hypotension, Height Growth, Personality Development, Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Leukemia, Thallasemia...
De addiction: Drug Addiction: Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Smocking withdrawal, Tobacco Chewing...
...and the list goes on. But no Ebola.
Still, I would waste no time in paying a visit to Dr. Kumar's Homeopathy and Mental Health Clinic, the next time you are in New Delhi, especially if you experience Smocking, Giddiness and Orgasm.
http://psychicsolutionsindia.com
Ha! If homeopathy is a sure cure for Ebola, how come Dr. Kumar (of Kumar’s Homeopathy and Mental Health Clinic) doesn’t mention it?
I am gratified to learn that if homeopathy does not cure your ills, then Dr Kumar is also a psychiatrist, qualified to cures those ills with
• Psychotherapy
• Hypnotherapy
• Age Regression therapy
• Past Life Regression Therapy
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
• Bach Flower Therapy
• Self Hypnosis Training
especially if you experience Smocking, Giddiness and Orgasm.
In that order? I am interested in acquiring a smock.
@squirrelelite
I am not interested in saving anyone but myself and am willing to try everything to survive.
@Chris/ @Mephistopheles O'Brien
"That Homoeopathy is not mere faith or imagination,
is proved by its curing the diseases of infants and of
patients in delirium, as well as of the inferior animals.
The writer is personally aquainted with many intelligent
farmers who employ none other than Homeopathic medicines in the treatment of their sick animals." - Dr. E.H. Ruddock - Stepping Stone to Homeopathy - 1870.
“It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.”
― Mark Twain
It is rigid dogma that destroys truth; and, please notice, my emphasis is not on the dogma, but on the rigidity. When men say of any question, “This is all there is to be known or said of the subject; investigation ends here,” that is death. It may be that the mischief comes not from the thinker but for the use made of his thinking by late-comers. Aristotle, for example, gave us out scientific technique ... yet his logical propositions, his instruction in sound reasoning which was bequeathed to Europe, are valid only within the limited framework of formal logic, and, as used in Europe, they stultified the minds of whole generations of mediaeval Schoolmen. Aristotle invented science, but destroyed philosophy.
— Alfred North Whitehead
Hmmmm....in 140 years, Homeopathy is still bunk.
And the other two quotes both apply perfectly to the supporters of Homeopathy.
@Sunil Mittal - So if there's proof of homeopathy, could you please tell us:
- how would someone distinguish between two different 30C homeopathic remedies and a physically identical placebo, without having the labels to look at?
- what is the evidence that the underlying principles of homeopathy are more than wishful thinking?
- where are the high quality, randomized, double blinded, placebo controlled studies that show that homeopathy has any significant clinical benefit for any disease? In particular, please show where it has been shown to be effective against Ebola or, as Chris has asked, rabies?
Or are you going to pull out Bartlett's again?
"Dr." Ruddock should've been more careful with that crack about "inferior animals".
At least they're not dumb enough to believe in magic water.
Sunil Mitral, those quotes are not evidence. Let me be more clear:
Provide PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers who are not homeopaths to answer my question. Make sure they are less than fifty years old, not from 1870!
Ah, so the argument "it cannot be me imagining things, because it's curing living beings too dumb to imagine things" is as old as 1870.
*insert my usual rant about how "dumb" animals demonstrate expectations/learned behavior/conditioning every time it's time to take care of them, and that we certainly can imagine things for them - curing is in the eye of the healer*
@Dangerous Bacon
I would disagree. Animals may not naturally believe in magic water, but we can certainly habituate/teach/condition them to react to us administrating magic water to them.
Or we may believe in it for them. In this case, yeah, one can argue that we are the dumber ones.
@Sunil Mittal (393),
Thanks for the quotes.
I especially like the one from Mark Twain. Perhaps you should apply it to your evidence in support of homeopathy and see how well it holds up.
A simple question for you, Sunil Mittal:
What, in your opinion, constitutes the single most compelling piece of evidence that homeopathy is effective at treating a non-self-limiting injury or illness? Be specific.
I mean, you do have some--right?
I find it strange that proponents of homeopathy always claim that those who don't believe in it as either closed minded or ignorant. Some years ago I approached homeopathy with an open (though skeptical) mind, read a great deal about it, used remedies and even experimented with making remedies and nosodes myself. Nothing in my experience led me to even suspect that homeopathy does anything at all.
It's not surprising that clinical trials find little evidence that homeopathy is anything more than a placebo, and that a systematic review and metaanalysis (found in a list of 'positive' studies provided by a homeopath) concluded:
When it comes to the claim that animals respond to homeopathy, so it must be true, I usually refer the claimant to the Veterinary Voodoo Society, and in particular the letters to their journal, both pro and anti homeopathy, which I always enjoy perusing. The letters from vets who reported total failure of homeopathy to prevent parvovirus and to treat canine distemper are distressing to read, and leave me in no doubt that those who believe homeopathy works are fooling themselves.
I feel compelled to share a paper I came across on the Veterinary Voodoo website. Others may be familiar with Lionel Milgrom's groundbreaking paper, Patient–practitioner–remedy (PPR) entanglement. Part 3. Refining the quantum metaphor for homeopathy, but I wasn't. Who knew that homeopaths and their patients act like subatomic particles?
Surely a joke, but apparently not.
Aristotle invented science, but destroyed philosophy.
— Alfred North Whitehead
I suspect that Whitehead was praising Aristotle; Sunil Mittal seems to read it differently.
Who knew that homeopaths and their patients act like subatomic particles?
Have you already forgotten the saga of Bengston and therapeutic touch for rats, and the quantum entanglement, from two years ago?
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/06/05/reiki-versus-dogs-just-bei…
Eau deer. Speaking of philosophy, and the works of L.R. Milgrom:
at
http://www.badscience.net/2000/01/journal-club-conspicuous-by-its-absen…
HDB,
That hasn't happened yet in my timeline, thanks to all this goddamned quantum jumping. Those homeopaths had to bring quantum phenomena into the macro world, or was it the therapeutic touch people? Figuring out cause and effect is impossible now non-locality has taken hold and rendered RCTs meaningless. You knew where you were with the old Newtonian universe, now you can't move for uncollapsed eigenstates.
doug,
Good grief. I just love the way some people invent outlandish explanations for imaginary phenomena, whether it's water memory, macroscopic quantum entanglement or gut dysbiosis. Let's not waste time figuring out if something works, let's jump straight to how it works.
@ squirrelelite
I was musing on how Mark Twain would react being quoted by purveyors of pseudoscience.
From his biography, I know he liked scientific/technological progress (if his story about an American at King Arthur's court is anything to rely upon).
Hasn't Mark Twain published a humorous story about his visit to some German woo-users, or is my memory faulting me again?
OT
My RI webpage is currently displaying an add in (almost correct) French about "le traitement à la Mer Morte", "le (sic) merveille de la nature"
(Dead Sea treatment, Nature's wonder)
The add invites me to ask their physician about it. Why couldn't I ask mine?
Helianthus,
I believe you are thinking of a very funny piece he wrote about his experience with a Christian Scientist in Austria. He later compiled his essays on the subject into a book.
Plus ca change....
By the way, I don't think you mean "faulting"; "deceiving" or "fooling" would be better. I envy your grasp of English as a second language, so I hope you don't mind me pointing out a very rare slip.
Ask and you shall receive (alternatively : "Watch out what you wish for")
"The good news is that a small international team of experienced and heroic homeopaths have arrived in West Africa, and are currently on the ground working hard to examine patients, work out the “genus epidemicus,” and initiate clinical trials."
http://www.donotlink.com/framed?571422
I don't know what to think about that.
On one hand, you can't say any longer that homeopaths don't have the courage to put their theory to the test.
+ at least they are working in cooperation with teams using standard treatment.
+ the teams on site could use more people ; when they aren't strictly working on homeopathic treatment they can be of some help if only for managing symptoms while they are waiting for it to have an effect (yeah, we could lament that it would be better if they worked full time on non homeopathic affairs, but it's not nothing either)
On the other hand, doesn't looking for a treatment that work for a lot of people contradict the individualisation principle ? (not that I am complaining ; and it seems like there are different opinions among homeopath on that subject)
+ the clinical trials will have to be quite rigorous if you want to prove that the homeopathic part of the treatment made a difference.
@ Krebiozen
Thanks for both the compliment and the correction :-)
I don't mind at all.
@Helianthus, I agree about Mark Twain.
I wonder if the Dead Sea Treatment referred to this:
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/10/27/second-annual-dead-sea-rave-draws-…
If nothing else, it ought to cure you of lassitude!
Thanks for the link, Krebiozen.
I haven't read as much of Mark Twain as I would like, but I downloaded that one.
Also on the Ebola front, there is some welcome good news for Amber Vinson.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nurse-who-had-ebola-to-make-statement-…
Supportive care for Ebola patients includes lots of hydration -- I suppose homeopathy can serve a useful purpose there.