

Homeopathy Awareness Week - zkz
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=556

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GiraffeNecktie
I have had family members suffering badly for years under traditional (and
various kinds of alternative) care who suddenly improved dramatically (and so
far permanently) with homeopathy. I don't know why that is. It could be
explained by the natural tendency for the body to return to equilibrium, it
could be that they just found a placebo they could believe in, but the bottom
line is that they are now fully healthy, the treatment had no side effects and
it was relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, the harm from traditional
medicine was extraordinary.

~~~
CalmQuiet
Although I've never experienced any definite benefits from the occasional
homeopathic remedy whose drops a friend has urged on me, I know several "hard-
headed" (meat-eating, non-"granolas", rationalists) who swear by the
homeopathic treatment for poison ivy/oak.

It may just be placebo mind/body effects, but if anything so innocuous can
reduce symptoms for something so slow-to-resolve and aggravating, I'm up for
"getting foolish".

As long as it's basically distilled water "with a healing vibration," is _way_
cheaper than trip to doc, and cannot have side effects (see the zicam recall),
what's not to like? --just my 2¢

~~~
alexfarran
Well one side effect is that magic water displaces real medicine where it
really matters.

Such as:

The recent case of the child who died of eczema,

The recommendation of many homeopaths to avoid anti-malaria drugs,

And the campaign against anti-retroviral drugs in South Africa.

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grandalf
homeopathy is as much bunk as the placebo effect.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo>

Why would anyone choose to ingest powerful pharmaceuticals if they could
experience significant improvements simply by believing that homeopathy works?

Even when you take advil for a headache, some/all of the effect may just be
the placebo effect.

note: placebos are used by many modern doctors who write prescriptions for a
drug called "Obecalp" routinely to harness the placebo effect:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/health/27plac.html>

The human mind/body healing process is too complex to dismiss placebos
offhand.

~~~
philwelch
"Why would anyone choose to ingest powerful pharmaceuticals if they could
experience significant improvements simply by believing that homeopathy
works?"

Because if you want to perpetuate a widespread belief that homeopathy works,
you have to require an equally widespead ignorance of how real chemistry
works. Then, to have a modern civilization at all, you have to also have an
elite that does understand how real chemistry works.

I'm sure you can understand how much of a problem this is going to become.

~~~
grandalf
Well, the placebo effect is also due to real chemistry ... just not chemistry
that anyone understands enough to start designing actual patentable
pharmaceuticals to harness it (yet).

I would counter that just as many people naively take advil when they get a
headache. I think many doctors would say that OTC NSAID abuse is probably at
least as big a problem as people not getting rid of their ailments b/c they
took homeopathic remedies.

Most people don't have a clue what is really happening when they flip on a
light switch in their home ... so by your argument they should avoid
electricity, appliances, etc.

~~~
Tobias42
The difference is, the light switch switches on the light regardless if I
believe in light switches. Thus it is comparable with conventional medicine
rather than homeopathy.

And even though - just like with regular medicine - I don't have to know
exactly how it works for it to function, I also don't have to have false
beliefs how it works.

~~~
grandalf
Do you think mainstream pharmaceuticals are 100% effective? They are analogous
to a light switch that switches the light on/off about 60% of the time at
best.

The placebo effect works 10-20% of the time. So we're talking about something
that is almost as effective.

Most people taking advil OR those little homeopathic tablets know/understand
nothing about how they work.

In the case of homeopathy, you don't need to know why it works -- in fact,
knowing that it works via the placebo effect might undermine its effectiveness
:)

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richieb
I have case of homeopathic beer. It's $5 per bottle.. write me.... ;)

~~~
jjames
The theory surrounding homeopathy would suggest that would only be useful for
curing extreme and persistent drunkenness.

------
jah
Oh the irony.

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31388177/ns/health-cold_and_flu/>

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TheAmazingIdiot
And here I was thinking that there was some grain of truth in homeopathy.

If I recall correctly, the link was here, a few months ago, about "13 things
that Dont Make Sense". A scientist who was the scourge of homeopathy, had to
admit that there was _something_.

Then there's water remembering when it freezes. Occasionally, distilled water
will not freeze until a bit lower than 0c. It'll be around -2 to -4c before it
freezes. Now, if we add a small amount of water, that is also distilled, but
shown to freeze at 0c, all the water will freeze no lower than 0c. You must
boil the water rigorously before it can retain the possibility of freezing
below 0c.

Who knows how it happens. Quantum memory, perhaps? But there is something.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
Aside the self-response and copy-pasta, here is the snippet of text and in
where I got this from.

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-
that-do-not-make-sense.html?full=true)

_______________________ MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's
University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its
claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was
unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still
have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all
that homeopathy was bunkum.

In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects
of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in
inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under
attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study,
replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so
dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked
just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but
she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.

So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things
like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting
this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of
dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on
the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still
imbued with the properties of the remedy.

You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no
homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-
controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol
53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her
paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage
others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real,
she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and
chemistry.

~~~
scott_s
No one has replicated her results. Fourth paragraph from top of the section:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#Subsequent_researc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#Subsequent_research)

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
Hmm. Weird.

I do remember that the WBC/histamine test and water test were different, but I
thought the WBC test was shown to have some kind of an effect.

And then, 20/20 goes and debunks the water memory. Now, how trustworthy is
20/20? And it gets deeper and deeper with one side saying nay and other saying
yea.

