Docs to WHO: publicly condemn homeopathy for dangerous diseases
A coalition of young doctors and medical researchers have written an open letter to the World Health Organization asking it to publicly condemn the use of pseudoscientific homeopathic remedies for the treatment of serious diseases, especially in the developing world:
The letter:Homeopathy urgently condemned for serious diseases# Explains that medics working with the most rural and impoverished people of the world already struggle to deliver the medical help that is needed. The promotion of homeopathy for serious diseases puts lives at risk.
# Lists some of the examples of recent and planned developments of homeopathic clinics offering treatment for these five conditions.
# Asks the WHO to make clear that homeopathy cannot prevent or treat these five conditions.
Leading experts in malaria, HIV and other serious diseases affecting the developing world are supporting the young medics' and researchers' call for the WHO to take action.
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As it happens, there are large areas of the world that could really use homeopathic remedies.
However, that's just because those remedies are nothing but pure water, which is otherwise in short supply.
Was in the pub last weekend where a lady who is fighting breast cancer was holding forth on how Homeopathy had really helped her.
She was a nice lady, and I realised that you can't say placebo to people who have been so medicined, but suffering god woman, you have no hair and are about half your previous weight.
Stuff the mumbo jumbo, and say thanks to Radio and Chemo therapies.
I have no problem with people believing any old shit they want but I do have a problem when this crap is being paid for on the NHS!
its up to individuals to decide what they put, or don't put into their bodies, an din my opinion homeopathy is not the best option for people who lack proper sanitation, such as in third world countries but @ #2 if homeopathic 'placebos' help and cost less or nothing, shouldn't we use them? rather then spending a life's savings on the attempt to extend that life only for a short while and enduring a lot of pain along the way.
In Africa, they think that raping a virgin will cure HIV. Since all the virgins are getting all raped, they need to keep turning to younger and younger girls.
Does that count as homeopathy, or just inhumanly messed up?
This is good, but we can do better.
Let us condemn ALL snake oil for ALL ailments.
#3: It's up to individuals to decide. It's up to society to give them the best possible information to base that decision upon. The topic here is "dangerous diseases", where placebo effect really is NOT an appropriate approach, and that message should be made clear. If you want to protect the placebo effect, you could just state emphatically that homeopathics have been definitively shown not to work for these diseases... but frankly, I consider homeopathics in particular to be over the line into dangerous scam and want to see them shot down hard.
I do grant the point about pure water... but if that's the goal, give 'em pure water. It's cheaper and it doesn't foster magical thinking.
Our mind sometimes plays funny tricks to us, am I the only one who read "Doctor WHO publicly condemn... "?
anything can foster 'magical thinking' in people who are not educated or who are mis-educated, I agree that education is key here, but education about all choices not just traditional medicine or just homeopathy.
homeopathy is not a scam, it is a mindset, people who practice it belive that a healthy mind leads to a healthy body, some times this works and sometimes not, just like in traditional medicine. yes it can be dangerous if you do it wrong, but so is surgury if not performed by a surgon.
People like the lady which #2 mentions tend to be sick, really sick. Go on chemo. Feel sicker. Feel sicker and sicker and think it's all over. This is a part of how chemo works. Then you start getting better.
The funny thing is that people often turn to voodoo therapy (like homeopathy) when they feel the WORST. What happens after the worst part?
Well, you start feeling better.
So you take the magic crystal voodoostick homeopathy with echinacea at the point you feel the worst, and voila, you start feeling better.
The problem is that some of these things HAVE been tested in a proper manner and shown to be as effective as doing nothing. Placebo is in some cases better than doing nothing (not in all cases, though, AIDS is an example)
Giving people hope in something that has not not been proven to work, but has in fact been shown NOT to work at all in those areas where it has been tested is seriously wrong.
And if any of you guys are scientific types, you should read the "official scientific" journals published by the homeopaths. Donald Duck has better methodology. They just make shit up, say it's a "theory" (misuding the term) and then take it as fact. And NOONE should criticize it or point out flaws "it just doesn't work like regular western science"..... ohhhh you mean it can't be shown to work, and the statistics of whether people get better or not have no relationship to whether it works or not...? ok...
arrrggghhhhhhh (I have had these discussions with real, practising homeopaths. Seriously deluded but mean well. That's just not enough)
Doctor Who?
Homeopathy for cancer? Hey, if that's your thing, go for it. Cancer isn't contagious, so if you want to play it your way, knock yourself out.
Homeopathy for a cold? Okay...just don't be offended when I sit over here on the other side of the room so I don't catch it while you screw around trying to hurry up the process of what nature will do anyway.
Homeopathy for scary shit that you can transmit to other people? Only if you want to lock yourself in a cement building and we'll fling your food over the wall to you -- and don't be offended if I think you're a selfish bastard for refusing to consider something that is, oh, I don't know...proven to work by something other than smoke and mirrors. Your right to not put meds in your body does NOT overrule everybody else's right to not get whatever scary shit you have.
Good. We can jettison the quacks, and start using real science to determine which other bits of folk medicine work, and why they work. I mean, I know how most of my supplements work, but there are others that haven't had much testing. I'd like to know if they work or not before wasting money on them.
It's not about freedom of belief when they are charging fortunes for a story about water and virtual molecules. Like Scientology, it's a monetized fraud.
This is simply one step to support the "Codex Alimentarius" allegedly becoming a Law in December of this year.
More People are killed by 'Doctors' and Pharmaceutical Drugs every year than are killed by Guns. Excluding only those killed by Law Enforcement.
I haven't been able to find evidence of even one death attributed to Homeopathies.
Seeing as how almost all pharmaceutical and chemical companies are controlled by the same individuals who are in the process of creating their Forth Reich here in the United States, I find the letter by these alleged doctors to be highly suspicious.
As the wording was "young doctors" also goes to show these are the new breed of doctor, living off the monies provided by those same pharmaceutical and chemical companies.
For those who lack any real knowledge of homeopathy or the natural medicines labeled under this heading and/or who support the United Nations Program, (Agenda 21), to reduce the global population to under 500,000,000 in the next few years, I say "Get Real".
Why do you think you will be one of those who survive the Death Camps?
What is it with fruitbats and excessive use of capital letters? And inappropriate quote-marks? Is it related to grocers' s'yndrome? Is it the secret ingredient in Dr Bronner's soap?
Quzhai, the people that have "real knowledge" of homeopathy are likely the same people that support a massive reduction in the world's population. They hope to achieve it by pushing homeopathic remedies for serious illnesses. It's all part of the Illuminatus Homeopathicus.
Cory, What do YOU "mean?" All-One or None!
I'm not into homeopathic treatments, and I'm all for sending the hard drugs to treat tough diseases, but it's interesting to see the hostile reactions to homeopathy here.
Some scientists think their methods are so holy, and they protect their turf with the same blind fervor as religious fundamentalists. But when they can't explain why some treatments don't work and why placebos do work, they throw up their hands. The honest ones will admit there are mental realms they can't enter.
I thought science said that we're all made of pure energy. Well, in my experience, mind can affect energy. Just because you can't measure it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I always liked the story of the homeopathic patient who forgot to take his medicine and therefore died of an overdose.
Prove to me that traditional medicine is not also a placebo.
Traditional medicine (which, in a strict sense, would mean shamanism, but let's not go there) is quite simply the preferred method nowadays, and therefore people tend to have faith in these practises before others.
There were times when you were required to pray a lot and medical practisioners would attach leeches to various parts of your body to get the evil out.
They too, were regarded as specialists and experts in their field, not to be called into doubt.
Yes, lotsa people died. As they do today.
Maybe.
Maybe people, ultimately, heal themselves. Or is that a dangerous thing to say in this day and age, what, with the pharmaceutical industry being all that powerfull?!
Well I'll say it anyway.
Maybe it's all a freaking placebo in the end. And that all it takes to be healed, is a desire and faith.
@Skye, 15:
The reason we lash out against it is that is has been seriously investigated, and given more than a fair chance to prove its worth. The conclusions were clear; it's no better than a placebo.
In itself, that's not that bad: There are many "remedies" with no real curative power in the world. What makes it a problem is that some people make rather a lot of money on convincing people to buy their remedies instead of getting proper treatment, thus costing the patients both money and health. My respect for people exploiting sick people for profit is quite low.
Oh, and we can measure their claims. Do people feel better (compared to placebo)? Do more of them get cured? If not, why bother and why pay?
Skye: It seems clear you don't understand what science is.
The most basic definition is that science is a system of acquiring knowledge that uses observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena. The knowledge that is gained from said observation and experimentation is then documented, along with the methods used to observe and record the phenomena. The scientist then invites others to try to find errors in their experiment or conclusions by trying to reproduce their results or find errors in their process.
In regards to homeopathy, what scientists have tried to do is to reproduce the results that homeopaths have claimed to have as a result of their "treatments", the vast majority of which ending with the conclusion that homeopathy performs no better than placebo and much worse than other, scientifically proven methods.
Lastly, I would like to point people towards an explanation of homeopathy done by the inimitable James Randi:
http://www.videosift.com/video/James-Randi-explains-Homeopathy
This is the same WHO who recently celebrated there 17th anniversary of taking homosexuality of their list of mental illnesses? That's 17 years ago.. Yes, they are who we should be trusting...
And most peole who rag on alternative treatments have simply been taught to think that way since birth, and have had little or no personal experience with them. Bound in the suffocation of their own irrelevent beliefs..
Marcel,
Like your comment
"Maybe it's all a freaking placebo in the end. And that all it takes to be healed, is a desire and faith."
I would add that perhaps a dose of common sense, a small amount of intelligence and a lot of personal responsibility could also make a difference in any individual's health.
Poisoned Food, (both intentional and accidental), is the primary culprit for many illnesses and excesses in alcohol, caffeinated drinks, sugar foods and smoking, just to name a few substances humans ingest to create their personal illnesses.
But the same corporations providing 80% of packaged foods are also owned/controlled through interlocking directorates by those same P & C companies mentioned earlier on this thread.
Q
Social networks are the desease. What's an acquaintance, who's your friend, how many lovers, intense? Flatten the nation why don't we, then Google Friends.
The only homeopathy I believe in is the action of vermouth during the creation of my martinis.
You know what they call "alternative medicine" when it actually works?...
"Medicine."
@Marcel "Prove to me that traditional medicine is not also a placebo."
Penicillin was first investigated because of its apparent anti-bacterial properties that were observed in a lab, in a petri dish. Given that said petri dish isn't connected to a mind, can this possibly be connected to a placebo effect? Absolutely not.
Many of the major advances in modern medicine are taken from an increased knowledge of how certain chemicals react and interact at the cellular level. This is then developed into a system that can be used as a treatment; Penicillin was seen to be good as an antibiotic in the lab, it was developed as a treatment for infections in humans, there was little surprise that it worked.
@#12 Quzhai "I haven't been able to find evidence of even one death attributed to Homeopathies."
That's strange, because I found lots.
http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html
To me, that there are people, some of whom are probably otherwise intelligent, defending homeopathy just tells me that our education system fails a lot of people in very depressing ways. You shouldn't be allowed to graduate high school without being able to explain how and why the scientific method works. There should also be a required course focused solely on logical fallacies.
So yes, the absolute most basic clinical testing of medicines is double blind comparisons with placebos.
And using the word "energy" for something that isn't measured in joules should be met with a small electric shock.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuStsFW4EmQ
moriarty,
That's a might lofty horse you are riding.
I think many/most/all educated people cannot explain the placebo effect, but smart doctors are quite happy to let you have the wool over your eyes if it works to alleviate your fear or pain.
I think you misunderstand me. I'm not "anti-placebo effect" or something. Some of the various fallacies at work are saying that because the placebo effect often has a measurable effect (and/or that "doctors used to do crazy stuff"), that actual medicine is also just a placebo effect, that doctors don't know what they're talking about and modern medicine is just a scam, etc.
"Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis." --- Jack Handy
Moriarty, i may have misunderstood you. I mean to say that leaving the wool over peoples eye's is actually a good course most of the time.
If you are a medical professional, then my theory wouldn't apply, but if a friend of mine is happy with his/her homeopathic approach he/she doesn't need my derision. Unless I can explain why I am right and they are wrong, and IN SO DOING offer a better answer to alleviate their pain or fear.
You might give people better facts, but IMHO, better facts are not always better answers.
"These 5 diseases?"
Newsflash --- homeopathy can't cure or treat any disease. Isn't that easier to say? By saying that it doesn't cure HIV, doesn't that imply that it cures SOMETHING, which is a giant lie?
BTW, I couldn't agree more with commenter #1.
"You might give people better facts, but IMHO, better facts are not always better answers."
Bokonon bless you.
trippcook - it definitely implies that if you want for it to, but your lie about the equivalency of the two tatements (one made by the authors, the other made by you from whole cloth) is just as giant as the giant lie you purport to point out.
You need better techniques, and less coffee?
@ Tripcook #31:
Not true. Homeopathy can be an effective treatment for psychosomatic ailments. In sufficient quantities it may also be used to cure dehydration.
why hasn't homeopathy died out? The practitioners and proponents should all be long gone if they truly relied on it. Think they secretly cheat when THEY are sick?
"why hasn't homeopathy died out?"
Because the practitioners reproduce faster than they die?
@Marcel
I could quite easily prove to you that traditional medicine is not a placebo. Virtually all regulated medicines in the western world undergo double blind testing against a placebo to test their effectiveness. The results are evaluated statistically to see whether the effect of the drug is more or less than that of a placebo. If the drug isn't up to scratch we don't use it.
I assume you're an adult and as such are responsible for your own beliefs, as such I also assume that you're very ignorant and don't have much of a thirst for knowledge. This is shown by the fact that you make allegations like this without bothering at all to find the answer yourself. The most cursory search of the internet or the most basic conversation with anyone who has ever studied science could tell you that "yes, traditional medicine is more effective than a placebo".
@IWOOD
re your martini comment, I love it. Let me guess, you wave the open bottle of vermouth in the vicinity of the shaker, right? :)
12: "I haven't been able to find evidence of even one death attributed to Homeopathies."
Actually, this is true in the strictest sense- people who die while on homeopathic 'remedies' die because of some outside infection or disease, not because of anything fatal or toxic in the homeopathy itself. There isn't anything at all in a homeopathic preparation. The danger isn't in the homeopathy itself, but in the rejection of treatments that actually work which tends to come along with a homeopathic 'treatment'.
Water has been on this planet almost since the beginning.
Every possible thing on Earth started in or has fallen into the oceans at one point or another - innumerable times.
Ocean, evaporation, rain, rivers, ocean, ad infinitum.
All the stuff on Earth has already "imprinted" all the water on Earth with every possible thing, good and bad.
Thus all water on Earth (even tap water) is, according to Homeopathy, already a cure for everything, including AIDS, owls, measles, dining room chairs, toilet paper, radium, ipods, spinach, wombats, frat boys and mulch.
@#9/AlanJCastonguay: Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorin%27_the_Tardis
Homeopathy is based, ultimately, on the magical Law of Contagion. As such, it doesn't actually do anything at all. Homeopathy will give you the same suite of results that Christian Science will; things that you might recover from naturally, you might recover from. Things that you can't recover from naturally... kill you.
Even if we grant the (IMO, silly) notion that homeopathy is perfectly fine since it's a placebo, one must admit that "infant diarrhoea" (one of the diseases listed in the report) is obviously not the sort of thing that might respond well to placebo (infants, like pets, gain no benefit from placebo whatsoever, because they don't have the "medicine makes me feel better" expectation). Homeopathy will merely give the parents hope... right up until the baby dies. Good job, homeopaths!
My family doctor told me the vast majority of illnesses are cured by the body regardless of treatment. He said in cases where treatments actually do cure illness, they can also compromise the body's ability to function optimally in the future by disrupting the normal course of the body's healing process. He said the hardest thing about being a doctor was telling people "take this pill, and you will feel better after a few days" knowing that in the best case the pill was simply a fetish object that helped them maintain the best attitude for healing.
#Faustus:
You mean that I should align with the body of evidence displayed by society's ruling convictions?!
It is prevalent by nature of its ruling, not because of its effectiveness. Perception follows conviction.
If we were living in the Middle Ages, you'd be the one convincing me that bloodletting was a good cure against anaemia.
@ Cory, #13
I have always suspected Dr Bronner of shenanigans; I know of no one ever in the history of soap who has dared to read the entire label. It's 100% pure, undiluted crazy.
@Marcel, Skye, etc. (#15, 17)
Evidence-based medicine is similar to democracy; it is the single worst system of medicine barring all others. There is a huge gap between the ideals of health and the practical achievements of your local hospital, but the hospital can at least point to a solid foundation of logic.
And that, I think, is the whole reason we have to continually beat back the homeopaths with a big stick. Statistical analysis is both difficult and boring, but it is the only method we have for separating what is real from what is simply wishful thinking.
To pre-rebut any debate...
1) Lies, damn lies, and statistics:
Sure, I too can show you any number of ways you can lie with numbers. But you will have a harder time lying to me, because I know what the process is and I can check your work.
There are review boards, government agencies, and tenured professors who exist to refute bad numbers. They are exponentially harder to lie to than I am, and their job is to verify results. Modern medicine works because we have shown so using statistics - no lie.
2) The Placebo Effect:
Yes, there is a major component to recovery that lies outside of modern medicine. The variation between patients is a bugaboo that refuses to go away, but it is ignored because the doctor can't do much about that variation. The doctor is controlling the factors that he understands, and the rest is up to the patient.
So: go and pray, confess your sins, open your chakras, cleanse your aura, and try homeopathy if you like. Do whatever makes your mind peaceful and receptive to healing; just do it with your doctor's knowledge and consent. And take your medicine.
@Marcel, #48
Straw Man. Modern medicine has a foundation in statistical analysis of observable and measurable symptoms. Leeches and bloodletting were barbaric practices of a superstitious people. They are separate and distinct, not merely a difference in cultural norms.
Quack, I say, quack.
People serious about healing look at every avenue available to them. Most of our 'western medical cures' in fact have roots in herbal/homeopathic remedies dating back since..well, forever.
Where do you -think- medicine comes from? It's not all cooked up in laboratories by robots (some of it is, but i digress)
Willow bark for aspirin, various rain forest plants, aloe, penicilin. These are all natural cures derived from looking at the homeopathic methods of a local culture, and distilling the process into easily obtainable pills and liquids.
That said, the majority of the world uses western medicine because they produce results. Can homeopathy take an organ out of someone and put it into another person? No.
I find that western doctors are -far- more open minded when it comes to medicine than homeopathic practitioners. They use what works, WITHOUT bias to what it is, where it comes from. Not only that, but western doctors have a much more rigorous and strenuous qualifications. These guys spend up to EIGHT YEARS, just to be apprentice doctors. I haven't heard of any homeopaths without equivalent length of training, without being formally medically trained.
If you want to see -proof- of the western method over homeopathy, look at developing Asian countries. China, Japan and India have a long and illustrious history of homeopathy, with China still maintaining "Eastern medicine" hospitals for those interested in going. Often doctors are well versed in both traditional and western medicine and have cures ready in each version. But those practitioners wouldn't be so delusional to tell you to goto an eastern hospital for heart surgery.
Much of the antipathy towards western medicine comes from people 'oppressed' by the social structures and ' the man' of the associated culture. If it makes you feel any better, western medicine has a great deal of it's origins in arabic texts- part of the reason you don't see a lot of middle eastern 'snake oil' is because they have the same medical traditions we do.
@4 Lobster: Yes, the rape of anyone is pretty messed up, and "inhumanly messed up" is probably an appropriate label for child rape occurring as a result of the virgin rape cure myth.
However, that myth is certainly not restricted to Africa, and appears to occur worldwide wherever a population living in poverty is beset by a deadly sexually transmitted disease. (Note that the myth appears to have its origins in Renaissance Europe in the context of syphillis).
You can find discussion of this in the Lancet here, here and and here (probably requires a subscription or academic access).
There's a publicly accessible article here.
It may have more prevalence in South Africa than elsewhere (although this is debated), but it is certainly not a belief held by the majority of the population of that country, or the rest of the continent.
Sweeping statements like:
"In Africa, they think that raping a virgin will cure HIV. Since all the virgins are getting all raped, they need to keep turning to younger and younger girls."
suggest that you need to examine both your prejudices and your ability to collect factual information.
On the other side of the coin, a great many doctors will be happy to prescribe whatever the pharm-corps have bribed them to give you, whether or not it's in your best interest.
Oh, and naturopathy & homeopathy are also western in origin.
Homeopathy aside, anyone who writes about pharmaceuticals in such glowing terms has clearly never worked in health care. They work for some people. Sometimes.
Testing of new drugs is paid for by the pharmaceutical companies. Which researchers and labs are going to get those contracts? The ones who demonstrate that the new years-and-millions-in-the-making drug doesn't actually do anything? Or worse, is harmful? Those researches will find themselves exploring new sources of income.
After the drug is on the market, the pharmaceutical company will find physicians willing to travel and spout talking points to other physicians in return for more money than they can make in actual practice. At the same time, company reps will clandestinely bribe doctors with meals and other perks to prescribe their new wonder drug.
A significant number of newish drugs are either ineffective or outright dangerous. To understand the recall process, please view Fight Club. Some notable drug debacles in the making: statins do not increase life expectancy in older people, merely guaranteeing death by cancer or Alzheimer's rather than heart attack; numerous anti-depressants exacerbate long-term depression and increase suicidal ideation; various ADD drugs give a short-term benefit with a long-term exacerbation of symptoms.
Pharmaceuticals are not magic. They are developed with the intent of maximizing profit and complete disregard for patient health except as it prolongs the cash cow.
I just can't figure out why, when our life expectancy in the US has, over the last 100 years, increased from 48 to 80, some people think there's something fundamentally wrong with the foundations of our medical science.
Tarlss, you have homeopathy confused with herbal.
Homeopathy is "form of alternative medicine that treats patients with heavily diluted preparations that are thought to cause effects similar to the symptoms presented." Yeah, that's Wiki, but it puts it pretty simply.
Herbal medicine is the use of plants (usually dried bits of roots, stems, leaves, flowers, or a tincture thereof) to heal illness.
They're not the same thing. Herbals actually survive scientific scrutiny once in a while -- like your white willow for aspirin example. (White willow kicks ass on a headache way better than Tylenol ever thought about.)
Homeopathy should not be confused with natural medicine or medications derived from natural sources. For example, you have a high fever and the homeopathic approach is to supply a diluted substance that will cause the same symptom, a high fever; not a cure. You can take a natural product such as aspirin that reduces the inflammation that causes a high fever.
#55 pretty much nailed it.
I had an uncle w/ cancer who tried to fight it via "alternative" means. Had.
I just can't figure out why, when our life expectancy in the US has, over the last 100 years, increased from 48 to 80, some people think there's something fundamentally wrong with the foundations of our medical science.
Because our increase in life expectancy is almost completely due to access to clean water and toilets, not medication. The biggest health problem in the developed world is the delusion that you can be fixed. Most medicines treat symptoms. Some of the ones that 'cure' you, like chemotherapy, frequently make you extremely ill and only prolong your half-life for a few years. Antibiotics are grossly over-prescribed and creating resistant organisms for which there may be no cure. And all of them have side effects which can decrease the quality of life.
Eat well, get some exercise and wash your hands and you have a high probability of living past 80 in good health.
I worked in health care for twenty years. People in the health care business tend to avoid drugs, because we've seen the pile-up at the end. Of course, recreational drugs are a calculated and highly entertaining risk.
My stance on homeopathy: if it is so easy for water to imprint on the diluted substance, is there anything stopping the water from imprinting on everything else it comes in contact with?
I was a little surprised at the mention of the Codex Alimentarius, although I think it should probably be getting a little more press than it actually is, considering that the US is in the process of "harmonizing" its law to bring it in line with the WTO.
Under DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994), vitamin and mineral supplements are classified as food and therefore are not required to be pre-approved by the FDA before going on the market.
Codex Alimentarius (and so will any law passed to modify DSHEA), on the other hand, classifies supplements as toxins, and supplies safe limits extrapolated from animal testing (from the lowest dose found to have a measurable change to the LD-50 dose). The other difference between the two is that Codex is structured so that only substances included on the list are allowed and all others forbidden. The list currently excludes many popular products like different forms of vitamin E, calcium, vitamin C, CoQ-10 enzyme, glucosamine and chondroitin as well as setting maximum and allowable limits on those nutrients that are on the list.
This would all be purely academic if it weren't beign used by the WTO as a standard for resolving trade disputes. If two countries file a dispute claim with the WTO and one country is compliant with Codex Alimentarius and the other is no, the compliant country automatically wins the dispute, regardless of the merits.
The 'deadline' for ratification in order to be in compliance is December 31st, 2009. Unfortunately, most of the coverage of this is wrapped up in conspiracy sites, but I suspect that there will be quite a few people unhappy about the sudden change or unavailability of the supplements they were used to taking.
This should be interesting... Then again, a whole lot can change between now and the end of the year.
Clean water, toilets, washing your hands, etc. all operate on the germ theory of disease, while homeopathy and a lot of other junk medicine don't. I disagree with your assertion that medicine is basically useless, but I think we can both agree that homeopathy is total crap.
@59 JimBuck:
I had a grandfather w/ cancer who tried to fight it via medical means - he died too.
Cancer isn't your best example of why homeopathy doesn't work - lots of people die even WITH chemo and radiation. Cancer is nasty stuff.
One of the great difficulties of modern medicine is its overreliance on a rationalist approach to the understanding of disease and its treatment, and the exclusion of empirical, evidence based data showing effectiveness in CAM treatments. Some CAM therapies really do work. There is evidence to support it. Many do not. What is most important is whether one can effectively treat an illness, not whether one can explain why the treatment works. Even the reason for aspirin's effectiveness was not understood until relatively recently. I suspect that we do not understand all there is to know about the physics and biology of living organisms.
The trouble is that, especially with fatal diseases, the case reporting method favored among practitioners and patients will not report all the cases of CAM treatments that ended with the patients' death. There's none of them around to argue it *didn't* work. The NIH has a small amount of funding available for double-blind placebo controlled research, but it's very expensive and so not much is done. Also, the diagnostic categories of some CAM systems (TCM, homeopathy) are different from Scientific medical disease concepts. So a trial that uses one homeopathic or TCM treatment for a population of patients all diagnosed with the same illness might not be the correct treatment that would be applied by a practitioner. It's fair to say that many existing negative outcome studies were not well designed for this reason. Perhaps a subgroup of patients for whom the therapy tested was correct was actually effectively treated. However, if the power of the study is too low, we wouldn't know. There are fascinating in vitro and animal studies that suggest further, correctly designed studies in humans are warranted. One interesting one a few years back showed that Mast cells released histamine in response to homeopathic doses of a certain substance but not in response to the control. Animals have been shown to respond to specific acupuncture treatments. Where is the placebo effect?
While any group of physicians can get together and say what they like, and be listened to with far more belief than a group of CAM practitioners who have direct experience, even valid research, and are defending their therapeutic approaches, it isn't scientifically or medically valid to just dismiss all homeopathy without sufficient evidence for each treatment. I could mention that I'm a medical student and have spoken with medical professors and physicians who have found certain homeopathic and acupuncture treatments to be effective. But that's also just as much an invalid means of making my case. The problems of health care access are far more important targets to fight deadly disease than making a generalizing statement on the need to publicly condemn homeopathy.
I'm pretty over western doctors and their holier-than-thou attitudes, beating down all alternatives with a big shiny drug-company-paid-for stick. I think the universities need to be more encouraging in the exploration of alternative therapies. Maybe homeopathy is a bad example but I see all alternative medicines being painted with the same brush. BAD. And I find the western model of using drugs that replace symptoms of the disease with slightly-better/different symptoms of the drug a pretty stupid way of doing things especially when it comes to anti-psychotics and other mood-stabilizers
Also will western medicine be blamed for a fall in life expectancy due to obesity, etc? Or will that be blamed on more people trying alternative medicine? Probably.
@64: You do realize that for homeopathy to be true, everything we know about biology, chemistry, even physics would need to be false? This isn't like naturopathy or even acupuncture which hypothetically could be exploiting previously-unknown properties of human physiology; if homeopathy were true, water would need to have a "memory" of substances it once touched but no longer has any molecules of. Yes, more radical concepts have been accepted by science over the years, but only after rigorous study and extremely solid experimental results. Homeopathy can't even produce clinical results above the level of placebo, never mind the dramatic effects it should have on organic chemistry and other non-medical fields. In the end, homeopathy is just sympathetic magic wrapped up in pseudoscientific language; you might as well pray to be touched by His Noodly Appendage.
You simply don't get to have an "opinion" about this. These are not "placebos," with cute neutral quote-marks around them, they're just water in little bottles. Whether the people putting the water in the bottles believe in what they're doing, or mean well somehow, is irrelevant to whether the water cures diseases.
"Well I'm sure they work for some people" is not an opinion, it's a polite attempt to segue to some other topic during a dinner party.
This is not what the word homeopathy means.
Homeopathy is not Eastern medicine.
If this specific tradition, invented by this specific Western doctor in the 18th century, is not what you mean when you say "homeopathy," then you are using the wrong word.
Also will western medicine be blamed for a fall in life expectancy due to obesity, etc?
No, that would be the meat-and-dairy industry.
And the internet, the only couch potato drug more addictive than television.
Can some of the people throwing out accusations of bribery by pharmaceutical companies please provide evidence or citations to back up their claims?
There's a big gap between marketing and bribery. As long as the pharmaceutical industry operates on a for-profit basis, there are going to be salespeople. It's not in the doctor's best interest to harm his patients.
Anti-psychotics are also quite a bit more effective than some here would make them out to be. Although it might be true that they're overprescribed (an ENTIRELY different issue), the number of people who are institutionalized has dropped significantly in the past 50 years, to the point where there are very few mental hospitals remaining in operation.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/InPlace_Nations.html
Can some of the people throwing out accusations of bribery by pharmaceutical companies please provide evidence or citations to back up their claims?
Irrelevant. Paying for research to get your own product approved is fundamentally unethical.
the number of people who are institutionalized has dropped significantly in the past 50 years, to the point where there are very few mental hospitals remaining in operation.
That's because they were closed in the 70s and 80s and the former patients now live on the street instead of receiving care.
The fact that some drug companies have been busted for the kinds of practices you point out is proof that there is a system in place to stop said abuse.
Let's not forget that companies that market alternative treatments also exist solely to make money, except they don't have any such regulatory system in place.
One last point: there's a fine line between healthy skepticism and baseless conspiracy theories. I don't see how it's "irrelevant" to ask for evidence of foul play by Big Pharma when other people are throwing around accusations that all doctors are on the take and drug companies are nothing but money-hungry death factories.
I don't see how it's "irrelevant" to ask for evidence of foul play by Big Pharma when other people are throwing around accusations that all doctors are on the take and drug companies are nothing but money-hungry death factories.
Paying the salaries of people who are researching a product from which you will make money and which might harm the public? I think that's ethically non-negotiable. I find it shocking that it's not illegal.
I'm what you might classify as "dying of cancer." When I was diagnosed I jumped into chemo for a year and spent a good portion of that time secretly begging for death, or at least for an end to the suffering. I also jumped into homeopathy because a super-brainy science nerd friend of mine is really, really making a life out of it. I was shocked and amused about how irrational so many things about homeopathy were explained to me.
Things like:
(a) homeopaths don't report their findings in journals for the benefit of all for fear of retribution
(b) Some guy in Asia was totally cured of the same cancer I have.
(c) None of this is repeatable, provable, and there are no control groups of any kind. Everything is anecdotal, which is apparently just fine.
(d) Faith-healing is totally legit, too.
I finally was able to prove it was all bunk by running a little test of my own: while on the chemo, I also took treatment via homeopathic remedies. I ended up in remission after a year, and she took total credit for everything. I asked, "how can you separate the two? how do you know it wasn't the chemo?" She replied that she just knew. Obviously. All that western chemo crap just got in the way.
Wrong answer. I never actually took anything she gave me. All secretive on my part. But I just wanted to see how she would treat the outcome. What it comes down to is belief, and belief only. The nice term for this is "pseudo-science," but the more realistic term is "charlatanism."
Do I think the medical world is a racket? Yes. Do I think my treatment is a devil's bargain? Yes. Do I like the people who develop cancer drugs only when it looks profitable? No. But clearly the chemo saved my life.
And not anything else.
If there were no regulations to obey, you can bet your ass that pharmaceuticals wouldn't bother with researching/proving their drugs work. That way they could really maximise their profits - of course that way a lot of people would end up dead. We have strict regulations about judging efficacy and safety of medicines -> expensive clinical trials -> pressure to distort research findings and suppress negative trial results. However peer-review and meta-analysis of published drug trials are catching more of the cheats and IMHO it's better than having no regulation at all.
The supplements/Homeopathy industry do not have to pass such rigourous tests, mostly because their products do squat and they know it. And do not be in any doubt, the mark-up on homeopathic remedies is far greater than for any 'allopathic drug', sugar and water are cheaper than aspirin last time I checked.
Of course, ideally all medical research would be 'open-sourced', the profit motive would be removed and we would all fart rainbows happily ever after.
What it comes down to is belief, and belief only. The nice term for this is "pseudo-science,"
The nice term is "faith". It helps many people stay calm in a world they do not understand.
also, glad you're here.
"Paying the salaries of people who are researching a product from which you will make money and which might harm the public? I think that's ethically non-negotiable. I find it shocking that it's not illegal."
Which is kind of fair. Although I imagine it's not illegal for the simple reason that very little research would get done if Pharmaceutical companies weren't paying for it.
Still, I agree, it's a fundamentally broken system. But at least the research is being done. Yes there's bias in what's published, and there's bias in what they choose to research in the first place. Yet it's there, to be debated, and pored over, and ripped apart when necessary.
The issue (or one of the issues) with homeopathy, is there's no research at all. There's no evidence, illicitly funded or otherwise, that stands up to more than a cursory examination. Indeed, there's a fair bit of evidence that it's no more effective than placebo.
Which is fine though somewhat dishonest, when you're handing out bottles of water to people with self limiting illnesses. The issue comes though when you're giving little bottles of water to people who have something that will kill them. Something that can be treated, definitely, with no question, whoever the hell payed for the research, with regular medication. That, to me, is considerably more shocking, surely?
I'm as much a critic of homeopathy as anybody, but it stretches believability to imagine that somebody facing death would bother to pay a quack for snake oil and throw it away just to prove a point anonymously on the internet later. When the stakes are that high, one would think you'd go "I'm paying for it, might as well take it," or else not bother with the charade in the first place.
If homeopathy is an effective means of medical intervention, then why is there no homeopathic birth control?
Really, it ought to be called "alternative (to) medicine."
There really is no debate about whether modern western medicine is a flawed system; after all, human beings are still a vital part of the operation, so we can expect a broad range of bad behavior throughout.
The difference, however, is that western medicine is based on observable facts. Homeopathy is not.
Any alternative medicine willing to submit to clinical trials should no longer be considered alternative.
Finally, it is a big step in the right direction if the results of all clinical trials are made public, and not just the successful trials.
Tarlss at #51 clearly has homeopathy confused with herbal medicine. To repeat what #69 has said, using natural cures like willow bark, Chinese herbs, etc. is not homeopathy. Homeopathy is something very specific, a technique developed by Samuel Hahnemann that involves diluting harmful substances to such an extreme degree --- like one part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 --- that it is likely that not a single molecule of the substance is likely to remain.
This confusion, I think is part of a larger problem that allows homeopathy to continue to thrive because people have it mentally filed under the category "alternative medicine" instead of "outright quackery." "Alternative medicine" is a very broad category that encompasses everything that has not been rigorously tested according to the rules of Western science. It encompasses everything from acupuncture and herbs to magnetism, mega-dosing on vitamins, folk remedies like putting a frog under your bed, and yes, homeopathy.
The problem is that while people tend to think of this all as one broad category, clearly not all alternative medicines are equal. Herbal remedies may not have been scientifically tested, but clearly there are many different chemicals in plants and consuming them may certainly have some kind of effect, regardless of whether that effect is scientifically reproducible. Mega-dosing on vitamins at least involves putting a substance into your body that is known to have some effect on human health. Even acupuncture is doing something, even though the mechanism and effects may not be fully understood.
But beyond the fact that homeopathy has never held up to scientific testing, it's based on clearly erroneous ideas. Like, for example, the fact that the substance you are supposedly taking, in all likelihood, is not even present at all in the solution you are taking. It is pure quackery and needs to be called out as such.
"You do realize that for homeopathy to be true, everything we know about biology, chemistry, even physics would need to be false?"
quantum physics?
Yes, including quantum physics.
"Quantum physics" is not the same thing as "magic."
Homeopathy is the same thing as "magic."
Magic is not the same thing as "true."
For a science-based look at all this sort of thing, may I recommend badscience.net?
Also, Registradus, homeopathy breaks quantum physics as well. If you are creating concentrations of 1 molecule of stuff per cubic lightyear of water (a "powerful" homeopathic dilution), even quantum is not going to help you.
Theodoric of York: Well, I'll do everything humanly possible. Unfortunately, we barbers aren't gods. You know, medicine is not an exact science, but we are learning all the time. Why, just fifty years ago, they thought a disease like your daughter's was caused by demonic possession or witchcraft. But nowadays we know that Isabelle is suffering from an imbalance of bodily humors, perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in her stomach.
Joan: Well, I'm glad she's in such good hands.
why is there no homeopathic birth control?
They're called Birkenstocks.
Yes Birkenstocks, Patchouli also.
Homeopathy is largely criticized because the mechanism of action is not understood. The design features of double blind placebo controlled trials that are referred to as a gold standard, depend upon the application of a drug treatment to specifically address a diagnostic disease label. Homeopathy is based upon individualization, not the same "herd" mentality of grouping symptoms together and treating everyone with the same medicine. This is explicitly why many studies of homeopathy are flawed in their design and in their findings. Very little money has been spent on understanding the use, effectiveness and efficacy of homeopathy using suitable design methods, and so when we speak of evidence based medicine refuting the effectiveness of homeopathic treatment for a specific disease using a specific remedy, we are confusing matters, because homeopathy is not applied in these ways and patients are not treated with the same medicines because they are diagnosed with a disease. A tenet of homeopathy is that disease is unknowable, meaning that a diagnostic disease label is not a useful application. Disease labels are a part of the diagnostic methods of allopathic/conventional doctors. In part, we are right to say that homeopathy is not effective at treating any "named disease" because in truth homeopathy is not applied this way... it is applied individually looking at the mental, emotional, physiological, pathological aspects of disease unique to each patient, regardless of what the patient themself may arrive and state they have. It is commonly known, that treatment homeopathically may result in two patients with the same disease label, being treated with different homeopathic remedies... and this is not because of flawed science, it is simply because the label is not the homeopaths label. A trained homeopath disregards the disease label and looks at the signs and symptoms individually, because each patient reacts and acts, lives, sleeps, eats etc... differently, so to a homeopath, giving the same remedy may not be indicated. Evidence based double blind placebo controlled trials are flawed at the onset of grouping patients together with a disease label and trialing a homeopathic remedy. Homeopathy simply isn't applied this way... so we cannot refute homeopathy using faulty design methods and say that there is no evidence of efficacy.
It is my opinion that more evidence needs to exist to support all treatments, including the use of conventional treatments that are often harmful to patients, regardless of their ability to suppress a symptom. Supressing symptoms is not curing a disease, it is a fallacy to say so... and bad science at the onset. The human body expresses symptoms as a means to thwart disease, and homeopathy, along with some other holistic medical practices attempt to subtly introduce remedies or interventions that promote those symptoms. Modern pharmacology has only existed for a short period, but humans have been fighting off disease for many centuries without suppressing the very symptoms that are signs of your body fighting off a disease. The fact that our objective in conventional medicine is to stop those healing symptoms, is by itself, under scrutiny ... a questionable approach. Many doctors are moving toward less intervention, not more, and prescribing a drug that is suppressive can interfere with the speed and ability to heal. This is commonly known and taught to medical practitioners. To discount an entire system of medicine that has existed since the time of Hippocrates, is a bit beyond us ... We know that healing by opposites and healing by similars are both relevant. We need to shake off the politics, industry and capitalism, and really look at less intervention, less prescribing, more doctoring (teaching people how to live healthy) and accepting that best practice is "a multi-stakeholder model", where different approaches are relevant and helpful depending upon "individual" circumstances of the patient, and cease looking at illness as a diagnosis. Of course, so long as we call ill health a specific diagnosis, we can really only understand curing people in these terms. Medicine is a socially constructed reality, and we create the terms and understandings, define cure by relationships to our understanding of the bodies responses to an intervention. It is a system of terms and meanings only, and this is explicitly why I would ask that you keep an open mind, and learn more about all practices in medicine, to better understand healing as both an art and a science.
Scott
Damn! Western medicine sure has it's panties in a bunch. I see sense much hostility towards the unknown. The unknown is scary and when we are scared we cover it up with hostility, leaving compassion by the wayside.
I don't take homeopathic remedies but I do know that there exists homeopathic remedies in 'Traditional Chinese Medicine'(TCM) alongside Chinese herbalism and acupuncture. I do not receive treatments for of any of this however I do have an open mind.
If all you know-it-alls praise western doctors so much for their knowledge and qualified training then maybe you will respect their judgment on this issue. My girlfriend is a nurse in a busy hospital and many of the doctors receive regular acupuncture. Although the homeopathic aspect of TCM is unknown to me, it is my understanding that all TCM is part of the same knowledge system which is a culmination of thousands of years of scientific study.
Western science has not yet been able to understand why this works but educated doctors all over the country are seeing it's benefits and choosing these "alternative" therapies for themselves. Is this a product of 'magical' thinking or does electricity really flow through currents in the body?
Why would an educated doctor have such an open mind about this? What do they see which you do not?
What I am seeing is the extreme nationalism amongst boing boing readers. Closed minds.
Acupuncture, moxibustion, rolfing all show measurable therapeutic effects beyond that explainable by the placebo effect.
Homeopathy does not.
On the other claw, the allopathic medical establishment (which is what y'all are contrasting homeopathy against) has tried to ban acupuncture, moxibustion, rolfing, and many other proven working systems repeatedly. So allopathic doctors are not to be trusted on this subject, due to proven bias.
To put this yet another way: homeopathy may well be bunk - and I myself think it is bunk - but the last people you should be trusting to make such a judgment are the people who will make monetary gains from the decision. This is economics & social policy 101 here.
@81, Therling
Thought not homeopathic in the strictest sense, birth control is one medicine that works on (part) of the basis of homeopathy, which is to cause the symptoms of the condition in order to prevent it. Birth control pills work by causing hormonal symptoms of pregnancy so that the body won't become pregnant.
best practice is "a multi-stakeholder model", where different approaches are relevant and helpful
Yes, here it is, it's not about science or truth, it's about turf. I want my cut! Move over! Stop badmouthing me in the press! You know the public shits their pants at the thought of getting sick. They don't want to know how anything works. They'll believe anything we say. You got a thing you say, I got a thing I say, it's just different approaches. There's enough money in the pot for everybody now, isn't there? Hmmmmmmmm?
"What I am seeing is the extreme nationalism amongst boing boing readers. Closed minds."
First, I resent the accusation that everyone who doesn't buy into Chinese superstitions from thousands of years ago is "nationalistic." I try not to believe in nonsense no matter where it comes from.
It seems we have different definitions of open mindedness. To me it means giving all treatments the same level of scrutiny in order to find out what works and what doesn't. To you it apparently means giving a free pass to everything, whether it works or not. There have been many clinical studies of homeopathy and it just does not perform better than a placebo. There's also the fact that, as #67 points out, "for homeopathy to be true, everything we know about biology, chemistry, even physics would need to be false." It doesn't work in theory, it doesn't work in practice...it just doesn't work!
@#95 - Could there be a possibility that Western science has not yet adapted to be able properly test Homeopathy? I'm not saying that it has or hasn't, but all scientists know that there are things which science cannot yet explain. There are scientific contradictions (it's true!). Also look back 50 - 100 years ago and you will find that we have revised our scientific knowledge. We have proved scientific facts of the past "false". In the year 2050 humanity will know many new things that prove what we now know as false.
The belief that science is something concrete and unchanging is an illusion. In quantum physics it is known that when you perform a scientific test that the observer alters the outcome.
Science does not fully understand the process of placebo. If it can't be proven that it is better than a placebo but we do not know how placebos work, then what do we know?
I don't claim to know.
But to say that it doesn't work better than placebo is an admission that it does work to some extent if you believe that the placebo also works. (as my doctors at Kaiser Permanente believe)
Regarding #67 Maybe it is...
@ nezzyidy #96:
Could there be a possibility that Western science has not yet adapted to be able properly test Homeopathy?
Science need not understand the mechanism of a phenomenon in order to properly test whether or not said phenomenon exists.
Homeopaths make fairly straightforward (and testable) claims, namely that their products have effects that are distinguishable from those of a placebo. You don't need to understand or believe in notions like "water memory" to design an experiment to see whether or not there is evidence to support that claim.
Correcting latest fallacies for any trickling readers:
A placebo is a treatment that doesn't do anything, misrepresented to a patient as a treatment that does do something. By definition. Something happens because the patient expects it to work. Why some people get better when treated by placebos has nothing to do with the nature or value of the particular treatment. Anything that doesn't work any better than a placebo is a placebo. Homeopathic placebos are much more expensive than other placebos.
Once again, homeopathy is not ancient Chinese medicine. They are two different things. Stop using the word if you don't know what it means.
Correcting latest fallacies for any trickling readers: A placebo is a treatment that doesn't do anything...
But if it works due to the placebo effect, than it does do something. In some studies, placebos work better than the drug being tested.