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Thread: BSc - in Homeopathy?

  1. #81
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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by geoff332 View Post
    All branches of medicine harness the placebo effect. All treatments are likely to include a placebo effect.
    Of course they do. However, active treatments also have an increased risk of side-effects.

    I think that Geoff has highlighted the real problem with homeopathy. That it's administered by deluded quacks who give bad advice. I've met a few qualified doctors who use homeopathy. They might give good medical advice and active treatments with their homeopathic medicines. However, I've never discussed homeopathy with them as I'm cynical about homeopathy and don't want to criticise a qualified health professional - at least not to their face

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    As David says, placebo, when there is no other known remedy, can be better than nothing. Also, the care and attention that a patient receives in a hospital can also have a curative role.

    Therefore, homeopathic medicines, being equal to placebo, and homeopathic hospitals, being caring places, can sometimes have a role in the care of people with illnesses with no known cure.

    So, if you want to stop funding homeopathic medicines and hospitals, how do you make up for the reduction in the level of care?

    As I understand it, there are ethical problems in prescribing placebos, and I don't think a "placebo hospital" will work as well...
    Let your mind go and your body will follow. – Steve Martin, LA Story

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    If you're interested in this kind of stuff You and Yours on Radio 4 are currently broadcasting about the issue

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qswn7

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by ducasi View Post
    As David says, placebo, when there is no other known remedy, can be better than nothing. Also, the care and attention that a patient receives in a hospital can also have a curative role.

    Therefore, homeopathic medicines, being equal to placebo, and homeopathic hospitals, being caring places, can sometimes have a role in the care of people with illnesses with no known cure.

    So, if you want to stop funding homeopathic medicines and hospitals, how do you make up for the reduction in the level of care?

    As I understand it, there are ethical problems in prescribing placebos, and I don't think a "placebo hospital" will work as well...
    I think the problem lies with the "homeopathic hospital". If the placebo effect delivered by homeopathy were a useful tool in the hands of a healthcare professional there really is no need to create a hospital dedicated to the placebo effect - which is all homeopathy can ever deliver.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Seems to be a lot of talk about "a placebo" when it should be about "Which placebo".

    Should the practitioner wear a doctors uniform? A witch-doctors? A priests? etc.

    How effacious would a certificate on the wall be saying B.Sc / M.Sc / Dr ?

    Which works better Chants, pills, potions, big machines, a ward, a hospital?

    Can real medicine be enhanced by using placebo techniques? e.g. refer patient to "specialist" who praises GP, then gives standard medicine, or a mock fight with bureaucrat to get "right" more expensive / alternative / homeopathic treatment?

    Could it be that a patient who has lost confidence in doctors could be better served by a B Sc trained to say take the pills prescribed, but wash them down with this "special" water?
    Last edited by bigdjiver; 23rd-February-2010 at 02:34 PM.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    Seems to be a lot of talk about "a placebo" when it should be about "Which placebo".
    This is part of a doctors training. In some conditions it's called "usual care". This is all the other ascpects of patient care that are given alongside the drugs. Don't forget that the drugs cost of healtcare is less than 10% of the total cost of care. And, for many conditions, the drugs provide only a small part of the solution to the problem.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    I think David is saying that there is evidence that placebo has a greater effect than no treatment at all. But please don't ask me for a bibliography - I'm sure there must be studies with 3 groups, treated, placebo and untreated. But I can't think of any off the top of my head.
    Right. That's exactly what I thought he was saying. And that's what I called bad science. I called it bad science because it is bad science. If you know that A produces an effect (Z) and you have a situation where A and B both have an effect equivalent to the effect of A, the only logical conclusion is that B has no effect whatsoever. Just because I'm bored, I'llw rite this formally:
    IF A => Z
    AND A + B => Z
    THEN B => 0

    It's one thing to claim that the provision of homoeopathy effects may have a placebo effect on the patients. But this is very different from claiming that the homoeopathic treatments have any direct effect. To give you an extreme example, you could treat your population with a mild poison. The poison would kill a few people, the placebo effect would cure a few people. If the placebo effect cured more people than the poison killed, the overall results from the study would be positive, even though the treatment itself is actively harmful. That is why it's so important to distinguish the placebo effect from the treatment effect and why I'm not letting this matter rest.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    This ite has a list of practitioners whoare willing to treat children, some only over the phone http://homeopathy4autism.com/

    I suffered a bout of plantr fascitis - inflamation of the foot. I used to hobble to Ceroc, against doctors orders, dance all night and feel no pain or other effets, then limp home. The next morning I would not be able to put my foot on the floor. I went through 4 weeks of this before it started to clear up. The happy brain is capable of producing substances that have a real effect.

    There are reseachers that claim that negative emotions produce chemicals that are detrimental to human health. There are some that claim that misery is one of the mechanisms driving evolution. An organism being miserable is a sign it is not well adapted, so these chemicals attack the DNA causing mutations and, as a side effect, cancer and other conditions.

    It may not just be that healthy people are more likely to dance, it may be that enjoying dance has a real health benefit, and so do placebos that patients believe in.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    I suffered a bout of plantr fascitis - inflamation of the foot. I used to hobble to Ceroc, against doctors orders, dance all night and feel no pain or other effets, then limp home. The next morning I would not be able to put my foot on the floor. I went through 4 weeks of this before it started to clear up. The happy brain is capable of producing substances that have a real effect.
    The body's ability to produce natural painkillers is well documented. Also, it is well known that distraction is one of the treatments for pain - but we must not forget that pain relief is symptomatic relief. It usually does nothing for the condition which is causing the pain.

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    There are reseachers that claim that negative emotions produce chemicals that are detrimental to human health. There are some that claim that misery is one of the mechanisms driving evolution. An organism being miserable is a sign it is not well adapted, so these chemicals attack the DNA causing mutations and, as a side effect, cancer and other conditions.
    I'm not sure about negative emotions producing destructive chemicals in the body. But there seems to be a school of thought that people can "think themselves sick" in the same way that they can think themselves well when they're given a placebo.

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    It may not just be that healthy people are more likely to dance, it may be that enjoying dance has a real health benefit, and so do placebos that patients believe in.
    There is a real and measurable health benefit to physical exercise. And partner dancing also adds in a social aspect which helps with mood.

    Is there an organisation which stands against homeopathy in the same way as there's an organisation to rescue people from cults? People are dying from homeopathy in the same way as they're dying from their parents or themselves being part of the Johova's Witness cult.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    There are reseachers that claim that negative emotions produce chemicals that are detrimental to human health. There are some that claim that misery is one of the mechanisms driving evolution. An organism being miserable is a sign it is not well adapted, so these chemicals attack the DNA causing mutations and, as a side effect, cancer and other conditions.
    The body produces chemicals that harm DNA all the time, regardless of emotional state, mainly in the normal course of cellular metabolism. I suppose my favourites are the free radicals, mainly because they are neutralised by superoxide dismutases or SODs. DNA is under attack all the time, from UV radiation to mechanical sheer forces when it is unwound to allow gene transcription to occur. We have an amazing repair system that catches 99.9999999% of mistakes. Those small mistakes allow gene evolution to occur, though many of these are silent mutations that do nothing.

    I'd say it is more likely that the repair systems have a problem as opposed to the body making essentially suicide inducing chemicals, though there is no doubt that a positive frame of mind aids recovery.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by pmjd View Post
    The body produces chemicals that harm DNA all the time, regardless of emotional state, mainly in the normal course of cellular metabolism. I suppose my favourites are the free radicals, mainly because they are neutralised by superoxide dismutases or SODs. DNA is under attack all the time, from UV radiation to mechanical sheer forces when it is unwound to allow gene transcription to occur. We have an amazing repair system that catches 99.9999999% of mistakes. Those small mistakes allow gene evolution to occur, though many of these are silent mutations that do nothing.

    I'd say it is more likely that the repair systems have a problem as opposed to the body making essentially suicide inducing chemicals, though there is no doubt that a positive frame of mind aids recovery.
    Sight evolved, and it has always been my belief that it would have evolved in the "blind watchmaker" too. It is too late to evolve once yoi are dead, so it makes sense to me that, since death is usually preceded by discomfort, that increasing the rate of mutation when an organism is a comparatively simple and elegant evoloutionary mechanism which would perform far better than pure chance.

    Quite simply, everything is created to seek happiness, and species are designed to get better at it.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    Quite simply, everything is created to seek happiness, and species are designed to get better at it.
    Everything is evolved to ensure survival of the species. "Happiness" is a gift that has evolved to send the message that you're doing something that ensures survival of the species

    Unfortunately there are some things that can short-circuit this cycle. For instance nicotine causes the release of dopamine, a "happiness" chemical produced by the body. Whilst there is no evidence that nicotine harms the body, there is plenty of evidence that smoking to obtain nicotine causes great harm due to the other ingredients of cigarette smoke. And, although nicotine doesn't cause harm, it does no good either.
    Last edited by Andy McGregor; 24th-February-2010 at 02:09 PM.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    Everything is evolved to ensure survival of the species. "Happiness" is a gift that has evolved to send the message that you're doing something that ensures survival of the species
    Dancing makes you happy is all the sales message that should be needed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    Unfortunately there are some things that can short-circuit this cycle. For instance nicotine causes the release of dopamine, a "happiness" chemical produced by the body. Whilst there is no evidence that nicotine harms the body, there is plenty of evidence that smoking to obtain nicotine causes great harm due to the other ingredients of cigarette smoke. And, although nicotine doesn't cause harm, it does no good either.
    I have read that nicotine causes blood vessels to shrink temporarily, streesing the heart. There were some very worrying heat images of the human body in Scientific American graphically demonstrating this. I am also led to believe Nicotine is very toxic.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    There were some very worrying heat images of the human body in Scientific American graphically demonstrating this. I am also led to believe Nicotine is very toxic.
    I'm not sure how good the evidence is on this. I'm told by smoking cessation professionals that it's the other compenents of cigarette smoke which are harmful. The harm of nicotine is that it makes people addicted to smoking. My best guess, based on no actual research whatsoever, is that nicotine is as harmful as caffeine. And the jury's out on that one. You never know, we might even find that nicotine alone is useful in the treatment of certain conditions.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    It is too late to evolve once yoi are dead
    It's too late to evolve when you're alive. Evolution - at least in the sense most evolutionary biologists consider it - occurs at conception. From that point, your individual genome is fixed for you to survive and pass on to your offspring (or not).

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by geoff332 View Post
    It's too late to evolve when you're alive. Evolution - at least in the sense most evolutionary biologists consider it - occurs at conception. From that point, your individual genome is fixed for you to survive and pass on to your offspring (or not).
    Mutations can occur. The suggestion is that unhappy organisms mutate more.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    Mutations can occur. The suggestion is that unhappy organisms mutate more.
    Not really - at least not according to most geneticists. What I think you're talking about are errors that occur during meiosis - creating genetic variations of the DNA in specific cells; but these changes don't effect the genome (the genome is the common template for the whole body). But the immune system is pretty good at spotting cases where individual cells are too different from the genome and killing off those cells. This process does go wrong sometimes (eg cancer). The process also kicks out more and more errors over time, which is part of the ageing process. But the majority of cells conform with the genone; I'm not aware of any evidence of a body's genome changing. If it exists, I'd love to find out about it.

    The changes that I've described are part of normal metabolism. None of it changes the genome and it's not evolution. It does not involve a system-wide change to the organism. I said evolution occurs at the point of conception. It actually occurs in the processes of mitosis and fertilisation.

    The idea that you're referring to is cousin to the Lamarkian idea that learned behaviour is inherited. Again, there is no real evidence of that actually happening that I'm aware of. Of course, I could be wrong. One of the great joys of science is that we learn more and the ideas we have change. It's quite possible that some elements of behaviour - such as diet and stress - do effect our genome and are therefore transmitted through reproduction. It's an interesting hypothesis and one well worth looking in to. But, as far as I'm aware, there isn't any evidence of it happening.

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    Quote Originally Posted by geoff332 View Post
    But, as far as I'm aware, there isn't any evidence of it happening.
    "Evidence"?

    Wash your mouth out!

    What were you thinking using such a dirty word when discussing homeopathy?

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHe...alTrials/18588

    Ethics of placebos, based on Lancet article

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    Re: BSc - in Homeopathy?

    I came across by accident and couldn't resist posting.
    Love dance, will travel

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