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Thread: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    There's an old adage -

    "The mind is a good servant, but a poor master"

    Meaning, there is more to a person than their mind, other resources can also be called upon for a person to be truly *intelligent.

    *intelligent - a holistic understanding. Not academically measured intelligence.
    Is this an argument that there is a kind of intelligence that would use an unproven remedy?

    Or is it clever sounding but spurious and irrelevant to the current debate?

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    Is this an argument that there is a kind of intelligence that would use an unproven remedy?

    Or is it clever sounding but spurious and irrelevant to the current debate?
    My best dances are when I have good connection with the lead and i can shut my brain down. (such as it is) and dance without it. What am I using - it can't just be muscle memory, instinct and intuition must come into it?


    Every plant and mineral has an antidote.

    The antidote naturally grows nearby.

    For instance the antidote to a nettle sting is the nearby dock leaf, which if you rub on the sting will tke it away, as if by magic.

    People who came before us worked this connection out between the nettle and the dock leaf. How?

    Did they set up a laboratory and test all the plants they had access to?

    Was it discovered by "accident" ie instinct?

    Or a bit of both?

    Some people are born natural healers with an instinct for remedies.


    By the way the phamaceuticals are now muscleing in on the homeopathic knowledge to manufacture mainsteam drugs.
    Also Boots has been selling homepathic remedies for years.

    NB. The antidote to any homeopathic remedy is coffee, so no need to be afraid of trying some.

    It would benefit Mr and Ms Black and White to realise that the world is actually full of colour.

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    My best dances are when I have good connection with the lead and i can shut my brain down. (such as it is) and dance without it. What am I using - it can't just be muscle memory, instinct and intuition must come into it?
    I'm not convinced that 'how to enjoy dances' is a good analogy for 'how to evaluate practical effectiveness of anything'.
    Every plant and mineral has an antidote.

    The antidote naturally grows nearby.

    For instance the antidote to a nettle sting is the nearby dock leaf, which if you rub on the sting will tke it away, as if by magic.
    This simply isn't true. You don't find antidotes to deadly nightshade growing nearby, and you don't fine antidotes to yew berries growing nearby, and you don't find antidotes to death cap mushrooms growing nearby. In fact, um, you don't find antidotes to any of them growing - though you may find them in a hospital, as well as other appropriate treatments.
    People who came before us worked this connection out between the nettle and the dock leaf. How?

    Did they set up a laboratory and test all the plants they had access to?

    Was it discovered by "accident" ie instinct?

    Or a bit of both?
    Several tens of generations of trial and error should do it. Much as it did for all effective remedies that preceded the scientific principle.
    Some people are born natural healers with an instinct for remedies.
    So you say.
    By the way the phamaceuticals are now muscleing in on the homeopathic knowledge to manufacture mainsteam drugs.
    There is no such thing as homeopathic knowledge!! Since homeopathy relies on magical principles and unsupported stipulations ('a little of what harms you makes you better' - where's the faintest evidence that that is true? Would you go about injecting somebody with full-blown AIDS with a syringe containing a few HIV viruses? NO. Wait though - for all I know you think AIDS is caused by a subluxation of the spine.)
    Also Boots has been selling homepathic remedies for years.
    Boots will offer for sale what they find people will buy. They also sell copper bracelets - both magnetised and unmagnetised - again in the teeth of all evidence that they are ineffective. You'll note that the homeopathic remedies are not in the pharmacy, but out on the shelves, not even alongside the aspirin and Nurofen. Why? Because the only ingredients are water or sugar. Safest medicines around - they have no more side-effects than they have effects.
    NB. The antidote to any homeopathic remedy is coffee, so no need to be afraid of trying some.
    Try as much as you like. (Providing you don't forego EBM at the same time.) All you have to lose is your money.
    It would benefit Mr and Ms Black and White to realise that the world is actually full of colour.
    Yes, but all of them can be seen with the naked eye.* A spectroscope can detect them, and even identify them. Different coloured light can be seen to have different effects on a) animals and vegetation, and b) inanimate objects. None of this is true with alternative medicine.
    * Some people cannot distinguish all colours. They can, however, see them, just not tell them apart.

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    My best dances are when I have good connection with the lead and i can shut my brain down. (such as it is) and dance without it. What am I using - it can't just be muscle memory, instinct and intuition must come into it?
    I'm at a loss to understand how this is relevant to the debate on alternative medicine being effective.
    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    Every plant and mineral has an antidote.
    This is an all embracing claim that is completely untrue. I think Barry made his point very well.
    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    The antidote naturally grows nearby.

    For instance the antidote to a nettle sting is the nearby dock leaf, which if you rub on the sting will tke it away, as if by magic.
    This is arguing from the particular to the general. It is arguing that you have observed a pattern and that pattern must be repeated elsewhere. In this case the argument simply does not hold - as Barry said.

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    People who came before us worked this connection out between the nettle and the dock leaf. How?

    Did they set up a laboratory and test all the plants they had access to?

    Was it discovered by "accident" ie instinct?

    Or a bit of both?
    Who knows? My guess is that people tried rubbing nearby leaves onto the sore place and found that one of them gave a soothing effect - they got some of their friends to try it, found it worked for them too. And they told their friends, who spread the word.

    This is how proper medicine works. Somebody thinks something might work for a particular condition. They do some tests to see if it will work and to see if it's safe. Having done those tests they start producing the medicine and telling people about it. The difference is that the medicines aren't growing for free in the woods.

    What happens with these unproven medicines is that somebody misses out the bit where they see if the medicine works and is safe. They think "I think this medicine will work" and then they start producing the medicine and telling everyone why it works and how it works - but they actually have no evidence that it does work!

    We all know that there have been cases where a medicine has been found to have unexpected side-effects after it was marketed. However, the safety tests that are in place for those medicines are far more stringent than those for any unproven treatment. The difference is that it is impossible in a trial of 5,000 patients to detect a 5 or 10 in a million side effect - those unfortunate side-effects only start coming up when millions or hundreds of thousands of patients are treated - or after the treatment has been used for many years.

    The difference between established medicines and "alternatives" is that there is a system to report and collate any side-effects. That system is very effective and that is why some drugs are withdrawn. There is no such system for "alternative" medicines.

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    NB. The antidote to any homeopathic remedy is coffee, so no need to be afraid of trying some.
    So, being devil's advocate for a moment. Going by what Astro said earlier - we must be able to extrapolate that all homeopathic remedies grow near coffee trees

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    It would benefit Mr and Ms Black and White to realise that the world is actually full of colour.
    Finally, I do not see the world of medicine as black and white at all. The human body comes in many variations. This and variations in diseases themselves, means that treatments do not work for some people. It is often a mystery why that happens, but is really does. I've read thousands of clinical trials on drugs and don't recall any that give a 100% result for any treatment. There are some that come close, for instance laxatives are very effective and you can't hide the result

    What I am black and white about is the use of untested treatments. What kind of person would treat their disease with a therapy that hadn't been tested for safety and hadn't been proved to be effective? Nice clothes anyone - worn once, but by an Emporor?

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    Going by what Astro said earlier - we must be able to extrapolate that all homeopathic remedies grow near coffee trees

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    I'm not convinced that 'how to enjoy dances' is a good analogy for 'how to evaluate practical effectiveness of anything'.
    It was an anology for "you can't see the wood for the trees"
    This simply isn't true. You don't find antidotes to deadly nightshade growing nearby, and you don't fine antidotes to yew berries growing nearby, and you don't find antidotes to death cap mushrooms growing nearby. In fact, um, you don't find antidotes to any of them growing -
    The natural balance of nature has been disturbed in developed countries due to pesticides for starters.

    If you lived in the Australian outback your parents would have shown you the natural antidote to a snake bite.

    If you and I were there, Barry, we'd have one with us from the NHS, because we wouldn't have the knowledge. If all else fails you can always suck out the poison.



    Several tens of generations of trial and error should do it. Much as it did for all effective remedies that preceded the scientific principle.

    So you say.
    well some NHS GPs are better than others, wouldn't you agree?
    There is no such thing as homeopathic knowledge!! Since homeopathy relies on magical principles and unsupported stipulations ('a little of what harms you makes you better' - where's the faintest evidence that that is true? Would you go about injecting somebody with full-blown AIDS with a syringe containing a few HIV viruses? NO. Wait though - for all I know you think AIDS is caused by a subluxation of the spine.)
    This is the crux of the matter. Not all, but most homeopaths think vaccinations are dangerous, and that is why mainstream medicine is leary of homeopathy. The principle seems the same, but it is not.
    Vaccinations have too much of "a little" and they are made using animal substances. Homeopathic renidies are minute, minute, minute quantities in alcohol. (there are alternatives for alchoholics) THey are taken in tablet form, tincture or in creams, never injected into the bloodstream.

    Boots will offer for sale what they find people will buy. They also sell copper bracelets - both magnetised and unmagnetised - again in the teeth of all evidence that they are ineffective. You'll note that the homeopathic remedies are not in the pharmacy, but out on the shelves, not even alongside the aspirin and Nurofen. Why?
    They are supposed to be kept away from strong smelling substances. Often they are right near hair shampoo though. Best to buy from a proper shop.
    Because the only ingredients are water or sugar. Safest medicines around - they have no more side-effects than they have effects.
    Try as much as you like. (Providing you don't forego EBM at the same time.) All you have to lose is your money.
    See my reply to Andy, below.

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    This is arguing from the particular to the general. It is arguing that you have observed a pattern and that pattern must be repeated elsewhere. In this case the argument simply does not hold - as Barry said.
    The only disease homeopaths don't claim to cure is Rabies.
    Does mainstream medicine have a cure for Rabies yet? I think I read somewhere that they can control it.
    Who knows? My guess is that people tried rubbing nearby leaves onto the sore place and found that one of them gave a soothing effect - they got some of their friends to try it, found it worked for them too. And they told their friends, who spread the word.
    Correct.
    This is how proper medicine works. Somebody thinks something might work for a particular condition. They do some tests to see if it will work and to see if it's safe. Having done those tests they start producing the medicine and telling people about it. The difference is that the medicines aren't growing for free in the woods.

    What happens with these unproven medicines is that somebody misses out the bit where they see if the medicine works and is safe. They think "I think this medicine will work"
    on what basis? Instinct, previous links?
    and then they start producing the medicine and telling everyone why it works and how it works - but they actually have no evidence that it does work!
    Homeopaths rigourisly test remedies on people. Plus, there is more than one remedy or quite a lot of health problems.

    We all know that there have been cases where a medicine has been found to have unexpected side-effects after it was marketed. However, the safety tests that are in place for those medicines are far more stringent than those for any unproven treatment.
    Re. safety. If the remedy doesn't work and causes side effects the "guinea pig" human can drink coffee or eat peppermint. Toosthpaste is an antidote too.

    The difference is that it is impossible in a trial of 5,000 patients to detect a 5 or 10 in a million side effect - those unfortunate side-effects only start coming up when millions or hundreds of thousands of patients are treated - or after the treatment has been used for many years.
    So mainstream is much more dangerous.
    The difference between established medicines and "alternatives" is that there is a system to report and collate any side-effects. That system is very effective and that is why some drugs are withdrawn. There is no such system for "alternative" medicines.

    So, being devil's advocate for a moment. Going by what Astro said earlier - we must be able to extrapolate that all homeopathic remedies grow near coffee trees
    Coffee is only one antidote.

    Finally, I do not see the world of medicine as black and white at all. The human body comes in many variations. This and variations in diseases themselves, means that treatments do not work for some people. It is often a mystery why that happens, but is really does. I've read thousands of clinical trials on drugs and don't recall any that give a 100% result for any treatment.
    That's where Homeopathy wins out again. The whole person is treated holistically, not just the disease. Think of an onion, a homeopath will peel back the layers to get to the root cause, not just treat the symptoms. For instance, they discovered that NHS drugs treating asthma have a side effect of pyosis - that skin condition.
    There are some that come close, for instance laxatives are very effective and you can't hide the result
    Use a flushing toilet.

    What I am black and white about is the use of untested treatments. What kind of person would treat their disease with a therapy that hadn't been tested for safety and hadn't been proved to be effective?
    see below

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    The only disease homeopaths don't claim to cure is Rabies.
    Aids? Leprosy?
    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    Homeopaths rigourisly test remedies on people.
    This is the crux of my argument. Where do we find out about how those tests were done? And what were the results of those tests? And where were those results published or how were they distributed? Were those tests peer-group reviewed? I really don't see that there is any solid evidence - if there was we'd have heard about it.
    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    So mainstream is much more dangerous.
    No, the risks of "mainstream" medicine are quantifiable. So are the benefits. It's all about risk vs benefit. Healthcare professionals are trained to weigh up the two and make a decision based on clinical need - although, nowadays they also have to consider the price

    With untested treatments you are unable to ascertain the risk or the benefit.

    My main concern with the "harmless" treatments used by homeopaths is that they increase the risk to patients by delaying them receiving proper care.

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    Aids? Leprosy?
    Sorry i meant apart from AIDS which Barry mentioned. Not sure about Leprosy.


    This is the crux of my argument. Where do we find out about how those tests were done? And what were the results of those tests? And where were those results published or how were they distributed? Were those tests peer-group reviewed? I really don't see that there is any solid evidence - if there was we'd have heard about it.
    Do you think so? I will ask a homepath the next time I see one.

    The way they test whether a remedy works is they have a hypothetises. Then they test the remedy on human "guinea pigs". Too much remedy is given. If the people develop symptoms of the disease they are trying to cure, then they have found an antidote.

    This is called "proving"

    It's the opposite of allapathic medicine where they would be testing for something to make the symptoms go away, not bring them on. [quote]

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    [QUOTE=Astro;493079]The way they test whether a remedy works is they have a hypothetises. Then they test the remedy on human "guinea pigs". Too much remedy is given. If the people develop symptoms of the disease they are trying to cure, then they have found an antidote.

    This is called "proving"

    It's the opposite of allapathic medicine where they would be testing for something to make the symptoms go away, not bring them on. But, and it is a big but, the objective of treating a condition is to cure it or relieve symptoms. Is there any evidence, any at all, that homeopathic remedies can do this consistently?

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    It was an anology for "you can't see the wood for the trees" The natural balance of nature has been disturbed in developed countries due to pesticides for starters.
    You blithely assume there was something called 'a natural balance' in the first place. This earth is not a mystical place, a sort of Merlin's kitchen. It's a rock in space conforming to real physical rules. The fact that it is such an wonderful place to be is astonishing in itself.
    If you lived in the Australian outback your parents would have shown you the natural antidote to a snake bite.
    There is a variety of snakes in Australia for which there are no natural antidotes. Unless treated with antivenom (not normally recognised as a traditional aborigine medicine) for example, a 'good bite' from a Taipan will 'almost certainly be fatal'. Sucking out the poison is a very good way of either killing yourself faster or, if you do it to somebody else, killing two people with one bite.
    well some NHS GPs are better than others, wouldn't you agree? This is the crux of the matter. Not all, but most homeopaths think vaccinations are dangerous, and that is why mainstream medicine is leary of homeopathy. The principle seems the same, but it is not.
    (Wearily) It isn't why EBM is leary of homeopathy. It's leary of homeopathy because there isn't a shred of evidence to suggest that homeopathic 'medicines' are effective - or in fact have any effect at all. What clouds the picture is that homeopaths, in the last 60 years or so, have expended more 'patient time' than your average NHS GP. This makes people feel less anxious about their problems and they report feeling better. No clinical trial has shown any effect.
    Vaccinations have too much of "a little" and they are made using animal substances.
    Generally, vaccinations are made from small quantities of virus or bacteria. These are not 'animals', nor are they vegetable. Bacteria come from their own kingdom, and viruses aren't alive at all.
    Homeopathic renidies are minute, minute, minute quantities in alcohol. (there are alternatives for alchoholics)
    Actually, they aren't. They are zero quantities in whatever medium is used. It's easy to show this.
    Take a 10C preparation. You dilute 1cc of some fluid or powder in 100cc water; then you do it again, and then again, and then again. At the end, you have the equivalent of your original 1cc dissolved in 100 billion billion ccs of water. There are 1 million ccs by volume in a cubic metre. So that's 100 thousand billion cubic metres of water. There are 1 billion cubic metres in a cubic kilometre. So we end up with 1cc of active ingredient in 100,000 cubic kilometres of water.
    That's more than four times the volume of water in all 5 of the American Great Lakes. On average, any 1cc of water you extract from your final solution will contain no active ingredient whatsoever.
    Some preparations are 30C, which requires more water than would fill the universe to dilute 1cc of active ingredient.
    There are more scientific explanations, involving what we now know about the number of molecules that are present in 1cc of anything, and it can be shown that there are far, far more cubic centimetres of water in the final solution than there are numbers of molecules in the original substance. Each time 99cc of the substance is thrown away to dilute the remaining 1cc into a new 99cc of water, 99% of the active ingredients are thrown away. By the final dissolution, 99% of the active ingredient is ALL of the active ingredient.
    They are taken in tablet form, tincture or in creams, never injected into the bloodstream. They are supposed to be kept away from strong smelling substances. Often they are right near hair shampoo though. Best to buy from a proper shop. See my reply to Andy, below.
    You believe in homeopathy, and I imagine most people who practise it and sell it believe in it too. But you are mistaken. All homeopaths need to do is successfully demonstrate the effectiveness of one of their treatments in the normal way (randomised double-blind testing), and that's the end of the dispute. But they have not been able to do so, try as they have.
    Try Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog, and search the site for homeopathy and the big row about malaria. People have been made very sick (because they travel to Africa and become infected) by taking homeopathic protection against malaria instead of being vaccinated. THE HOMEOPATHIC 'MEDICINE' DOESN'T WORK. You might as well sacrifice a goat for all the good it will do.
    Last edited by Barry Shnikov; 17th-August-2008 at 09:56 PM.

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    You believe in homeopathy, and I imagine most people who practise it and sell it believe in it too. But you are mistaken. All homeopaths need to do is successfully demonstrate the effectiveness of one of their treatments in the normal way (randomised double-blind testing), and that's the end of the dispute. But they have not been able to do so, try as they have.
    I am afraid that Astro is suffering from blind faith.

    There is absolutely no proof that homeopathic medicines work. None at all. But Astro has been convinced. What we need to understand is why. Come on Astro, tell us why you think that homeopathic medicines work and why you think they work better than medicines that have undergone the rigour of clinical testing?

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    ....... medicines that have undergone the rigour of clinical testing?


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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by JiveLad View Post
    Again I am not really sure what you are trying to say here Jivelad.

    Are you trying to say that all medicines from big pharma have not undergone clinical testing or are you saying that have undergone clinical testing but that those tests were not rigorous?

    Which is it and what information do you have that makes you believe that?

    Are you stating here and now, and publically, that you never have nor ever will take drugs made by big pharma, because you believe that have not been clinically tested?

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Chef View Post
    Again I am not really sure what you are trying to say here Jivelad.

    Are you trying to say that all medicines from big pharma have not undergone clinical testing or are you saying that have undergone clinical testing but that those tests were not rigorous?

    Which is it and what information do you have that makes you believe that?

    Are you stating here and now, and publically, that you never have nor ever will take drugs made by big pharma, because you believe that have not been clinically tested?
    Or is he saying that he'd prefer a treatment that has not been tested?

    I'm constantly amazed at the one-sided arguments of people who put their faith in untested treatments. They base their arguments on anecdotal evidence of no harm* from homeopathy and a cynical attitude towards companies and governments who are trying to make treatments as effective and as safe as possible.

    And before someone says, "they're just in it for the money", don't forget that a better and safer treatment is going to be the one that makes the money. The incentive for the developer of the drug is the same as the incentive for it's customers, be they governments or patients. That incentive is that we can estimate, with a degree of confidence, the number of patients who will benefit and we have a measure of the risk that is being taken when using a treatment that has been rigorously tested - the most effective and safest drug will be the one that leads the market: until a safer or more effective drug is developed. It's called progress - where is the progress is homeopathy? There will be none while there is no evidence.

    Having read the trials done by others a qualified physician can call upon the experience with thousands of patients that has been published in the literature. Where is homeopathy this argument - there simply is no published data.

    *No harm allied with no effect** is a dangerous combination when treating real diseases

    **There is still no evidence that homeopathy works, despite Astro's claim that it can cure everything but Aids and Rabies.

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    [quote=Andy McGregor;493080]
    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    But, and it is a big but, the objective of treating a condition is to cure it or relieve symptoms. Is there any evidence, any at all, that homeopathic remedies can do this consistently?
    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    I am afraid that Astro is suffering from blind faith.

    There is absolutely no proof that homeopathic medicines work. None at all. But Astro has been convinced. What we need to understand is why. Come on Astro, tell us why you think that homeopathic medicines work and why you think they work better than medicines that have undergone the rigour of clinical testing?
    "Homeopathic Science and Modern medicine (The Physics of healing with Microdoses)" by Harris Coulter

    In this book Coulter describes many of the trials that have been conducted over the past 50 years or so, using plants, animals and humans as controls to prove the effectiveness of homeopathic medicines.

    He also discusses the Homeopathic Philosopy which is a set of rules for practice. It hasn't changed since it was formularted 200 years ago.

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    Or is he saying that he'd prefer a treatment that has not been tested?
    "Proving" is the name given to the homeopathic method of testing substances in order to establish their "symptom picture". Since Hahneman's first proving in 1790 hundreds of provings have been carried out and their results collated in the great Materia Medicas. (the most in use today is by J.T.Kent (1849-1916)


    In the 1940's the Americans organised a programme of re-proving remedies, but it was abandoned when identical symptoms were elicited all over again.
    I'm constantly amazed at the one-sided arguments of people who put their faith in untested treatments. They base their arguments on anecdotal evidence of no harm* from homeopathy and a cynical attitude towards companies and governments who are trying to make treatments as effective and as safe as possible.
    In the same way that homepathy can cure - dramatically and permantly in many cases - it can also harm.

    Kent himself said he would rather be in a room with a nest of vipers than be subjected to the administrations of an inexperienced homeopath.

    The Society of Homeopaths has registered members. They have trained and have RSHon after their names. It is extrememly important to check with the Society that they are bona fide. Anyone can put RSHon on their card.]

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    You blithely assume there was something called 'a natural balance' in the first place. This earth is not a mystical place, a sort of Merlin's kitchen. It's a rock in space conforming to real physical rules. The fact that it is such an wonderful place to be is astonishing in itself.
    yes I do.

    There is a variety of snakes in Australia for which there are no natural antidotes. Unless treated with antivenom (not normally recognised as a traditional aborigine medicine) for example, a 'good bite' from a Taipan will 'almost certainly be fatal'. Sucking out the poison is a very good way of either killing yourself faster or, if you do it to somebody else, killing two people with one bite.
    There is a homepathic remedy called Snake Bite. It was discovered accidentally. There are some "provings" that cannot be tested on humans because they are posionous, so a second catogary of "provings" are called "accidental provings". Socrates died of Hemlock poisoning and this information has been used as an "accidental proving" by homeopaths.
    (Wearily) It isn't why EBM is leary of homeopathy. It's leary of homeopathy because there isn't a shred of evidence to suggest that homeopathic 'medicines' are effective - or in fact have any effect at all. What clouds the picture is that homeopaths, in the last 60 years or so, have expended more 'patient time' than your average NHS GP. This makes people feel less anxious about their problems and they report feeling better. No clinical trial has shown any effect.
    Yes you do need to spend more time than a GP would.(10 minutes) As it's holistic, is more complicated as not all remedies work for the same people. Andy McGregor stated that this is a problem with mainstream drugs too.
    Generally, vaccinations are made from small quantities of virus or bacteria. These are not 'animals', nor are they vegetable. Bacteria come from their own kingdom, and viruses aren't alive at all.
    i was refering to the substance it's in, not the bacteria itself. Bovine serum is popular, but it could contain CJD.
    Actually, they aren't. They are zero quantities in whatever medium is used. It's easy to show this.
    Take a 10C preparation. You dilute 1cc of some fluid or powder in 100cc water; then you do it again, and then again, and then again. At the end, you have the equivalent of your original 1cc dissolved in 100 billion billion ccs of water. There are 1 million ccs by volume in a cubic metre. So that's 100 thousand billion cubic metres of water. There are 1 billion cubic metres in a cubic kilometre. So we end up with 1cc of active ingredient in 100,000 cubic kilometres of water.
    That's more than four times the volume of water in all 5 of the American Great Lakes. On average, any 1cc of water you extract from your final solution will contain no active ingredient whatsoever.
    Some preparations are 30C, which requires more water than would fill the universe to dilute 1cc of active ingredient.
    There are more scientific explanations, involving what we now know about the number of molecules that are present in 1cc of anything, and it can be shown that there are far, far more cubic centimetres of water in the final solution than there are numbers of molecules in the original substance. Each time 99cc of the substance is thrown away to dilute the remaining 1cc into a new 99cc of water, 99% of the active ingredients are thrown away. By the final dissolution, 99% of the active ingredient is ALL of the active ingredient.
    It works on the principle of less is more. {The forerunners of the fashionistas.}
    Last edited by Astro; 18th-August-2008 at 12:27 PM.

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    You believe in homeopathy, and I imagine most people who practise it and sell it believe in it too. But you are mistaken. All homeopaths need to do is successfully demonstrate the effectiveness of one of their treatments in the normal way (randomised double-blind testing), and that's the end of the dispute. But they have not been able to do so, try as they have.
    They do use the double blind test. Also placebos. Also the conductor doesn't know which are the placebos.
    Try Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog, and search the site for homeopathy and the big row about malaria. People have been made very sick (because they travel to Africa and become infected) by taking homeopathic protection against malaria instead of being vaccinated. THE HOMEOPATHIC 'MEDICINE' DOESN'T WORK. You might as well sacrifice a goat for all the good it will do.
    An antidote against malaria was Hahneman's very first proving in 1790 on himself. I'll have a look at the blog and Hahneman.

    Do you have a more direct link Barry?

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    [QUOTE=Astro;493145]
    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post



    "Homeopathic Science and Modern medicine (The Physics of healing with Microdoses)" by Harris Coulter

    In this book Coulter describes many of the trials that have been conducted over the past 50 years or so, using plants, animals and humans as controls to prove the effectiveness of homeopathic medicines.
    So now we have a 170 page book that tells us how to cure all diseases except rabies and aids.

    There are many books like this in the world. Anybody can get them printed. However, peer reviewed clinical trials are published in medical journals. If there was any evidence that homeopathy actually works it would get published. I did a quick search and came up with this interesting study - this is particularly interesting to me as I spent 3 years in research at the same University. The study looks at mosquito bites treated with a homeopathic remedy a placebo that is the same without the homeopathic component and no treatement. The conclusion was that there was no difference between the homeopathic remedy and placebo. The most telling thing was that the placbo was better than no treatment - and so was the homeopathic remedy. That is because, IMHO the placebo and the homeopathic remedy were identical.

    The odd thing is that a link to this reference comes from a homeopathy website. They are actually using this kind of evidence to support homeopathy!
    Last edited by Andy McGregor; 18th-August-2008 at 12:50 PM.

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    Re: "pharma/alternative medicine/superstitious nonsense"

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    "Proving" is the name given to the homeopathic method of testing substances in order to establish their "symptom picture". Since Hahneman's first proving in 1790 hundreds of provings have been carried out and their results collated in the great Materia Medicas. (the most in use today is by J.T.Kent (1849-1916)


    In the 1940's the Americans organised a programme of re-proving remedies, but it was abandoned when identical symptoms were elicited all over again.
    So they proved that toxic substances have the same toxic effect 150 years after the last time they were observed as having that toxic effect? I hardly think that could be a surprise to anyone. It doesn't, however, 'prove' anything except that the substance is toxic.

    It's a pretty long leap of logic from there to assume that using a massively diluted solution of the same substance will cure that disease, don't you think?

    The Society of Homeopaths has registered members. They have trained and have RSHon after their names. It is extrememly important to check with the Society that they are bona fide. Anyone can put RSHon on their card.
    Anyone can put anything on their card - anyone who has to fake a qualification in that way obviously has self-esteem issues. I'd be more scared if they went for 'MD' or 'MRCS' (although, at least that shows they think they're smart).

    I think you mean RSHom, by the way...
    Last edited by Tessalicious; 18th-August-2008 at 01:28 PM.

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