Homeopathic Remedies Recalled For Containing Real Medicine 173
ananyo (2519492) writes "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recalled homeopathic remedies made by a company called Terra-Medica because they may contain actual medicine — possibly penicillin or derivatives of the antibiotic." Diluted enough times with pure water, though, maybe these traces would be even more powerful.
Re:Sarcasm (Score:4, Informative)
If you believe in homeopathy, traces of antibiotics are a really bad idea
Traces of antibodies are a really bad idea, period. Exposing bacteria to something that doesn't kill them teaches them to become resistant.
This stuff isn't at a high enough concentration to alter the population dynamics of any bacteria in the gut (the most likely target, there should be few bacteria anywhere else but on the skin). But the concern it the dosage would be high enough to trigger an anaphylactoid response as that system comes with a nice group of biological amplifiers as standard equipment.
Re:Sarcasm (Score:5, Informative)
The research claiming to show that was sponsored by trial lawyers, many attempts were made to replicate it but they all failed,
Worse than that, it was shown that Wakefield (the fraud who did the bogus study) selected the children in the study because they were already showing the symptoms he was looking to blame on vaccination, then gave them vaccines, blamed their symptoms on the vaccines, and gave them painful, unnecessary tests to "prove" how harmful the vaccination was. This was all so that he could (after being paid to do so) discredit vaccines in order to promote a snake-oil "alternative" immunization method, which was also shown to be completely useless. And of course, blind to the irony, the anti-vaccine movement quite often claims vaccines are there only because the doctors are being paid off, and you should "follow the money" to see proof. (which they never actually do...)
the journal which published it (and, eventually, even the doctor who performed it) withdrew it.
Well, the journal withdrew it, yes. Wakefield didn't though, instead he himself was withdrawn, and had his medical license taken away as a result of his unethical behavior.
Re:Sarcasm (Score:4, Informative)
While at the same time you can go down to the feed store and buy the very same antibiotics, nominally for animal use, by the liter.
Re:Sarcasm (Score:4, Informative)
I though the idea of homeopathic water was to dilute the percieved cause* of the ailment. Should diluting a helpful ingredient be considered harmful then?
Quite so, which is why diluted vitamin C will eventually kill you.
Only if it's diluted in enough water to drown you.