Australia Declares Homeopathy Nonsense, Urges Doctors to Inform Patients 408
jones_supa (887896) writes "Homeopathy is a 200-year-old form of alternative medicine based on the principle that substances that produce symptoms in a healthy person can be used to treat similar symptoms in a sick person. The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia has officially declared that homeopathic remedies are useless for human health. The body today released a guide for doctors (PDF) on how to talk to their patients about the lack of evidence for many such therapies. Doctors will also be told to warn patients of possible interactions between alternative and conventional medicines. On top of that, the council has produced a 300-page draft report that reviews the evidence for homoeopathy in treating 68 clinical conditions. It concludes 'there is no reliable evidence that homoeopathy is effective for treating health conditions'.
Representing the opposite viewpoint, Australian Homeopathic Association spokesman Greg Cope said he was disappointed at the narrow evidence relied on by the NHMRC in its report. 'What they have looked at is systematic trials for named conditions when that is not how homeopathy works,' he said. Homeopathy worked on the principle of improving a person's overall health and wellness, and research such as a seven-year study conducted in Switzerland was a better measure of its usefulness, he added. There are about 10,000 complementary medicine products sold in Australia but most consumers are unaware they are not evaluated by the domestic medicines safety watchdog before they are allowed on the market."
Representing the opposite viewpoint, Australian Homeopathic Association spokesman Greg Cope said he was disappointed at the narrow evidence relied on by the NHMRC in its report. 'What they have looked at is systematic trials for named conditions when that is not how homeopathy works,' he said. Homeopathy worked on the principle of improving a person's overall health and wellness, and research such as a seven-year study conducted in Switzerland was a better measure of its usefulness, he added. There are about 10,000 complementary medicine products sold in Australia but most consumers are unaware they are not evaluated by the domestic medicines safety watchdog before they are allowed on the market."
The spokesman for the AHA said... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The spokesman for the AHA said... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because not all of them are intentional frauds. Just like most pastors firmly believe in god(why did I have to go there?) many homeopaths firmly believe in their system of medicine. Others of each group are intentional frauds who see dollar signs, and have no qualms with manipulating suckers.
Re:The spokesman for the AHA said... (Score:5, Insightful)
Substituting one god for another isn't going to effect your well-being to any great extent. Substituting homeopathy for medicine will.
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Sure, but the problem is that (some/many of) the people doing this aren't aware that they're affecting anyone's well being(except positively). And the rest will lie through any amount of interrogation over it, because sociopaths don't have any issue with lying, normally.
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In my experience, sociopaths find it extremely difficult to lie.
I grow bamboo, by the way. Would you like some in a pot?
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Might do, move from Hindi to Jehovah's Witness and then need a life saving blood transfusion would have a serious impact on your health.
Re:The spokesman for the AHA said... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The spokesman for the AHA said... (Score:4, Funny)
Substituting one god for another isn't going to effect your well-being to any great extent. Substituting homeopathy for medicine will.
Rumor is that abandoning Islam is reason for a death sentence.
Re:The spokesman for the AHA said... (Score:5, Insightful)
I spent my youth on homeopathy w/o any major issues, and now that i'm sick, neither homeopathy nor commercial medicine are much help.
The conflict is in the group that you missed out - when homeopathy doesn't help but "commercial" medicine does.
Ask Steve Jobs if you don't believe it.
Oh, wait, you can't... (because??)
Youth and Homeopathy (Score:5, Insightful)
I spent my youth on homeopathy w/o any major issues, and now that i'm sick, neither homeopathy nor commercial medicine are much help
For most people their youth is generally spent without major health issues. Attributing that to homeopathy is rather unnecessary.
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Just like most pastors firmly believe in god
Too bad no government has enough courage to officially release a 300 pages document that informs people there is no proof of the existence of [a] god.
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Too bad no government has enough courage to officially release a 300 pages document that informs people there is no proof of the existence of [a] god.
Plenty of governments, from revolutionary France, to the Soviet Union and Maoist China, have actively suppressed religion, with varying degrees of success.
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Because not all of them are intentional frauds.
While I think this is perfectly true, I think it bears mentioning that it's not quite that innocent. They may well believe it's true, but they are also completely immune to evidence showing that it doesn't work. They ignore and dismiss all evidence against their sacred cow. This isn't a whole lot better than being an intentional fraud in my eyes.
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And that's why homeopathy continues.
Homeopathy is indistinguishable from, "Take good holistic care of yourself and keep psychologically strong!" - two important pieces of advice which are significant to health. If medicines alone were so effective, you wouldn't need to do the whole double-blind placebo-controlled trial thing, would you? It'd be obvious from the medicine's effect alone.
The trouble is that it's really hard to give people faith (in their own body's healing power) without giving them a icon, or
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Homeopathy is indistinguishable from, "Take good holistic care of yourself and keep psychologically strong!" - two important pieces of advice which are significant to health. If medicines alone were so effective, you wouldn't need to do the whole double-blind placebo-controlled trial thing, would you? It'd be obvious from the medicine's effect alone.
Not quite. You need the double-blind placebo-controlled randomized studies because medicines are not the only source of improving health. We are able to overcome most illness by ourself. Our tissues can regrow, we have an immune system to fight of diseases, and our liver and kidneys getting us rid of toxins all the time. If medicine was the only game in town, then yes, we could just do a simple before-after analysis and see solely the effects of medicine. As we have enough abilities to self-heal, and we are
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It's not, but the "medicines" administered by a particular depend on their beliefs about what works. If they've been indoctrinated into homeopathy, and never learned to doubt it, they're going to administer treatments that don't work. If they're a real doctor who's been fed lies about how generics don't work as well, and haven't really learned to doubt that(happens for some doctors) they're going to prescribe expensive brand-name drugs.
Human folly gets deeply intertwined in medicine, because its a high s
Placebo [Re:The spokesman for the AHA said...] (Score:2)
I did not know that medicine was about believing...
It's called the placebo effect [howstuffworks.com], and it's quite unreasonably effective.
So, I'll start believing that i do not have the flu. Let's see if this works.
It will! That's an effect called regression to the mean [wolfram.com].
Firmly believing you don't have the flu will, in all likelihood, cure your flu in two days to two weeks [about.com]!
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It will! That's an effect called regression to the mean [wolfram.com].
Firmly believing you don't have the flu will, in all likelihood, cure your flu in two days to two weeks [about.com]!
Or rather, believing in not having the flu will likely cause you to misdiagnose flu symptoms as being something unrelated to flu, thereby curing the flu in no-time.
"I have no flu because those flu-like symptoms have nothing to do with the flu because I have no flu."
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They also don't understand modern medicine, by and large. I'm not endorsing quackery, just trying to understand the motives at play.
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Perhaps tomato soup may have some beneficial effects, but if you really want to find feelings of well-being and contentment, you should have more ketchup.
Ketchup contains natural mellowing agents which help you stop worrying about your minor medical ailments. You don't need homeopathic medicine; you don't need a placebo. All you need is to relax, have some ketchup, and let your body take care of things naturally.
These are the good years, in the golden sun,
A new day is dawning, a new life has begun,
The river
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diminished placebo effect (Score:2, Interesting)
What would maximize the placebo effect?
Is using the placebo effect always bad practice?
Re:diminished placebo effect (Score:4, Funny)
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I believe a carefully constructed mosaic of facepalm images to appear to be one giant facepalm is appropriate.
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Let me see if I understand this correctly. You want people to remain ignorant so that they can trick themselves into thinking homeopathic treatments work. I'm too terrified by the prospect to even come up with a clever insult.
Maybe that's just as well, and there's no need for insults. It's not such a bad idea. We'd need precise data to decide it, but as far as myths go, homeopathy could be a myth with some social value - that is, if you get significant results with innocuous and inexpensive treatment. As this friend of mine said, the placebo effect is strong with this one...
The main thing is, information is and should be freely available. Anyone who can read can spend some time on the internet and find out the scientific viewpoi
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Unless "conventional medicine" is also a placebo, there is no real medicine and all these shenanigans about homeopathy are just to strengthen the paradigm.
But don't think too much about it, or you'll lose your only defense against the plague.
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Unless researchers are in on the conspiracy. They all know there's no such thing as "medicine", only placebos. But they have to protect humanity from such knowledge.
Re:diminished placebo effect (Score:5, Funny)
Research has shown that you can maximize the placebo effect by charging more money.
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This is very true for just about everything. People like to believe that things that cost more are intrinsically better than cheaper alternatives. Even if all the evidence indicates no difference, or even that they are worse.
Otherwise you'd feel like you were a sucker that had been ripped off in paying more for no good reason. And no-one likes to think they're a sucker.
re: diminished placebo effect (Score:2)
Re: diminished placebo effect (Score:5, Funny)
I use meta-placebo effect instead of medicines.
I know that the placebo effect exists and is effective, so believing something can heal me will indeed heal me.
Therefore, I juste have to believe that just believing that believing will heal me will heal me, and it heals me.
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I know that the placebo effect exists and is effective, so believing something can heal me will indeed heal me.
...unless you have a real disease, in which case the "cure" won't last very long.
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What would maximize the placebo effect?
This is like the medical version of the broken window fallacy. Why do something that doesn't work and rely on the placebo effect when you can do something that does work and rely on the placebo effect?
Re:diminished placebo effect (Score:5, Informative)
But won't telling the patient "the facts" diminish the placebo effect? What would maximize the placebo effect? Is using the placebo effect always bad practice?
My father was a village MD, and we talked at lenght about this, so here goes:
1. yes, and that's why the Placebo effect is largely ineffective on the medical professionals;
2.Sadly, increasing price is one of the things that correlates with placebo effects;
3. Emphatically no, but there is not a real need for specific "placebo"medicaments: lots of active principles help lower the symptoms, all the while not doing anything much, and they are mostly cheaper than "alternative" medicine.
P.S.: as to point 2, there is a solution: putting a reasonably big price tag on the box and telling the patient that 90% of it is borne by the insurance, since it's so effective.
Re:diminished placebo effect (Score:4, Informative)
But won't telling the patient "the facts" diminish the placebo effect?
"Placebo effect works even if patients know they're getting a sham drug
Study suggests patients benefit from the placebo effect even when told explicitly that they're taking an 'inert substance'"
http://www.theguardian.com/sci... [theguardian.com]
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Re:diminished placebo effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Placebo's have an effect on things the human mind can control.
Medication has an effect on things the human mind can AND cannot control.
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To further the point, the placebo effect is at work even when you take medication with an active ingredient.
Pain reduction, for instance, occurs much faster than is possible by purely chemical effects when you take a tylenol. I've heard up to 40% of the painkilling effect is placebo, and it happens moments after you take the pill. You're anticipating relief from the drug, and so your brain helps things along.
Homeopathy is garbage, and it should be treated exactly as the Australian government is treating it.
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> But won't telling the patient "the facts" diminish the placebo effect?
Yep, probably.
http://www.plosone.org/article... [plosone.org] is one study that disagrees with that.
Homeopathy doesn't work that way (Score:5, Funny)
It doesn't work by treating conditions. You're using it wrong. The first thing you need to do is stop expecting it to do anything.
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Using it wrong? The only way to win is not to play.
Re:Homeopathy doesn't work that way (Score:5, Funny)
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Homeopathy is great for treating dehydration.
or hypoglycemia...
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Re:Homeopathy doesn't work that way (Score:5, Funny)
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But most people who buy and use homeopathic medicines, as opposed to homeopathic practitioners, believe it does. They feel unwell, look for a medicine to make the unwellness go away, and pick a homeopathic remedy off the drugstore shelf. People are buying homeopathic treatments as if they fitted into the standard medical treatment model.
BS (Score:3, Insightful)
Homeopathy worked on the principle of improving a person's overall health and wellness
If this is true, then why are they marketed to help with specific ailments?
Not going to work... (Score:4, Insightful)
For those who might listen, one might temper it by saying homeopathy *does* work, but it's thanks to the placebo effect.
Re:Not going to work... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about letting people choose what methods of healing they want to use?
That's fine.
Selling little bottles of very expensive water with labels that very carefully imply that they do, indeed, cure diseases (while legally not saying anything of the sort) to people who don't know any better is what gets people up in arms.
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Twisting a geek quote (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not going to work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably chemicals in our drugs are often extracted from nature. why wouldn't the same chemicals in their natural form have the same potential to work?
True - but nothing to do with homeopathy. You are describing herbal medicine which certainly certainly works sometimes - though there are dangers from unknown potencies and interactions with other medicines. Homeopathic medicines are based on something that causes the symptoms they are intended to cure - but diluted so far that not a single atom of the original substance remains. It is sort of an analogy with inoculation - by giving someone a killed or weakened version of a dangerous virus, you protect against the full-blown version of the virus. But we know what is happening in this case - we are pre-loading the immune system. The mechanisms by which we prepare wakened virus are well understood. Homeopathy has a theory that, by means unknown, dilution beyond non-existence somehow infuses the water with a potency to counteract symptoms similar to those caused by the diluted substance. Unfortunately,there is no theoretical or (importantly) experimental backing for this.
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I did this once. My problem was not understanding homeopathy.
What you say is valid, and probably why people buy into homeopathy. Boiling willow bark in vinegar, distilling milk thistle, or steeping ginger root will have great effects. Further, many medicines are concentrated forms of plants which are ineffective or contain toxic elements and thus cannot be taken as herbs; while, conversely, many medicines (LOVASTATIN) are hellaciously toxic in the purified form, but safe and effective in natural form.
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Re:Not going to work... (Score:4)
Homeopathy is pure bullshit beyond any redemption. It's physically impossible.
Homeopathy != nonindustrial medicine
Re:Not going to work... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is you're confusing herbal medicine, holostic medicine, drug descovery and homeopathy.
No one sane denys the existence of herbal medicine: many drugs were originally dervied from plants, and many others are known to have a whole variety of different effects.
Holostic medicine is not unreasonable: no point curing one ailment at the expense of creating others even worse than the original.
For drug descovery, some are stumbled upon by pure chance (Viagra), and for many, especially brain related ones, the mechanism is poorly understood, and they only work on some people. Nevertheless they have been tested and it's reasonably well known roughly what proportion they do work on, the likely side effects and interactions with other common drugs. So, the knowledge is incomplete, but nor worthless.
Homeopathy is by contrast utter crap.
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Homeopathy is applied psychology and pretty effective as such. Saying it's crap means you don't understand a iota of it.
You're saying that homeopathy can't work because there are no substances in the bottle. I'm saying it's precisely because there aren't any substances (except a small amount of alcohol) while still being expensive, that it is sometimes effective without damaging side effects.
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" This has always been the defining characteristic of homeopathy's holistic approach."
That and the fact that its inventor had never heard of the germ theory.
Re:Not going to work... (Score:5, Informative)
A while back I was prescribed an anti-depressant. The doctor said he didn't know if it would work for me. He said it wasn't even well understood *how* it worked.
You had a bad and uninformed doctor. A good doctor should have at least a general idea of how the medication works, and he certainly shouldn't be prescribing drugs without knowing if they'd work or how!
That confused me because presumably whatever was in the pill was added for a reason, but clearly there's a lot of trial and error. And clearly there are extremely nasty side effects from many drugs.
So many pharmaceuticals' effectiveness may be overrated, as may be their safety. I'm not sure some medicinal plants are necessarily less effective or less safe.
Presumably chemicals in our drugs are often extracted from nature. why wouldn't the same chemicals in their natural form have the same potential to work? For example, willow bark has salicin (from whence aspirin came), and has been used medicinally since the time of Hippocrates.
There may be side effects from pharmaceutical drugs, but they are well understood as a result of the extensive testing they are required to go through, and a lot of effort is made to minimize those side effects. Medicinal plants have the same range of side effects. The difference is herbal medicine doesn't go through scientific testing, it's side effects are not required to be labeled and are not as well understood. Drugs that are isolated from medicinal herbs will typically try to isolate the active ingredient, reducing the chances of side effects from other plant ingredients that may have unwanted pharmacological properties and refining the dosage to the minimum necessary.
The idea of treating the whole person instead of just the symptom is a growing concern in western medicine. This has always been the defining characteristic of homeopathy's holistic approach.
So many homeopathic treatments are almost certainly bunk, but throwing out all homeopathy may be short sighted, just as throwing out all of western medicine would be.
The defining characteristic of homeopathy is the "like cures like" approach, with medicine prepared from repeated dilution. This has been repeatedly proven to be bunk and without merit. If the core fundamentals of their medical approach is false, having been consistently disproven, why shouldn't the whole field be throw out as discredited and without merit?
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The idea of treating the whole person instead of just the symptom is a growing concern in western medicine. This has always been the defining characteristic of homeopathy's holistic approach.
Eat well. Exercise. Don't smoke or drink to excess. Get plenty of sleep. That's "western" medicine's mantra. And is pretty fucking holistic.
You can't cure an ear infection by wishing it away.
Re:Not going to work... (Score:4, Interesting)
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It also raises the question... Why doesn't sea water cure abso-fucking-lutely EVERYTHING? I'm pretty sure there's some of everything that ever was on this planet diluted out to fuck in there.
Sounds like they need a homeopathic beer (Score:5, Funny)
Courtesy of Mitchell and Webb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0 [youtube.com]
Homeopathy Works (Score:2, Interesting)
By the same
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I have long maintained that if you could induce the placebo effect 50% of the time you'd be doing better than modern medicine.
That being said, since homeopathy has no measurable effects, and works in an undefined way which can't be seen or measured ... calling it out as bunk is probably good.
You can't make medical claims unless you have evidence to back it up. And it sounds like there's zero actual evidence.
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I have long maintained that if you could induce the placebo effect 50% of the time you'd be doing better than modern medicine.
Don't you think modern medicine should have just as much of a chance of tapping into the placebo effect as anything else?
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Homeopaths I know charge $8 per vial. And $4 of that is just for medically certified empty bottle.
If it's $30 per vial where you are, I suspect more than half of that is going to the retail outlet.
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In my U.S. states, astrologers must use some form of, "For entertainment purposes only" so people (the ones not so gullible to visit an astrologer) are warned astrology isn't real.
as it probably affects human relationships in an even more negative way.
You mean more than preventing someone with a serious affliction for getting real medical help?
Homeopathy does not, and has not, ever worked. Under any circumstance. The best that can be said about it is it get
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but I have seen a great deal of patients recover from terrible illnesses only because it helped them not give up, or worked very efficiently as a placebo
And how is that an improvement over giving them a medicine that beside a placebo effect of identical magnitude additionally causes direct pharmaceutical effects? Since when do these two effects clash?
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And how is that an improvement over giving them a medicine that beside a placebo effect of identical magnitude additionally causes direct pharmaceutical effects? Since when do these two effects clash?
Your answer makes sense, but you lack the whole picture. Homeopathy doesn't work like that.
Homeopathy is not just the "fake medicine", as most articles you read on the internet work. There is a whole theatrical performance. It works like this:
1) The "doctor" asks for a few questions about your problems, your dreams, your social life, family, etc.
2) He has a book where each of the things you mention (or the closest one) have an homeopathic ingredient listed
3) He correlates and finds an ingredient that
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She treats her patients in addition to their GP, not instead of.
Really? Isn't that up to the patient? Will she refuse to see someone who hasn't been to the GP?
When the drugs your GP is prescribing do not work, having something else to try or even just someone else to talk to about your health is extremely valuable. Keeping a positive attitude is everything, since the alternative might simply be suicide.
Yes, that's all very lovely, but then you should be seeing a counsellor, not a magic bean salesman.
My experiences (Score:5, Funny)
I visited a homeopath once. I had dreadful allergies and was quite desparate. So off I trundled to the homepaths tent in the festival I was attending. There they did some sort of reading and asked a few questions. They opened a huge old book and spent a few moments throughtfully reading through various passages. Then delivered the news that I needed arsenic. Only this poison could help me. They procused a small plastic bag containing small spherical white pills. I complained that I was not keen on taking arsenic in any shape of form. So they explained that they started with a huge vat of water with a little bit of arsenic in it. Took a tiny drop of that water and diluted it further, and once again until only the essense of asenic remained. There wasn't any arsenic in those pills. By this time I was laughing so hard I had completely forgotten about my allergies. I left with a big smile on my face and used the sugar pills in my coffee.
So sorry everyone, homeopathy works.
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Dr. Oz (Score:2)
I've seen two episodes of Dr. Oz. In the first, he talked about treating a jellyfish sting. Knowing nothing about jellyfish stings, I assume his advice was legit. The second episode he talked about homeopathic medicine and all of the wonderful treatment options it provided. He didn't laugh when he was saying that. I never watched again -- can't trust anything he says to be valid.
Well, if it works (Score:5, Funny)
300 pages of scientific results (Score:2)
But here is an opposing viewpoint from someone without the ability to evaluate truth claims.
Interaction? (Score:2)
Homeopathy is using such small diluted amounts, that interaction should be impossible.
Unless they are referring to interaction with other dubious natural remedies like rhino horn, and tiger balls, etc...
Futurama quote: Take some zinc or echinacea! (Score:2)
Or a big fat placebo. It's all the same crap!
So just ban it already (Score:3)
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So you're meta-complaining?
Re:If this were the US.... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah...because its Republicans who are into homeopathy, healing crystals and all that mystical unicorn feel-good hippy bullshit.
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homeopathy, healing crystals and all that mystical unicorn feel-good hippy bullshit.
Well, that's one way of describing Christianity. Still awaiting repeatability on water-into-wine.
(TBH the Jesus character was a fairly decent superhero - reminds me of Crash Test Dummies' "Superman Song". But so many of his followers are cunts. What's up with that?)
Actually, the stupidity infects both sides.... (Score:2)
http://buffalobeast.com/twic-1... [buffalobeast.com]
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I think this also works if you replace the word economic to get one of the following:
* Faith-based social policy
* Faith-based foreign policy
* Faith-based domestic policy
* Faith-based public policy
* Faith-based science policy
* Faith-based government policy
Or simply remove the word economic and get:
* Faith-based policy
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This is a political topic, whether you want it to be or not. It's politics that allows this sort of crap to persist in the US because people should be allowed to do whatever they want, up to and including completely ripping off their fellow man.
Re:s/homeopathy/creationism/g (Score:4, Funny)
Replace homeopathy with creationism.
One wonders what the response would be then.
"What they have looked at is systematic trials for named conditions when that is not how creationism works," he'd say. "Creationism worked on the principle of improving a person's overall health and wellness, and research such as a seven-year study conducted in Switzerland was a better measure of its usefulness," he'd add.
Re:"What they have looked at is systematic trials. (Score:5, Funny)
Says it all...
Curse you, actual scientists, with your "facts" and "data". Where we come from, we don't need no facts.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. I was recently afflicted by a non-systematic, unnamed condition, and drinking lots of water helped.
Hmm, now that I think about it, I may have been thirsty.
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Not actually true. There are a couple medications that have very different effects if you drink a lot of water or are dehydrated.
I agree with your point, just thought I'd point that out.
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Doctors will also be told to warn patients of possible interactions between alternative and conventional medicines.
Obviously not talking about homeopathy anymore. Water won't interact with real medicine.
Not all homeopathic remedies are diluted down to zero concentration. Also, most homeopathic practicioners also use a variety of other alternative treatments, including herbs, vitamins, juices of various kinds of tropical berries, foot reflexology, mineral supplements, chakra alignment, herbal baths, salt from Tibet, and other things.
Re:just keep in mind (Score:5, Insightful)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z... [wikipedia.org]
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Even in Quebec?
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That situation has not changed. The only thing that is changing is an attempt to educate the populous that there are no real effects other than the possible placebo effect.
These products can still be sold, purchased and taken - but it's nice to know that people are being educated that the claimed benefits of these products are purely the speculation of the seller and not a belief of the traditional medical professionals (or 'domestic medicines safety watchdog' if you will).
So people are still free to buy th
You know what thay call "alt medicine" that works? (Score:3)
Haven't you heard the joke?
What do you call "Alternative Medicine" that's actually supported via good evidence?
Medicine.
There's nothing controversial about the idea that certain herbs and natural substances, diet changes, etc. can treat illness. A doctor that doesn't use all the evidence-based approaches at his disposal is simply a bad doctor. A doctor that does use evidence-supported natural-based remedies as appropriate isn't practicing "alternative medicine", he/she is simply being a better doctor.
The