Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions 447
MightyMartian writes It should prove to be no surprise for most rational people, but a group of Australian researchers have determined that homeopathy is completely useless at treating medical conditions. Researchers sifted through 1,800 research papers on homeopathy and found no reliable report that showed homeopathic remedies had any better results than placebos.
Of course, anyone with compelling evidence to the contrary (or better yet, proof to the contrary) is encouraged to post links in the comments below.
First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First Post (Score:5, Funny)
No, that's too weak. You need to dilute it until it's a .0000000001st post.
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There is that to consider.
Also - even if homeopathy WERE no better than placebos, then there are times when placebos are better than nothing. Little kid falls down and goes boom-boom. He comes running to Mommy, who kisses his boo-boo and tells him it's all better. Nothing but a placebo, but it transforms the little guy from a snotty nosed, sniveling little mess, into Superman. Superman goes running off to save the earth again. Placebos have their place.
As for homeopathy - if it makes the patient feel g
Re: First Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Most rational people agree that placebos have their place, the effect is a valuable part of treatment and current medical establishment ought to be adjusted to maximise it's benefits.
But charlatans selling nothing else and claiming to be selling medicine end up killing LOTS of people every year.
The thing is - real medicine gets you the placebo effect ANYWAY - and ALSO gets you actual TREATMENT.
We can possibly increase the placebo effect if we copy a few things from the charlatan's playbook - like making appointments one-hour and actually connecting with patients, getting to know them, helping them feel emotionally better.
They are experts at that, the trouble is - that's ALL they are experts at and they LIE about offering anything more - which kills people, lots of people, every year.
I read an article recently by an oncologist about the serious difficulties they face because so many cancer patients are ALSO on supposedly alternative treatments which has no medical value but CAN severely interact with the treatments they ARE on (like chemo) and make those less effective. Interestingly she points out how those alternative providers never request files from them, never contact them to discuss a patient - never talk to them.
Any real medical professional you go see while on something like chemo would PHONE your oncologist and discuss his planned treatments whatever they may be to make sure there is no unintended cross reaction. A real doctor wouldn't remove an ingrown toenail from a cancer patient without first talking to the oncologist in case the local anaesthetic can cross-react with the chemo.
The alternative lot never do that, because they know the real doctors will tell them NOT to do anything. So instead of not doing something potentially VERY harmful or even deadly, they do it in secret and leave the oncologists to clean up the mess.
Re: First Post (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're absolutely right.
And that's before we even consider the truly tragic cases where the alternative lot expressed their negative sentiments about medicine so harshly that patients end up forgoing them - and now they have ONLY placebo effects.
Re: First Post (Score:3)
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They just couldn't understand that a Large percentage of our medicines are refined versions of the active component that's in the herbs they are using, and the medicines are without the other components in herbs that have other effects, including negative ones. Additionally, the medicines are of specific quantities, while the herbs are variable dosage, so you don't ev
Re: First Post (Score:5, Insightful)
"Water has a memory" (Score:5, Funny)
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They actually go for the special cables that dilute the signal.
Re:"Water has a memory" (Score:5, Funny)
Well humans are about 65% water and we remember things so clearly 65% of what we remember must be remembered by water QED.*
*The science in this statement was diluted at least 1e10 times before being used.
Re:"Water has a memory" (Score:5, Funny)
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Here's a tip - homeopathic speaker cable - buy about 10 lengths of cheap doorbell wire. Then sneak into a HiFi shop and rub one piece against a length of $500-per-foot premium speaker cable. Go home and rub the first piece of cheap cable against the second piece - continue and then hook up your speakers with the 10th length of cable.
What happens is that the quantum entanglement caused by brief contact with the high end cable forms a virtual conduit for the frequencies blocked by the cheap cable. You will i
Unfair comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they found similar results when compared with placebo. Placebos can actually be effective. To infer that the treatment is useless is actually false. The treatment consists of tricking someone into thinking they're going to get better. Occasionally, this will psychosomatically heal them.
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparison against placebo is the gold standard for medical research. Why is it unfair to do the same comparison that modern medicine is put to?
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
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placebo's do have in fact, while small, a significant effect on health
A significant small effect?
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not that small.
Placebos have as high as a 30% response rate for many things. That's why the gold standard is to compare double blind placebo controlled data. It isn't no response rate that matters, it is the response rate relative to sugar pills that somebody tells you are medicine. Telling somebody that roasted rat pellets (convincingly) are medicine means that you will get a positive response.
Add to this data dredging, confirmation bias driven studies, tenure decisions made in your favor only if you see a positive response in your new cancer treatment, and the fact that "significant" is generally a statistical absurdity like p = 0.05, and it's no real surprise that we end up with lots of (ultimately) silly conclusions.
rgb
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:5, Informative)
Things that reach statistical significance are often rather small differences clinically. So unless you clarify exactly what type of significance you are looking at it the effects can be quite small. You see this is 'regular' medicine quite a bit. A drug company will advertise a 'significant difference' between drug x and placebo, but they are looking at one of various statistical tests showing that the effect is real. However, when you look at it in clinical terms, it's perhaps 2-3% better - an effect you would never see in practice. But it's real....
Placebos can be effective in clinical terms - sometimes up to 10 - 20% effect which, although not earth shattering, is on par with many 'regular medicine' treatments. Homeopathy is basically a placebo effect. It's a fairly harmless one - if it is actually water. The caveat being it might prevent the patient from seeking 'real' medical attention in a timely fashion. That can be devastating at times, other times it can actually be useful.
It gets complicated.
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In short, they promote misery, ill health, and death to make money by basing it all on lies.
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Placebos usually have a fairly large effect. On average it's about 30%, which is greater than the additional advantage afforded by lots of actual treatments. In certain areas, like pain and depression, the placebo effect is more like 50%.
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:4, Interesting)
Wasn't there a study that found that placebos had positive effects even when the patients were told that they were placebos?
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It's not that complicated: it's really hard to make a profit selling people their own mind's ability to heal them.
We've known dogs and rats can readily detect lung and many other cancers just by smelling a person's breath since at least the 50s (or was it 20s), but when was the last time you saw a cancer-sniffing dog offering instant, non-invasive cancer screening at the hospital? You haven't - there's no profit in it. Plus I think doctors are a little insecure - they have a lot of centuries of leaches an
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It's not that complicated: it's really hard to make a profit selling people their own mind's ability to heal them.
The placebo only works if you don't think it's a placebo. So if people believe in weird shit, yet it increase to success of the placebo effect then where's the harm?
We've known dogs and rats can readily detect lung and many other cancers just by smelling a person's breath since at least the 50s (or was it 20s),.
Have we? I've heard the stories, but have never seen the science. If it it were true, it doesn't require Big Medicine to throw off the shackles of Big Snake Oil, surely Cesar Millan would be out there making even even more millions?
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It's not that complicated: it's really hard to make a profit selling people their own mind's ability to heal them.
The placebo only works if you don't think it's a placebo. So if people believe in weird shit, yet it increase to success of the placebo effect then where's the harm?
The harm is that it discourages patients from seeking other treatments that will give both placebo benefits and genuine medical benefits.
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What I really don't get is why people reject the idea that the mind can heal.
They don't. The role of a healthy mind in the maintenance of a healthy body is fairly well understood by the medical community - which isn't to say that anyone really knows how it works, but doctors understand that happier people get better faster.
Why is it then that the role of the mind in healing is always denigrated as "placebo" (must be bad) instead of acknowledged as perfectly valid and important?
No-one, anywhere, is saying that the placebo effect is bad. What they are saying is that homeopathic remedies are no more effective than sugar pills. Which is perfectly true. It is, therefore, dishonest to sell homeopathic remedies and claim that they cure people.
Placebos are NOT the "gold standard" (Score:5, Insightful)
Double-blind randomized clinical trials are the "gold standard" for medical research, not necessarily placebos.
Sometimes the control in such a study is indeed a placebo. This is the case for which there is no treatment of overwhelming effectiveness and/or ones amenable to psychosomatic healing, like psychiatric illnesses or some forms of pain.
But for many other conditions, you could bring up a research up on criminal charges for using a placebo instead of the current standard treatment. We'd never do such a thing in, say, a study for curable cancers, diabetes, blood pressure, serious infections, heart attacks, or even a birth control pill.
In a study for a drug to treat, say, Type I diabetes, we'd NEVER use a placebo. The control group in such a study would be Insulin, since no treatment at all would be swiftly fatal.
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Because homeopathy is based on the placebo effect. That does not mean it has no effect, it can have a great effect. It just means that the effect is based in the placebo effect.
IMHO what the homeopathy studies SHOULD be looking for is whether there are unwanted side effects. Those should be non-existent because you can always find a placebo with no side effects. In that regard they should be held to a higher standard than non-placebo medicine.
To conclude that the homeopathic medicines do nothing because the
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:5, Informative)
This represents a gross misunderstanding of the placebo effect.
Placebo has no physiological effect (like homeopathy). Often people taking placebo, homeopathy, etc. will *report* feeling better - but this does not mean they are better in any meaningful sense of the word.
More info here: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/... [csicop.org]
It is very unethical to sell somebody a treatment which does not *treat* anything.
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Often people taking placebo, homeopathy, etc. will *report* feeling better - but this does not mean they are better in any meaningful sense of the word.
True, though in some cases, reporting you feel better is the same as actually BEING better. Antidepressants, for instance.
Either way, I agree with your premise. Just because something happens after taking a "cure" does not mean that the "cure" caused the effect. In this case, it's likely the subject's belief in the "cure" that's causing the effects to occur, rather than the "cure" itself. That said, I might be okay with doctors charging $100/pill for placebos if the high cost managed to convince a patient it could work, so long as they didn't try the trick in cases where the patient was at risk and they refunded the patient afterwards if it didn't work. ;)
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
though in some cases, reporting you feel better is the same as actually BEING better. Antidepressants, for instance.
This still isn't quite correct. For example: patients may want their doctors to feel as though a treatment is working and thus report an effect that isn't real ("yeah, sure - I feel better"). But the minute they walk out the door they feel just as crappy as when they entered. Other "effects" from placebo are simply bias in the study on the part of the researchers. Or the "observer" effect where people change simply because they're being watched. Placebo is a catch-all for any reported result that isn't explained by a real treatment.
Also - something quacks^Hhomeopaths never want you to know is that any reported effect *size* is minuscule from both homeopathy and placebo. So a small percentage of people reporting a tiny improvement? Your money is best spent elsewhere.
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No disagreement from me, and that's a great clarification. I did overgeneralize a bit with that statement, so thanks for catching it and setting it straight.
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Often people taking placebo, homeopathy, etc. will *report* feeling better - but this does not mean they are better in any meaningful sense of the word.
Curiously, I'd say that's the only meaningful sense of "feel better".
If I took treatment which genuinely cured me of some physical ailment but didn't make me feel better, I honestly wouldn't care for it and wouldn't do it again. If I took a placebo which didn't cure the physical ailment but made me feel better, I'd be all over it. I guess I'd just assumed that this was obvious and everyone would have the same reaction. Apparently you don't.
Maybe I'm influenced by endurance sports (e.g. I've done many 10+ mi
Completely wrong (Score:2)
Placebo can have physiological effects.
"Physical changes are real. For example, studies on asthma patients show less constriction of the bronchial tubes in patients for whom a placebo drug works."
https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
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Placebo has no physiological effect (like homeopathy). Often people taking placebo, homeopathy, etc. will *report* feeling better - but this does not mean they are better in any meaningful sense of the word. It is very unethical to sell somebody a treatment which does not *treat* anything.
Assuming that research says one day that foot massages have the same effect as placebo, or have the same effect as just resting your feet, no more and no less, at least not anything that can be effectively measured objectively on the longterm health of people, I guess that you would consider therapeutic foot massage establishments unethical as well. Because obviously, the customer is not always right, the customer can't be trusted to evaluate his own feelings objectively, and that we should probably shut do
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That's not true. Placebos do usually have physiological effects. Very few clinical trials use "how you feel" as an endpoint. Instead they use objective measures like change in tumour size, lung capacity and did the patient die? Placebos do improve those things. They also have effects on body chemistry.
We generally consider it unethical to claim something is medicine if it doesn't have any intrinsic effect of it's own. That's not the same thing as not having any physiological effect.
It might be a little more complicated than that. (Score:3)
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Placebos generally cost a lot less
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If you doubt the effectiveness of placebos then you have not read anything from the pharmacology literature for the last 50 years. Antidepressants and other mood altering drugs are subject to significant placebo effects, and even surgical placebo effects have been well documented. Yes, it is psychosomatic, but how people feel after a treatment is undeniable. There is probably a large component of reduced stress after going through a treatment the person thinks is going to help. Less cortisol is released, an
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Actually, the more expensive a placebo is, the better it works. What countries with public health care systems need to do is let doctors prescribe cheap placebos for cases where real treatment isn't available or warranted, but tell patients that they're actually getting very expensive drugs.
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Research has shown that the more someone pays for a placebo the more effective it becomes.
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Of course they found similar results when compared with placebo. Placebos can actually be effective.
And that's why they compare things like this to placebos, and not poisons.
The purpose of such testing to see if the medicine in question is actually having an active, biological effect against disease. Placebos don't have any sort of active biological effect on people; they have a more passive, mental effect. If your effect is statistically indistinguishable from a placebo, than all you really have is a different type of placebo. If you do statistically better than a placebo, then we infer that there is
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> Of course they found similar results when compared with placebo
Meaning it's a placebo. *That's the definition.*
> Placebos can actually be effective
Of course, that's why we always test against them.
> To infer that the treatment is useless is actually false
And herein lies your entirely misunderstanding.
There is absolutely no suggestion that the treatment is *useless*. Placebo's work. Really. Almost every time. Having a doctor hand you aspirin rather than the nurse makes it work better. This is wide
Re:Unfair comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo [slashdot.org]
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/08/21/the-other-side-of-the-placebo-effect/ [slashdot.org]
Post your proof in the comments? (Score:5, Funny)
Geeee (Score:2)
no better than placebo??? (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, but aren't placebos effective? I thought even the FDA [theonion.com] agreed ;-)
Re:no better than placebo??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, we just don't have an objective system for measuring how someone "feels" so we have to use a placebo to establish the noise floor on people subjectively rating how they feel and how terribly inconsistent that system is.
Results are homeopathic (Score:2)
Re:Results are homeopathic (Score:5, Funny)
Homeopathy's Law of Infinitesimals: the fewer studies there are of Homeopathy, the better it works.
So placebos can treat medical conditions too? (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:2)
In other news, water turns out to be wet.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, water turns out to be wet.
And its wetness increases, the more you dilute it!
Wait...
False!!!! (Score:3)
Useless? (Score:2)
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I'm fairly sure the Placebo Effect is effective.
Well, then you'd simply be wrong.
You see, there isn't one "Placebo Effect". The effect is different for different ailments.
An example: you have a patient who is suffering from a migraine. You give them a placebo. In 10 minutes, they say they feel somewhat better. That may be the "placebo effect".
A second patient comes in who has had a heart attack. They aren't breathing, and there is no pulse. You give them a placebo. In 10 minutes, they're dead.
When constructing studies with placebos, you typically
researchers will be sorry (Score:5, Funny)
And if you find this result upsetting... (Score:5, Insightful)
... just have a small glass of water. You'll feed much better.
Incidentally, alternative medicine doesn't exist. There's medicine. And there's stuff that doesn't work.
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... There's medicine. And there's stuff that doesn't work.
Never thought this would happen, but: obligatory on-topic Tim Minchin [wikipedia.org] 10-minute beat poem:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U [youtube.com]
Randi already proved this in 2001 (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar... [wired.co.uk]
what if I'm dehydrated. ? (Score:2)
Take two tablets... (Score:2)
... if symptoms persist, take one.
Here are two tablets... (Score:2)
If symptoms persist, take one-half.
If symptoms persist, take one-quarter.
By the way, has anyone seen what dogs do with grass? Ok, it varies a bit by dog. Some eat grass (and throw it up later) while others simply bite at the grass (swallowing little or none and not throwing it up later).
The point is, why do they do it?
I postulate, with the second category of dog, that they are getting a hint, an "essence of grass", and using that as an intentional "almost at homeo
It Was Somewhat Useful Though (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please (Score:2)
<SARCASM>
It's clear that the Aussie researchers were paid off by Big Pharma®!!!
</SARCASM>
Useless for medical treatment but --- (Score:3)
They're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
If they think Homeopathy doesn't work, they're just not using enough.
Or, wait, sorry, they're using too much.
The less homeopathy you use, the stronger it is.
The logical conclusion is that if you use none at all, you'll see the greatest improvement, especially financially.
That's TERRIBLE advice.... (Score:2)
The less you use, the more powerful the effects, so if you use none at all, you run the risk of dying from a MASSIVE overdose...
Enough with the "well, it's an effective placebo" (Score:2)
Selling a "convincing" placebo to people might be a good idea if homeopathy confined itself to "treating" harmless conditions. But Homeopaths think they can treat real diseases for which we have medical treatments of known effectiveness.
Homeopaths think they can treat cancer, diabetes, hypertension, arrhythmia, allergies, viral illnesses of all sorts (from the common cold, to influenza and ebola), gout, parasites, etc.
If people believe that their homeopathic remedy "cured" them of insomnia, they might turn
It was useful to me as a kid, in a weird way (Score:2)
I was sick like all the time as a small child (constant sinus infections, often also in my ears and throat and lungs, it was awful). First stop was all kinds of doctors that put me on all kinds of medication, at the end of which I was even worse. Finally my mom tried taking me to an alternative place that turned out to be a homeopathic clinic, not that she actually believed in it, but she was about ready to try just about anything. She actually called the pills they gave her to give me "placebo pills", whic
Let's do an experiment: Kidney Failure Treatment (Score:3)
Worthwhile reading ... (Score:3)
First saw this on IFLScience (Score:2)
I saw this article first on IFLScience, and wowee... the comments were the equivalent of repeatedly thwacking multiple hornets nests with sticks. The sheer number of people up in arms about this study is jawdropping.
While not really surprising, it is depressing. Especially when you consider the fact that the majority of people who were outraged had no idea what homeopathy actually was. Countless comments about how willow bark, st. johns wort, etc worked for them and therefore the study was just a big con
http://www.howdoeshomeopathywork.com/ (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again ... (Score:2)
... the placebo effect is real, and only works if people believe in the remedy.
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As it happens, it works even when people know they're receiving a placebo. Weird, isn't it?
Even stranger, there are measurable physiological effects. It's not just patients reporting on their subjective experience.
Placebos are far from useless (Score:3)
Placebos have undoubtedly successfully treated more people than any medical procedure. [We can say this because treatments are rarely twice as effective as placebo. As such, placebo can be considered to be responsible for typically 50-100% of a treatment's effectiveness.]
There are many health issues where treatments don't outperform placebo by 10% eg mental health.
Now if you or your public health service is on a budget, a cheap placebo might well be the best option.
A couple more points:
- Many treatments are impossible to test against placebo eg osteopathy and the like. Homeopathy is perfect to test against placebo -- it is scientifically indistinguishable from water. Therefore we know with far more certainty than anything else that homeopathy doesn't outperform placebo. We could still be wrong but we can be surer of that than any other complementary treatment.
- Double blind is a necessity for testing against placebo. Single blind cannot give a positive result -- but a negative one means your treatment is pretty bad. But double blind methodologies are often flawed and should always be tested by asking the patient what they think they took. If > 55% guess correctly, you have a problem.
Homeopathy that works contains actual medicine (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason that so many people believe that homeopathic medicines is that most of them actually WORK, because they are "contaminated" with actual medicine. For instance, there's this zinc-based nasal spray that is advertized as homeopathic, but in fact it contains a non-trivial amount of the active ingredient. It's advertized as homeopathic (a) as a marketing gimmick for those who buy into this stuff (note: people who believe in homeopathy don't read labels or even understand what's on those labels) and (b) probably some way to get around FDA regulations.
Ever heard of grapefruit seed extract? Supposedly it's this powerful antimicrobial agent. Except it's not. Often the product also contains an actual antimicrobial compound as an "inactive ingredient."
I have no idea how companies get away with this. I mean, if it works, that's fine, but to lie through their teeth about what does what in the product?
Re:Well, they're wrong. Plain and simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a few days ago [slashdot.org] I made the case why homeopathy or other "magical medicine" and the way it might be practiced today can offer at least one significant upside vis-a-vis regular medical treatment ... or should I say council?
That homeopathic substances probably offer no better remedy than placebos is not really news. However, they *do* offer cheap placebos, which also can be a good and useful thing. And placebos are effective, or at least have an effect, there are enough studies that prove that.
The problem is when the placebo effect is not powerfull enough to overcome a medical issue but real pharmaceuticals are and the people instead choose the placebo homeopathy because its natural and better when it really isn't. Or when the people selling the diluted sugar pills are charging equal or more that real effective pharmaceuticals.
Secondly the placebo effects also works when there are real medicines as well so you get two benefits (real and placebo). were homeopathy is just one(placebo).
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The problem is when the placebo effect is not powerfull enough to overcome a medical issue but
Yes it is. Go read about the placebo effect. e.g. there was an operation that was carried out for some time for angina. It was pretty effective for a lot of patients, resulting in long-term symptom relief. I don't recall the exact details, but I think it involved tying up some superficial blood vessels under the assumption that this would reduce pressure on the heart. Some time later a surgeon did a study where some patients received a sham operation. Turns out the sham was as effective as the real operati
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What's the matter, you don't want to take a pill that may cause anal bleeding or death when you want to treat a migraine? Live a little!
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So given a choice I'd chose the cheaper homeopathy "solutions".
Given a choice I'd chose the even cheaper placebo "pills" ;^)
(unless of course actually spending money on your cure in a non-single-payer healthcare system is an integral part of the placebo effect)
It's not a "complex moral argument" at all (Score:5, Insightful)
If Homeopathy confined itself to conditions that are not curable with medicine, are medically harmless, or amenable to the placebo effect, you might have a point of simply letting people indulge themselves.
But Homeopaths allege they can "treat" all sorts of harmful (and sometimes deadly) diseases for which we DO have rather effective medical interventions. (Cancer, diabetes, malaria (that was one of the first homeopathic "remedies" when even at the time we had an effective drug to treat it), influenza, manic-depression, hypertension, etc.)
If somebody eschews an effective remedy because they believe that homeopathy "cured" them of some inconsequential thing, then it does real harm to that patient.
It's not a "complex moral argument" at all here.
Fair comment (Score:2)
Were you stoned when you wrote this,or just stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
1) If homeopathic remedies could lower histamines, this could be easily "measured with science".
2) Intoxication is a condition that easily lends itself to psychosomatic "cures". We could easily measure the actual effectiveness with science by giving patients water vs. Homeopathic "remedies" and comparing the two groups (reaction tests, blood draws, mood surveys, whatever.) It would not be a difficult study to design at all.
3) The very idea of "Liver Detox" is a crock. There are lots of different poisons, and the idea that a single remedy could the effects from alcohol AND caffeine (which aren't even remotely chemically related) is ridiculous. (Though no more ridiculous than Homeopathy itself, which to actually work would require completely throwing out a whole pile of rather well-settled parts of chemistry, physics, and biology.)
4) Insomnia is another heavily psychosomatic condition. (Indeed, therapy works better for insomnia than any other remedy.)
The idea of a Double-Blind Clinical trial is not hard to grasp. When a homeopath tells you that somehow their remedies "can't be measured" with such a trial, they are simply moving the goalposts. If they are actually "cures" for anything, then that will show up in a trial. Period. End of story. To think otherwise is nothing more than irrational "magical thinking".
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Why would any rational person try bullshit non-therapies?
Re:Homeopathy - Faith based treatment (Score:4, Insightful)
It's fucking bullshit. Jesus Christ, I can't believe the lengths people will go to justify witch doctor quackery.
Re:Homeopathy - Faith based treatment (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with only using "how I feel" as a measurement while ignoring scientific measurements of the effects is that human senses are pretty horrible and are often wrong.
Back in my day this was taught and demonstrated in public education (seems not to be the case anymore) and can be proven with a very simple experiment: the old warm and cold bowl of water trick.
Line up three bowls on the counter. Fill one half way with cold water and another half way with hot (to the touch, not burning) water. Put one hand in each for a few minutes.
Then mix the two bowls of water together in the last bowl to get warm water, and put both your hands together in that bowl.
The hand previously in the cold water will feel hot, and the hand previously in the hot water will feel cold, both at the same time and in the same bowl of water.
Your senses are completely lying to you. One bowl of water can't be two different temperatures at the same time.
Only our intellect is capable of recognizing the contradiction in the data from your senses to indicate neither can't be correct.
Only impartial scientific measurement can give you accurate data that is correct, combined again with our intellect to let us override data from our senses with measured data.
This isn't to say our senses aren't important or don't matter at all, only that our senses are just the first step in obtaining knowledge. All three (senses, intellect, and measurements) are required.
Please don't rely on one without the others, as that only serves to make your knowledge dubious, and draw into question any and all future knowledge based on that one incorrect fact.
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And yet placebos have been shown to be pretty effective, and are steadily becoming more so when compared against the drugs being tested.
Or, perhaps...
The drugs are only marginally effective, and some of the maladies that affect us today are partly psychosomatic...
Yes, the mind can be a powerful tool. Unfortunately, it's not always on our side...
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Mod parent funny!
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I like James Randi's joke about the man who accidentally overdosed on homeopathic medicine when he forgot to take it.
I read something similar. Bill Joel's daughter decided to end it all, and overdosed on homeopathic medicine. Fortunately she survived that suicide attempt.
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Re: (Score:3)
The problem is, when homeopathic remedies are created, there is no dose of the natural substance left, just water. When that water is used to "dose" sugar pills, those pills are just sugar. So yes, homeopathy is just sugar and water.
Quinine is not homeopathic.