Is the End of Government Acceptance of Homeopathy In Sight? 668
cold fjord writes: It looks like homeopathy is in for a rough stretch ahead as shown in a chart and noted by Steven Novella at NEUROLoOGICAblog, "Homeopathy is perhaps the most obviously absurd medical pseudoscience. It is also widely studied, and has been clearly shown to not work. Further, there is a huge gap in the public understanding of what homeopathy is; it therefore seems plausible that the popularity of homeopathy can take a huge hit just by telling the public what it actually is. ... In 2010 the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee completed a full report on homeopathy in which they concluded it is witchcraft – that it cannot work, it does not work, and support for homeopathy in the national health service should be completely eliminated. In 2015 the Australian government completed its own review, concluding that there is no evidence that homeopathy works for anything. Homeopathy is a placebo. ... The FDA and the FTC in the United States are now both receiving testimony, questioning their current regulation of homeopathy. ... There is even a possibility that the FDA will decide to do their actual job – require testing of homeopathic products to demonstrate efficacy before allowing them on the market. If they do this simple and obvious thing, the homeopathic industry in the US will vanish over night, because there is no evidence to support any homeopathic product for any indication." — More on the FDA hearings at Science-Based Medicine.
rename it "placebopathy" (Score:3)
and let it be..
Re:rename it "placebopathy" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:rename it "placebopathy" (Score:5, Funny)
I'll just reply with this post [slashdot.org], by some poster called Frosty Piss [slashdot.org]:
Re: Not a Placebo (Score:4, Informative)
oh, those poor homeos (Score:4, Funny)
Playing devil's advocate here... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's wrong with having placebos? Placebos work. They are quite effective treatments for a variety of health problems, especially things like mental health problems. Homeopathy is obviously ridiculous, but I don't see anything wrong with having some kind of government-sanctioned system of placebo sugar pills available. Use the profits to fund actual medical science. The fact that the pills are placebo doesn't even need to be secret - you can post directly on the label that it has no active drugs in it and that it is still an effective treatment (both facts are true). A lot of people would consider lack of 'active drugs' a plus. Most people wouldn't even read the labels anyway. The pills would sell quite well.
Re:Playing devil's advocate here... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with labelling something no better than a placebo as "healthcare" is that people who could benefit from real treatments can be led to use a placebo as a replacement for actual effective treatments; if the placebos don't work, they may have just aggravated the health issue by delaying real treatment.
It's like saying "Scientology worked for me"; you are promoting a very dubious form of (mental) health care, instead of scientifically proven options. If your medical doctor wants to prescribe a placebo, fine, but make sure you go to a real doctor for that.
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Many "real treatments" are actually only moderately better than placebos and come with significant side effects; yet placebos are often much better than no treatment at all. The problem with eliminati
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If you say that the placebo is a placebo (in such a way that the patient understands what placebo means), you completely eliminate the placebo effect.
Believe it or not, that isn't true.
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Re:Playing devil's advocate here... (Score:4, Informative)
What's wrong with having placebos? Placebos work.
yeah, they worked great for Steve Jobs, as i recall.
Placebos (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with having placebos? Placebos work.
No placebos do not work. They are the very definition of not working. There is a reason we use placebos as the control group when doing double blind tests. The placebo effect is real but the placebos by definition have no medicinal effect whatsoever.
Placebos do have their occasional use as a therapy but homeopathy is for all practical purposes a placebo sold at a huge markup to stupid people. Homeopathy is pure fraud for that reason. It astonishes me that it is legal to represent them in any way as something even vaguely medicinal.
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Yes they do work. If I'm feeling down and I take a placebo pill, It's likely I'll feel great again. That's the definition of 'working.' When you take a placebo pill it causes real biochemical changes in your body: http://link.springer.com/artic... [springer.com]
And as for control groups, most often they use a treated group, a placebo group, and a non-treated group. And I never said homeopathy is anything other than a placebo.
You completely lack knowledge of medical science. Your opinion is worthless.
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The problem is that some people, called homeopaths, make a living out of it and that it is close to a fraud. Profits don't fund medical science. Profits fund homeopaths and corporations developing the pills. And worse, they do not admit it is a placebo.
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If you're talking about a condition that will not become progressively worse if left untreated, then sure, go for a placebo. If you're looking for a cure because you're paranoid of conventional methods, either because you don't trust the motives of pharmaceutical companies or are scared of the side-effects, for a condition that will deteriorate if left untreated -- well, let's just say that is downright foolish.
Re:Playing devil's advocate here... (Score:4, Informative)
You can't regulate away stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
People will indulge in homeopathy, chiropractery and crystal healing. OK, they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but do you think banning these things will help? How's that worked out for drugs? Or cigarettes? Those have disappeared. Right? Oh, wait, they haven't.
For all these things, put the warnings on the label and let Darwin take care of the rest.
Label it accurately (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but do you think banning these things will help?
Short answer? Yes. Selling "medicine" under false pretenses is 100% of the reason why the FDA exists. If these products were represented accurately then I guess I have no problem with them being sold as entertainment but they are NOT medicine. You know what they call alternative medicine that is proven to work? MEDICINE.
Homeopathy in France (Score:3)
IIRC, homeopathy in France is officially accepted by health authorities as being a useful placebo: it cannot harm, but it can help thanks to the placebo effect, therefore its use is allowed. It is not reimbursed by socialized healthcare, though.
I note the following in the summary:
the FDA will decide to do their actual job – require testing of homeopathic products to demonstrate efficacy before allowing them on the market.
I assume it is demonstrating better efficacy than placebo, because placebo has an efficacy itself.
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"placebo has an efficacy itself."
MAY have an efficacy. Mostly not though. Also, many of those products claim to have certain ingredients - ginko, for example - and have been found to simply contain ground up random trash plants. Some have been found with Jimson. Not exactly confidence inducing, eh?
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Let's tackle religion next (Score:2, Interesting)
Homeopathy today, religion tomorrow! Working towards reason is reasonable and away from it is, well, unreasonable.
Yes, but please don't end all alternative medicine (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree that homeopathy is total nonsense. Unfortunately, it's commonly linked with other forms of alternative medicine that actually do work, and I won't want to see those go down as well. In fact, there is a push by the pharmaceutical companies for the FDA to regulate alternative medicines such that they will become no longer cost-effective to produce. Herbal meds take money out of the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, so they will try to take advantage of homeopathy going down to elimiate herba
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"Thyroid disorder" LOL!!! Yeah, right. Of course, there are cases where Levothyroxine won't work: hyperthyroidism.
It won't vanish (Score:5, Funny)
If they do this simple and obvious thing, the homeopathic industry in the US will vanish over night,
Not really -- it will just be diluted until not a single homeopathy vendor remains, but the market will retain the essence of the original vendors and the effect will be even more potent.
Two more centuries (Score:5, Insightful)
So now, for the next two centuries, we'll have to hear stories about how government is suppressing "natural" cures that they don't want people to have, because of big pharma (and Monsanto). Oh well.
Depends on you (Score:3)
Nonsense! (Score:4, Funny)
I took a homeopathic medicine for dehydration and got better.
Re:Who buys them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of people given the shelf space devoted to it.
Re:Who buys them? (Score:4, Informative)
E.g. at Whole Foods, which IMO that store is a huge ripoff to begin with, not even counting the homeopathic medicine section. For starters, they have a "bad foods" blacklist that doesn't even make any sense, and worse is that they sell a crapload of junk food. Meanwhile the hippies that shop there, and pay two to three times what the food should cost, just blindly assume that everything there is healthy.
Re:Commercialization of 'health' (Score:5, Insightful)
But for the most part those people who buy Armani suites don't go around telling everyone that they should ware one too. Or bitch and complain when they go to a place where it would be inconvenient to wear an Armani suite.
The natural food (vegetarians/vegans) freaks, are just as bad as any religious zealot. They think that their way is the only way for all people, and work hard to convert them. Not realizing, caring or dismissing evidence that there isn't any major benefit, or the fact that some bodies and lifestyles such a diet doesn't work unless there is the same degree of zealotry towards your diet.
Places like whole food while expensive is still cheap enough that we will have to deal with these people on a daily basis.
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Ok, I don't believe in homeopathy, but I suspect the market is people with ongoing medical problems where they've been thru conventional medicine, the doctors haven't helped and have given up. If that happened to you, YOU would be willing to try homeopathy and pretty much anything else that might work, because you don't have an alternative.
No dignity in witchcraft (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I don't believe in homeopathy, but I suspect the market is people with ongoing medical problems where they've been thru conventional medicine, the doctors haven't helped and have given up.
Sometimes. People do turn to witchcraft sometimes out of desperation. And make no mistake that homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a placebo sold at a huge markup to stupid and sometimes desperate people. Most people who buy into homeopathy however are rather stupid new-age granola types who lack critical reasoning ability. I'm particularly disappointed in places like Whole Foods that sell this snake oil even though they have no excuse for not knowing better.
If that happened to you, YOU would be willing to try homeopathy and pretty much anything else that might work, because you don't have an alternative.
No I wouldn't use homeopathy because I am not stupid enough to ever believe it would cure me of anything. I'm going to die someday and I'd rather do so with some dignity rather than paying money to some snake oil salesman for something that will do nothing.
Re:No dignity in witchcraft (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes. People do turn to witchcraft sometimes out of desperation. And make no mistake that homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a placebo sold at a huge markup to stupid and sometimes desperate people.
I'm not at all in favor of holistic medicine, but modern medicine ain't all that either.
Botulinum Toxin is now being prescribed for a number of things. Like the old use of paralyzinf facial muscles - presumably to give a more youthful appearance.
Also for overactive bladder - but you shouldn't use it if you are not willing to self catheterize yourself.
But the real interesting one is for migraine headaches. It's approved for that, but the small print says that in trils versus placebo, Botulism toxin gave 9 migraine free days per month, while placebo gave 7.
Re:No dignity in witchcraft (Score:5, Informative)
And make no mistake that homeopathy is witchcraft.
Nonsense. There is overwhelming evidence that homeopathy is ineffective. There is far less evidence that witchcraft is ineffective. Homeopathy is based on the falsifiable theory that water has a memory of substances that were dissolved in it. Witchcraft is based on the non-falsifiable theory that there are supernatural forces that can be summoned to intervene in the human world. Those are entirely different things.
It is a placebo sold at a huge markup to stupid and sometimes desperate people.
That is an accurate description of homeopathy. That is not at all an accurate description of witchcraft.
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If that happened to you, YOU would be willing to try homeopathy and pretty much anything else that might work, because you don't have an alternative.
No I wouldn't use homeopathy because I am not stupid enough to ever believe it would cure me of anything. I'm going to die someday and I'd rather do so with some dignity rather than paying money to some snake oil salesman for something that will do nothing.
Hi there. Yes you will. The statement before makes an assumption : one will behave rationally under life-ending-stress. That is simply untrue. I salute the wish to stay rational in all and any circumstances. We all should have this ability. Yet that is only a wish. People are not necessarily stupid going into "idiocies". It is a better strategy to believe in rubbish and stay alive, instead of being clear-minded of commit suicide out of lack of hope. Let me diverge a bit...
A friend of mine - 35 years of age
Re:Who buys them? (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you are in pain, you might give $100 to someone to pray for you. I mean, at that point, what do you have to lose? $100?
Which is why I wouldn't do that. I would lose $100 and not gain anything by it. The alleged benefit would have to be plausible to me. I'm just not large enough a market to scam.
You perhaps have not been in quite enough pain. They didn't give soldiers with blown off limbs morpine for the euphoria.
Ever hear a badly injured person screaming from the pain? It's a weird high pitched and very disturbing keen. They might give you a hundred dollars just to knock them unconscious.
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You perhaps have not been in quite enough pain.
And I won't ever be in enough pain to try something that I know won't work.
They didn't give soldiers with blown off limbs morpine for the euphoria.
And morphine isn't a placebo that I know won't work.
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Ever hear a badly injured person screaming from the pain? It's a weird high pitched and very disturbing keen. They might give you a hundred dollars just to knock them unconscious.
This aptly describes my ex's first orgasm ever.
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Re:Who buys them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hypochondriacs buy a lot of homeopathic cures, because it works well on their imaginary ailments. On the plus side, it probably doesn't hurt them either. Unfortunately, even hypochondriacs sometimes get real health problems and fail to get proper health care that could actually help them.
I have a friend who has a serious problem, but refuses to see a practitioner of allopathic medicine. She is trying one quack treatment after another and is not getting better. No amount of facts seem to interfere with her beliefs.
Re:Who buys them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe you could try suggesting to your friend that she start journaling, if she isn't now. It has both utility and appeal, and will help her track how she feels, what treatments she has tried, and could help inform her future choices. Maybe she'll eventually see she should try a more mainstream approach. Perhaps you could ask her if she has ever seen an osteopath [umm.edu]. Modern osteopaths are essentially the same as MDs, and licensed to practice medicine like them, but they do take a somewhat more holistic view of health. If your friend is in some way afraid of doctors the name osteopath might not raise the concerns that the word "doctor" would and yet she would still receive modern medical treatment. I wish her well.
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No, you don't. At best you skipped over some very inconvenient parts of the text for your view, and that is assuming you bothered to read it at all.
The "dog in this race" that I have is a preference for facts and truth to occasionally show up in the discussions of the supposedly intelligent people here. I know, it's mostly a forlorn hope, but still .... And I'll add to that I find pitiable the habit of so many here on Slashdot that apparently live such cloistered lives with such narrow and stunted view
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I know a few.
All are of the of the New Age Crackpot/Hippy variety
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I know quite a few people that have bought homeopathic remedies as well.
None of them are crackpots, new agers, or hippies. They simply don't know that what they bought wasn't medicine. To them, one cold remedy is the same as another.
Take a look next time you're at the pharmacy. The homeopathic stuff is mixed in with all the other products -- and it's not like the packaging makes it terribly clear. You'll often find little more than the word "homeopathic" in thin white 10pt text printed over a busy backg
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It's also word of mouth stuff. As in being asked if you take enough zinc every time you get a cold. Doesn't matter how ridiculous it is, if they heard it from a friend then you should try it.
Yes, I have heard of many strange uses for Vicks Vapor Rub that many a person swears by because they heard it from a friend/family member.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/... [snopes.com]
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Zinc really works. If I take it, I get over my cold in 7-14 days. If I don't, it takes a whole week or two.
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Re:Who buys them? (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife bought home a $250 bottle of some homeopathic health remedy she'd bought for herself, that warned on the outside not to take more than 1 or 2 drops at a time due to its extreme potency. Downed it in one. Most expensive bottle of water I've ever had. She was pissed, until I made her go read up on what homeopathy was. What's scary is that she, an intelligent, 35 year old woman, simply didn't know. The fact it's allowed to be sold in pharmacies (at least, in my country) is a scary thing.
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You just cited one of the worst examples of this stuff, IMO. But that said, I suppose a counter-argument is that so many medications "big pharma" hawks today have numerous negative side-effects -- and not JUST the ones they itemize on the TV commercials and on the side of the box in small print.
At least a "fake drug" with a placebo effect is safe. A while ago, I started taking one of the "proton pump inhibitor" medications for heartburn that's available over the counter. After a few doses, I realized my h
Re:Who buys them? (Score:4, Funny)
Did she atleast turn in to Super Woman after taking that extremely potent elixir?
It's doubtful since he's the one that drank it. But you raise a good point, I'm sure he's glad that he didn't turn into Super Woman. :D
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My mother used to use them. Because a "doctor" suggested it. Doesn't matter what my opinion is as I have no say in the matter. Luckily she is not discarding traditional medicine, just augmenting it with placebos.
There are a lot of people who like to shop around until they find a health practitioner who says what they want to hear.
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I don't believe that I've ever known anyone that either believed in or took homeopathic potions as cures. Who actually buys that stuff?
THere is one product called Arnica Montana which is actually pretty good for pain.
But despite being called "homeopathic" it really isn't. It's made from the dried flowers of a type of daisy, the Arnica Montana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
From the article: The roots contain derivatives of thymol,[9] which are used as fungicides and preservatives and may have some anti-inflammatory effect.[10] When used topically in a gel at 50% concentration, A. montana was found to have the same effect when comp
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Funny)
The FDA should at least make sure that these preparations contains oil from a genuine ophidian species.
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Funny)
I have a couple of questions:
a) How do they erase the memory of dinosaur poop from the water molecules in the pills? Dinosaur poop can't be good for me.
b) Why can't they just throw half a pound of homeopaths in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and cure everybody's illnesses all at once, for free?
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I went to the chemist a while back to buy some ibprofen, the chemist suggested a homeopathic, insisting it was just as good. If I hadn't been educated about homeopathy, I would have probably bought the homeopathic crap.
Which one was it?
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Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
That makes no sense at all. The over the counter painkillers are NSAIDs, and they're also proven effective for that purpose (being anti-inflamatory.)
Granted they aren't going to work if you just cut your thumb off and it hurts really bad, but they'll absolutely help for mild pain like headaches, arthritis, etc, and that is NOT placebo, in fact it's even measurable.
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They put aceteminophen in Tylenol on purpose to kill you if you try to get high on Tylenol. They don't need junkies messing up their reputation.
High on what? The pill binders? The only thing in Tylenol is acetaminophen. Are you maybe confusing it with percoset or other Rx only opioid compounds that also contain acetaminophen?
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High on what? The pill binders?
Sure, why not? Pills are frequently bound with sugar. Eat enough and you get high.
Re: Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
They put aceteminophen in Tylenol on purpose to kill you if you try to get high on Tylenol. They don't need junkies messing up their reputation.
erm.. excuse me but Tylenol is but a trademarked name.. the generic name of it is...Acetaminophen....
http://www.rxlist.com/tylenol-... [rxlist.com]
so the fact that it's got Acetaminophen isn't surprising..... as that's what it is!
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
The first study doesn't deal directly with pain, and should never have been published, IMO, it is appallingly bad science. Some (probably not all) of the flaws:
as I said, I'm surprised it was published, but given that BioMed Central recently retracted [retractionwatch.com] 43 papers for fake peer review, perhaps I shouldn't be.
The second paper is not about homeopathy but about acupuncture, which is (a) naturopathy and (b) an actual physical process involving sticking needles into specific parts of the body (AFAIK nerve clusters).
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it has something to do with advertising and fraud, not the contents.
Apart from fraud and charging people large amounts of money for something they are not getting, it is dangerous . Not because the product is actually dangerous, but because in many cases it's taken in lieu of actual medicine. For most situations - colds, minor aches an pains, etc - it's not a big deal, but for real health problems it is.
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Have you gone to the grocery store or local quick stop to pick up some over the counter medicine? That homeopathic crap is sitting next to the real drugs in the same exact section, both of which cost the same (or the homeopathic crap costs more!) and both of which declare in big letters that they cure similar symptoms.
You have to read the box to find out which one has real drugs in it that have been scientifically proven to have actual effectiveness at the proper dosages for the symptoms that you have or y
Yes it matters (Score:5, Informative)
Why does it even matter?
Because it is fraud. It parts people from their money under false pretenses. It leads people to believe it has medicinal properties that it does not and they sometimes choose to not seek genuine medical care as a result.
I mean, these treatments are pretty much just water. If somebody wants to drink water that they think has special properties, why stop them?
Because it doesn't have special properties and can be shown to lack the special properties claimed. When you sell a product you are required by law (or should be) to represent the product accurately. You should not be allowed to claim health benefits unless there is evidence to support that claim.
It's not even like drugs, where there can be severe harm to the users and others in the vicinity.
It fraudulently separates people from their money. It also at times keeps people from seeking genuine medical care when they need it.
Re:Yes it matters (Score:5, Funny)
Just imagine this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Homeopathic ER. Pray you're not the patient.
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One of the *few* areas in which Western medicine excels? Do you actually believe that there are many other areas in which non-"Western" medicine excels? If so, perhaps you'd like to share just 10 or 20 examples. I'm very excited to hear of your groundbreaking research! After all, if you could show this, you'd be a Galileo for our times.
Re:Yes it matters (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that it should be allowed to be sold, but, like cigarettes, with a mandatory warning to the effect that it contains no chemicals other than water and has no medical efficacy. If people are still willing to buy it then, it's not fraud.
What should absolutely be forbidden is any spending of public funds on this stuff (which is the huge part of the controversy in UK, where NHS funds homeopathic treatments for patients).
Re:Yes it matters (Score:4, Insightful)
"I would say that it should be allowed to be sold, but, like cigarettes, with a mandatory warning to the effect that it contains no chemicals other than water and has no medical efficacy."
Far from the same issue.
Tobacco labours do their intended function. It is that they have demonstrated side effects poisonus enough as to make mandatory to warn about them.
Homeopathics, on the other hand, have not the intended effects they are sold by, so it becomes false advertisement and outright fraud.
"If people are still willing to buy it then, it's not fraud."
If homeopathics are advertised as what they are, water, and follow the regulatory practices of the bottled water market, then sure, no problem. The point is that the homeopathic producers don't want to compete against, say, Coca-Cola and try to place their products for what they are not.
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Homeopathics, on the other hand, have not the intended effects they are sold by, so it becomes false advertisement and outright fraud.
Hence why I specifically said that the mandatory label should clearly state that they have no medical efficacy. I doubt they'd sell many "remedies" that way, but if they want to try, I don't see why not.
Re:Yes it matters (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yes it matters (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes it matters (Score:5, Funny)
Piss off a psychic: throw them a surprise party!
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Why does it even matter?
Because it is fraud.
It's a lot worse [theguardian.com] than that
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You could not have chosen a better phrasing than "I have witnessed". Your faith in homeopathy has the same probative value as those people bearing witness to sweet Jesus. And neither prayer nor homeopathy (nor your moral indignation) are going to reverse stage 4 cancer.
People like you are the reason that homeopathy is dangerous. Because you (apparently) genuinely believe that homeopathy is an appropriate treatment for cancer. And some of you will counsel patients to come off their chemo regimes and swap to
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This is why
http://whatstheharm.net/homeop... [whatstheharm.net]
Tl;dr lots of dead children
Re: Does it matter? (Score:5, Informative)
That's ridiculous. The Form of cancer he had was treatable. Had he been treated he likely would have survived because most patients with that type of cancer survive.
But because he delayed treatment he didn't get treatment when it likely would have worked.
If you wish to be ignorant, fine, but he had no chance of survival with the treatment he opted for versus a good chance with real treatment
http://gawker.com/5849543/harvard-cancer-expert-steve-jobs-probably-doomed-himself-with-alternative-medicine
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Yeah okay but that website is kind of a buckshot approach to dismissing any kind of nonsense it sees fit. Which would be fine, until you actually start reading it. Let's take a stroll through, uh, random selections from just above the fold on the "rituals" page. What's the harm with "rituals"?
He passed out while using a native american sweat lodge and his friends thought he was astral travelling. They used rituals to try to wake him up. In reality he was extremely dehydrated and died at a hospital.
What rituals? What kind of rituals do people use in a "native american[sic] sweat lodge" to "wake up"? This is the kind of nonsense I'd expect from Reefer Madness.
During a social club ritual initiation, someone mistook a fully loaded gun for one loaded with blanks. He died of a gunshot wound.
That has nothing to do with ritual initiations, and eve
Re: Who buys them? (Score:4, Informative)
Some of it works. A medipot lets you dump water up one nostril and out the other.
And this brings us back to the problem addressed in the summary: "Further, there is a huge gap in the public understanding of what homeopathy is; it therefore seems plausible that the popularity of homeopathy can take a huge hit just by telling the public what it actually is." The Neti Pot may be popular among alternative medicine types, but it's not homeopathy.
Re: Who buys them? (Score:5, Informative)
I use a Netipot, only for clearing sinus congestion. No homoeopathy involved, straightforward flushing.
Re:Who buys them? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's just the thing actually, medical science could have done very well for him. When his physicians first found he had liver cancer, they thought for sure it would be untreatable. However he lucked out and got a rare form that grows very slowly and is easily removed with surgery.
So you know what he did? He went straight to a naturopathic "doctor" who recommended a juicing to fix it.
Needless to say, that didn't work, and by the time he actually decided to do anything about it (which was years later) it had already metastasized, and also destroying his liver in the process. Not much more details are known to the public other than that he went to something like 9 separate liver transplant centers in order to increase his chance of receiving a graft quickly (something that most people can't do because you have to be able to physically get to the clinic within an hour of them finding a donor, but he could anyways because he owned a private jet.)
Apparently he got his liver (hence when his health was declining he didn't have any visible signs of jaundice) but still died anyways, my guess is that the cancer had already spread to too many other places. We do know however that he admitted to a few people that not going with the surgery all those years later was a huge mistake.
Anyways it's funny to read naturopathic and homeopathic websites and forums who defend their beliefs in spite of this (Jobs was a well known "natural medicine" and "natural food" fanatic) by saying he didn't properly follow one of their stupid religious rules (which one he supposedly didn't follow varies from site to site.)
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Re:Monster Cables (Score:4, Insightful)
They are placebos as well yet no one seems to want those banned?
Wrong way of comparing...
Medications have to be effective to be allowed, but not more effective than older cheaper medications.
And it's really easy to demonstrate that connecting your speakers with Monster cables produces way better sound than not connecting them at all ;-)
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Monster Cables at least actually work for the basic purpose. yes they are massively, hideously overpriced and prey on the gullible that believe you can make 1's and 0's more crisp, but they still perform the basic role. Homeopathy does not do anything, the only possible benefit is as a placebo, it does not actually work as a medical treatment.
Re: (Score:2)
...but picking on homeopathy is unfair.
No, it's not unfair at all...
Re:No evidence? (Score:4, Funny)
Why would you being hungry affect him?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Saline clears the nasal passages, too. The fact that water will wash out mucus should be a surprise to no one.
That doesn't mean homeopathic crap is clinically effective at anything.
Re:Scientific worldview undermining own credibilit (Score:4, Insightful)
As a longtime user of homeopathy, I have watched with amusement a scientific studies have been published recently purporting to prove that homeopathy does not work. I know from my direct experience that it works, so if science is finding something different, there must be something wrong with its premises.
As a longtime user of a tiger-repelling rock, I have watched with amusement a[s] scientific studies have been published recently purporting to prove that tiger-repelling rocks do not work. I know from my direct experience that it works, so if science is finding something different, there must be something wrong with its premises.
Re:Snake oil is everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
"The prior shows a logical certainty, the latter [absence of evidence] is rationalization."
No, the latter is not mere rationalization; it is a logical use of limited resources (like time and money).
People can come up with a billion crazy theories or stories. We don't have time to test all of them or start using all of them by default. Hence, the responsibility falls upon the story-teller or seller to do the test and present evidence before anyone else gives them attention, time, or money in return. That's not rationalization -- it's simply rational.
As I say in my statistics classes: "The null hypothesis gets the benefit of the doubt; the alternative hypothesis has the burden of proof". (Or as Wikipedia puts it: "Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis... is a central task in the modern practice of science, and gives a precise sense in which a claim is capable of being proven false. The null hypothesis is generally assumed to be true until evidence indicates otherwise.").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis [wikipedia.org]
Re:Snake oil is everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Short excerpt from a large word salad, but I'm not seeing the words "peer-reviewed research" or "clinical trials" anywhere.