Homeopathy Doesn't Work. So Why Do So Many Germans Believe in It? (bloomberg.com) 221
How Natalie Grams, who once abandoned her medical education to study alternative therapies, became Germany's most prominent homeopathy skeptic. From a report: The pseudoscience of homeopathy was invented in Germany in the 18th century by a maverick physician named Samuel Hahnemann. His theory was based on the ancient principle of like cures like -- akin to the mechanism behind vaccines. The remedies Hahnemann developed, meant to help the body heal on its own, originate as substances that with excess exposure (like pollen) can make a patient ill (in this case, with hay fever) -- or kill them: Arsenic is used as a treatment for digestive problems, and the poisonous plant belladonna is meant to counteract pain and swelling. These substances are diluted -- again and again -- and shaken vigorously in a process called "potentization" or "dynamization." The resultant remedies typically contain a billionth, trillionth, orâ...âwellâ...âa zillionth (10 to the minus 60th, if you're counting) of the original substance.
Today, homeopathy is practiced worldwide, particularly in Britain, India, the U.S. -- where there's a monument to Hahnemann on a traffic circle six blocks north of the White House -- and, especially, Germany. Practitioners, however, differ greatly in their approach. Some only prescribe remedies cataloged in homeopathic reference books. Others take a more metaphoric bent, offering treatments that contain a fragment of the Berlin Wall to cure feelings of exclusion and loneliness or a powder exposed to cellphone signals as protection from radiation emitted by mobile handsets. Grams, the daughter of a chemist, first turned to homeopathy in 2002. While she was attending medical school to become a surgeon, a highway accident left her car in the ditch with the windshield shattered. Grams walked away unhurt, but she soon began to suffer from heart palpitations, panic attacks, and fainting spells that doctors couldn't explain. Her roommate suggested she visit a heilpraktiker, a type of German naturopath that offers alternative therapies ranging from acupuncture and massage to reiki and homeopathy.
Homeopaths typically spend a lot of time with patients, asking not just about symptoms but also about emotions, work, and relationships. This is all meant to find the root cause of a patient's suffering and is part of its appeal. The heilpraktiker asked Grams about her feelings and the accident, things she hadnâ(TM)t spoken about with her doctors -- or anyone -- thinking they weren't important in understanding what was wrong. The heilpraktiker prescribed her belladonna globules and recommended she visit a trauma therapist. Steadily, her symptoms fell away. She was healed. Soon after, Grams dropped the idea of becoming a surgeon, opting for a future as a general practitioner while taking night courses in alternative therapies. After completing her medical degree, she began a five-year residency to qualify as a GP. But three years in, Grams abandoned conventional medicine and began an apprenticeship with a homeopath near Heidelberg.
Today, homeopathy is practiced worldwide, particularly in Britain, India, the U.S. -- where there's a monument to Hahnemann on a traffic circle six blocks north of the White House -- and, especially, Germany. Practitioners, however, differ greatly in their approach. Some only prescribe remedies cataloged in homeopathic reference books. Others take a more metaphoric bent, offering treatments that contain a fragment of the Berlin Wall to cure feelings of exclusion and loneliness or a powder exposed to cellphone signals as protection from radiation emitted by mobile handsets. Grams, the daughter of a chemist, first turned to homeopathy in 2002. While she was attending medical school to become a surgeon, a highway accident left her car in the ditch with the windshield shattered. Grams walked away unhurt, but she soon began to suffer from heart palpitations, panic attacks, and fainting spells that doctors couldn't explain. Her roommate suggested she visit a heilpraktiker, a type of German naturopath that offers alternative therapies ranging from acupuncture and massage to reiki and homeopathy.
Homeopaths typically spend a lot of time with patients, asking not just about symptoms but also about emotions, work, and relationships. This is all meant to find the root cause of a patient's suffering and is part of its appeal. The heilpraktiker asked Grams about her feelings and the accident, things she hadnâ(TM)t spoken about with her doctors -- or anyone -- thinking they weren't important in understanding what was wrong. The heilpraktiker prescribed her belladonna globules and recommended she visit a trauma therapist. Steadily, her symptoms fell away. She was healed. Soon after, Grams dropped the idea of becoming a surgeon, opting for a future as a general practitioner while taking night courses in alternative therapies. After completing her medical degree, she began a five-year residency to qualify as a GP. But three years in, Grams abandoned conventional medicine and began an apprenticeship with a homeopath near Heidelberg.
I'm not a doctor but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a doctor but it seems to me the trauma therapist is who did the actual healing, not the bella donna concoction.
The fact that she wasn't referred to a therapist at all for the panic attacks is troubling.
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Re: I'm not a doctor but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Therapists in general are still seen a bit as insult, for lack of a word. People desire psychological ills because it suggests they aren't in control. Mention an issue is psychosomatic and people become defensive. If the healthcare system at all relies on patient satisfaction, we quickly see how this becomes a problem.
I am not a doctor. I have diagnosed sever psychological issues in my family based on their medical history before any GP ever noticed. I live in China now. I commonly see very severe psychosomatic issues affecting a range of individuals, more so than I ever noticed in America. The reality of getting people appropriate and respected psychological care is by no means an easy issue... and I say this as a person who has personally intersected with this sphere of medicine a few times.
Re: I'm not a doctor but... (Score:2)
physiological ills. Typo.
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Re: I'm not a doctor but... (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, homeopathy or any placebo can be very effective for psychosomatic illnesses.
Re: I'm not a doctor but... (Score:2)
People with depression are frequently told to "get over it" or "snap out of it" or "cheer up" etc. As a result, saying your depression stems from a chemical imbalance in the brain is a way of asserting that you're not just "feeling sad" and that it's a real disorder.
I see it as a defense mechanism against those who would minimize someone's mental illness, not "blaming chemicals."
Re: I'm not a doctor but... (Score:2)
Maybe she heard it incorrectly and was trying to say clinical depression. That would explain why she got angry...
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Certainly for some situations, like cancer or advanced heart disease, radical therapy is usually he only reasonable intervention. However, situations like feeling sad once a week, such as w
Re:I'm not a doctor but... (Score:5, Informative)
TFS doesn't give the spoilers. As a newly minted "alternative therapies" believer she "did research" and "wanted to use everything she could find to defend homeopathy". However, she was eventually convinced by science, and "abandoned her practice" as "prescribing remedies she no longer believed were efficacious had become an ethical strain".
"In May 2019 a reporter from a German newspaper asked her, point blank, if homeopathic remedies work. Grams’s response: 'Not beyond the placebo effect.'"
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"In May 2019 a reporter from a German newspaper asked her, point blank, if homeopathic remedies work. Grams’s response: 'Not beyond the placebo effect.'"
Interesting. The thing that many came here to say was already said. I may just have to read TFA after all, after I take my pills.
Re:I'm not a doctor but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The real interesting question is: Why does the Placebo Effect even work at all? By all accounts it shouldn't even exist. So why does mind over matter sometimes work?
New Scientist had this very wierd [slashdot.org] example:
Re:I'm not a doctor but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that seems obvious to us now, but clearly it wasn't so obvious to her at the time. I read the full article and found it very interesting. She not only worked as an alternative medicine provider, but tried to write a book defending homeopathy, and all the research she did for that book is what ultimately convinced her it was bunk. So, what an awesome narrative about a misguided soul who got educated, learned the truth, and started advocating for it, right!
She could have dug in her heels, as did the homeopathic manufacturer who tried to use legal threats to silence her after she started speaking out. But she showed real courage and moral backbone.
Unfortunately, she can't work in the field anymore. She can't bring herself to prescribe remedies she knows don't work, and no actual clinics will take her to let her finish her medical residency. I wish this story had a happier ending, given that she saw the light. But seeing the light ended her career and forced her into a different one that she doesn't like as much.
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Only if the Trauma therapist employed CBP which is pretty much the only strategy in the psychology world that actually cures anything. The rest are focused on perpetual treatment of conditions after planting enough suggests to convince you of the diagnosis.
Ironically (or perhaps not given the recommendation) CBP often involves exposure and confrontation to desensitize you to whatever you
Re:I'm not a doctor but... (Score:4, Informative)
Did you mean CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, NOT cock and ball training), or is CBP something new?
I for one found CBT to be effective during and after my life took a shit (unexpected turn?), and would tell anybody seeing a therapist to ask for it, as opposed to endless talk therapy
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I'm not a doctor
That's good.
but it seems to me the trauma therapist is who did the actual healing
Nope. The therapist does not heal you. He therapies you. You heal yourself.
As far as I understand "trauma" that are blunt injuries, like a broken leg, or a bruise.
Bella Donna is not used for treatments like that. It is used either as pain relieve, then the above would roughly fit, or for treating inflammations, or open wounds - aka areas prone to a possible inflammation.
Here is the english wiki article:
https:// [wikipedia.org]
Homeopathy works because of homeopathy (Score:5, Funny)
The less evidence there is for it working, the better it works.
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The less evidence there is for it working, the better it works.
Now you've proven how it works and messed it up for everyone
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This is the part I don't understand.
Why do so many people who view themselves as Very Serious and Sciencey People equate "placebo" with "doesn't work?" Are they aliterate? Do they think they believe in science, but they only actually can (constitutionally) read headlines, and short comments from like-minded people?
The placebo effect can't set a broken bone, or treat cancer, but it's the most effective medicine for the common cold. (32% reduction of symptoms, compared to under 10% for anything efficacious.)
Re:Homeopathy works because of homeopathy (Score:5, Insightful)
The placebos effect is real, however it is just a science baseline measurement. It isn't ethical to treat people with a placebo, for an issue unless it is part of a double blind study.
Placebo may be fine for something that will clear up in time. Such as you say with a cold. But it isn't much of a treatment.
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placebo effect does not offer a repeatable cause and effect outcome, since it is as variable in effectiveness as people are different from each other
science-y people like repeatability
you might get more of the science-y people to buy in if you label it Neuro-Linguistic Programming, because words
but, the minute effectiveness is based on the unique skills of the practitioner most will get bored and look for another sure thing
Re:Homeopathy works because of homeopathy (Score:5, Interesting)
Homeopathic medications do not just limit themselves to being cures for mild self resolving ailments. They regularly market themselves as magic cure-alls for a multitude of conditions of various degrees of severity including lethal if not treated.
Homeopathic medications and other placebo based treatments do not distinguish themselves from evidence tested medications in a way that the typical consumer will recognize.
These medications are not being marketed to only people who are consent to a placebo treatment course. The placebo effect only works on a person who expects a medication to work. It is massively unethical for these to be marketed for use on infants and animals because they can not communicate the medication does not work and they never would have any placebo effect.
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https://www.hwbna.org/
You're upset that I compared homeopathy to a crime against humanity where 400 African Americans where lied to for 40 years resulting in over a hundred deaths and hundreds more had their lives changed forever. I can't do anything about that, the people responsible are dead. But there are people today harming orders of magnitude more with
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Are you implying that aliterate is a mis-spelling? It actually is a word, though not a common one. It refers to someone who is functionally illiterate. In other words, able to read, but unwilling or at least not inclined to do so. It's like the difference between amoral and immoral.
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Alliterate is also a word and only one letter off from illiterate. But it refers to someone who speaks in phrases where the words all begin with the same sound.
Re:Homeopathy works because of homeopathy (Score:4, Informative)
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This is likely the same data that state that the vaxxs are 100% safe, with zero death and zero side effects, which is easy to prove wrong: https://rumble.com/vmpbh3-3813... [rumble.com]
Nobody ever claimed any of that, so once again you're a liar.
Nothing you put into your body is 100% safe, with zero death and zero side effects and only a moron would say otherwise.
Re:Homeopathy works because of homeopathy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why am I totally not surprised that you're a supporter of homeopathy?
Re: Homeopathy works because of homeopathy (Score:3)
I'm neither a fan of homeopathy, nor of the guy above, his line of reasoning is sound: if you claim to treat a patient, and give him a substance to that end, you'll inevitably trigger tbe same self-healing mechanism any placebo would ON TOP (or at the base, whichever analogy you prefer) of any actual hraling propeties your ailment may or may not have.
Being rude and calling this stupid instead is not a counter argument.
Jerk.
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Nope. Homeopathy does work, and there's a lot of evidence for it.
ie. The Placebo effect is very real.
Equating The Placebo Effect with some thing (in this case, Homeopathy) actually working isn't really an accurate comparison. In this case it would be that a positive outcome is due to *either* Homeopathy actually working *or* The Placebo Effect.
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But for most of what homeopathy is used for, actual medicine works a lot better.
And the placebo effect doesn't have any benefit for, say, cancer. As more than a few cancer patients have found out.
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Actually it is supposed - accepted science - that the placebo effect works for/against anything.
No, it does not. IT doesn't do anything for cancer, as mentioned. It won't treat burns or bullet wounds, and many other things.
Try some science sometime instead of reading the labels on the snake oil.
Every country has its share of idiots. (Score:2, Interesting)
Germany is no exception. Intelligence is on a bell curve. The modern world is complex and frightening, and homeopathy is simple and soothing, like religion. Of course it has followers.
Because sugar pills only work (Score:2)
when you clap your hands and say "I Believe, I Believe"
With multiple, different "Homeopathic Tinctures", there are many options to have faith in, and always some other "solutions".
Article Pretty Much Answers the Question (Score:5, Insightful)
This quote says it all (or most of it):
"Homeopaths typically spend a lot of time with patients, asking not just about symptoms but also about emotions, work, and relationships."
When you deal with an ordinary physician, the experience tends to be: "Hi, take these pills, have a nice day!" You are lucky to get 10 whole minutes with a doctor. Especially when dealing with ailments that are mostly psychosomatic (like the car accident trauma that was described), a listening ear and a placebo can be a pretty attractive treatment plan for a lot of folks. It's also an attractive alternative for ailments like chronic back pain where established medical practice doesn't have much to offer. You may not actually get better, but at least you will get some empathy out of the deal.
Re: Article Pretty Much Answers the Question (Score:2)
Amen.
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I'd say it depends on the physician. When I lived in a small city (in Germany), my physician took so much time chatting with me that I felt bad for the people in his waiting room. But there were rarely more than two.
I think a part of the issue is also that it is very uncommon in Germany to go to a psychiatrist. Extremely uncommon. People go there if they have suicidal thoughts or if they need the sessions to get HRT, but other than that I can't think of a reason. Psychiatrists are nicknamed Seelenklempner h
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When you deal with an ordinary physician, the experience tends to be: "Hi, take these pills, have a nice day!" You are lucky to get 10 whole minutes with a doctor.
I think the experience you describe is true in the USA.
But there are plenty of other countries in the world.
I went to a cardiologist in South America a couple of weeks ago. He spent over an hour with me doing tests, talking and giving me advice and recommendations.
I'm pretty sure it would have been 10 minutes under the US HMO system. But fortunately, most of the world doesn't have that broken system. (though often they have less access to cutting edge treatments)
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I'm referring to the more recent acknowledgement that long-term opioid use isn't really effective for back pain (even though it was recently standard practice), and the (now acknowledged) over prescription of procedures like spinal fusion surgery.
As you yourself acknowledge, solving the issue may be more about things like exercise and physical therapy than anything a doctor can do for you.
Re:Article Pretty Much Answers the Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Those regular addiction epidemics you guys have don't happen anywhere else.
nothing surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
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There's close to three quarters of a million people dead who might disagree with you if they hadn't been killed by that pandemic you say doesn't exist.
Science is hard (Score:2)
The brain wants to believe. The brain wants a quick feel good hit. The brain doesn't want to consider facts, weigh evidence. They just want to be told "this works, you'll be good".
A person who says to a cancer patient "I'm your friend, I care about you. Jim, those doctors don't care about you. We'll take care of you and 100% cure you. This happened because given zinc-deficient food at work. That, and cell phone radiation caused an alkaline imbalance and zinc deficiency. Don't worry though .. we can reverse
Homeopathy was invented in Germany (Score:2)
You answered your own question.
Roentgen, another German, invented X-rays and the Germans x-rayed the feet of their children to see if the shoes fit until the early seventies, giving the shoe-salespeople cancer.
Mankind evolved to believe in Magic (Score:5, Insightful)
When we were proto-humanoids, we developed the key ability of intelligence - the ability to see two proximate events and decide one was cause and the other is effect, all without any real evidence.
Do X, get Y, which leads to Z, doesn't matter why. To the modern mind, this is called magic, because you do not know the why.
This was key to survival against creatures without the ability to make these kinds of predictions.
Later we realized that understanding why let you do a lot more. We could then predict how to get Z2, Z3, or get Z without X or Y. This understanding of why we called education, which led to the results called science.
But not everyone gets a solid education. Leave the people ignorant and you get the base human behavior that believes in Magic. Worse, sciences dismiss and treat things things as 'stupid', which offends those that are NOT stupid, just ignorant (because the government failed to educate them).
So the ignorant get angry at Science and fight being educated.
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well put
we can't know everything so out lil monkey brain has to fill in gaps the best way it can; maybe not perfect, but far better than 100% guesswork, from a survival perspective
I would wager that our lizard-monkey brain is what really has hands on the tiller most of time anyway; it's our pride at being so 'modern and civilized' that keeps us from acknowledging it and even worse, utilizing it
Like the U.S. can talk... (Score:4, Informative)
I find it humorous to see so many people dumping on Germany having homeopathic solutions when you can find chiropractors everywhere in the west.
Homeopathy is at least a placebo, it generally can't actively screw up your body physically even if done wrong.
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Homeopathy is at least a placebo, it generally can't actively screw up your body physically even if done wrong.
It can screw up your body physically if you turn down effective treatments in favour of homeopathy. I believe Steve Jobs died from pancreatic cancer as a result of that.
placebo, but perfectly camouflaged (Score:2, Interesting)
I think accusing homeopathy of being nothing more than a placebo misses the point.
Yes, it's a placebo, and a placebo is known to work. Unless, of course, the patient knows that his cure is, in fact, a placebo.
So how about considering homeopathy as a perfect disguise - nothing more, but also nothing less?
Under this optic, those who push so hard for unmasking homeopathy are in fact destroying a working cure...
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The problem is that for many illnesses, medical treatment is much more effective than a placebo. So when people take homeopathy instead of medical treatment, the choice does them a lot of harm.
Unfortunately there's only one method to stop that from happening, which is to show them the inferiority of homeopathy - but that method destroys the placebo effect.
Magic healing works. Here's how: (Score:3)
Homeopathy and other pseudoscience/esotheric stuff actually works pretty well within certain boundaries. It can even offset notable disadvantages or shortcomings of true science healthcare on a large scale.
Here's why Homeopathy in Germany (and elsewhere) actually has positive effects:
In Germany anybody doing any type of non-scientific healing need a basic medical training to become a licensed healing-practitioner. The training isn't trivial, but doable (2 years I think it was). The main reason for it is to train anybody doing healing-magic so that they recognize serious illnesses and send their patient off to a real doctor if that happens. This has multiple positive effects:
1.) Hypochondriacs can go to someone who is basically paid to listen to their story and their worries, taking a bit of burden off real doctors for more serious healthcare.
2.) Unlike regular doctors in Germany who interrupt their patients after 90 seconds on average and are focused on throughput and thus are notably prone to miss-diagnosis - like many doctors around the world - homeopaths and other healers are paid directly to listen. The side-effect being that it is not uncommon for Homeopaths with a German practitioners license to come up with a real diagnosis for which the regular doctor had no time after jumping to conclusion #1 and sticking with it.
Point in case: 20 years or so back I had chest pain and thought it was my heart. It came with some coughing. The physician sold me on a heart-lung condition after roughly 3 minutes and came up with some regular medication for that, It seemed haphazard to me. So I talked to a homeopath who was recommended to me by a "true believer". He interviewed me on the phone for 30 minutes. His conclusion: It's not a heart thing, the pain is your esophagus. You have reflux, and the night-coughs are from acid spilling over into your airpipe. I'll send you my [magic potion], take two drops every third hour while the moon is only hald full bladibla [fill in esotheric bullsh*t here]. ... I didn't even listen and threw the potion in the bin when it arrived.
However, his assessment about the condition was spot on. I changed my diet, took some soda salt and healing-earth for a week or so and it went away.
The medicalcdoctor had given me medication that was wrong and could have easily done damage. The homeopath listen to me, did a correct diagnose and at least didn't send me anything that had the potential to screw up my health.
3.) Most doctors quickly subscribe one of five usual suspects in medication. Anti-biotics are prescribed way more than necessarily and way to carelessly. Cortisone is very often prescribed in a manner that does more damage than good and the vast majority of doctors don't know the fundamentals of a correct and/or useful cortisone therapy and when and where it makes sense and where it definitely doesn't make sense. There are many cases where magic homeopathic sugar-beeds are the way better option because they don't do any damage, the patient recedes to normal and don't have to deal with side-effects of a wrong and/or overdosed treatment with full-caliber last-ditch-effort medicine that is questionable in 80% of cases.
4.) Operations bring in big cash for hospitals and surgeon-teams. Hence they are done way to often in Germany. This is a real problem and quite well know. Mr. Magic Sugar-beads is the better option than that for anynone who doesn't put in the effort to do some own research and/or doesn't have the guts to tell an over-eager team of surgeons wanting to score their next five digits in a superfluos and likely damaging operation to go and f*ck themselves.
Back when I did martial arts I saw a comrades wrist going from "a little off with some pain sometimes" to totally stiff and disfunctional over the course of 3 surgeries. He had to permanently wear a splint after the last. There are doctors around who need their license revoked ASAP and a serious beating right afterwards, and not just in Germany. Medical is
It's covered by insurance (Score:2)
I live in Germany and my general practitioner actually prescribed a homeopathic remedy once without informing me that it was. I could have filled the prescription at my regular pharmacy and taken the damn thing without even knowing. Often, a doctor's office will cover both scientific medicine and pseudoscientific approaches under the same roof, by the same doctor(s).
Really, the line between scientific medicine and magical treatments is often quite blurry over here. It's scary. And the government allowing it
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Get a better general practitioner.
Because Placebo works. (Score:3)
In Germany, health insurance even pays for homeopathic treatments, which I think is completely ridiculous.
He defended this, and himself "prescribing" homepathic BS because it works. Not in the medical or chemical sense, of course. But the placebo effect is real, especially for the unidentifiable little ailments the aging population has, which also suffers from abandonement and solitude.
So, what is he supposed to do? Tell them that he can't do anything? Give them Aspirin or another magic pill as a placebo?
He chooses to give them sugar pills - the placebo effect os stronger, there are definitely no adverse effects, and the patients "feel" understood and better and in control of their ailments, leading to better quality-of-life.
A long berating and explication of biochemistry wouldn't have that effect.
I really understand his point - even though it opens a whole philosophical can of worms.
Homeopathy is soooo last year! (Score:5, Funny)
I now do Pizzapathy. When I have a headache, I eat a pizza tonno. And 2-20 hours later, the headache is gone, as if it never existed. Sometimes, though, the headaches get worse after eating the pizza. That's how I know that the pizza is actually working. That's the so-called "initial worsening". But usually after another pizza and a bit of rest, the headaches vanish.
But you can't just eat a pizza tonno, what pizza works for you depends on what pizza type you are. For a friend of mine, cardinale is the weapon of choice when it comes to fighting headaches. Best you first make a pizza type consultation to have an expert in Pizzapathy tell you which pizza is the best for you. It's not really cheap, though, and you may have to try a lot of pizzas before you find your type, but there's no way around it, unfortunately.
The pizzas are from a German company called "Dr. Oetker". As you can see in the name, it was developed by a doctor, so it's a sensible medical product. Still, insurances don't pay for therapeuthic pizzas due to a conspiracy by the pharma lobby who knows exactly that nobody would swallow their expensive pills anymore if people knew that all they have to do is eat some tasty pizzas to cure their ailments.
Another problem that comes along with this is that sometimes, when the pizzas don't work, it's usually due to sloppy handling by the stores who may have packed them close to chinese food (pizza has a memory, you see, and it is slighty racist, I fear. Or maybe just doesn't like the competition, I don't know, I'm not really a pizza expert, more still a student of pizzalology). It is about time we start lobbying that these important cures for critical human diseases get treated with the respect they deserve and don't get thrown about by workers who do not understand their role in the health system. It is time that therapeutic pizzas may only be sold by certified Pizzapathy experts.
And don't tell me that's all just placebo effect and imagination. HE WHO CURES IS RIGHT!
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That is what real empirical testing does for you instead of relying on the hearsay of ideological pizzaskeptics.
Well, because anti homeopathy people are idiots (Score:2)
Yes, that is in the subject.
Perhaps you should for funk sake grasp that "homeopathy" is an umbrella term.
There are thousands of medicines that are not "diluted till there is no atom in it anymore".
E.g. the Arnika salve I use after sports injuries contains 27% arnica extract. And: it is a homeopathic medicine: it might shatter your Weltbild, but it s the best treatment for trauma / blunt force injuries.
Stupid idiots on the internet, what the funk do you care about Germany anyway? Switzerland is the Fortress
German Attitudes and Laws Regarding Homeopathy (Score:3)
I'm from Germany and there are a multitude of reasons why homeopathy is so popular.
First of all, most people don't actually know what it is. They think of it as being some kind of alternative to traditional medicine that has some legitimacy, and many people equate homeopathy with "natural" or "herbal" products (which are definitely not the same).
Another huge issue is that the legitimacy is enforced by our laws: we have quite strict standards when it comes to regular medicine nowadays, probably stricter than the US. All medicine has to show that has an efficacy beyond the placebo effect in well-designed trials before it may be approved by our regulatory bodies. There is one exception in the law though, homeopathy, where the only thing that must be shown scientifically there is that it isn't actively harmful (not difficult if you dilute stuff into oblivion) -- the efficacy requirement for homeopathic medicine basically boils down to a board of homeopaths have to believe it's effective. Compounding this issue is that our public health insurance providers are required to pay for some homeopathic medicines by law if they are prescribed by a doctor.
What's even worse is that there's a culture here that many regular doctors will prescribe homeopathic remedies without patients even explicitly asking for it. (It happened to me, and I was quite shocked at that time.)
I also don't know of anyone who learnt anything about what homeopathy actually is in school unless they had a teacher that really cared about the subject -- I certainly didn't learn about what it really was until I stumbled upon information on the internet during my time at university.
Given all that, I can't fault the general public in Germany for "believing" in homeopathy. Unfortunately the lobby for homeopathy in Germany is very strong and so far all attempts to alter our laws so that homeopathy isn't officially recognized by the regulatory bodies anymore have failed. And unfortunately there is no clear divide between political parties about this issue here -- at best you have small fractions within some parties that object to homeopathy, but left-wing or right-wing, the major political parties will change nothing in the foreseeable future.
A glass of water is a cure-all! (Score:3)
Think about this "potentization" nonsense.. A glass of water would have diluted particles from EVERYTHING, from halfway across the universe even.
If this were true, a glass of water would cure everything. It would be super-potent too.
There's not even any need to 'create' any medicine, it's already there in even more infinitely tiny quantities.
If you believe that garbage. But apparently it doesn't even take itself that seriously.
big phrama lies! (Score:2)
if sugar pills don't work why are we seeing 40% of people in the trial saying it has a positive effect!
Nonsense again? (Score:2)
heilpraktiker, a type of German naturopath that offers alternative therapies ranging from acupuncture and massage to reiki and homeopathy.
That is not what a "heilpraktiker" is. Losely translated as "Healing practitioner". First of all: they have nearly the same education as a mediacl doctor who studied at the university.
Secondly: there are more doctors offering "alternative therapies ranging from acupuncture and massage to reiki and homeopathy." than any Heilpraktiker working.
What a stupid summary.
Did You Hear The One About... (Score:4, Funny)
DId you hear the one about the guy taking a homeopathic medication and forgot to take his pill one day? He died of an overdose.
COVID (Score:2)
There are plenty of people in the grave this year that tried placebos, alternative treatments, and miracle drugs like:
- bleach water
- Ivermectin
- Rinsing their mouth out
- etc..
COVID had no mercy on them. It has a penchant to prefer vaccines and treatments that have successfully passed Phase 3 trials.
Science is hard like stones (Score:2)
But consider medicine is a white coat, black art.
Most humans are simple creatures (Score:2)
Of course they believe in nonsense like homeopathy, religion, astrology and identity politics. If you work among capable people you may forget what the real world outside your industry looks like, though COVID should have erased any residual respect one might have for what Mencken called the "booboisie".
No one should be surprised. They cannot be reached by intelligent arguments they're inherently incapable of understanding. They are education-averse so that won't work either which leaves the only reliable t
Placebo effect... (Score:2)
The "cure" is in the therapy, the concoctions are just Placebo's.
We know the body does indeed heal itself, including the mind, within reason.
But a placebo effect without the therapy, I'm guessing that won't be as effective.
Re:Oh. Not this again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh. Not this again. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems pointless replying to this, since you said you weren't engaging with responses. I suspect though, that you are just playing semantics here - especially as you have put 'homeopathy' in quotes. If we define homeopathy as the act of banging and diluting stuff in water until there's effectively nothing left but water, then its pretty safe to say that it is no more effective than any other placebo. Since the placebo effect is not something I've seen homeopaths state as an element of homeopathy, I think its safe to say that it doesn't work.
Obviously if you then stretch homeopathy into a more general alternative medicine field (as suggested by your quotes and the text you quoted) then effects and whether things work or not can be more nuanced. But that is a bit like saying that buses cure depression, because a trip to the seaside is often uplifting.
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Thanks for the response and I didn't mean to be so stand-offish. I just didn't want to get dragged into a back-and-forth shitshow that would do little but demonstrate Godwin's law again.
It is also not my intent to defend Homeopathy, but if you google for the remedies they push there is a lot of it that isn't offensive to the science minded. Like chamomile tea to relax you or help quiet a cough. Then there is more exotic stuff Apis Mellifica to treat rashes etc. Does it work and how? I have no idea
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If we define homeopathy as the act of banging and diluting stuff in water until there's effectively nothing left but water, then its pretty safe to say that it is no more effective than any other placebo.
No it is not.
Your idea is actually pretty stupid.
Would you care to explain in 3 - 9 simple sentences how a therapy based on my symptoms of having an arsenic poisoning works? You do not need to find the correct treatment.
How would a homeopathic therapist attempt to treat it7me?
Your turn ... take your time.
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Only the things which aren't actually homeopathy may work. Some use extracts of herbs in non-negligible concentrations, and not the thing that's allegedly causing the ailment diluted so far that "the water only remembers it". The latter is homeopathy, and if you believe it works, you've been had. You're paying through the nose for sugar water, and that doesn't even cure dehydration. The natural medicine isn't homeopathy, and if you don't buy it under that label, the teas and tinctures are a lot cheaper. Eit
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I've lost a relative to this quackery.
Most likely not. He just died to his sickness.
And anyone who claims that it does work, like you do, needs to prove it.
Exactly: now prove your relative died to "quackery".
Ooops you can't.
Strange that emotions make you so blind to how science works - pun intended. Sad for your relative, though.
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There are elements of "homeopathy" that actually do work.
No, there aren't. There is nothing that "works" around homeopathy that wouldn't also "work" even if they didn't put their water or sugar through silly magic rituals first. But then it would be harder to charge obscene amounts of money for this scam, wouldn't it.
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No, there aren't. There is nothing that "works" around homeopathy
Yes there is. My Arnika salvae e.g. works just fine.
And the original idea how to apply "diluted" things, works firn too.
What sucks is your knowledge about it.
Or do you really think a therapy against Arsen poisoning symptoms starts with a bottle of water with only a single atom/molecule in it?
If you think that: then you have no clue what homeopathy is about: hint, learn greek. It is literally in its name!!!
Re: Oh. Not this again. (Score:2)
I feel sorry for you. Homeopathy is completely horse shit. The entire premise is stupid. Let it go, and don't take it personal.
Re:God, Alah, Jehovah don't exist, so why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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Define "communism."
Communism definition (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of subtle variations with different names: communism, Stalinism, Maoism, Socialism, Leninism, Marxism, collectivism, Castroism, Titoism, neo-Marxism, post-modernism, and so on.
It's like asking "define apple", and while there are many types and varieties of apple it's still variations on a central theme.
All of these are descended from, and variations on, the works of Karl Marx, so we could accurately use the term "Marxism" (doctrine described by Karl Marx) or "Communism" (his original term) to describe the entire field.
Define "communism."
I assume from your post that you're one of those "real communism hasn't been tried" people.
It turns out that "real communism" has been tried over and over, by many people. It starts with good intentions from one person, trying to do the best they can for their people, and has always slid into corrupt totalitarianism. That's because it takes a totalitarian regime to implement communism "well", and the corrupting influences are too great for any leader to withstand.
Many examples abound. Lenin (and Trotsky) led to Stalin, China got Mao Zedong, Cuba got Castro, N. Korea got Kim Jong Il... the list goes on.
China had been believed to be on the rise, a developing nation that was slated to eclipse the US in every way. This was reflected in the zeitgeist opinion of the time: I'll mention Firefly, where everyone spoke Chinese as a 2nd language. The opinion was that pervasive.
Then Xe Jinpeng rose to power.
Fast forward to 2015 and cracks in Xe's policies are starting to show, and 2018 Xe became "president for life" and China has begun to slowly lose ground and has garnered tremendous animosity from the rest of the world. It is no longer safe to manufacture things in China, and companies are fleeing the country in droves. Xe has implemented a totalitarian regime with few human rights, and the corruption has pushed them to the precipice of disaster (see: Evergrande bankruptcy and sporadic power outages.)
That's basically the historical plotline of communism everywhere it's been tried: Some good people try to set up a better system, it becomes corrupt, falls into totalitarian dictatorship, and then dies.
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you are the gift that keeps on giving, thank you I needed a laugh today
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It turns out that "real communism" has been tried over and over, by many people. It starts with good intentions from one person, trying to do the best they can for their people, and has always slid into corrupt totalitarianism.
One reason why communism does not work is that it denies or attempts to suppress normal human behaviour, and people rebel against it. There is a natural tendency for people to organise into groups, which we might call tribes, and communism attempts to get rid of all groups, except the communist group.
Most of the problems with communism are actuality due to imposing single party rule, whether that is left or right wing. This involves ruthless suppression of dissent. In a democracy, it is recognised that ther
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"If you can not distinguish between a concept - or call it ideology - and a dictatorship that painted the name of that on its flag"
I'm not going to say someone is an idiot. I just think that we have lacked the means to actually implement a working Communism until computers and the internet.
If you created something with a central guarantee of fairness, and it was controlled by bottom up voting -- it might work. However, you'd have to require participation and find some way to make sure people weren't fed pro
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communism has really never been tried. It falls quickly into a pure "dictatorship" enriching the ruling elite that promised communism but simply enriched themselves.
Only Cuba might have come close, and while some will claim look how bad it is, well, just look at slightly better PR next door governed by the US with no sanctions against it, and remember one thing: the wet tropics is at best difficult to tame even for a 1st world country. Malaria, and all of the other diseases plus hurricanes leveling thin
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The only reason homeopathic remedies are only 99.99% pure water is that drinking water has trace elements and distilled water is more expensive.
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That may be one of the reasons Americans are not allowed to go there. Yay freedom!
Every other time any Latin American country has elected a government that did not suit what the US wanted the CIA or the Marines or both would move in and kill people. Including the multiple times the Marines were used to keep the price of bananas low.
Idiots like Okian Warrior however
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In Germany, most homeopathy - as in prescriptions - is pills.
The second most is "solutions", and they do usually not contain water, but alcohol - oops. Might explain the placebo effects.
And the third thing - and is most likely in volume and in money the most stuff that is sold - simple herbal/natural remedies that: work just fine. Or why do you for funk sake think it is allowed to sell the stuff or prescribe it? In Germany plenty of things have the stamp "homeopathy" on it, while they are definitely not som
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I would say that communism has worked quite well, but only at small scales. A few people or families working together naturally gravitate towards a communist collective, at least among themselves. Heck, most churches are very strongly communist in their social structure. I would theorize that the upper bound of functional communist society is the Dunbar Number --- about 150 people.
Beyond that, the degree of interpersonal relations needed to make communism functional just isn't there, and everything begins t
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People focus too much on communism. It has failed as an idea, and yet people still obsess about fighting it, like they're still doing the grand crusades against satanism in preschools. What they do however is confuse socialism with communism, and confuse social democrats and trade unions with socialism, and in general they freak out about anything left of center being a gateway drug to full blow Marxist extremism. This is in the same way that they freak out of D&D leading to satanism.
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Communism is the same. Time after time it's been tried, with disastrous results.
Not true. Pre-European Aotearoa New Zealand was effectively made up of communist micro states comprised of hap (sub-tribe) groupings of related families. The hap owned the land and resources as a collective. No resources were privatised, ever. This lasted after colononisation began, and was only disrupted by statutes specifically passed by the settler government because they wanted to steal the land and other resources.
Communism was successful for hundreds of years, you should really do more research.
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Moving the goalposts ? So now "Communism" means only for populations of 10m+ ? The fact that European barbarism turned their at communism into a failure does not mean it never existed elsewhere.
The fact remains that communism DID exist, was stable over hundreds of years, and delivered an economy that had zero poverty. Could it have scaled ? I think so because you could easily implement a federated model based around the iwi (tribal) structures. But we'll never know, because of European intervention and th
Re:Not just Germans (Score:4, Insightful)
The think that the naturopathic practitioner actually too k the time to speak to a patient... about what bothered them???
Poppycock!
There is no room for a physician to talk with a patient in today's time-sliced world, that physician has pharmaceutical salesmen they need to speak with first!
I think that there room for Shamanism, particularly since it works for a lot of people
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Pretty insightful.
There is clearly a large segment of the population that cares more about emotional care than legit health care.
I don't know what the solution is. As with so many issues, it comes down to "Those other people want the wrong thing!"
Re: Not just Germans (Score:3)
Re: Not just Germans (Score:4, Insightful)
In some part, I do like homeopathic medicine. There are a lot of things modern medicine has no simple answer to.
Yup, a lot of problems are not solved yet. It doesn't mean we should take fake medicine when no real medicine exist.
Consider someone with sleep problems. There are some addictive temporary solutions that may put the patient on a slipery slope towards addiction. There is a homeopathic medicine available based on a plant. My wife, a docter, prescribes this with the message that it may take up to a month for it to get better. (This is also mentioned on the box of the pills). A lot of patients end up sleeping well. They were stressed, sleepnessness made it worse and they are soothed by the fact that it will go over. Occasionally they drop by for a new prescription. Rationally, this is complete nonsense. It does not work. Emotionally, this is good stuff.
We call it placebo effect. I think doctors can't really prescribe a fake drug knowing it doesn't work, just because of the placebo effect. So your wife deserves to get in trouble. If she really think the homeopathic pill works, then it's even worse, as she can't back it up with evidence.
I tried it for fun, and even though I know it does not work, I did seem to sleep a lot better.
A random sugar pill would have done the same. Otherwise, the maker of that pill would make a double blind study and get the pill approved as a drug.
If it did work, it wouldn't be considered homeopathy anymore.
Using homeopathic medicine when a real working solution is available is of course a whole other story.
It's bad even when there is no working solution. People spend money for these pills. Some people get rich because of them. And this is called fraud. At least it would if they called it a drug. But they seem to get by by calling it food.
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There is clearly a large segment of the population that cares more about emotional care than legit health care.
Drawing a line between "emotional care" and "legit health care" is exactly what made the conventional medical system unsuccessful in treating the woman described in the article. Mental health is health. The alternative practitioner in the article attempted (in their own flawed way) to treat the whole patient in a way that her doctors had failed to do.
Talk therapy and counseling should play a more prominent role in the delivery of healthcare in most (all?) countries.
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Indeed. The problem is not that homeopathie does not work. The problem is that talking to the patient does work and any good medico does it but many MDs are really weak in that regards, at least in part due to perverted incentives and bad MD education. Hence while the homeopaths have a completely wrong theory and their "pharmaceutical" measures have no effect at all, they get one thing right that many MDs get wrong. And that is what keeps them around.
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Well, if water has a memory, we should all be thankful that it doesn't hold grudges, considering how much shit we flushed with it.