Baptist Vine

My girlfriend's fake doctor cousin keeps sending her stuff on homeopathy - like this for example........

http://thewnho.tripod.com/smallpoxtreatment.htm

A fake-magic-water-memory-no molecules cure for small pox!!!!!

You are the only people who seem to understand this kind of frustration.

VonEvilstein

Homeopathy is a pet hate of mine, oooh yeah.

Your aveage dose will contain a couple of active moecules... I know the theory, about the water being able to "remember" what was in there, but this begs the obvious question:

Where's the proof? If anything in homeopathy had held any water, or perhaps anything but water, the people at my uni would have known, and would have taught us all about how it worked.

The probelm, as usual, is one of education! When I told some housemates one time, that I really didn't want any of their homeopathic "remedy" for my throat, because I prefered stuff that worked, they got all offended. Their stance was that I should not be so dismissive of their stuff, just because it was of natural origin...

See the ignorance?

Most people think that homeopathic = natural.
:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

Even after I explained it to them, one still seemed to think that this sounded better than anything "chemical" - one more time, then :banghead:

As for treating smallpox with water... I can't wait for the lawsuits... Are they actually trying to sell this on that site?

Here in the Netherlands, homeopathic products are not allowed to be labelled as medicine. They have to be labelled as homeopathic products. I think my former local pharamcist's ears should be rocovered now, from the screaming I did at her when she gave me homeopathic eye drops. That made me mad, being given water, when I asked for medicine.

ExTheist

I have noticed that trying to argue with people who advocate "natural cures" is just like trying to have a rational discussion with theists about religion. It all comes down to a question of faith.

Mad Kally

Quackery

The best example is homeopathy, which claims that "remedies" so dilute that they contain no active ingredient can exert powerful therapeutic effects.

Dr Rick

A review of eleven independent systematic reviews and/or meta-analysis's of homeopathy was published this year in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology It concluded that there was not one condition found in any of the them that responded convincingly better to homeopathic treatment than to placebo.

Some alternative interventions such as accupuncture and herbal medicines appear to have some potential efficacy, but homeopathy has none.

Rick

Baptist Vine

Dr. Rick, can you provide some links, if such exist, to the BJCP articles?

jayh

I remember being with a (reasonably scientific) enthusiast of herbal treatments trying to purchase concentrated extracts at a health food store, but the clerk kept coming up with homeopathic preparations which have no ingredients. The friend tried to explain the difference to the clerk but I don't think it sunk in.

Dr Rick

The abstract of the review I mentioned can be found http://=http://www.blackwell-synergy...spage=577]here; the full article is not accessable without a subscription.

...i can't link it here because the "pubmed" part comes out as: ubmed"

I'll work on it; in the meantime, any advice on how to link the article would be appreciated.

Rick

Walross

I recently had a friend who was considering going to a homeopathic "doctor" until I explained the basic premise of it to her. Her reaction was "how can that work??" What I would like to know is how many people go to these quacks without ever finding out what homeopathy is based on?

Mad Kally

Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake

A 30X dilution means that the original substance has been diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. Assuming that a cubic centimeter of water contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth. Imagine placing a drop of red dye into such a container so that it disperses evenly. Homeopathy's "law of infinitesimals" is the equivalent of saying that any drop of water subsequently removed from that container will possess an essence of redness. Robert L. Park, Ph.D., a prominent physicist who is executive director of The American Physical Society, has noted that since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth.

Oscillococcinum, a 200C product "for the relief of colds and flu-like symptoms," involves "dilutions" that are even more far-fetched. Its "active ingredient" is prepared by incubating small amounts of a freshly killed duck's liver and heart for 40 days. The resultant solution is then filtered, freeze-dried, rehydrated, repeatedly diluted, and impregnated into sugar granules. If a single molecule of the duck's heart or liver were to survive the dilution, its concentration would be 1 in 100200. This huge number, which has 400 zeroes, is vastly greater than the estimated number of molecules in the universe (about one googol, which is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes). In its February 17, 1997, issue, U.S. News & World Report noted that only one duck per year is needed to manufacture the product, which had total sales of $20 million in 1996. The magazine dubbed that unlucky bird "the $20-million duck."