Valmorian

Let me put it this way. If I found out that a doctor was prescribing placebos for my asthma, I'd seek another doctor as fast as possible.

Valmorian

Wow, I hadn't seen that one before. Scary. I'm no physics expert, but really...

LordSnooty

In England, science teaching is so wholly dreadful that I agree with him. It needs to be taught in an entirely different way.

When I was at school, I learned nothing. I'm really bitter that I went to school for 11 years and came away with virtually nothing.

They could actually make science more interesting and useful by looking at stupid 'theories' like homeopathy and teaching kids how to use their critical faculties and science to determine the validity of a claim.

Paul

Baptist Vine

If someone claims that homeopathy works, then what can it cure? What is the most serious disease that homeopathy can cure, on it's own, without acting in combination from a real medecine?

There are several books written at the layman level that can be found in the big chain bookstores. These try to give homeopathy the benefit of the doubt, a liberal does of it in fact, but even they specifically state that homeopathy cannot be used for acute diseases. Homeopathy's track record has not progressed beyond bruises and mild diarreah, things that heal on their own without the benefit of
magic-memory-sugar-water.

Where was homeopathy during the plague, influenza, tuberculosis, small pox? Like cures like? If someone contracts small pox give them small pox? Can I cure lung cancer by smoking?

If all homeopathy has to it's credit after hundreds of years is some benefit to minor irritants, then it certainly isn't the system Hahnemann claimed it to be.

mecca777

Well, according to a sign in the window of a Chinese "energy medicine" store in my town, they can help to relieve the symptoms of "immune system deficiencies". I'd love to know just exactly what the law says about what they're implying.

Clutch

And impotence, no doubt.

When I lived in China, every herbal medicine available purported to cure whatever specific thing it was for, and impotence. Everything cured impotence. I've never seen such an explicit and pervasive obsession with the fear of a limp dick.

Seemed to me that a less radical solution than ingesting ground-up hummingbird hearts would have been to find a quiet bedroom that didn't also have your mother, three uncles and four great-aunties sleeping in it...

thebeave

There is a parallel here with prayer. Believers will often stick to ailments that generally cure themselves anyway over time so that the claims about its healing power can never be objectively proved or disproved ("I prayed to God that my migrane headache would go away, and sure enough ten minutes later it was gone!" ). When prayer (or homeopathy) is tried on a serious disease and,in the rare event the person is cured, its the prayer (or homeopathy) that gets the credit, not spontaneous remission or other factors. Of course, when the disease doesn't go away (which is the vast majority of the time), you don't hear about its failure to work, only that the person didn't believe enough, or it wasn't curable anyway, the homeopath was lame, blah, blah, blah.

Dr Rick

Gastric anti-secretory medications such as the histamine-type-2 antagonists (Tagamet, Zantac) and the newer proton-pump inhibitors (Prilosec, Prevacid) are very effective in healing ulcers and are still part of most ulcer healing regimens. They healed ulcers prior to our understanding of the pathogenic nature of Helicobacter pylori infections; the problem was that they did not treat the underlying cause of them so that ulcers would often recur after therapy was discontinued. These medicines were proven in clinical trials performed over the past 30 years to be effective, but they were not curative. We understand the pathogenesis of peptic ulcer disease much better now, and can consistently cure ulcers and keep them from coming back in most cases, but that does not mean the previous therapeutic regimens were of dubious utility; rather, they were very useful but not optimal.

Using homeopathics instead of Prilosec to treat ulcers would have been much worse for those patients who were treated prior to the era of H. pylori eradication.

Rick

[ November 30, 2002: Message edited by: Dr Rick ]</p>

sakrilege

Here's a story on dilution of medicine

<a href="http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/4249096.htm" target="_blank">Courtney</a>

Valentine Pontifex

Can I sell kegs of "Homeopathic Beer" for the low, low price of $29.99 plus deposit on the keg and pump?

I believe the percent gross will be REALLY good!