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My view of the UK medical….er…..profession….is noth much higher than….Doctor’s views of sharlatans…..

I even got offered Antibiotics for a cold by a UK Doctor….. now I know you all slave endlessly under the NHS…until you get a lucrative jobe elsewhere…….providing antibiotics to a reasonably healthy person with a cold….probably means me paying for the perscription and me paying more tax for a service which has a highly educated but often ineffective service…….

But then you had to pay more for the letters behind your names and could be earning as much as someone who splashed out 65 bucks for an AANC dip with a Channel 4 contract!

I write this just to remind you all that as a patient…no not a purveyor of Penta water…or cocaine filled condoms…but a simple lowly patient.

I respect your imperic knowledge, but cringe at your superiority….

BUT I LOVE THE DEBUNKING OF “OTHER” QUACKS :-

The only problem is getting homeopaths to co-operate with well-controlled studies, which prove homeopathy to be a crock, hence their need for PR stunts like Spence’s.

If you define homeopathy as the effect of doing exactly nothing then everything about it makes a lot more sense. It’s only if you have to keep coming up with cover stories for all its problems and difficulties that problems arise.

Intermittently I feel sorry for homeopaths as well as angry with them. They can spend entire careers and their whole intellectual life defined by a giant lie. On a human level and outside the rough and tumble of debate I think that is terribly sad.

No kidding: they were the most suggestible group within a highly suggestible cohort.

As I have said in another thread (http://www.badscience.net/?p=189) Spence has previously been very keen to show how powerful homeopathy is by citing its alleged adverse effects.

I think it would be reasonable for him to be challenged to explain how many of his 6,500 reported advers effects, and, you are right, how many died during their follow-up period.

Unlike drug trials there are many interventions for which it is impossible to blind the person who is providing the intervention, e.g. surgery. It may therefore be impossible to eliminate bias entirely but we can take steps to minimise its scope. Outcomes can be assessed or administered by independent observers who are blinded to the treatment the patient has received. Careful design of the control arm (e.g. sham acupuncture) may make it possible to blind the patient to the treatment they have received.

That said, the Spence paper is appalling. If we asked the authors to look at the number of deaths in their patients I doubt they would be so keen to perform an uncontrolled analysis that attributes the outcomes entirely to homeopathy.

For those with an interest in peer review I recommend the website of the Fifth International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication (with links to previous meetings) at http://www.ama-assn.org/public/peer/peerhome.htm

I think it’s trickier than that. Even with an honest experimenter who doesn’t swap the drug and the placebo, if the experimenter knows which is which he may give subtle clues to the patient, so the patient may get some idea of whether he/she is expected to do well or not. If the experimenter is blinded, all patients are given identical impressions about what the treatment is, how it is expected to work, and so on.

It is not there in report that adjunctive modern medicines were used in all cases but just “x” group is indicated which clearly indicate that CMs was used in “x” group. I can’t say about radio report as we are going with survey report. How he said, what he said, was it just for medicines given to x group or to some few patients, if given all the times OR he has spoken in view of prevailing modern atmosphere (PMA). If you still don’t believe in any one, you can check it with GPs, doctors, homeopaths, parents & patients again.

I don’t think you’ve quite been given the correct answer to your question. There are only two possibilities. He either knows he is talking nonsense but says it anyway, or he doesn’t even understand the issue. There is no third option, neither is flattering and both are typical of the woo-woo medicine community.

(Please folks, try to resist the urge to respond to Kumar. It may sound unfair, but he has limitless time and desire to divert discussions of pseduomedicine to his cracked agenda of homeopathy, Tissue Salt Remedies (use Google and be prepared to weep) by employing his complete collection of logical fallacies.

Sorry, Ben, a badscience link got posted at JREF and Kumar followed it)

I suspect that what they’re talking about here are negative effects that could be pinned down to an external cause. After all, if a patient said that they felt better after their homoeopathic treatment, I very much doubt that the homoeopaths will have gone looking for reasons other than the homoeopathy, seeing as the whole study relies on the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

There was no control on the study, therefore it is impossible to say whether any claimed improvements were the result of the homoeopathic treatment, or whether they would have just happened anyway.

And it really is pointless to argue about whether or not the patients were receiving conventional treatment. One of the authors of the study (Spence) actually admitted, in an interview on Radio 4 on 21st November, that the patients in the study had also been receiving conventional treatment.

The above from report indicates that candidates who have taken other treatment(should be inclusive of conventional treatment) are seprately groupped in “x” group.

The out come of “x” group : TABLE 4. OVERALL OUTCOME FOR 6544 PATIENTS; “x” showing just o.3% & n20

Biased or not biased is a seprate issue which can be checked by surveying again– hostital, homeopaths, GPs of patients, patients participated and their parents, by those who feel/find it otherwise. Whether they or science shouldn’t be interested for their purposes, to check its truth? If not, can it be not taken as a bias for self interests?

The essence of any study on homeopahy is, whether study was “adjunctive study” or not and whether some relaxations are given to homeopathy or not in view of, how it is taken by the authorities, kept as back-bencher, not researched equally etc.

I’m (thankfully?) out of touch with what’s hip in the UK, but I assume you mean ‘Closer’ the magazine? Their website has a little votey-thing, asking the question, “Do you think the Atkins Diet is bad for you?” but unfortunately they don’t have a button for ‘Oh my, erm, can you repeat the question please?’

http://www.closermag.co.uk/

Apparently this weeks issue has an article on losing a stone with (world renowned dietician) Carol Vorderman, and ‘real life’ article detailing a mothers plight as her daughter slowly turns to stone, no less.

“Seven-year-old LW faces a terrifying future trapped in her own body.”

Sometimes I forget what a privilige it is to travel the astral planes at will by means of an out-of-body experience.

Oh wait, no, her daughter has something serious called ‘Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva’.

Made me click though didn’t it! B******s!

I wouldn’t worry too much Caradog, if Doc McKeith is facing a terrifying future trapped inside the likes of ‘Closer’.

Where would we be without her?