Comments on: The end of homeopathy?

By: Snuggie

Snuggie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:46:37 +0000

Snuggie blanket Snuggie blanket blanket with sleeves blanket with sleeves

By: vvd

vvd — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:50:48 +0000

* the rest of their lives…

By: vvd

vvd — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:41:53 +0000

I do not understand those who enjoy its natural-scientific illiteracy, and it seeks to demonstrate. So I do not understand the author of this article.
Do you not think about this:
1. If homeopathy takes a powerful placebo effect, why this effect does not show (or almost never shown) antibiotic to cure the disease, where the antibiotic is not effective, for example, herpes?
2. Why homeopathy cures infants who were not able to cure allopathy? Their parents believed in allopathy less than in homeopathy? Why did they first tortured their children allopathy? Why “parental suggestion” effectively in homeopathic treatment, but not effective in allopathic?
3. Why homeopathy cure alcoholics who do not even know that their food and drink, add the medicine?
4. Why homeopathy heals animals, including, just picked up on the street?
Did you know that any molecule faced each other remember the rest of your life, or at least, not yet undergo new collisions with comparable parameters, even if after they are on different galaxies? It is known to any physics. What prevents this universal effect manifest itself in homeopathy?
You just embarrassed that the quantum teleportation has been proved in the early nineteenth century, and not at the end of the twentieth?

By: diudiu

diudiu — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:39:36 +0000

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By: LeiLa

LeiLa — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:19:07 +0000

Ben Goldacre?

If you could please pm me i would be very greatful i would like to ask a couple of questions regarding your article.

Leila

By: JamieT

JamieT — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:13:20 +0000

A lot has been written but look at this
http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/whats-new/singlereg/default.aspx
Nothing will stop them being official, and all that to protect the public. Unless anything is done it seems all that you have said is hot air
Jamie

By: zappa

zappa — Sat, 09 May 2009 12:48:12 +0000

Found this harrowing story which illustrates the dangers of bad science…http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Parents_prosecuted_after_homeopathic_treatment_leads_to_daughter%27s_death

By: jim hicks

jim hicks — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:26:12 +0000

a fellow nearby has achieved an awareness that permits him to ’see’ illness and ’see’ cures. –
he and his wife were offering hope to some whom the doctors could no longer help. –
one wonders if he could ’see’ cures in homeopathic items. –
there is a ‘muscle test’ i have seen demonsrtated.

Spirit and Engrams [Dianetics]
play a monster role in human
wellness. there may not be a large enough potential financial gain for anyone to
quantify these influences.
whatever works eh ?? love all – jimhicks36atjunodotcalm

By: jim hicks

jim hicks — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:25:57 +0000

By: sumalat

sumalat — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:03:49 +0000

Was a sceptic as much as any of you till my son was born. He suffered from a very bad skin condition which our modern medicines and medicos failed to alleviate. In fact it was when he started worsening that I very reluctantly took him to a homeopath at the insistance of a relative. Placebo! yes, it does exist for us adults, but, how do you explain a baby of 10 months age respond favourably to treatment by “mind over matter” ( for that matter the placebo effect itself should prompt us to wonder that we do not understand a lot of what goes on in and around us. The mind can heal, you say, wow, please explain the same to me. I am all ears). My son is 12 years old now and has been a “homeo kid”. His skin condition is kept at bay even today by homeo. He is very radiant and healthy. To contrast my sisters colleague had a daughter with dermatitis which was treated by various allopathic drugs including UV radiation etc. The trauma the poor child went through before she died at age 9 I do not want to describe. It was the very treatment that she went through which was responsible for her misery and ultimately death.This is not to dilute any of your anti homeo comments but to just state what I did for this science which we cannot explain but to which I am very grateful.

By: JQH

JQH — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:00:50 +0000

The fact that medieval theologians (Note: theologians, not scientists) opposed Copernicus is hardly proof that 21st century doctors (a completely different group) are wrong about homeopathy (a completely different subject.

By: drgsrinivas

drgsrinivas — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:48:30 +0000

Homeopathy could be true! Remember, the then ’scientific’ community had laughed at Copernicus, exposing its arrogance, only to be found guilty later! Science, which is the knowledge we have acquired so far as humans, is neither an absolute thing nor unchallengeable.
If you are open minded then please visit
http://www.scienceandhomeopathy.blogspot.com

By: jonathanhearsey

jonathanhearsey — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:10:32 +0000

Brilliant – just brilliant.

Well done, Dr. Goldacre.

After attending my final ever anti-vaccination seminar recently

http://jonathanhearsey.com/?p=34

I’d love you to write a paper of similar magnitude on the subject of vaccinations.

Keep up the good work,

By: pronk

pronk — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:29:52 +0000

Homeopathy Cures Brain Tumours
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY 23: 975-982, 2003
975

Oh man, that paper is terrible. The study group is tiny, less than half of them improved, the homeopathic remedy was was administered with all sorts of other stuff who’s possible effects are utterly ignored, the timescale for improvement is completely random for each patient (so no consistent, measurable effect as you would expect with something having an actual effect) and there’s no word whatsoever on whether the patients were also undergoing any other treatments, what previous treatments they’d had, whether their diagnosis was independently confirmed and so on. I could go on, but there’s not much point. This is a backwater journal trying to stir up some interest by publishing a dubious, contentious paper that would be (and probably was) thrown out by any decent title. You may as well ask whether the patients ate any cake during the study period, and then claim cake cures cancer.

By: Jo

Jo — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:51:25 +0000

The fabulously excellent RadioLab podcasts have one on Placebo with a brief interview with Daniel Moerman.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/05/18

I highly recommend their podcasts – they’re funny and beautifully edited with very good use of music and sound effects. There’s a lovely bit with Fabrizio Benedetti in this one.

I’ve just received Moerman’s book as a birthday treat, and was surprised to see his name here as I’d previously heard of him only as the author of Native American Ethnobotany database: http://herb.umd.umich.edu/

By: g8or

g8or — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:08:19 +0000

Homeopathy Cures Brain Tumours

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY 23: 975-982, 2003
975

“Ruta 6 selectively induces cell death in brain cancer cells but
proliferation in normal peripheral blood lymphocytes:
A novel treatment for human brain cancer”

Download free article here;
http://www.pbhrfindia.org/images/stories/pdf/ruta6.pdf

By: g8or

g8or — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:42:42 +0000

Ok guys, but what do you make of these;

http://www.pbhrfindia.org/index.php/Publications-Presentations/Papers/Posters-presented-in-Conferences/Meetings/Papers/Posters-presented-in-Conferences/Meetings.html

Ruta 6 selectively induces cell death in brain cancer cells; http://www.pbhrfindia.org/images/stories/pdf/ruta6.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=12963976&dopt=AbstractPlus

http://www.fidelibus.com/SOL-BRAIN.htm

http://www.pbhrfindia.org/index.php/Case-Studies/Cure-of-Brain-Tumor/Cure-of-Brain-Tumor.html

cheers!

By: G04T_DFA

G04T_DFA — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:19:43 +0000

damn that didnt look that long. Dont bother if it looks like a rant or something I guess, i wouldnt blame you

By: G04T_DFA

G04T_DFA — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:18:45 +0000

Evenin all, just a few drive-by comments. Scientific proof is rigorous, but not infallible; an element of belief is required. I believe that science is very, very good at producing and analysing results. Why? because I KNOW that nitric oxide is a vasodilator. It is shown that the more you add, the more relaxed muscle becomes. (within the curve etc, in the absence of inhibition in some form so on…). From this, it can be concluded that if someone has very constricted blood vessels, a lack of nitric oxide production could be the cause. More investigation needed. This thinking is very reliable in natural science; it brings us the microchip, the television, the defibrilator, the cortical steroids for asthma. Why are these ideas accepted? An alternative method may be explored, but these devices and the ideas they are based on demonstrate robust proof for themselves; evidence is not a matter of opinion, it simply is. Any argument is of procedure or a lack of validity on this basis.
In this way, my beliefs (by which i mean my understandings of how certain things happen or what they are doing there to begin with) are influenced by what I see, and what I make of them in my head. A doctor can show me how many people have died as a result of a certain surgical procedure, or tell me what possibly connects them (did they all smoke? were they infected pre-operation?). In this way, scientific belief is justified; questioning it has a history of obtaining knowledge in science…via investigation, clearly supporting or refuting the hypotheses concerned. “Dont believe it?” says science, “try it yourself as I did and you should find the same. If you do not, it is either chance or there is an alternative explanation. Is my idea flawed, or not implemented correctly, leading to a false result?” This is how eccentric becomes commonplace. Science is not a man far away telling you what to think. It is a method of answering natural problems with a way of finding an explanation, usually with he point being to change things for the percieved better through a known means of action. Through this chain of thought, i could conclude that solid understanding of stuff through seeing (like lions like the taste of meat, that falling off a really big cliff usually kills animals) and experimentation (all the cows off the cliff are dead. Almost every time), consistant results appear. If they do not, maybe I must reexamine aspects of my inquiry, but at least I can see the lions chasing the cows off the cliff (or not as they are all off eating potato dishes.) Thus, homeopathy is not really homeopathy; it is simply potential active ingredients; if they dont work, they dont work. If they do, there should be a marked result. If there isnt, why? If it does not pass this test, i’l feel a little duped.
I could rant on about concentration I guess, but aside from extrapolating that very low or high [ingredient] is somehow different (which is a bad idea, extrapolation lies outside knowns) I will say that the scientifically established drugs cope with potency being a clear issue; more has more effect, until it maxes out or until something interferes. Homeopathic remedies dont seem to offer clear explanations. This is why I cant spend money on them. You could sell me an elvis clock with swinging legs on the honest claim that I will think its entertaining for a bit, but I doubt you could sell me a leap of faith that he was a priest (for example, no mockery) on the basis that I am somehow affected by the swinging legs thing. In other words, a volume of knowledge to back stuff up and transparency is a good thing. We all do so much, nobody can prove stuff alone that drug companies invest millions in. At least if theyre lying it will probably be spotted by someone, or at least criticised. At which point it may respond within the lines of inquiry directed by the criticism. Homeopathy could be rife with frauds and we’d never know, because of many reasons, such as human error, or attempts to sell expensively refined ingredients without volumes of evidence in its defence.The reasons are manifold really, but theres a couple. If theres a global conspiracy in science to constantly mislead, why is our lifespan going up, our health linked to lifestyle and our children in central london getting fresh water and not cholera. If homeopathy does work (not derisive, “if” is used as a logical operator here), it should be perfectly capable of silencing criticsm with some difficult-to-deny demonstration, with subsequent defense ideologically (oh yeah, read in this thread that double blinds are not very good or something according to some supporters of homeopathy. No problem, and not that this is directed at anyone, but isnt it the best way, I mean, the best way to do it is so that no-one knows so no-one can make it up, right? Please, prove me wrong (im not sarcastic), or argue that double blind effectively messes up the results to such a degree that using it is a liability in supporting hypotheses through its influence on data. Caveat; saying it is bad does not make it bad. Just give me some reasons as to why double blind is not appropriate for seperating active from placebo. Again, no-ones arguing that homeopathy can cure renal failure, (and if you do, then maybe you should do what those australians did to prove the cause of stomach ulcers and NO INSULT this is just a legal way of testing a premise that would be thrown away due to risk to safety of others. That way we can all see it at work is all), but if it does have a beneficial effect on people without pathologising every day ups and downs to the degree that it causes ignorance detrimental to safety or happiness (possibly truth, i like to know truth, but what does it matter to others? that varies), I will use it where its needed. Without parenthesis and my rampant train of thinkin, if homeopathy does help people without doing society or the individual a disfavour in any real way, and you can show me and tell me what is really going on, and I can ask you about it and not be misled, it works. Otherwise, youre maybe hiding from something? Maybe sometimes the honest man has nothing to hide.
Thanks for reading if you could be arsed. My style is difficult to read maybe. Just know that I dont represent homeopathy, or science, I just have had to examine things in my life and this is how I establish whether or not something is to be believed. Sadly, most hoemopathic remedies do not convince me. Dont call me closed minded. Answer my criticsm if present in its context and show me otherwise. Thats what I think science is about.

By: JoanCrawford

JoanCrawford — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:47:17 +0000

Almud, you are the last Japanese soldier.

The war is over, and you lost.