Sorry. Realize (Yep, ‘Merican) this is not a substantive contribution to the discussion … but I am afraid that you have awoken one of my pet peeves.

Nauseous: causing or able to cause nausea.

I recognize (there’s that annoying zed again) that there is a growing use of “nauseous” for “nauseated,” further, it seems probable that this usage will become primary.

At times this brightens my day – think of taking the medical history of a 350 pound woman with bright red inch-long fake fingernails and purple dyed hair telling one that she is nauseous – but more often one is left reflecting upon the loss of yet another word to ignorance.

Why not try to discuss things rationally? Reason and logical thinking is what , I believe , set humans apart from the rest of the animals.

I think you may misunderstand the placebo effect. Any treatment can have a placebo effect – it requires the person taking it to believe it to have an effect. For example – morphine , a well known and proven to be effective pain killer , will have an associated placebo effect , if the person taking it believes it to work.

New substances , in order to become prescribable medications have to be shown (in trials and tests) to work OVER AND ABOVE the placebo effect. Now , there are problems with how some of these trials and tests are performed , or reported – see Ben’s latest post – but on the whole every drug has to go through fairly rigorous investigation before it comes available for doctors to prescribe.

The trouble with homeopathy , is that , though it should be fairly easy to set up good quality trials , there is NO GOOD EVIDENCE that it works OVER AND ABOVE the placebo effect.

So , homeopathy medication works about as much as one would expect a sugar pill to work. This makes sense – by diluting a substance a million million million times (if not more) and then adding this to a sugar pill ( the method by which these medications are prepared) then what have you got? A sugar pill.

What about your argument that if it makes people feel better , why not? This argument has more merit.

I think the trouble with this , over and above the seeming unfairness of rigorous rules for proper medication (which I don’t think anybody objects to) and the complete lack of rules for homeopathic remedies , boils down to a question of money. The NHS has limited funds. we could spend money on developing money which works (ie has a placebo effect and a proven additional effect). ie medication that would make MORE people feel MORE BENEFIT , than homeopathic medication. More bangs for the buck.

Then there is the problem of homeopathy being used for more serious condtions , in the place of traditional medication (the most notorious is against malaria – where I’m afraid placebo effect will not stop you dying).

Then there is the problem of the NHS officialy sanctioning a product with no proof it works more than the placebo effect , endorsed by poor reasoning and faulty logic.

Your last paragraph – ‘Who cares if scientists can’t prove it, people feel different’ – they can prove it ,people DO feel different but NO MORE than the placebo effect , and that is the point.

Those are absolute genius, I’d never seen that site before and its cracking. The one about the witch doctor made me laugh a great deal, I got very odd looks from people in the office!

@The Placebo

In response to your final post, I would just like to clear up one thing. I’m not ‘fundamentalist’ in my scientific beliefs, I don’t want to force everyone to share my beliefs. I honestly don’t mind if people would rather see a homeopath than their GP, or get a tarot reading or see a witchdoctor (I worked in Uganda for a while, and they are still very popular there, even where proven conventional medicine is available). I’m fine with people going to see a homeopath, and finding themselves lighter of wallet, and feeling happier; its not my bag, but I defend the rights of people to see homeopaths if that is what they so desire.

When this gets into a less happy situation for me, is public funding. Why do you insist the taxpayer funds homeopathy? Why can’t we just leave it as a private practice? The problem here is that the government has to be responsible about how it spends its money. The health service has a limited budget, and it has to justify every penny it spends. You cannot medically justify spending public money on alternative medicine, that being: things that have not been proven to work, or things that have been proven not to work . Here, homeopathy falls into both categories (with the caveat “beyond the placebo effect). Ok, homeopathy is not the particular torch that you carry, but surely you can see that you need to have an evidence base on something you wish to spend public money on? some reason to actually spend the money? I don’t think I am alone in thinking that the benefit from a treatment whose only effect is that of a placebo, does not give a good enough reason for the health service to spend money on it.

No indeed, humans are not ruled by science, but I do hope (perhaps in vain) it does crop up in the functioning of the government. We, and the world around us, is described by science, and that’s the point. Via the scientific method we find out about the world, and find a way to describe its wonder and its awe. I am sad that you feel one cannot be a scientist and be in awe of love, and all the wonder of human experience. I have had endless debates with my dad about this (he lives in Australia selling coloured phials of water which are meant to enhance our ‘energies’), and I just cannot seem to get the point across that scientific outlook on the world enhances my experience through greater understanding. I see beauty in a succinct mathematical proof in the same way I see beauty in that brilliant new nature doc ‘Life’ (narrated by the most awesome Sir David Attenborough). The fact I believe the biological mechanism for the experience of emotion in the brain can be fully observed and described by medical science does nothing to belittle my wonder of the highs of love, or the life-affirming blackness of tragedy (not oximoronic I believe). My dad and many others like him prefer to believe that turning our backs on observation (and the scientific method), we become enlightened and start contemplating proper ideas (none of which can ever be tested, proven, or otherwise engaged with).

I find this tragically naive, because in essence my dad, and all the others like him, have effectively confined their experience and beliefs to human imagination. What I can’t seem to communicate is that there are things in the universe that so utterly blow the mind, they are beyond any man made idea, theology or ‘alternative philosophy’. See Dr Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog for example, and check out the stunning images of our solar system, our galaxy and even further afield. There is so much more out there than human imagination and the ‘rule of emotion’. This is pure intropsection, when if we just looked outside of what people imagine, and into the wonders of the physical universe; whether its subatomic breakthroughs at CERN, the 2.5 billion pixel image of our galaxy from the spitzer telescope, or the discovery and documentation of HIV resistant genetic mutations in humans, I am constantly in awe of the world around me, and have science and scientists to thank for it.

I feel so indebted to the generations of academics and scientists, whose millions of man-hours of work allow me to experience the world like no previous generation has, that yes I do resent it when people like my dad would rather talk about a plastic phial of coloured water with “infinium” written across it in silver ink.

To drag this back to topic, this then applies to all complementary medicines, none of which work beyond the placebo effect. People are drawn in by quirks of human imagination (from horoscopes, to homeopathy, to reflexology, to kinesiology), and decide to wilfully ignore proven science… it saddens me. But like I said, I will defend the ability of these people to undergo this treatment if they wish (although not at the expense of conventional medical treatment), I do not want to rid the world of homeopaths or people who believe in it. I just want to keep the restricted public health budget spent on medicines which actually work beyond placebo.

If you would like to see a homeopath that’s fine, I just resent footing (part of) the bill.

But in terms of cost, 0.00625% of the NHS drugs spent on something that does have a real effect on how people feel as opposed to on another drug which would then require further drugs to counter the side effects seems pretty reasonable. In a democracy we, the public, should have a say. Those who have financial interests currently rule, and that is wrong. So what if 0.00625% is spent on something doctors don’t understand. I don’t understand why the NHS spend that much on lots of things which produce no noticeable benefit to those the NHS exists to serve, not even as a placebo.

And, for the record, I am not a great believer in homeopathy. But I do know that it can work for some people for some ailments. Who cares if scientists can’t prove it, people feel different. Love rules!

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/ten-in-ten-homeopathic-prescriptions-contain-mistakes-200912032281/

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/complementary-therapists-to-be-regulated-by-witch-doctor-200901201522/

I’m not quite following your posts, you seem to criticize commenters for saying off-the-shelf homeopathy will have a placebo effect.

It has been shown that homeopathy’s -only- benefit is throught the placebo effect. In the case of homeopathy from a pharmacist’s shelf, the person buying the remedy expects it to work, so they pay the money, then go through the daily ritual of taking the pill. Because they think it will work, it can have a positive effect via the placebo effect. You don’t have to be in a trial to witness a placebo, there doesn’t have to be a control.

It is perfectly accurate to use the term placebo in this case, it is also perfectly accurate to use the term sugar pill, since the placebo is the mechanism and the sugar pill is the vehicle.

I’m sorry to challenge you, but I’m afraid you’re wrong on your second point in #51. As a taxpayer, you shouldn’t have access to your treatment of choice through the NHS. You should have access to proven treatments as tested by experts and regulated by the government. Fine, you want homeopathy on the NHS and you don’t think its unreasonable, but what about the person who wants to be treated by a witchdoctor, should the NHS employ a “Redbridge PCT Witchdoctor”? What about palm reading, or tarot reading as preventative measures? What about prayer healing, should the NHS employ a hundred strong force available 24 hours a day to pray for people who want to be treated through the power of prayer?

I understand if you have a firm belief in homeopathy, then these examples will sound absurd, but I’m afraid there’s no better proof for homeopathy than there is for any of these methods. When you are ill, you go to the GP (the trained physician) so that he or she can prescribe the best treatment, whatever that may be.

Your last paragraph raises an interesting point, if the placebo effect can be shown to be effective in the treatment of patients, should the NHS fund the placebo effect? Again, although interesting, I’m afraid this is a no. I heartily recommend you watch the parliamentary science and technology committee hearing on homeopathy, found here:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5221

Where NHS funding of the placebo effect is one of the (many) points raised. This is the same link as given in Ben’s post of the 25th Nov.

Prescribing a placebo is fundamentally dishonest, patients should not be given (and made to pay for via prescription costs) something that is -known not to work-. This is a potential can of worms, so much can go wrong with starting to prescribe medicines that aren’t medicines (see homeopathic malarial prophylaxis).

I’d rather spend that 5/80,000 of the NHS’ drugs bill on more actual drugs that actually work. But even if that weren’t an option, I would rather spend that much on sending antiretrovirals and vitamin supplements to the third world, rather than spending it on homeopathy for UK citizens. Then at least someone is getting some real help (beyond placebo) from that money.

As a taxpayer, I should have the option to treatment from the NHS of my choice, especially if that choice is cheaper than the alternative. Maybe the Homeopathic remedy producers should charge the same as the pharmaceutical companies for their output. Then they could afford to do trials and produce statistics which support them as the pharma companies do. There are examples in this thread of drugs which are proved to not work, but are very expensive to the NHS. Why does that happen. Post 19 points out the costs for rosuvastatin – higher than the total spent by the NHS on homeopathic remedies according to evidence put to the parliamentary committee last week.

Is it really a problem to spend less than 0.00625% of the NHS drugs bill on something that recipients of that spend feel benefits them?

going down by 100,000 each time.

IIRC,
Take 1 drop (1 cubic mm ?) of your ’stuff’, stick it in 100 cubic cm of water, stir well.
Dilution = 1/1000 / 100 = 1e-5 (one over a hundred thousand)

Now do the same again with a drop of the result,
Dilution = 1e-10

Same again.
Dilution = 1e-20

Since (Avogadro) we know that one molecular weight of a substance in grams (of which our initial drop probably contained say 1/100) contains roughly 6e23 (6 times (10 to the 23)) molecules, you can see that with the dilutions above we are getting down to only a few molecules in our dilutions already.

Can’t remember how far homoeopaths go, but the point being made by the ‘interplanetary sphere of water’ is that at homoeopathic dilutions, there is no actual substance molecule present unless you had a vast amount of the ‘diluted solution’.

Like saying you’d have to put in 14 million lottery tickets to be certain of winning – you’d have to have that much ’solution’, at the homoeopathic dilution, to ‘ensure’ you got one molecule of the substance.

I agree, its patients with chronic illnesses that medicine provides inadequately for, who are in a tough position. My brother had persistent eczema throughout his childhood, and once medicine had run its course and not solved the issue our mum (despite starting her career as a nurse) threw quackery at it, including homeopathy. Of course it didn’t do anything, and years later his skin cleared up on its own; but I can see why patients turn to homoepathy in this instance. Doesn’t make it right, or worthwhile, there’s just clearly a mechanism for sustaining the practice.

I’m glad that even as a child I had no time for homeopathy, as an asthmatic it could have been far more life threatening to replace my salbutamol inhaler with a sugar pill. I bet if I was suckered, went around armed with sugar pills, had an asthma attack, died, an investigative homeopathist would have a look and go “theeere’s the problem! he kept the pills in the same pocket as his mobile! homeopathy does work, he just used it incorrectly!”

@Mark Ryan

good to see a better debate than that travesty they thought they could get away with first time round. Interesting that its the GP speaking sense and the Academic spouting bollocks. Government 1 University of Southampton 0!

Called into the M56 Chester services recently, asked if they had any travel sickness tablets (for my wife).
The guy pointed behind the counter and said, “We’ve only got these herbal ones” – picked up the box: “homoeopathic travel sickness treatment”.
My Bad Science-reading kids said I should have bought them and tried them on the wife for any effect !

Also the other week when Boots said it would continue to sell homoeopathic stuff, the Daily Express article mentioned St.John’s Wort among other herbals on sale at Boots, as well as the homoeopathic stuff.

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