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Science vs. Homeopathy
Mr. E writes "Ars Technica has an interesting look at pseudoscience as it applies to homeopathy. While most discussions about what science is get derailed by the larger controversies surrounding them, Ars chose a relatively uncontroversial pseudo-science to examine so that they could examine the factors which make homeopathy a psuedo-science: ignoring settled issues in science, misapplication of real science, rejection of scientific standards, claims of suppression, large gaps between the conclusion and evidence, and a focus only on the fringes of what we currently understand."
Homeopathy is controversial, in that some people actually believe it and loudly proclaim its wonders. That's like saying that evolution vs. intelligent design is settled just because science overwhelmingly supports the former, ignoring that many people still believe the latter.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
A friend of my cousin works in a homeopathic pharmacy (in Russia). She told a story that once in a while a client appears in the pharmacy with a prescription which literally says: "Placebo" (yes, an average Ivan is probably even less likely to be able to read a prescription than an average Joe, as Latin is not Cyrillic). The client gets the prescribed drug and pays a hefty sum for it. Supposedly, the more they pay, the more likely it is to work.
I'm a doctor -- I could write an entire book on the relation of "scientific" or "evidence-based" medicine in relation to homeopathy.
:)
In general, homeopathy is essentially tolerated, and as the article humorously points out, it tends to not do much harm because things are dilute. From the Wikipedia article, which nicely summarizes it:
> any positive effects of homeopathic treatment are simply a placebo effect.
That has pretty much been my experience -- and it is difficult for an individual (even a doctor) to tell somebody to NOT do something that is not harmful, and (very, very unlikely) may be beneficial. Physicians joke about "homeopathic" doses of drugs when we think a drug is significantly under-dosed (usually when beginning somebody on a new medicine to see how they react to it.)
It is really funny the ritual surrounding this -- you wouldn't believe the people that adhere to homeopathic remedies and spend hundreds of dollars on these cure-alls, yet still "struggle" to afford the copay on the drugs that are actually keeping them alive. However, something that reinforces positive thought (which indeed can have an effect on your health) is good, and the placebo effect is undeniable.
Despite their benign nature, the aggressive marketing of these substances to vulnerable groups (the sick) disagrees with me. I mean, look at this http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=homeopathic+remedy&btnG=Google+Search and some of the wild claims they make for cure. I can't make these outlandish claims for most of the drugs I prescribe, so how can an honest doc compete?
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
The writers picked the topic because of a relative lack of controversy. This is unsurprising to me, but not for a good reason. My experience - I would love to see some research, hopefully proving me wrong - has led me to believe that a majority of people accept the spurious claims of homeopathy advocates. I'm disheartened about this by the number of otherwise perfectly reasonable people who have insisted that I should pay money for a homeopathic dilution of zinc to fight a cold virus.
"My last cold only lasted three days, must have been the Zicam," is so wrong on multiple levels, and it's a sad commentary on the state of education that such thinking is so widespread, although it's only fair to note that such has always been the case with regards to medicine.
My favorite part of the article is this three-bong-load abuse of physics by Lionel Milgrom, a contributor to this very special journal edition, who proposes a theory (I shit you not) of quantum entanglement of humans:
Mr. Milgrom, you and I share the same perspective on the universe. Unfortunately for you, it's called religion, not science, and your attempts to dress it up as science for the purposes of promoting our generation's version of patent medicine are the worst sort of shameful mockery.
Also, "instantaneously?" How can any two things be made instantaneous by a force that "transcends time?" You're as shitty a philosopher as you are a physicist, Mr. Milgrom.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
Not surprising since the royal family are believers in this nonsense.
Where is the Undo button for my life? Not to mention the Esc key.
The number of people who would try to use homeopathy for crisis medicine (heart attack, stroke, car crash) is vanishingly small, so it's probably not a valid concern in such cases.
Most homeopathic substances aren't very expensive because there isn't much but water or sugar being sold.
We'd be better off if people didn't believe in frauds, but homeopathy does less damage than many other forms of medical stupidity.
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It does not work. I'm tried quite a few of them, to be sure.
But there is one exception - and amazingly it works great. Arnica Montana is amazing stuff. All it does is stop compression-type injuries from swelling.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
This argument completely goes both ways.
Example: I have an embarrassing confession to make. I once contracted a disease called scabies. Scabies, long story short, is bugs living in your skin. Your skin becomes inflamed and it itches. I have no idea how I got it, but it is fairly contagious, particularly if you have prolonged close contact with somebody who has it (e.g. you share a bed). My doctor diagnosed it, prescribed a treatment for me which I used to the letter, and I was cured. End of that story. Except...
Go online and do a search for scabies and you will find all sorts of interesting stuff. There are whole forum threads devoted to it. The cure, which for me was really very simple, does not seem to be simple at all for a lot of people.
It will probably help if I explain something else about it. Like I said, scabies is bugs, and you get welts and they itch. But these are not bug bites, per se. What is happening is that your body has initiated a systemic allergic reaction to the presence of the insects. You're basically breaking out in hives. Often you will break out in areas where no bugs have ever been. And the problem with this is that the cure for scabies is to kill them. Killing them, however, doesn't get them out of your skin -- it just interrupts their lifecycle. Eventually your skin will shed and they will all be gone. But in the meantime they are dead but still there ... which means that even after you are cured of scabies, you keep having symptoms ... sometimes for several weeks after the successful treatment. So you can maybe see how this freaks people out.
Back to the Web. Go online and search for "scabies cure" and you will find all kinds of people who are very frustrated about their symptoms, which has led them to try all sorts of things:
Breakfast served all day!
You don't need double blind tests to know that 2 + 2 is not 5.
You don't need double blind tests to know that air breathing animals won't survive in a vacuum.
You don't need double blind tests to know that jumping off a tall bridge is going to hurt.
You don't need double blind tests to know that homeopathy has an internal inconsistency: pure water is required but by definition can't exist.
Some things are just provably wrong and don't need experimentation.
Infuriate left and right
Warning: I am extremely biased against Chiropractory and believe it should be shut down. Any arguing with me on it will be pointless. I am sure you are a nice person and so is your chiro but I look at it as snake oil. I am not going to try to convince you not to go but I will give you some facts. Maybe talk to your "doctor" about it but if you decide to continue seeing one, that is your choice and I hope it works out for you...
I can agree with the parent comment. My wife was given a neck adjustment on Dec 28 2003 and on the 2nd of 2004 had a mild (thankfully) stroke. It appears what happened was when the chiro torqued her neck one of her vertebrae moved. Of course a little while later the muscles pushed it back in place which they will do. At the same time a blood vessel was pinched off to her brain causing her left eye to not track quite as well as her right. She is fine but she still gets a bit of vertigo. Talked to a lawyer about it and they said unless we were willing to go through years of heartache and stress her time would be more worthwhile spent telling people her story. Her GP informed her that she has another patient who is middle age who's right arm is now useless due to a bad chiro adjustment.
My wife was 30 at the time of the stroke, in perfect health as she was an avid runner even doing a half-marathon, doesn't drink, never smoked, so not even close to being someone classified as a normal risk for strokes.
My wife isn't bitter, I am I admit as I had to look her in the eyes when she was terrified as we didn't know what was happening and whether or not this was the beginning of something bigger. She thinks the big problem was that the chiro glossed over the risks, she doesn't even recall ever being told about them. She had been a semiregular patient for 5 years for lower back pain (which visits to a physical therapist fixed in a couple months after she stopped going to the chiro). I agree with the person up the thread that Chiros should stay away from the neck area and as well they should drop the whole "latent intelligence" BS that moving bones makes your organs work better.
An interesting read (albeit definitely not an unbiased view on the world of chiropractory is book called Spin Doctors, which you can order on Amazon or Chapters .
A little knowledge is dangerous.
I used to be a Homeopathic Practitioner. Really I was. I was a Traditional Homeopathic Practitioner. There is a huge difference between 'modern' homeopathy and traditional. The split happened in the late 60s and both forms have diverged significantly since.
The modern approach is inclusive of as many therapies as you can shake a stick at, while the die-hard traditional won't adopt anything else.
So what is it?
- Homeopathy is based on the concept of "Like Cures Like" - So the best thing you can do for a hangover is to take a spoonful of brandy the next morning.
- Homeopathy works. Why do you take Quinine tablets for malaria? Because taking quinine causes similar symptoms to malaria.
Ever had eczema or skin issues? Ever taken coal byproducts for it? That's a Sulphur based product - Another homeopathic remedy.
Have a bruise? Want to get rid of it? Get some Arnica cream. Bitten by a mosquito? Try Urtica cream. Want an effective disinfectant? Try Calendula. All of these are proven homeopathic creams that work. No faith required. Sure, nowadays there's alternative remedies for general conditions like this, but there is no reason to discount alternative and older remedies.
- All of what we term 'immunization' is Homeopathy in its traditional form. You ingest a serum made from the very substance that causes the disease.
- Quackery was just that. Real doctors in the 1800's and beyond (especially in the US) used Homeopathic remedies whilst the quacks used opium, alcohol and wild herbs as a panacea.
- Homeopathy has a rating system. All remedies ending with an 'X' are dilutions eg 1 part per 10. All those ending in 'C' are 1 part per 100 and so on - following the roman numeric system.
- Homeopathy works from the general to the specific. Never the other way around. There is a huge difference in the efficacy of super-high dilutions 'M' for example and 'X'. A practitioner worth their salt would never give an 'M' first off. Very high dilutions are only used once a particular condition has been aggravated and only rarely.'X' and 'C' have measurable concentrations of whatever remedy is used. It is not water.
- Remedies are 'proven'. That means that a statistical sample of people are given 'X' doses of a remedy and observed closely as in all drug trials, looking for symptomatology. If the remedy gives consistent results then it is tested with patients who exhibit similar symptoms.
- Remedies come as creams, powders, solutions, pills, sprays, inhalations and injection (hypodermic).
- Homeopathy has a pharmacopoeia of thousands of proven remedies.
- Homeopathy ONLY WORKS if a condition is diagnosed properly. As proper diagnosis involves checking for a myriad of 'symptoms', it becomes a challenge to arrive at the right diagnosis. Get it wrong and the remedy doesn't work. There are a few pitfalls like that. I say that because if you've been given a remedy and it didn't work, then that's probably why.
Modern Homeopathy however has really gone astray. That's why I got out of it. Modern homeopathy considers that effective remedies can be made by shining a light through a slide that purportedly has the same 'vibrations' as the remedy is supposed to represent. And this is supposed to work? That sort of stuff goes against the grain of traditional practice and I would have to agree with many of the placebo comments made here.
I know I won't convince many, but when you see it working properly, all doubts fade.
Just keep an open mind. One day you may need it.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!