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The UK's New Minister For Magic
An anonymous reader sends this depressing excerpt from New Scientist:
"A serious blow to science-based medical practices has been dealt in the UK with the appointment of Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary. The fortunes of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) are about to be transformed with the help of the magical waters of homeopathic medicine. Top marks to The Telegraph's science writer Tom Chivers for quickly picking up on talk that the UK's new health minister, Jeremy Hunt – who replaced Andrew Lansley yesterday in a government reshuffle – thinks that homeopathy works, and should be provided at public expense by the NHS."
If you read Jeremy Hunt's response letter, what he actually says is that some PATIENTS want and/or believe in homeopathic medicine, so we should let them have it. Basically he's saying that the NHS should agree to pay for any treatment that the general populous wants, since it is a "patient-focused" organization. This argument is also significantly easier to defend if it's a treatment that they are already paying for, and it sounds like they are.
In short, Jeremy Hunt is a politician. He made a calculated determination that people who like homeopathic treatments are more likely to be supportive of him due to this decision than others are to be against him for deciding the other way. I can see why, since most scientists will think of him as a "typical stupid politician" (not much of an insult for an actual politician) while most homeopathic believers will see him as a "defender of their cause."
Homeopathy doesn't.
Sure it does. And I'm no fan of homeopathy. The areas listed in the "Mote Prime" article are areas strongly influenced by the placebo effect (pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, etc.). I assume that Homeopathy would have the same influence as any other placebo in treating those problems.
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In that case, I have a million other ideas, all differing to some extent, and each with the same profound properties that a placebo provides. Each one has an inventive story and reason for why it works behind it (I haven't tested most of them admittedly, but I DO think they're all great). The government should allow these million other methods on the market too, and make me a millionaire.
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Then it's not homeopathy which works - it's the placebo effect which works. And for that we don't need overpriced sugar which has danced around the table twelve times at midnight or somesuch nonsense.
It's modded down because if we replaced those XXXX antibiotic's that the AC above claims kills people in the hundreds of thousands, with homeopathy "treatments", billions upon billions upon billions of people would die in the space of 6 months. Idiots.
The Libertarians can't help but mod me down even when I don't directly reference them.
Well, it's bloody we'll true. Medicine in ye olden days where you could only judge a doctor's fitness by how many patients lived or died (in other words pure market forces) wasn't exactly a stellar success, and it's only when certification boards and similar bodies, with the force of legislation behind them, did you at least gain some trust as to basic credentials and competency, and some way to remove doctors who failed to maintain that competency.
A pure free market in health care would be a nightmare, where the worst aspects of the current system would be magnified in horrific fashion.
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In a medical context, "Working" means performing better than a placebo. By this definition, homeopathy DOES NOT work.
So placebo is, in fact, an effective remedy for pain and other subjective symptoms. This is a perfectly correct formulation. Pain is an entirely subjective phenomenon. If a sugar pill causes a person to perceive less pain, it is an effective form of pain relief, pure and simple.
No, to play by their rules, you need to fill a box full of packing peanuts and 1 penny. Then shred the box, throw the pieces in the garbage and pay him with a gum wrapper found at same land fill.
When my mother was dying of Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), she volunteered for a double-blind trial, knowing that there was an even chance she would get the placebo. This did not bother her in the least - she was hoping that it would ultimately result in some benefit for someone else later on. Unfortunately, her disease had already progressed too rapidly and she was not accepted into the test cohort.
I don't think there is anything unethical or inhumane about making a valid statistical trial. Many of these substances have serious side-effects and very prohibitive costs - it is better to make an informed and valid comparison of the pros and cons of any treatment.
These trails require the informed consent of the participants, and any well designed trail takes into account that if a new treatment turns out to be very effective it would be unethical to continue, but must be ended and the treatment supplied to all.
As is often the case, the experts have actually though of these things before you.
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