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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."
And this is why all centralized power is dangerous. Eventually an idiot WILL be put in charge. If it were one hospital, insurance provider, pharma company, whatever it is bad but survivable. But when it is a government with a virtual monopoly on something important like medicine and a real monopoly on the use of force to back it up, shit gets serious.
Democrat delenda est
At least leeches actually *do* have genuine and well-demonstrated medical applications.
Homeopathy doesn't.
Please don't think I'm trying to suggest a sample size of one is sufficient, but as an illustrative example I give you Steven Paul Jobs, who famously tried to cure his pancreatic cancer with a whole host of homeopathic remedies until it had progressed so far as to be inoperable. The placebo effect is well-demonstrated and reliable, so you would expect homeopathic remedies to show some benefits, as you allude to. It's when people forego useful medical treatment in favor of homeopathic fairy tales that the real dangers of homeopathy are apparent.
The placebo effect works, and homeopathy should be a tremendously inexpensive way to induce it. The placebo effect does not mean that people do not get better--it is that people get better even when you give them something inert! How better to generate something inert that feels like it should help than to take something that should help and dilute it? Granted, the effects of placebo are limited, but if you only need something limited anyway, why not give them a microcent's worth of water in a 20-cent vial, sold for $2, to make the patient feel as much relief as they can generate from their own beliefs? (How different is this from bottled water, anyway? The tap water in most places affluent enough to afford bottled water is perfectly safe.)
I'm only partly joking.
(Blasted democracies, requiring informed citizenry and spoiling all our plans to dupe them into thinking they're fine!)
Unfortunately herbal remedies and Homeopathy tends to get lumped together. I know first hand many herbal remedies work and some legit doctors have been prescribing them for decades. Athletes use Arnica for muscle strain and I found it works pretty well on migrains for lessening the symptoms. Cinnamon has been found to be at least as effective as most of the diabetes medicines used for controlling blood sugar peaks and it's also recognized as a stimulant. There are hundreds of medically proven herbs that are cheap and effective with potentially thousands more untested that are in traditional medicines. Homeopathy on the other hand to me is mostly snake oil. Things like diluting a compound and having it still be effective is just plain silly. I'd consider most of it placebos. The problem is there's no clear line between herbal and homeopathy. For back aches I call Tiger Balm, Arnica and ice packs the holly trinity. To me they are herbal remedies but you find them in the homeopathic section of health food stores and some drug stores. Herbal remedies should be government funded because they are inherently cheaper than factory drugs and with fewer side effects. The problem is there's been so little testing since the drug companies don't stand to get rich or get exclusive rights to them so it's hard to make rules as to which are truly effective. There's things like Goat Weed that is a herbal Viagra that is effective but then again people still take ground up Rhino horn which is expensive snake oil. With all the hundreds of billions a year that are spent on drugs there should be government testing on herbal remedies if for no other reason than saving money. The problem comes in the form of resistance from drug companies. Cheaper solutions threaten profits so don't expect government standardized testing of most herbs any time soon if ever.
Does it strike anyone else as odd that you can go from Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport to Secretary of State for Health in a day, or from Transport to Defence? Do any of these people have any actual experience or qualification in the departments they get dumped on? It's all just a load of old bollocks, isn't it?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Or American dollars, at the rate those printing presses are flying...
On topic, at least homeopathy doesn't directly cause hundreds of thousands of fatalities per annum when correctly prescribed. You can't say that about the junk they're peddling at my doctor's office.
It treats earache too.
My daughter, as a toddler, had one earache after another. Every time the doctor examined her ears, there was nothing wrong. Eventually he prescribed homoeopathic pills, on the NHS, it's not a new thing here. The pills looked and tasted like mints. The earaches stopped.
I'm no fan of magic and witchcraft. I know it was something other than earache but those pills worked.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
EU just rolled out a new directive. Traditional (also herbal) and homeopathic medicine has the burden of proof now for safety and quality. If the EU does one thing well, it's consumer protection.
You can apply for funding to be able to afford the clinical trial. This is an excellent move sorting out the effectiveness and at the same time preserving traditional "household" medicine. In the end, that's what science is about: Whether it is aesthetically pleasing or illogical that drops are diluted in a huge amount of water is irrelevant. All you have to answer is does it work (better than placebos in a double-blind trial)?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Actually, funny story, there is scientific evidence that homeopathy works. But you know, no big deal, I am sure the rest of your argument doesn't hinge on that small fact.
The latter is more correctly categorized as "naturopathy". For some ailments, it can work as well as traditional medicine because plants do have various chemicals that can cure disease.
Now there's the issue of those chemicals not being "clean" (i.e., mixed with other undesirable substances), not knowing the dosage (because the amount of the useful chemical varies from plant to plant), and, of course, misidentification of plants (which can lead to one ingesting the wrong chemical). And though all of the issues mentioned can arise when a chemical (which, in this usage, is referred to as a drug) in pill, elixer, injection, or suppository form is prescribed by a physician and used as directed by the patient, the likelihood of an undesired outcome is lowered considerably when the forces of science and modern manufacturing technology are brought to bear.
Of course, feel free to chew on a willow branch instead of taking an aspirin for your dose of acetylsalicylic acid - I certainly won't stop you. But when you end up with your muscles still aching because your jaw muscles and teeth gave out before the pain was gone, don't come crying to me.
That is all.
If the hospital sticks a pretty label on a bottle of tap water and utilises the placebo effect then it's a worthwhile treatment and will add benefit.
If the hospital prescribes a branded bottle of tap water that costs the NHS £480 a bottle then it's fraudulent and I'd be looking for links between the "manufacturer" and Jeremy Cunt*
*Yes, that's the name used to introduce him on BBC Radio 4
not sure why this got modded down. it's quite accurate. here in the US, the common treatment for just about ANY ailment is 'here's a bottle of XXXX antibiotic. take these for 2 weeks and call if the problem persists'. or they put you on a prescription until a year later you start seeing commercials all day about the pills you're taking; telling you how you're eligible to be in a class action lawsuit...
Oh, a wired article about a know clinical process that they don't understand.
Hint: Placebos are not increasing effectiveness.
In fact, they have no effectiveness.
They just decrease the perception of pain or other subjective symptoms.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Exactly. By that philosophy we can conclude that while we are drinking all the good with a glass of water, we are also drinking a glass of pure cancer, since at one time it must have been in contact with a host of natural and man made carcinogens. By the way, you shouldn't have ate so much garlic last night.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I heard this explained well through a joke.
A neurologist went into the emergency room, saying he was in great pain. "Where does it hurt?" he was asked.
"In my head."