Slashdot Mirror
Is the End of Government Acceptance of Homeopathy In Sight?
cold fjord writes: It looks like homeopathy is in for a rough stretch ahead as shown in a chart and noted by Steven Novella at NEUROLoOGICAblog, "Homeopathy is perhaps the most obviously absurd medical pseudoscience. It is also widely studied, and has been clearly shown to not work. Further, there is a huge gap in the public understanding of what homeopathy is; it therefore seems plausible that the popularity of homeopathy can take a huge hit just by telling the public what it actually is. ... In 2010 the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee completed a full report on homeopathy in which they concluded it is witchcraft – that it cannot work, it does not work, and support for homeopathy in the national health service should be completely eliminated. In 2015 the Australian government completed its own review, concluding that there is no evidence that homeopathy works for anything. Homeopathy is a placebo. ... The FDA and the FTC in the United States are now both receiving testimony, questioning their current regulation of homeopathy. ... There is even a possibility that the FDA will decide to do their actual job – require testing of homeopathic products to demonstrate efficacy before allowing them on the market. If they do this simple and obvious thing, the homeopathic industry in the US will vanish over night, because there is no evidence to support any homeopathic product for any indication." — More on the FDA hearings at Science-Based Medicine.
Why does it even matter?
Because it is fraud. It parts people from their money under false pretenses. It leads people to believe it has medicinal properties that it does not and they sometimes choose to not seek genuine medical care as a result.
I mean, these treatments are pretty much just water. If somebody wants to drink water that they think has special properties, why stop them?
Because it doesn't have special properties and can be shown to lack the special properties claimed. When you sell a product you are required by law (or should be) to represent the product accurately. You should not be allowed to claim health benefits unless there is evidence to support that claim.
It's not even like drugs, where there can be severe harm to the users and others in the vicinity.
It fraudulently separates people from their money. It also at times keeps people from seeking genuine medical care when they need it.
Some of it works. A medipot lets you dump water up one nostril and out the other.
And this brings us back to the problem addressed in the summary: "Further, there is a huge gap in the public understanding of what homeopathy is; it therefore seems plausible that the popularity of homeopathy can take a huge hit just by telling the public what it actually is." The Neti Pot may be popular among alternative medicine types, but it's not homeopathy.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
I use a Netipot, only for clearing sinus congestion. No homoeopathy involved, straightforward flushing.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
E.g. at Whole Foods, which IMO that store is a huge ripoff to begin with, not even counting the homeopathic medicine section. For starters, they have a "bad foods" blacklist that doesn't even make any sense, and worse is that they sell a crapload of junk food. Meanwhile the hippies that shop there, and pay two to three times what the food should cost, just blindly assume that everything there is healthy.
And make no mistake that homeopathy is witchcraft.
Nonsense. There is overwhelming evidence that homeopathy is ineffective. There is far less evidence that witchcraft is ineffective. Homeopathy is based on the falsifiable theory that water has a memory of substances that were dissolved in it. Witchcraft is based on the non-falsifiable theory that there are supernatural forces that can be summoned to intervene in the human world. Those are entirely different things.
It is a placebo sold at a huge markup to stupid and sometimes desperate people.
That is an accurate description of homeopathy. That is not at all an accurate description of witchcraft.
That's ridiculous. The Form of cancer he had was treatable. Had he been treated he likely would have survived because most patients with that type of cancer survive.
But because he delayed treatment he didn't get treatment when it likely would have worked.
If you wish to be ignorant, fine, but he had no chance of survival with the treatment he opted for versus a good chance with real treatment
http://gawker.com/5849543/harvard-cancer-expert-steve-jobs-probably-doomed-himself-with-alternative-medicine