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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.
Lots of people given the shelf space devoted to it.
They are placebos as well yet no one seems to want those banned?
Wrong way of comparing...
Medications have to be effective to be allowed, but not more effective than older cheaper medications.
And it's really easy to demonstrate that connecting your speakers with Monster cables produces way better sound than not connecting them at all ;-)
What's wrong with having placebos? Placebos work. They are quite effective treatments for a variety of health problems, especially things like mental health problems. Homeopathy is obviously ridiculous, but I don't see anything wrong with having some kind of government-sanctioned system of placebo sugar pills available. Use the profits to fund actual medical science. The fact that the pills are placebo doesn't even need to be secret - you can post directly on the label that it has no active drugs in it and that it is still an effective treatment (both facts are true). A lot of people would consider lack of 'active drugs' a plus. Most people wouldn't even read the labels anyway. The pills would sell quite well.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
Why does it even matter?
I mean, these treatments are pretty much just water. If somebody wants to drink water that they think has special properties, why stop them?
It's not even like drugs, where there can be severe harm to the users and others in the vicinity.
Jesus Fucking Christ, these treatments are just water!
Why the fuck does somebody choosing to drink clean water even need to be regulated?
Ok, I don't believe in homeopathy, but I suspect the market is people with ongoing medical problems where they've been thru conventional medicine, the doctors haven't helped and have given up. If that happened to you, YOU would be willing to try homeopathy and pretty much anything else that might work, because you don't have an alternative.
What's wrong with having placebos? Placebos work.
No placebos do not work. They are the very definition of not working. There is a reason we use placebos as the control group when doing double blind tests. The placebo effect is real but the placebos by definition have no medicinal effect whatsoever.
Placebos do have their occasional use as a therapy but homeopathy is for all practical purposes a placebo sold at a huge markup to stupid people. Homeopathy is pure fraud for that reason. It astonishes me that it is legal to represent them in any way as something even vaguely medicinal.
Yes, things like homeopathy aren't useful, but they don't actively hurt either. So why have regulations?
It's because of the fraud involved. Bernie Madoff was clearly running a pyramid scheme, so there shouldn't be any regulations against it, right? It's okay for people selling products to straight up lie about what it is, as long as it's obvious to most people that it's a lie it's perfectly okay. Buyer beware, and all that.
People will indulge in homeopathy, chiropractery and crystal healing. OK, they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but do you think banning these things will help? How's that worked out for drugs? Or cigarettes? Those have disappeared. Right? Oh, wait, they haven't.
For all these things, put the warnings on the label and let Darwin take care of the rest.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Hypochondriacs buy a lot of homeopathic cures, because it works well on their imaginary ailments. On the plus side, it probably doesn't hurt them either. Unfortunately, even hypochondriacs sometimes get real health problems and fail to get proper health care that could actually help them.
I have a friend who has a serious problem, but refuses to see a practitioner of allopathic medicine. She is trying one quack treatment after another and is not getting better. No amount of facts seem to interfere with her beliefs.
Ok, I don't believe in homeopathy, but I suspect the market is people with ongoing medical problems where they've been thru conventional medicine, the doctors haven't helped and have given up.
Sometimes. People do turn to witchcraft sometimes out of desperation. And make no mistake that homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a placebo sold at a huge markup to stupid and sometimes desperate people. Most people who buy into homeopathy however are rather stupid new-age granola types who lack critical reasoning ability. I'm particularly disappointed in places like Whole Foods that sell this snake oil even though they have no excuse for not knowing better.
If that happened to you, YOU would be willing to try homeopathy and pretty much anything else that might work, because you don't have an alternative.
No I wouldn't use homeopathy because I am not stupid enough to ever believe it would cure me of anything. I'm going to die someday and I'd rather do so with some dignity rather than paying money to some snake oil salesman for something that will do nothing.
I agree that homeopathy is total nonsense. Unfortunately, it's commonly linked with other forms of alternative medicine that actually do work, and I won't want to see those go down as well. In fact, there is a push by the pharmaceutical companies for the FDA to regulate alternative medicines such that they will become no longer cost-effective to produce. Herbal meds take money out of the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, so they will try to take advantage of homeopathy going down to elimiate herbal meds as well.
I could list all sorts of herbal and other alternative meds and their positive effects and side-effects. Two I'll mention:
- Dessicated bovine adrenal gland is useful if you have some mild adrenal dysfunction.
- Dessicated porcine thyroid gland is fabulous if you have a thyroid disorder and Levothyroxine hasn't been effective. The glandular is kinda like taking Armour Thyroid or Cytomel, except that you get the complete set of thyroid hormones.
OK, they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but do you think banning these things will help?
Short answer? Yes. Selling "medicine" under false pretenses is 100% of the reason why the FDA exists. If these products were represented accurately then I guess I have no problem with them being sold as entertainment but they are NOT medicine. You know what they call alternative medicine that is proven to work? MEDICINE.
I would say that it should be allowed to be sold, but, like cigarettes, with a mandatory warning to the effect that it contains no chemicals other than water and has no medical efficacy. If people are still willing to buy it then, it's not fraud.
What should absolutely be forbidden is any spending of public funds on this stuff (which is the huge part of the controversy in UK, where NHS funds homeopathic treatments for patients).
90s. He did all sort of aromatherapy, American Indian stuff, etc., and had people calling him night and day to ask if it was OK to eat this or that. Of course, he sold all sorts of homeopathic remedies for anything and everything. I ended up at a restaurant with him and some friends and shortly after dinner he lit up a cigarette. I asked him how he could be advising people all day long on how to stay healthy and then light up a cigarette. With a straight face he said "the stress of quitting smoking would cause him more harm the smoking itself causes".
What a f**king idiot!
Homeopathy was invented two centuries ago. Somehow, it's still around.
So now, for the next two centuries, we'll have to hear stories about how government is suppressing "natural" cures that they don't want people to have, because of big pharma (and Monsanto). Oh well.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And if you are in pain, you might give $100 to someone to pray for you. I mean, at that point, what do you have to lose? $100?
Which is why I wouldn't do that. I would lose $100 and not gain anything by it. The alleged benefit would have to be plausible to me. I'm just not large enough a market to scam.
You perhaps have not been in quite enough pain. They didn't give soldiers with blown off limbs morpine for the euphoria.
Ever hear a badly injured person screaming from the pain? It's a weird high pitched and very disturbing keen. They might give you a hundred dollars just to knock them unconscious.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
As a longtime user of homeopathy, I have watched with amusement a scientific studies have been published recently purporting to prove that homeopathy does not work. I know from my direct experience that it works, so if science is finding something different, there must be something wrong with its premises.
As a longtime user of a tiger-repelling rock, I have watched with amusement a[s] scientific studies have been published recently purporting to prove that tiger-repelling rocks do not work. I know from my direct experience that it works, so if science is finding something different, there must be something wrong with its premises.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
No, they aren't. You don't know what you're talking about.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"The prior shows a logical certainty, the latter [absence of evidence] is rationalization."
No, the latter is not mere rationalization; it is a logical use of limited resources (like time and money).
People can come up with a billion crazy theories or stories. We don't have time to test all of them or start using all of them by default. Hence, the responsibility falls upon the story-teller or seller to do the test and present evidence before anyone else gives them attention, time, or money in return. That's not rationalization -- it's simply rational.
As I say in my statistics classes: "The null hypothesis gets the benefit of the doubt; the alternative hypothesis has the burden of proof". (Or as Wikipedia puts it: "Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis... is a central task in the modern practice of science, and gives a precise sense in which a claim is capable of being proven false. The null hypothesis is generally assumed to be true until evidence indicates otherwise.").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Can we also get rid of horoscopes, psychics, religions, and politicians?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Short excerpt from a large word salad, but I'm not seeing the words "peer-reviewed research" or "clinical trials" anywhere.
"I would say that it should be allowed to be sold, but, like cigarettes, with a mandatory warning to the effect that it contains no chemicals other than water and has no medical efficacy."
Far from the same issue.
Tobacco labours do their intended function. It is that they have demonstrated side effects poisonus enough as to make mandatory to warn about them.
Homeopathics, on the other hand, have not the intended effects they are sold by, so it becomes false advertisement and outright fraud.
"If people are still willing to buy it then, it's not fraud."
If homeopathics are advertised as what they are, water, and follow the regulatory practices of the bottled water market, then sure, no problem. The point is that the homeopathic producers don't want to compete against, say, Coca-Cola and try to place their products for what they are not.
But for the most part those people who buy Armani suites don't go around telling everyone that they should ware one too. Or bitch and complain when they go to a place where it would be inconvenient to wear an Armani suite.
The natural food (vegetarians/vegans) freaks, are just as bad as any religious zealot. They think that their way is the only way for all people, and work hard to convert them. Not realizing, caring or dismissing evidence that there isn't any major benefit, or the fact that some bodies and lifestyles such a diet doesn't work unless there is the same degree of zealotry towards your diet.
Places like whole food while expensive is still cheap enough that we will have to deal with these people on a daily basis.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.