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.
Homeopathy today, religion tomorrow! Working towards reason is reasonable and away from it is, well, unreasonable.
My wife bought home a $250 bottle of some homeopathic health remedy she'd bought for herself, that warned on the outside not to take more than 1 or 2 drops at a time due to its extreme potency. Downed it in one. Most expensive bottle of water I've ever had. She was pissed, until I made her go read up on what homeopathy was. What's scary is that she, an intelligent, 35 year old woman, simply didn't know. The fact it's allowed to be sold in pharmacies (at least, in my country) is a scary thing.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Natural medicines tend to be effective when the subject has a sensitive body (achieved and sustained by healthy habits including daily exercise, near or vegetarian diet (maybe a vegan diet), not smoking, minimal or no drinking, eating healthy foods including plenty of fruits and vegetables (preferably with minimal pesticides), perhaps a regular meditation practice.
For those who combine habits such as eating lots of meat (usually packed with hormones and anti-biotics), dairy (usually packed with bgh), junk food (and gmo foods), smoking, drinking , rarely exercising, spend no time refining their higher mind, it is likely hard medicine (occidental - chemical) will be required to resolve illness and medical issues. Natural medicines would have little effect on such individuals. What would you expect? Refine your body and you can get away with more natural approaches.
I would rarely rule anything out unless I can verify it myself. Remember that the pharma industry has a vested interest in minimizing penetration of alternative medicines. The fda and similar organizations in g8 countries are revolving doors with the pharma industry. Conflict of interest is common at the highest level.
My own experience with homeopathy is hit and miss. However, It can be fun to experiment, and the hits have been interesting. The best was a substance called cina which rid me of parasites while traveling in Asia. (A month where I couldn't eat well and had very low energy when I did eat). I stumbled on a homeopathy clinic next to the hospital I was about to visit for tests. $5 and 3 days later I was cured.
I also experienced interesting results (hit and miss) in the ayurvedic domain. The hits usually came from old men who had been practicing a lifetime. So I would say the practitioner is a consideration. There are charlatans.
I know quite a few people that have bought homeopathic remedies as well.
None of them are crackpots, new agers, or hippies. They simply don't know that what they bought wasn't medicine. To them, one cold remedy is the same as another.
Take a look next time you're at the pharmacy. The homeopathic stuff is mixed in with all the other products -- and it's not like the packaging makes it terribly clear. You'll often find little more than the word "homeopathic" in thin white 10pt text printed over a busy background. Worse, like generic and store-brand varieties, the packaging mimics brand-name products. Flipping the package over to read the "drug facts" isn't going to help the average consumer either -- how are they supposed to know what 100x or 250d actually mean?
It takes knowledge and effort to avoid homeopathic remedies. You'll find that buying homeopathic products isn't often a choice consumers make consciously.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I went to the chemist a while back to buy some ibprofen, the chemist suggested a homeopathic, insisting it was just as good. If I hadn't been educated about homeopathy, I would have probably bought the homeopathic crap.
Maybe you could try suggesting to your friend that she start journaling, if she isn't now. It has both utility and appeal, and will help her track how she feels, what treatments she has tried, and could help inform her future choices. Maybe she'll eventually see she should try a more mainstream approach. Perhaps you could ask her if she has ever seen an osteopath. Modern osteopaths are essentially the same as MDs, and licensed to practice medicine like them, but they do take a somewhat more holistic view of health. If your friend is in some way afraid of doctors the name osteopath might not raise the concerns that the word "doctor" would and yet she would still receive modern medical treatment. I wish her well.
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
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.
I'm not at all in favor of holistic medicine, but modern medicine ain't all that either.
Botulinum Toxin is now being prescribed for a number of things. Like the old use of paralyzinf facial muscles - presumably to give a more youthful appearance.
Also for overactive bladder - but you shouldn't use it if you are not willing to self catheterize yourself.
But the real interesting one is for migraine headaches. It's approved for that, but the small print says that in trils versus placebo, Botulism toxin gave 9 migraine free days per month, while placebo gave 7.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Actually works. Go read up on "secondary infection" and see if there's anything to be gained from a strong bacterial resistance while fighting off a virus. Probably not a good plan to prescribe wide-spread, but makes sense in some limited cases.
Learn to love Alaska
That's just the thing actually, medical science could have done very well for him. When his physicians first found he had liver cancer, they thought for sure it would be untreatable. However he lucked out and got a rare form that grows very slowly and is easily removed with surgery.
So you know what he did? He went straight to a naturopathic "doctor" who recommended a juicing to fix it.
Needless to say, that didn't work, and by the time he actually decided to do anything about it (which was years later) it had already metastasized, and also destroying his liver in the process. Not much more details are known to the public other than that he went to something like 9 separate liver transplant centers in order to increase his chance of receiving a graft quickly (something that most people can't do because you have to be able to physically get to the clinic within an hour of them finding a donor, but he could anyways because he owned a private jet.)
Apparently he got his liver (hence when his health was declining he didn't have any visible signs of jaundice) but still died anyways, my guess is that the cancer had already spread to too many other places. We do know however that he admitted to a few people that not going with the surgery all those years later was a huge mistake.
Anyways it's funny to read naturopathic and homeopathic websites and forums who defend their beliefs in spite of this (Jobs was a well known "natural medicine" and "natural food" fanatic) by saying he didn't properly follow one of their stupid religious rules (which one he supposedly didn't follow varies from site to site.)
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.
Hi there. Yes you will. The statement before makes an assumption : one will behave rationally under life-ending-stress. That is simply untrue. I salute the wish to stay rational in all and any circumstances. We all should have this ability. Yet that is only a wish. People are not necessarily stupid going into "idiocies". It is a better strategy to believe in rubbish and stay alive, instead of being clear-minded of commit suicide out of lack of hope. Let me diverge a bit...
A friend of mine - 35 years of age - suffers Chron like disease for years. I tell you, this is very practical : You poo blood, and are so week that you can't move a chair and suffers pain. Lots of pain. During a few weeks a year. That girl makes use of science-based medicine. Yet, when she perceives nothing cures her as much as she needs, she also turns to alternative-bollocks medicines WITHOUT abandoning science-based medicine. I discovered truck-loads of incredible crank-pseudo-medical-shit. UN-F...G-BELIEVABLE ! My rational side is screaming so loud : tell her this is all rubbish !
Once, I observed her going under 40 Kg body weight on a hospital bed. Man : when facing the real she-may-die-out-of-disease-OR-desperation-within-3-days AND given she still DOES make use of science-based medicine, my rational side screams even louder : shut up and let her believe whatever she wants.
Which leads me to this personal conclusion. We - humans - are faith machines. We want and need to believe. I am not happy about that for myself, but that is a different question. Sure hope does not cure. But it may seriously help not to commit suicide which is somehow useful. So... Sure let's banish homeopathy and others gibberish. But let's create a whole range of "official" placebos. The "red one", the "blue version", the "green style" and so on. With fine print on label : "This is not a medicine. It is distilled water void of any active content with no effect other than potential - but not guaranteed - placebo effect. In all case, you must seek professional qualified attention before using this placebo."
The harm is that it encourages these fraudsters, and gives them the semblence of legitimacy when they don't deserve it. The end result is that people die, because they choose to rely on this nonsense instead of stuff that actually works.
It also takes money away from real research because scientists are compelled to repeatedly test this crap.