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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.
I don't believe that I've ever known anyone that either believed in or took homeopathic potions as cures. Who actually buys that stuff?
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
and let it be..
that's what my mother would say.
They are placebos as well yet no one seems to want those banned?
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.
May be like a placebo effect or not, but in my own experience with a homeopathy, a product for nasal airflow (Rinus, etc) work for me and for every friend that use the same product.
Considerate the no side effects its ok for me.
There's no scientific evidence?
Well, there's a lot of evidence against many products which is very dangerous to health and their are legal.
...but picking on homeopathy is unfair.
No, it's not unfair at all...
Now we'll find out what lawmakers are owned by the placebo companies.
I think it has something to do with advertising and fraud, not the contents.
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.
IIRC, homeopathy in France is officially accepted by health authorities as being a useful placebo: it cannot harm, but it can help thanks to the placebo effect, therefore its use is allowed. It is not reimbursed by socialized healthcare, though.
I note the following in the summary:
the FDA will decide to do their actual job – require testing of homeopathic products to demonstrate efficacy before allowing them on the market.
I assume it is demonstrating better efficacy than placebo, because placebo has an efficacy itself.
Homeopathy today, religion tomorrow! Working towards reason is reasonable and away from it is, well, unreasonable.
There's a lot of snake oil outside of traditional medicine, but there's a lot of it *within* traditional medicine as well.
One of the really obvious low-hanging fruit that I've seen is the Burzynski Clinic.
To summarize, Stanislaw Burzynski (a doctor in Texas) claims to have invented a new cancer treatment that's better than Chemo. Someone made a movie "Cancer is serious business" which shows lots and lots of case file evidence that this is true.
We have a claim, and we have evidence. Is this bunkum or a scientific breakthrough?
It's usually easy to figure this out: interview the patients, see if they were treated, if they got better (or not), and if they are happy with the treatment. Examine the evidence and see if it's consistent with the claims.
In most cases of "bunkum", you'll find that the patients feel they were cheated, the treatment had no effect, they were also on traditional treatments, and so on and so on. It's pretty easy to separate the wheat from the chaff by examining the evidence.
In the case of Stanislaw Burzynski, no one does this. Read up on the reports and find that no one addresses the evidence directly: it's all ad-hominem attacks ("he's not a real doctor, he's not a cancer researcher"), indirect rationalizations ("it can't work because it doesn't fit my model", he doesn't have an explanation for *why* it works, it must be bunkum because it's too good), administrative accusations, and so on and so on.
One particularly salient point, brought up by many, is that the treatment is "untested". His treatment doesn't work because there are no studies to confirm this.
No one addresses the evidence.
I think what medical science, and science at large, have to realize is that people are starting to wise up to these "absence of evidence" statements. Just having a doctor say "there are no studies showing it's effective" won't cut it any more - it's seen as a verbal hand-waving to support schools of thought. It's "absence of evidence is evidence of absence".
This is what happened with Homeopathy. People had a rationalization for *why* it works and there was some historical evidence. Add in some first-hand accounts, and suddenly you've got a miracle cure that science can't explain (but really works!).
Not every crazy theory needs a full-fledged study, but I suspect a lot of good could be done by taking the top "fad" populist beliefs and making simple, definitive studies. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if a doctor could say "we studied it and there's no effect" instead of "there's no evidence that this has any effect".
The prior shows a logical certainty, the latter is rationalization.
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.
Yes, it is unfair, because the PLACEBO EFFECT (which is essentially what homeopathy relies upon) is ever closer to scientific validation right now.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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.
You're an idiot, and homeopathy will not cure that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
You'd be surprised. There's homeopathic crap sold in Wal-Mart, in the pharmacy, right next to actual medicine.
One time I really needed allergy eyedrops. As you might imagine, with my eyes watered, reading fine print was not particularly easy. And yet I managed to see a tiny "homeopathic" label on the eyedrops. Wal-Mart was trying to sell me a tiny, $6 bottle of water, in the pharmacy, in a misleading package. Thankfully I noticed in time to put it back, but I nearly put some kind of expensive, diluted bee-crap ("apis") into my eyes which were suffering from severe allergies instead of real medicine.
So you don't have to be stupid to buy them. There are some that masquerade as medicine in mainstream pharmacies. I wonder how many people have been fooled? Half of them don't even know what "homeopathic" means to even recognize that they've been duped. They probably think it's a chemical name or something. And because it's water, it's generally just going to be ineffective as a treatment, rather than actively harmful (save insofar as it prevents or delays effective treatment, of course) so too many people will be none the wiser.
Honestly, I think we need a good 60-Minutes segment or something to clue people in on the scam.
The FDA should at least make sure that these preparations contains oil from a genuine ophidian species.
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.
THERE IS NO EVIDENCE.
FFS, every damn reputable medical body is saying straight up it's bullshit and even one second's worth of rational thought also says it's bullshit. The undeniable fact is that there is no proof despite your delusion to the contrary.
The fact homepathy cant even pass the one second "Is this bullshit?" test says perfectly well how much crap it is. There is no debate to be had on this, homepathy does not work, can not work and will not work.
That was hilarious. Thanks for posting.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
But why should it be regulated? It isn't going to do harm, other than perhaps
someone not getting real medical treatment
you answered your own question. It should be regulated or listed as fraud simply because many falsely believe it to work and may use homeopathy as apposed to seeking real medical treatment. This has knockon ramifications for healthcare costs as by the time the person realises they are were conned they may be far sicker (sometimes terminally so), the knockon effects go to family costs, social services and many others. homeopathy is simply fraud, it has both financial and medical consequences for people and society in general.
It's bunk. But why should it be regulated?
It's fraud. Fraud should be regulated.
What they want to do is close a government loophole. It's not currently "fraud" because medical fraud is governed by the FDA, and the FDA doesn't regulate homeopathy because it's not medical. The homeopathy people claim it's medical, so it should either be regulated like all medicines from the FDA, or it should be open to fraud lawsuits. Currently it is neither. It should be both.
That's why it should be regulated. People lying for profit. Fraud. No more need be said.
Learn to love Alaska
+1 Insane Luddite anti-establishment rant. I mean, +1 funny.
Learn to love Alaska
Acupuncture works, and fMRI studies have proven that it does something, though exactly what and by what mechanism isn't fully known, but that's true of many things.
Learn to love Alaska
Because it does cause harm in some cases. People will claim that their product is homeopathic but it turns out to actually have some herbs in it that could be dangerous to some people. The proposed FDA regulation is not to prevent the sale of homeopathic products, but to ensure that the product contains exactly what it says on the label.
...concluding that there is no evidence that homeopathy works for anything. Homeopathy is a placebo.
And therefor if "there is no evidence that homeopathy works for anything", than obviously it is not a placebo, since there are legitimate studies that show positive effects from placebos.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Your support for homeopathy. Am I going to fast for you?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
Doesn't scientologists sell or promote a device that ...
As contentious as it may be, and 'Ignorance' tag seems like it would be all too fitting.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Your opinion (apparently) differs from his.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
None of these surveys state that homeopathy does not work, or is not effective, they are simply stating that any studies that have been done do not meet the standards required for pharmaceutical products.
Pharmaceutical science does not compare the effectiveness of product A against product B, it simply states that statistically product A works, and any side effects are not worse than the original condition. This pharmaceutical science has been proven to be wrong for every pharmaceutical product withdrawn from sale.
Conducting a pharmaceutical science experiment costs millions of dollars, and is only done if the manufacturer is reasonably confident that the pharmaceutical product will work, and that the cost of doing the study can be recovered by charging any other manufacturers licence fees and by making a very good profit for every product sold.
Homeopathy products do not meet the cost recovery barrier that pharmaceutical science requires, and so they are based on the same raw science that provides the pharmaceutical science candidates.
Homeopathy products do meet the cost recovery barrier of pharmaceutical science are no longer called homoeopathy products, they are called pharmaceutical products, even if they have been changed to be less effective.
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!
If they do this simple and obvious thing, the homeopathic industry in the US will vanish over night,
Not really -- it will just be diluted until not a single homeopathy vendor remains, but the market will retain the essence of the original vendors and the effect will be even more potent.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
OK, I'll bite.
You didn't read the article did you? Even if homeopathy isn't complete and utter hogwash quackery, the article addresses your claim that it requires a holistic approach.
How can you justify homeopathic products sitting on pharmacy shelves being sold for ridiculously high prices, when in order for them to be effective they must be tailored specifically by a holistic homeopathic therapist? You're shooting yourself in the foot on this one.
Anyway, you're still wrong and homeopathy is complete and utter hogwash quackery, with or without Heisenberg uncertainty there is no valid scientific principle by which it can work. People who promote it are at best deluded, and at worst frauds.
It's interesting you mention Bernie Madoff. He said one time that the only people who got burned by his scheme were those who were too greedy to not do their homework. After the initial investment period, he didn't ask anyone to join the fund; people were breaking down his door to get in on the action. Several people who wanted to join the fun realized it was too good to be true, and stayed away.
How sorry am I supposed to be for people who are too stupid with greed to give something a second look?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
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."
Why would you being hungry affect him?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It is amazing how much effect the mind has over the body. I'm not saying placebos can cure cancer but if you got people to believe things like backaches, migraines, ulcers, etc when there are no signs of injury could be cured. I had horrible backaches until I read a book by Dr Sarno and realized it was all in my head. When I figured out I was repressing anger it all went away. That might have been a placebo as well but it worked wonders.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Lots of "medicine", especially at places like Whole Foods has this warning:
"*This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration"
This product is intended to diagnoise, test, cure or prevent any disease"
At most that would happen is that homeopathy products would get a label similar to this. Doctors would not prescribe homeopathy but do they do that now anyway?
As for why anyone would be a product with this label: because lots of stuff has the label. Some of it is clearly nonsense but others are actually useful, just as not studdied with enough rigor to be labeled as medicine.
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.
Which one was it?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
was two things:
1. He drunk the bottle, not her, to show her it was nonsense.
2. (More importantly) She thought she was buying real medicine. Not sure what country the parent's in, but in America $250 isn't out of the ordinary for a drug not covered by your insurance, so the high price wouldn't necessarily be a tip off. Assuming I'm not just putting words in the parent's mouth than that's the scary part for me: that Homeopathy is indistinguishable from clinically tested medicine to an intelligent woman.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So let's just assume that homeopathy actually works they way they claim it does, they dilute stuff throw away 9/10 of it, dilute it again, and it gets stronger and stronger at each dilution ..... what happens to that 9/10 they throw away? it goes down the drain, into the sea where it gets diluted way more, and presumably becomes far stronger, the ocean must be full of horribly strong medicine for all sorts of things, a quite dangerous place to go.
Mind you it's also full of diluted fish-poo too .....
Meanwhile I'm off to make some 150 proof homeopathic beer ...
The problem is that people may delay effective treatment while trying homeopathic treatment.
Steve Jobs died because he delayed treatment for his cancer while he tried an alternative therapy with no backing by research.
Now if there's no known cure or treatment I see no reason to tell people they can't try homeopathy other than cost.
Let's not forget this drugs sordid history. While this snake oil did sort of work, it was prescribed for decades before it was removed from the market. Funny how bad apples from the drug corps doesn't overturn the cart. But if they don't own the rights to something then all bets are off.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
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.
What you call bunk, i call outright fraud. We punish frauds.
Good-bye
"How sorry am I supposed to be for people who are too stupid with greed to give something a second look?"
Do you have any idea what this says about you?
Good-bye
Recent research has shown that most over the counter painkillers are ineffective - i.e., no more use than homeopathics, exhibiting only a placebo effect.
Ridiculous. Got any citations?
That makes no sense at all. The over the counter painkillers are NSAIDs, and they're also proven effective for that purpose (being anti-inflamatory.)
Granted they aren't going to work if you just cut your thumb off and it hurts really bad, but they'll absolutely help for mild pain like headaches, arthritis, etc, and that is NOT placebo, in fact it's even measurable.
Did you hear about the guy who forgot to take his homeopathic medicine? He overdosed! :)
Homeopathy is mind-bendingly stupid, and yet loads of people claim it makes sense to them.
It makes my head hurt to think about how these people must "reason" things out in their daily lives.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I'm sorry, but shit just doesn't work that way. Please stop trying to rationalize belief in this ridiculously stupid theory or treatment.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Hey, can I buy that tiger-repelling rock?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Perhaps if we all took super-small does of radioactivity we'd get that homeopathic effect and we'd all become immune to nuclear bombs.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
If homeopathy worked, the military would be using it, and they're not.
This is one of my "litmus tests" for whether or not shit is real. Does the US military use it? If so, then it's probably real and probably works.
The military will use whatever works regardless of cost or practicality. But if it doesn't work, you won't find them using it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Yes, it is unfair, because the PLACEBO EFFECT (which is essentially what homeopathy relies upon) is ever closer to scientific validation right now.
It most certainly is NOT unfair when weighed against the wild claims made by proponents of homeopathy. If they debate was over the placebo effect, you'd have a point--but that is not the debate at all, and your "point" is utterly irrelevant to the discussion.
Placebo effect, fine. Multi-billion dollar industry based on pure bullshit, and that also in some cases drags people with serious disease away from effective treatment, not so fine.
A lot of natural or "old wives cures" are not really alternative medicine, many when scientificaly studied lead to the discovery of medicinal substances that add to the range of drugs that can be prescribed.
Many plant extracts contain active substances which are analogs of established active pharmacological substances.
My favorite is "bitter mellon gourd" which has been used in se asia for thousands of years for treating many conditions, its a known antioxidant, and contains an enzym that acellerates glucose absorbsion from the bloodstream. Im sure multiple drug companies are studying it for its effects.
Having said all that homeopathy is total bullshit...
It matters because people take these treatments believing they'll solve their problems, and don't seek real medical help that's actually demonstrated to work.
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
Are the words of Bernie Madoff credible? Is the whole point not that he's a liar proven demonstrably to all rational people? Who cares if he's got some rationalization for hurting people. The rules of our society shouldn't be written by and for sociopathic personalities.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The commercialization of 'health' is no difference from the commercialization of anything else
Just like there are people willing to pay top dollar for Armani suits there are people happy to part their money to purchase things that they think are 'healthy'
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I think it says I don't have much sympathy for people who are too stupid with greed to step back and think critically about something that is 'too good to be true', as others managed to do.
Do you have any idea what your question says about you?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
You know what they call it when "Alternative Medicine" is effective? "Medicine"
Odds are, you are wrong.
Just sayin'
Learn to love Alaska
Are the words of Bernie Madoff credible?
When backed by others who saw through the hype and avoided losing their money.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
The Placebo Effect is effective about 50% of the time according to some research. Merely getting people to believe they will get better helps. Out waiting the disease helps in many cases while the body's natural mechanisms come into play for healing. This may in part explain it. Just gotta believe. :)
I presume you are in the UK. In the USA persons educated and licensed to distribute prescription drugs are called pharmacists, not chemists. In the USA persons educated and who work in the area of the chemical sciences are called chemists. I'm not sure what the latter are called in the UK - chemical scientists? If both professionals are called chemists then I can imagine some confusion.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
I'm glad I added that qualifier in my statement then. :^)
But in all seriousness, that is exactly how many people decide if your point is valid. "It agrees with my opinion, so this person is a great and wise human being", or "It doesn't agree with my opinion, so the person is obviously an idiot."
Even if you are on that person's side in an argument, but have a slightly different view of it, you are just as horrible as a person from the complete opposite viewpoint.
I don't know how long you have been reading this site and others, but you have probably seen/experienced this sort of attack before. It happens often here, and several times a week across various comment boards or news stories.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
It means you are more than willing to fuck over people for arbitrary reasons to line your pocket. Thats ok, lots of other people do that, but it still makes you a fucking asshole.
Good-bye
The biggest homeopathic "remedy" companies won't be hurt by this at all. They already use a different method to get their products to consumers that won't change, by using multi-level marketing (aka pyramid schemes) to push products and (questionable) information on them. A good example of this is the "essential oils" scheme that is quite popular right now, which often appears to be a weird hybrid of Shaklee and Scientology. Look at how they push their product, and tell me how it would matter if the government changed their position tomorrow.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
... especially if you look around and find books dedicated to homeopath(et)ically treating illnesses by drawing symbols on the skin ... (my take on that book is https://antifande.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/endlich-verfugbar-medizin-zum-aufmalen/, german original)
How can ANYONE who is not rooted in the dark ages even CONSIDER such outrageous claims, be it these extremes, or the "regular" ones made by and for those extremely diluted solutions?
But then, I reckon the ones falling for that crap also believe in an all-knowing power that - albeit knowing what's best and having pre-planned everything - can be swayed into working for you if you just pray enough)
Considering the reach of government in much lesser issues, it's about time all and every governments step in and do their job!
I think it has something to do with advertising and fraud, not the contents.
Apart from fraud and charging people large amounts of money for something they are not getting, it is dangerous . Not because the product is actually dangerous, but because in many cases it's taken in lieu of actual medicine. For most situations - colds, minor aches an pains, etc - it's not a big deal, but for real health problems it is.
They put aceteminophen in Tylenol on purpose to kill you if you try to get high on Tylenol. They don't need junkies messing up their reputation.
High on what? The pill binders? The only thing in Tylenol is acetaminophen. Are you maybe confusing it with percoset or other Rx only opioid compounds that also contain acetaminophen?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Australia actually.
Have you gone to the grocery store or local quick stop to pick up some over the counter medicine? That homeopathic crap is sitting next to the real drugs in the same exact section, both of which cost the same (or the homeopathic crap costs more!) and both of which declare in big letters that they cure similar symptoms.
You have to read the box to find out which one has real drugs in it that have been scientifically proven to have actual effectiveness at the proper dosages for the symptoms that you have or you'll very easily pick up the homeopathic crap by mistake.
Homeopathy works the way religion works. If you believe in it, that is.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Your argument is moot because they actually sell remedies with those ridiculous dilutions. This is the whole point of regulation
See here: http://www.weleda.co.uk/homeop...
These are 30C tablets, which is a commonly advocated dilution. That means it is diluted by 10^-60, according to wikipedia on average this would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient.
When did I say I ran a fraudulent investment company?
Just because I don't have sympathy for the greedy people doesn't mean I want to degrade myself with the same level of greed.
And for your information, I have worked hard to become an asshole in my own standing. I don't need your misconceptions based on psychological projection to achieve that rank.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
"Thyroid disorder" LOL!!! Yeah, right. Of course, there are cases where Levothyroxine won't work: hyperthyroidism.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yeah okay but that website is kind of a buckshot approach to dismissing any kind of nonsense it sees fit. Which would be fine, until you actually start reading it. Let's take a stroll through, uh, random selections from just above the fold on the "rituals" page. What's the harm with "rituals"?
He passed out while using a native american sweat lodge and his friends thought he was astral travelling. They used rituals to try to wake him up. In reality he was extremely dehydrated and died at a hospital.
What rituals? What kind of rituals do people use in a "native american[sic] sweat lodge" to "wake up"? This is the kind of nonsense I'd expect from Reefer Madness.
During a social club ritual initiation, someone mistook a fully loaded gun for one loaded with blanks. He died of a gunshot wound.
That has nothing to do with ritual initiations, and everything to do with being absolute morons with guns.
The liver of the fugu fish is widely known to be toxic, but he believed he could survive the poison. He ate four of them as a demonstration. Within minutes he died of paralysis and convulsions.
That's not a ritual, that's a known-dangerous delicacy that's banned because it's known-dangerous.
Welp.
Let's go find out about the harm of feng shui.
The neighbors both believed in feng shui, but didn't get along with each other. When one put a mirror on their house to reflect bad luck, the other did the same and the feud escalated. The argument ended up in the street with one person dead.
Unless the claim is that the mirrors made them do it... I'm pretty sure morons kill each other over sports and musical taste too. What's the harm in liking basic human recreation, amirite?
Okay but surely believing in ghosts is harmful right?
Helen owned a house that she believed was haunted, and she promoted that fact publicly. Unfortunately, she did not disclose that to the buyer of her house, who decided he didn't want a haunted house. A long court case resulted, which Helen lost.
Seems like both of them believed in ghosts, but one of them made out pretty well.
Rachel and her friends decided to go ghost hunting near a local haunted house. They didn't realize the owner of the house did not like visitors, and owned a gun. She ended up with a gunshot to the head and a long hospital stay.
I'm sure that Rachel wouldn't have been shot if she'd been trespassing for scientific reasons.
Okay what's the harm of Holocaust denial? LOL holy fuck. Apparently the only harm in Holocaust denial, according to this idiotic website, is that societies which don't prevent speech might fine or arrest you for unpopular speech.
Yeah sorry, pick a better source.
Less Harm, huh? (Hint: people allergic to penicillin and a few seizing babies might disagree with you)
As consumers we expect labeling to be accurate and truthful. Labels on homeopathic medications are neither. They claim to treat illnesses that they cannot possibly treat and they may cause someone to delay seeking actual, helpful medical interventions. It is modern snake oil and it can ONLY harm. Even if it has neutral effects on your health, it takes away attention and resources from valid medications and treatments. It needs to go away for good.
PS: A very large body of evidence on PubMed awaits you detailing the effectiveness of NSAID's in the treatment of pain. No placebo effect necessary.
Everything is up for debate. Otherwise you have given up science and adopted your own brand of quackery.
Only a little bit hungry. He'll be convinced before breakfast.
All that will happen is that the claim will be entirely divorced from the contents. If this happens, homeopathic stuff becomes an alluring online business- make up a name (that you can copyright), do the homeopath shuffle to produce a substance chemically identical to water (because it IS just water after that many "remove 90%, fill with water, shake" steps)... and don't make any claims.
Then another website just so happens to map your trademarked names to the supposed whatever the fuck a 100x mixture of semen and bug brains is supposed to work on. The believers still buy their potions, but the pharmacists likely can't be the ones doing the mixing.
Now, that's in the US. in the countries where it's basically paid for by the government as part of a national health care plan, these changes will only be positive- you'll still be able to buy your placebo, but not have the rest of the citizenry pay for it. Hell, that'll probably increase the "efficacy" of it, if you have to pay for it yourself...
Placebos often work quite well compared to doing nothing. I have always viewed homeopathy as a good way for doctors to prescribe placebos when that was the medically best option. I think it's a shame that this option is being taken away.
They put aceteminophen in Tylenol on purpose to kill you if you try to get high on Tylenol. They don't need junkies messing up their reputation.
erm.. excuse me but Tylenol is but a trademarked name.. the generic name of it is...Acetaminophen....
http://www.rxlist.com/tylenol-...
so the fact that it's got Acetaminophen isn't surprising..... as that's what it is!
Whether he is serious or not, right or wrong doesn't matter. People should have the right to make their own choices, even if those choices are unscientific.
the only thing wrong with over-the-counter painkillers is when they say they target a specific area - they can't do that, its just a marketing ploy.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
they are also called pharmacists in the uk, chemist is a very old general term for the shop a pharmacist works in (and its easier to pronounce :o) ) .
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Alternative medicine should be either based on science or it should be religion. If it's not religion AND it's not working the people to be healed can be seen as helpless victims. If it is religion then people can be seen as if acting by their own "free will": The "healer" is just an intermediary who speaks through God, for example, and the healing "just happens" when there is enough mercy/understanding/wisdom/etc. in the air. There are no victims in religions, just mutual understanding and lack of it keeps you sick.
Picking on people that make false claims and kill other people as a result is entirely fair. Fraudsters do not deserve respect.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I have no problems with idiots making dumb decision. I take issue with the fraud of the liars who try to sell others on their delusions so that they don't feel bad being the only ones who believe dumbly.
Learn to love Alaska
The original hypothesis (I wouldn't dignify it with the name theory) behind homeopathy isn't sound at all, it's merely plausible. Ideas are ten a penny: it's finding ones that fit the way things actually are that's difficult.
Yes, the idiopaths run 100 studies at 95% confidence, and publish the 5 that support them, and burn the other 95. That's how studies work. Independent studies show it doesn't work. Not a little, not at all.
Learn to love Alaska
This is why
http://whatstheharm.net/homeop...
Tl;dr lots of dead children
The first study doesn't deal directly with pain, and should never have been published, IMO, it is appallingly bad science. Some (probably not all) of the flaws:
as I said, I'm surprised it was published, but given that BioMed Central recently retracted 43 papers for fake peer review, perhaps I shouldn't be.
The second paper is not about homeopathy but about acupuncture, which is (a) naturopathy and (b) an actual physical process involving sticking needles into specific parts of the body (AFAIK nerve clusters).
IMHO, the only reasonable regulations here is to make sure the packages are clearly labeled as homeopathic and to make sure the ingredients and packaging are clean.
It's a con. A newer version of the old snake oil routine with less song and dance but more fancy looking brochures and official looking pretty labels.
Going the homeopathic route to "treat" a medical issue is wasting valuable time and money while allowing a condition to worsen when it should be taken of by an actual physician with real medicines. People suffer and risk death doing this. If you were bleeding to death from a huge gash, would you be better off applying direct pressure and going to the hospital, or pouring a vial of water that a knife had been waved at over the wound?
As to regulating it, well, medicines are regulated and are required to be safe and to work. Homeopathic "remedies" most certainly do not work, so they will fail the test, as they have failed in so many tests of the efficacy. Of course, if they stop making claims of curing things, then they can drop off the radar as simple "lifestyle supplements", but then their profits will also tank as virtually nobody will buy water that's massively overpriced and no longer makes extraordinary claims of miracle cures.
Come to think of it, even selling water that is intended for human consumption is regulated by the FDA.
No matter how you look at it, bilking people out of their money and risking their health and lives through false promises and outright lies is not something that is acceptable.
High on what? The pill binders?
Sure, why not? Pills are frequently bound with sugar. Eat enough and you get high.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The problem is that there are parents who believe in this crap that use it to "treat" their kids instead of providing them with proper medication and therapy. I've known some of them.
They're as bad as the religious fundamentalists who insist on "prayer healing" for their children instead of taking them to a doctor.
It's the kids who suffer, not the idiots themselves. So, yes, homeopathy can do real harm to people other than the nutbars and lunatics who believe in it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The US equivalent is "drug store". Tends to be somewhat regional though, as do most things US.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
The idea that somehow things were actually better off in the past as they were now, so what has changed in the world sense the past, and what new methods should we avoid. Just like how everything your Grandmother made is superior to what you can make. Or the idea of a secret Native American cure...
Some of this is from most of our cultural experience. Europe fell into the dark ages shortly after the fall of the Roman empire. After we got out it, we got back to reading the ancient texts of the past and found great knowledge in them. As well many of the religious texts that made it seem like the people in the past had a more direct relation with the supernatural.
However for the most part we know more then what we did in the past, while it is wise to not ignore the past and we should study it for some forgotten knowledge, it should be reevaluated scientifically to see if it does or doesn't work. A lot of the material from the past has things that work, but their explanation on why it works is way off, because their explanation is off, it means using it for untested things can be dangerous.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
But the placebo effect has been shown to work on things like cancer as well.
Learn to love Alaska
http://whatstheharm.net/homeop...
This is the page on homeopathy, but If you go on the home page you will see more of such stories for other woo stuff.
Homeopathy should be properly labelled as containing no active ingredient whatsoever , a bit like the big black label on cigarettes, or even downright banned until it pass the same STANDARD test on animals and human to demonstrate the advertised effect.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
This is a horrible idea. Government needs to fund homeopathy as much as possible.
By my understanding of these things, that should mean the tiniest fraction of a cent's worth of funding to cover the next 50,000 years. With that sort of money behind them, homeopaths should be the richest people in the world!
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
I know from my direct experience that it works,
Direct personal experience is good to coin questions, not to produce validated knowledge.
== Sound: My "direct personal experience" tells me there is a constant high pitch sound in my environment. Knowledge tells me it is Tinnitus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
== Sight: My "direct personal experience" tells me I see phantoms right now. Knowledge tells me these are floaters https://en.wikipedia.org/?titl....
== Taste & Smell: My "direct personal experience" tells me I am eating a peach. Knowledge tells me I smelling a peach, while biting and shewing an apple.
== Taste: My dad's "direct personal experience" tells him this peach has no taste at all. Knowledge tells him he is suffering Ageusia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
== Touch: My "direct personal experience" tells me I have pins and needles on my arm. Knowledge tells me I have a kind of nerve anesthesia.
== Sight: Through "direct personal experience", billions of individuals believed earth is flat. Knowledge tells us it is spherical.
== Sight: Through infinitely reproducible "direct personal experience" billions of individuals - including you right now -, across many centuries, across many civilizations, every where on the planet can drop a pen in a glass of water and believe it is broken. Knowledge tells us the refraction of light leads us to believe so.
See for yourself what your "Direct personal experience" tells you for example there on first Google hit on "optical illusion" : http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/
Not a single sens we have can be trusted to produce knowledge. Not mines. Not yours. This is basic knowledge. At 18 years of age, school should have informed you about objectivity and subjectivity.
"it therefore seems plausible that the popularity of homeopathy can take a huge hit just by telling the public what it actually is."
This is a startlingly naive statement. If there were any truth in this there wouldn't have been homeopathy in the first place. People are not rational. Telling them the simple truth will only make them more stubborn in their ignorance.
To quote another Slashdotter (19thNervousBreakdown):
"The placebo effect from homeopathy is pretty neat, but on the downside you have to be a fucking idiot for it to work"
The undeniable fact is that there *is* evidence in favor of homeopathy of the same nature as that used to support other medical treatments. As I said, I think this indicates poor methodology on the part of medical researchers in general. This is similar to how ESP studies are the control group for psychology:
The original post which includes some of the evidence, and that paper cites many others. You clearly cannot conceive that this situation could exist, but it does. As to "every damn reputable medical body", only the uninformed care what a bunch of NHST-users think. You have to look at the evidence for yourself, it is extremely unfortunate but the medical experts cannot be relied upon to sift BS from good science. They are not trained in scientific thinking.
Again : "... You have to look at the evidence for yourself ..."
This is IMO where the problem is. No, you cannot "look at the evidence for yourself". Reviewing the quality of a test protocol, checking the statistical significance of some numbers, in a double-blinded, against placebo group, against control group is certainly not accessible to random one. Sorry. That needs proper education and training. That is named "scientific training".
So to make it short. Homeopathy specific effect has never been observed. Nor validated by enough independent scientifically trained reviewers. The number of studies brought into the picture has little - if not none at all - evidence value. Studies must be verified. Many times.
So to make it short. Homeopathy has not been shown to have any specific effect at all. Ever.
For the homeopathy to work or not, it must first have any observable effect. Until now, homeopathy have shown zero effect.
Maybe tomorrow.
in your daily life. There is absolutely no good reason for the FDA or any other government body to be involved. People should be free to take any natural substance if they so chose to do so. And there are vast resources available to anyone who wishes to research any of these products.
Stop trying to "save" us from ourselves.
Sounds like an early version of vaccinations to me.
Maybe we should also ban vaccinations based on a complete lack of science.
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.
I'm no believer of mystic medicine, but for one thing homeopathy works: friends that tell me they are using it often say the "doctor" actually talks to them, ask how are their lives, how is it going, etc., and by taking troubles out of their chests, some illnesses just go away. The medicine itself is probably just assuring something to themselves, but in the end, the cure works. This is a good move, since more and more doctors just don't care for their patients, they just want to finish the consult and call the next customer, for more and more money. Listening to people can, many times, effectively help them. If it quacks luck a duck, sits like a duck, and dilutes like a duck, it's a duck.
I keep seeing people claiming that Arnica Montana cream works to reduce swelling. Unfortunately, they also sell Arnica Montana as a homeopathic pill.
I took a homeopathic medicine for dehydration and got better.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
Easy. Just test a combination of various homeopathic agents, with one of them actually being a real drug (under a fancy homeopathic name) at high enough concentration to have an actual effect.
I have seen studies done this way. Always check the homeopathic medicine in question for barely diluted, real drugs.
Which is great, but that doesn't instantly mean there should be a "placebo market" which attempts to pretend to be better than actual medicine, to the point where it tries to get people to only use it. That's bad. Let doctors prescribe placebos, not water-fondlers.
I've said it before: Homeopaths actually can be useful, if they are well educated (medically) and do take their time speaking to a patient. I've met doctors I wouldn't trust making a relyable anamnesis and I know homeopaths whos diagnose I would trust. At least more than some of those doctors.
The medicine of course is bunk, but here in Germany it's partially justified by some as a cheap means to get to placebos.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I have a couple of questions:
a) How do they erase the memory of dinosaur poop from the water molecules in the pills? Dinosaur poop can't be good for me.
b) Why can't they just throw half a pound of homeopaths in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and cure everybody's illnesses all at once, for free?
No sig today...
Why does it even matter?
Because quack medicine kills people.
Just ask Steve Jobs...
No sig today...
I don't know how to break this to you, but some plants are poisonous. The notion that natural == safe is nonsense.
No, it has nothing to do with believing sensationalist headlines. It has to do with knowing at least high school chemistry and being able to do basic math. That is more than enough to get you to "dilute it till it doesn't exist".
Unfortunately that's not the case. Homeopathic remedies often do have content other than water, but in uncontrolled and untested doses, sometimes resulting in dangerous effects. See Zicam nose spray, for example. The FDA finally stepped in after hundreds or thousands of people lost there senses of smell and taste.
There is also Chiropractic, which is a weird field because its:
1. The theory
2. Study of stance of a human, and how to do it wrong
3. Massage
4. Overlap with Osteopathy due massage and stance
They put dessicated Erythroxylon Coca in cocaine for the same reason.
Odds are I've thought about this and looked into it a lot more than you. Odds are I'm a lot more articulate than you speaking about it. And odds are I'm better trained in science and more experienced working with technology than you. Just sayin'.
This is an interesting statement your are making : because your are (so you say) more educated you would be less subject to believes. You will be surprised to know that this statement has been properly studied. And... the results are exactly the opposite ! Yes. ( I was actually surprised too.) http://www.lazarus-mirages.net....
The concepts of "believes" and "faith" are extremely interesting objects. Homeopathy is good test case to study them.
"It most certainly is NOT unfair when weighed against the wild claims made by proponents of homeopathy."
You must not spend any time in a Doctor's office.
Tell you what, you go get hit by a truck, and need a good chunk of your skeleton replaced by titanium and ABS/Kevlar composites and nickel.
Come back to me with a straight face when the doctor suggests Reiki therapy afterwards. Yes, TWO doctors did that with me.
It's PLENTY FUCKING UNFAIR given you people are ignorant of the bullshit REAL DOCTORS spread on a daily goddamned basis.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If everyone knew they were just buying clean water to drink, it wouldn't matter. But the regulation of homeopathy matters because people buy homeopathic products in order to control or cure illnesses that these products cannot control or cure. The people who buy the homeopathic products may avoid buying products with proven medical efficacy, which may result in their condition going untreated and possibly worsening; at a minimum, they have been fleeced into spending money that they didn't have to spend even if they recover on their own. In extreme examples, parents are treating children with homeopathy; the children aren't making the decision, the parents are.
I think people should be free to buy whatever they want, as long as any claims made by the sellers as to medical efficacy are valid. The US Food and Drug Administration ensures that actual medicines/drugs with a science-based theory of operation are effective in the manner claimed by the vendor, why wouldn't the FDA do the same thing for any other products claimed to have a medical benefit? For purveyors of homeopathy to both claim that they can make you better yet fall outside of monitoring/regulation of medicines is absurd.
Please end all of them.. as government accepted and healthcovered cures. You can leave them for people to pay for themselves. Evidence also show placebo works better the more people have to pay for it, so it should improve its efficiency.
The best we can do is make absolutely clear that the placebo is just a placebo and that it will not provide a cure for any disease, only at most a small bit of short-term pain relief.
No that is not the best we can do. We can make it illegal to even hint that homeopathy or anything resembling homeopathy is a cure for anything. If someone wants to represent something as a treatment then they can get it tested through the FDA like actual medicine. Furthermore a disclaimer ("this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease") is NOT sufficient to get a free legal pass for you your snake oil.
Placebos _are_ scientifically proven options - for pain relief, mental health issues, and other ills. There are many illnesses for which placebos are literally the best known 'medicines'.
WRONG. Placebos do NOTHING. If it actually does something then it by definition is not a placebo. The placebo EFFECT is real but that is not the same thing as saying placebos are medicines. We use placebos as the benchmark for determining if a treatment has a curative effect. If it isn't better than placebo then it means it does nothing to treat the disease. Better than placebos is the demarcation for where medicine begins and snake oil ends. It certainly isn't an excuse for allowing a placebo to be represented or even implied to be a therapy.
They said "a thyroid disorder", not all thyroid disorders. I'm assuming, they were referring to hypothyroidism or sub-clinical hypothyroidism.
+1. Tanks. Simple. Judgment less. Auto-teaching. Thanks.
a) How do they erase the memory of dinosaur poop from the water molecules in the pills? Dinosaur poop can't be good for me.
Someone thought of that too. "Water memory" doesn't occur unless "activated" by striking the substance with a leather and horsehair-covered paddle.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Man. Some people keep missing the "and other alternative" parts. Can't read much?
Adrenal fatigue is a real thing. I have it. And if you want a norepinepherine boost, those glandulars work great.
Go dilute your tears by 1 part per million and see if that fixes the butthurt.
LOL that is the post of the week right there.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Some selected stories of the harm caused by people's misplaced belief in homeopathy:
What's the harm in homeopathy?
Oblig http://xkcd.com/1526/
Here's one citation:
Acetaminophen Ineffective for Back Pain, Knee/Hip OA
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/842430
There are apparently "responders" and "non-responders". For non-responders, the risk of acetaminophen outweighs the benefits (actually, the absence of benefits).
Can doctors prescribe placebos, there's go to be legal and moral issues there. Isn't it more ethically wrong to prescribe something you don't believe in than to prescribe something you do believe in.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Too funny. There is no such thing as alternative medicine. If it worked then it would just be, you know, medicine.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Homeopathy is obviously nonsense - less isn't more, MORE is more. But the companies that sell "homeopathic" products are among the best sources of certain herbal remedies that work just fine for me and my wife (minor things for minor complaints, with less stomach upset than aspirin, with arnica for sore muscles being the best example). Unfortunately the two concepts - homeopathy and herbalism - are often confused in people's minds. People forget how many of the older drugs have plant origins, and the drug industry would love to help everyone forget faster so they can patent more naturally-occurring compounds from sources already known to folk medicine. (Please note, I'm not talking about believing every old wives' tale, I'm talking about researching those tales and finding the nugget of validity at the core, just like the people who extracted and synthesized aspirin from the plant once used by brewing it as a tisane.)
Think of the children! Parents obviously hate their children and that is why the loving Father State needs to step in and correct them! /sarc
I'm all in favor of homeopaths being able to marry. Oh. Never mind.
Well, you can "take issue" with them all you want, but disliking something or believing it is dishonest is not sufficient justification for outlawing it.
Examples of this are rife everywhere - from my own experience, any asthmatic can tell you in the 2000's their rescue inhaler only cost them $15 for the generic - however, when the gas inside the inhaler was changed from a CFC-based propellant to nitrogen, they filed new drug status (for the same ancient drug), purely because they changed the propellant - asthmatics now pay $45 for the same inhaler (with insurance, FYI) with the new gas. Who's to say they won't switch to oxygen or CO2 as a propellant when the next round of patents expire and the prices drop to generic levels?
On the opposite side of the spectrum, herbal remedies can for some things be quite helpful - and some of the "herbal cures" in that realm like Slippery Elm for diverticulitis work very well but are not prescribed by any doctor lawfully as these cures are not tested by anyone officially - because doing so won't guarantee the researchers investment in testing will be paid back because they cannot control who sells that herbal cure afterwards. There are cures in nature that are not being directly researched, presented or even considered by the big pharma community because of this. Many cures in nature are being researched so that the potentially patent-able bits are pulled out for testing and potential commercialization. If they found that chewing a certain leaf or making tea of it cured something important, big pharma would never tell us - not until they pulled the active parts out and sold that to us 15 years later at a premium after extensive testing as well.
I suppose the FDA should be doing this on their own, but that's an extra that's not in their charter..
Thousands of results.
This is unfortunately a very widespread misunderstanding, but placebos are not harmless, even if they "work". They are positively harmful in cases where better-than-placebo interventions exist for life-threatening conditions.
So the placebo is harmless in all cases, and the only "harm" that may occur is someone not selecting the optimal treatment, but that's true of all treatments, not just placebos, and placebos cause no harm themselves, but delays in treatments may cause harm.
Your linguistic inaccuracy makes you 100% wrong.
Learn to love Alaska
It is sort of a slow cleaning-up process. The number of people homeopathy kills may be small, but it has been around far, far too long and it is a well known example of quackery. Calling it what it is has strong symbolic value and helps driving home what evidence-based medicine is actually about and that not everything claiming to be evidence-based actually has good evidence.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Your liver is perhaps the most resilient organ in your body. In fact it is one of few that is not only highly redundant (you can lose 50-80% of it before getting any ill effects) but you can even physically loser huge portions of it and it will fully grow back within weeks.
You'd have to seriously abuse the shit out of Tylenol to do permanent damage to your liver. It's also only recommended to avoid Tylenol if you have chronic liver disease (e.g. hepatitis) or already have severe liver damage from alcoholism. If any of that applies to you, then you've likely already done much worse things to your body.
A lie for personal gain is fraud. Thus, the issue I take with it is that it's fraud, and fraud is (and should be) illegal.
Learn to love Alaska
No, a "lie for personal gain" does not automatically constitute legal fraud; changing that would be a tremendously bad idea In fact, it is doubtful whether fraud should even be a criminal offense, instead of a civil matter.
Besides, I don't see why you believe that homeopathic practitioners are lying to you: they are telling you what you are getting and why they believe that it works. Where is the lie?
they are telling you what you are getting and why they believe that it works. Where is the lie?
Does it work?
Learn to love Alaska
Ok, room full of computer guys, all of us are overweight. Way overweight. ALL of us have tried, for around 20 years to lose weight. Even Fen/Phen, etc. All of us are about 100 lbs overweight. Dude tried HCG. We all thought - here we go again. He lost 30 Lbs, then 60, then 90. I lost 90. Everyone else that tried it lost around 90. 100% effective. So that's just plain old water? Some water.
I know, I know... it was the 500 calorie diet and not the water. Oh yea, how come since I've gained 40 of it back because I blew it off... how come I can't lose it without it?
One thing is for sure, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't lost it. Doc told me that.
Just sayin'
Well if it were not measurable it wouldn't be a placebo either, would it? What do you think 'placebo' means?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Yes, it does work: more people get well on it than without treatment, and it causes no physical harm. The way doctors and pharmacists usually use this is that, before they start off with a prescription drug regime that may cause serious side effects and cost a lot of money, they combine a placebo (homeopathy) with lifestyle changes. It's a sensible approach, both because of the placebo effect, and because it stops irrational patients from hurting themselves with drugs they may not need.
And I'm sorry to burst your illusion, but efficacy, safety, and scientific rationale for FDA-approved drugs is usually not that great either, and failure of FDA-approved drugs to live up to their promises costs society far more than homeopathy even if homeopathy were not useful.
And I'm sorry to burst your illusion, but efficacy, safety, and scientific rationale for FDA-approved drugs is usually not that great either,
They are tested against, and must beat placebos to be approved.
But I get it now, it isn't that homeopathy works, you agree it doesn't. It's that everything the government touches is worse than doing nothing. That's a different discussion. I hear, I understand, and I think you are a nutjob that should just join a militia.
Learn to love Alaska
Which part of Yes, it does work did you not understand?
The part where "placebo" is given as proof it works. That means it doesn't work, and the person using "placebo" knows it doesn't work.
The anti-government loon is just re-defining "work" to mean "doesn't work, in a manner I find pleasing".
Learn to love Alaska
If you are going to outlaw homeopathy because it's little more than a placebo, you need to also pull all the drugs from the market that are also little more than placebos, which includes many antidepressants.
If homeopathy has failed at anything, it's at properly advertising and usurping and corrupting scientific method, like the pharmaceutical industry with the help of the more unscrupulous members of the medical community has been so very successful at for decades.
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.
Translation: if you're a fucking hippy, you'll believe in fucking hippy bollocks.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
they are also called pharmacists in the uk, chemist is a very old general term for the shop a pharmacist works in (and its easier to pronounce :o) ) .
The only people that I know in the UK who use the word "pharmacist" are pharmacists.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I have worked hard to become an asshole in my own standing.
Congratulations on all your hard work, it's certainly paid off.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Nice.
"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
- Sir John Harington 1561-1612, who, I learn, also invented the flush toilet.
I have worked hard to become an asshole in my own standing.
Congratulations on all your hard work, it's certainly paid off.
Hi! Thanks for noticing. And thanks for the encouragement. It means so much.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.