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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.
and let it be..
Lots of people given the shelf space devoted to it.
that's what my mother would say.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's a huge section of bullshit snake oil products in every Whole Foods store. I haven't noticed anyone buying it, but they wouldn't give it all that shelf space if it wasn't generating revenue.
-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.
Some of it works. A medipot lets you dump water up one nostril and out the other.
And this brings us back to the problem addressed in the summary: "Further, there is a huge gap in the public understanding of what homeopathy is; it therefore seems plausible that the popularity of homeopathy can take a huge hit just by telling the public what it actually is." The Neti Pot may be popular among alternative medicine types, but it's not homeopathy.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
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
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.
I use a Netipot, only for clearing sinus congestion. No homoeopathy involved, straightforward flushing.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
My mother used to use them. Because a "doctor" suggested it. Doesn't matter what my opinion is as I have no say in the matter. Luckily she is not discarding traditional medicine, just augmenting it with placebos.
There are a lot of people who like to shop around until they find a health practitioner who says what they want to hear.
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
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
You just cited one of the worst examples of this stuff, IMO. But that said, I suppose a counter-argument is that so many medications "big pharma" hawks today have numerous negative side-effects -- and not JUST the ones they itemize on the TV commercials and on the side of the box in small print.
At least a "fake drug" with a placebo effect is safe. A while ago, I started taking one of the "proton pump inhibitor" medications for heartburn that's available over the counter. After a few doses, I realized my heart was racing at night, when I went to bed. The first time, I didn't make the connection but when it happened again the second time I took it, I was scared and stopped immediately. I asked my doctor, who told me "That's not one of the known side effects." (A search on the Internet revealed quite a few people complaining of the same issue on message forums, although no mention of it at all on the manufacturer web pages for it.)
Now, I see heart palpitations and irregular heartbeat mentioned as possible side effects in a number of places, but it sure wasn't at the time I was taking it!
My feeling on the homeopathic stuff is, there should probably be some kind of warning label on it so consumers are informed that the medical industry does NOT believe it serves any useful purpose. But if it's basically made of harmless substances? Oh well .... buyer beware and all that.
While struggling to figure out which medications actually help and which don't with a difficult pre-teen with some mental health issues, I'd *love* to be able to buy off-the-shelf placebo pills which she'd believe were something else....
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."
It's also word of mouth stuff. As in being asked if you take enough zinc every time you get a cold. Doesn't matter how ridiculous it is, if they heard it from a friend then you should try it.
Yes, I have heard of many strange uses for Vicks Vapor Rub that many a person swears by because they heard it from a friend/family member.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/...
. .
Why would you being hungry affect him?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Did she atleast turn in to Super Woman after taking that extremely potent elixir?
It's doubtful since he's the one that drank it. But you raise a good point, I'm sure he's glad that he didn't turn into Super Woman. :D
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
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?
THere is one product called Arnica Montana which is actually pretty good for pain.
But despite being called "homeopathic" it really isn't. It's made from the dried flowers of a type of daisy, the Arnica Montana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
From the article: The roots contain derivatives of thymol,[9] which are used as fungicides and preservatives and may have some anti-inflammatory effect.[10] When used topically in a gel at 50% concentration, A. montana was found to have the same effect when compared to a 5% ibuprofen gel for treating the symptoms of hand osteoarthritis.
Notice that concentration isn't nearly homeopathic.
I use it on my knees and ankles. Too many years of sports abuse.
You can buy it or make your own by soaking the dried flowers in Vodka for a week or so, then put the resulting liquid in a spray bottle and spray on the affected area.. Do not drink dammit!
Smells great too, you won't wander around stinking of Ben Gay's methyl salicylate. And obviously much better than narcotics.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
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.
That only makes it worse. Homeopathy is based on pseudoscience that is just plain stupid, if people use that name for other things, and there are examples of things that DO WORK (even if they aren't based on the same principles that make homeopathy impossible to work), they will use them as examples that homeopathy DOES work, which will only help misinform people.
Actually, I think I read that they observed people getting a benefit from taking a placebo pill, even if they know it's placebo. Not nearly as much as people believing it works, but that'd give it more than null effectiveness.
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.
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
E.g. at Whole Foods, which IMO that store is a huge ripoff to begin with, not even counting the homeopathic medicine section. For starters, they have a "bad foods" blacklist that doesn't even make any sense, and worse is that they sell a crapload of junk food. Meanwhile the hippies that shop there, and pay two to three times what the food should cost, just blindly assume that everything there is healthy.
It might be legit, but a little too close to the chiropractor they are. I would have much more faith in somebody who helps you keep the bacteria in your gut nice and healthy.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You perhaps have not been in quite enough pain.
And I won't ever be in enough pain to try something that I know won't work.
They didn't give soldiers with blown off limbs morpine for the euphoria.
And morphine isn't a placebo that I know won't work.
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.
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
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.)
"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
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
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 !
No, you don't. At best you skipped over some very inconvenient parts of the text for your view, and that is assuming you bothered to read it at all.
The "dog in this race" that I have is a preference for facts and truth to occasionally show up in the discussions of the supposedly intelligent people here. I know, it's mostly a forlorn hope, but still .... And I'll add to that I find pitiable the habit of so many here on Slashdot that apparently live such cloistered lives with such narrow and stunted views that the only reason that they can summon to mind for someone having a different view from them is either personal gain or they are on someone's payroll.
I've extracted and highlighted some bits you may have skipped over.
University of Maryland Medical Center - Osteopathy
Today, D.O.s get the same basic training as medical doctors (M.D.s), but they also learn manipulation (hands on adjustments of muscles, bones, and ligaments) and use this along with more conventional medical treatments. Most D.O.s are primary care practitioners, specializing in family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, or pediatrics.
D.O.s practice in all specialties of medicine ranging from emergency medicine and cardiovascular surgery to psychiatry and geriatrics. D.O.s trained in various specialty areas take a whole patient (holistic) approach.
According to the American Osteopathic Association, more than 64,000 osteopathic physicians practice in the United States today. Although osteopathic manipulations were once used to treat all forms of disease, now they are considered useful mostly for musculoskeletal conditions (such as back pain).
Now if you want to present a case that the University of Maryland's Medical Center is a hotbed of quackery or simply wrong, I'd be happy to examine your evidence.
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
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
Short excerpt from a large word salad, but I'm not seeing the words "peer-reviewed research" or "clinical trials" anywhere.
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.
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...
"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.
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!
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)
Surely if it has a detectable active ingredient it's decidedly not homeopathic...
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).
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.
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.
This aptly describes my ex's first orgasm ever.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Zinc really works. If I take it, I get over my cold in 7-14 days. If I don't, it takes a whole week or two.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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 took a homeopathic medicine for dehydration and got better.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
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...
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."