Homeopathy: pharmacists dispense with professional guidance

Do you think talking to plants is based on good science?

The Royal Family largely endorse Homeopathy because it actually works and is effective, and their endorsement of this can act as a role model for others, or perhaps they use Homeopathy because it is just hocus-pocus and not based on “science”? (whatever that actually means).
In comparison to pharmaceuticals, and the mortality rate of using them, perhaps we should consider the “dangers” of using Homeopathy, which of course are negligible.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/19/homeopathy-is-dangerous-should-be-banned_n_1362977.html
Of course to claim that Homeopathy is based on “placebo” is a non-scientific comment: Research evidence – positive clinical trials……………
In 1997, The Lancet published a thorough meta-analysis which showed that, of 89 clinical trials, 44 reported homeopathy to be significantly more effective than placebo; none of the 89 trials found placebo to be more effective than homeopathy.
Clinical effectiveness of homeopathy: the evidence from published research………………………..
http://www.nutrition-matters.co.uk/misc/homeopathy.htm

Do I think talking to plants is based on good science?
Probably, because you get more sense from plants than some humans.

Yes, a plant certainly does make more sense than the average homeopath! How about this gem from a leaflet supposedly rebutting skeptic arguments:

“When you hold something in your hand and let it go, what happens next depends on lots of factors but the theory of gravity can explain why a helium balloon goes up, a ball-bearing goes down, and a feather may do either. If there is no certainty in the explanation of what happens after a treatment, it is because there is not a scientific theory to explain it, so anyone using this argument is actually admitting that they do not have a scientific theory of medicine.”

Apparently this is what passes for rational argument among homeopaths!

This is the “reasoning” by which Gary Null promotes his “death by medicine” twaddle.

If you’re hit by a car and die in A&E, you are a victim of medicine, according to these people. They are incapable of nuanced argument, the fact that the balance is firmly in favour of any particular treatment in terms of life years gained is simply waved away.

And they assert that your “health freedom” is being suppressed by “big pharma”, while behaving exactly as big pharma might be expected to if there were no regulation (and if it was run by people with no conscience).

Funny old world.

Just because you do not understand a mechanism Guy, does not negate its effectiveness, and why would anyone, who is not certain of an explanation of what happens after a treatment, need to know the “theory” of why it works, just so long as it DOES work. The Internet is a global phenomenon, but does the average user actually know how broadband fiber optics work, as long as it does?
It is the role of science to determine the “hows” and the “whys” and not just disregard the evidence because it does not fit into a particular narrow-minded methodology.

The Clinical effectiveness of homeopathy: the evidence from published research………………………..
http://www.nutrition-matters.co.uk/misc/homeopathy.htm

I understand the mechanism quite well. Placebo effects, cognitive bias, the natural course of disease. Homeopaths pretend its something else but there’s no credible evidence to support their claim.

There is no “clinical effectiveness”. See http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/45/45.pdf

Guy, you have completely misunderstood Gary Nulls reasoning behind his “death by medicine” report, along with Dr Carolyn Dean MD, ND and Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy Smith, PhD, where they speak of Iatrogenic deaths and the failure of the American medical system generally………..
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm

Indeed, health freedom is being eroded by Big Pharma, and their regulation is all but that in name only; you only have to do some rudimentary research to realize this.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42844396/fda-corruption-letter-authenticated-lawyers-start-your-engines/
http://anh-europe.org/sites/default/files/121030_ANH_A5_FSD.pdf

Please read this as well…………..
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18219.cfm

@Chris:

“Health freedom” is a lobby by quacks to evade evidence and scrutiny. No “health freedom” advocate would accept a level playing field for all treatments.

A treatment is alternative only because it cannot be shown to work, or more likely ti can be shown with good confidence not to (as with homeopathy). If it can be proven to work, it is no longer alternative, it is medicine.

[This comment has been edited for breaking our commenting guidelines. Thanks, mods]

@magufo So you say. In reality, just about every (genuine) skeptic or scientist i the world dismisses homeopathy out of hand, because homeopathy has provided precisely zero credible evidence to back its claims.

So your ad-hominem argument is just hot air.

@ReallyGoodMedicine: Close. There are vast volumes of poor quality work that starts from the assumption that homeopathy works and from there – amazingly! – show that homeopathy works, using the simple but necessary trick of not even trying to see if the result is consistent with the null hypothesis.

There is also some good quality research in systematic reviews and even systematic reviews of systematic reviews, which shows no effect beyond placebo. This result, unlike the one you prefer, is consistent with all other branches of science.

The studies you cite are a good argument for psychological approaches to management of chronic disease, they are not a good argument for pretending that sugar pills are medicine.

Problems with medicine validate homeopathy in precisely the same way plane crashes validate flying carpets.

Gastric ulcers is an important example. Medicine thought they were due to stress, which was entirely down to tradition, not science; science found they were due to helicobacter pylori and within a few years surgery for gastric ulcers had virtually vanishes, antibiotics had become the standard of care, and many lives were saved.

That’s a great example of science correcting for errors.

Homeopathy is based on tradition, rooted in the doctrines laid down by its inventor. It has no mechanism for the correction of errors. Disputes over whether imponderables are valid or not can’t be objectively resolved, because nothing about homeopathy is objectively verifiable, so the dispute led to schism. This is just one of the many things showing homeopathy to be a religion in every meaningful sense.

@magufo: Yes, I am an engineer, a scientifically literate graduate, I have a personal interest in the cognitive errors that lead people to believe in nonsense such as homeopathy. Your comment fails to address this in any meaningful sense, since my views are entirely in line with the scientific consensus.

Your attack on Randi is also a gratuitous ad hominem. Benveniste’s result was fraudulent, as his assistant admitted.

Homeopathy is every bit as controversial as fairies and unicorns. Science is done with it: until homeopaths come up with an even vaguely plausible mechanism it is not worth wasting any further effort.

Guy, your comment: “There is no reason to think homeopathy should work, no way it can work and no proof it does work (other than as a placebo). There is no credible evidence of any specific effect from any remedy, no credible evidence to support any of its doctrines, and there has never been any plausible mechanism by which it might work”……………….Then I suggest you read Dr Maliks post in this thread, and the link I have referred to previously (twice)…………………………………………
The Clinical effectiveness of homeopathy: the evidence from published research………………………..
http://www.nutrition-matters.co.uk/misc/homeopathy.htm

Just to pick up on a couple of other points you have made: “There’s good evidence that people who believe in alternatives to medicine have worse cancer outcomes, presenting later and with more advanced disease and often refusing standard of care even when it has a good chance of long term survival”.

I suppose this is why Oncology refers to a 5 year survival rate, so if you die in year 6 this will still represent a successful statistic.
Perhaps you can point me to the: “good evidence that people who believe in alternatives to medicine have worse cancer outcomes” information, when alternative cancer treatments have not been able to collate their successes statistically, because of fragmented clinics and lack of organisation, that Mainstream Allopathic Medicine has been able to enjoy.

Another whopper: “Selling nonsense is not in and of itself evil. Most diet products, large numbers of herbal remedies and many vitamins are either worthless or completely unnecessary for most of their users”…….means that you are unaware of the effectiveness of Orthomolecular Medicine (Nutritional Medicine) and as endorsed by Health Canada. I could go on and on and on.
But if you mean “selling nonsense” as in the sale and approval by the FDA of Vioxx, (for example) then I would agree with you…………..http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/46535/when-half-million-americans-died-and-nobody-noticed

We should also bear in mind that most all chronic disease treated by Mainstream Medicine is only “managed”, and something you have to live with for life, if you don’t die before that (Diabetes, MS, Osteoarthritis, COPD, Hypertension, Parkinsons, Motor Neurone Syndrome, and so on and so on and so on…………….and the reason sufferers seek help elsewhere: the failure of Modern Medicine whose treatments are largely based on quackery, except for ER, Diagnostics, Surgery, and Anesthesia.

There is no reason to think homeopathy should work. Like does not cure like, as a general or useful principle of pharmacology, and dilution decreases, not increases potency, according to a vast amount of evidence.

There is no way it can work. Hahnemann did not kn ow of the atomic nature of matter, the doctrine of serial dilution is clearly predicated on matter being infinitely linearly divisible.

There is no proof it does work, beyond placebo. Systematic reviews show that the more carefully it is tested, the more closely the outcome follows placebo effects. There is no good evidence at all for any specific effect. Nonspecific effects are rarely down to the treatment.

Astoundingly, a pro-homeopathy website turns out to be an unreliable source. I already referenced a much more far-reaching and evidentially sound analysis: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/45/45.pdf

Yes, Vioxx was a faulty product. Guess what? Science exposed this. Homeopathy has never had a mechanism for correcting its errors, because it is a religion and cannot question its core doctrines, which are the foundation of its errors.

As usual with SCAM proponents, you are using straw men. I said: “Most diet products, large numbers of herbal remedies and many vitamins are either worthless or completely unnecessary for most of their users.” That is absolutely correct. Herbal medicine consists of using unknown doses of poorly controlled pharmacologically active substances with unknown purity. Yes, it works to some degree. That does not in any way contradict my statement, which you should have noticed has several conditional statements in it.

To claim that chronic disease is only “managed” by medicine rather than some mythical definition of “treated” by homeopathy is purest sophistry. The definition of chronic disease is a condition whose underlying cause cannot be cured. Selling nonsense to people with chronic disease is lucrative but profoundly unethical.

Health Canada is subject to serious criticism for endorsing as “safe and effective” products which definitely do not work (e.g. Mozi-Q).

Not all Canadians are so credulous. This is the consumer report that nailed the claim that Montagnier’s work could support homeopathy: http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2011/cureorcon/

@Nancy: There is no “Principle of similars”. There are some substances that coincidentally might have an effect at high doses not unlike the effect they alleviate, it would be statistically improbable if that weren’t the case, but medicine does nto find “like cures like” to be a remotely useful starting point for investigation, let alone Hahnemann’s belief that it was the sole reliable source of cure.

Yes, Health Canada licensed Mozi-Q. There is a standard test for mosquito repellants, Mozi-Q was not subjected to this test because it is basically licensed as confectionery like all homeopathy. When it was tested using the standard test by n independent researcher, it failed. It does not repel mosquitoes at all, nor is there any reason to think it might.

@magufo: Your statements are barely coherent,. let alone rational. It is ridiculous and wrong to assert that skeptics merely parrot the views of James Randi or anyone else. The scientific consensus is what it is:

Professor Sir John Beddington (outgoing Chief Scientific Advisor) called it “mad”, Professor Dame Sally Davies (Chief Medical Advisor) called it “rubbish”, Sir Mark Walport (incoming Chief Scientific Advisor) called it “nonsense” and “non-science”.

Homeopathy is an 18th Century whimsy, defensible in its historical context but inexcusable in the light of current knowledge.

That is not pseudoskepticism, it is a rational and logical conclusion based on homeopathy’s 200 year failure to provide a plausible theoretical framework.

Guy, your comment: “Most diet products, large numbers of herbal remedies and many vitamins are either worthless or completely unnecessary for most of their users.”.

Is a comment based in fiction. For your education Guy………………….

The use of Nutraceuticals (http://www.clemson.edu/NNC/what_are_nutra.html) and probiotics as therapeutic agents for gastrointestinal disorders is rapidly moving into clinical usage. Scientific studies are providing mechanisms of action to explain the therapeutic effects, and randomized controlled trials are providing the necessary evidence for their incorporation into the therapeutic armamentarium.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16214413
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16472130

AND…….”To claim that chronic disease is only “managed” by medicine rather than some mythical definition of “treated” by homeopathy is purest sophistry. The definition of chronic disease is a condition whose underlying cause cannot be cured. Selling nonsense to people with chronic disease is lucrative but profoundly unethical”.

So, the definition of a chronic disease is a condition whose underlying cause cannot be cured?
By Mainstream perhaps, who only “manage” the symptoms of most all chronic disease or educate you on how to “live with” your chronic condition.
Then you had better read this quite thoroughly Guy……………….
http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/default.aspx

Using your own reasoning, Mainstream disease-management is no better than your explanation of Homeopathy, or a case of “The pot calling the kettle black” ?

@Nancy: No, I am not referring to the Arndt-Schulz law, because there is no such law. It has been replaced by the concept of hormesis, which is not know to be general and also flatly contradicts homeopathy.

In hormesis, a substance has a temporary inflexion in the dose-response curve. That is, over a very narrow range of pharmacologically active doses, effect appears to increase with dilution. But only over a very narrow range: after this is tails off again as normal.

Even Arndt-Schulz does not give any support tot he idea that the effect persists beyond the point where the substance no longer exists. It is yet another example of homeopaths taking something which is not entirely inconsistent with their religion and asserting its applicability well beyond what can be scientifically supported.

@chrisb1 I repeated my statement and you still chose to use a straw man instead. Once again: “Most diet products, large numbers of herbal remedies and many vitamins are either worthless or completely unnecessary for most of their users.”

See if you can spot the qualifying words that render your counter-argument false.

As to “curing”, there is no case anywhere in the world where homeopathy can be unambiguously and objectively proven to have cured a single case of a single disease.

Nancy: No, it’s not. And its not a law. It has not been proven to be generalisable and the principle of hormesis is a much more complete explanation of the same observations.

Regardless, neither supports homeopathy because both require pharmacologically active doses of the substance in question. All observations of this principle still find that effects decline exponentially with dilution below a certain point, which is the precise opposite of what homeopathy claims.

In other words, it’s yet another cherry-picked factoid applied beyond what is scientifically defensible in order to shore up the beliefs of a religion which has tried and failed to prove it is something else.

The mastitis claim debunked: http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2010/09/can-homeopathy-cure-mastitis-in-cows.html

Have you participated in the online debates where proponents of medicine argue against all evidence to the contrary that measurable doses of pharmacologically active substances have objective physiological effects?

No. Because there are no such debates. It is objectively provable fact.

Over 200 years after Hahnemann invented it, the high priests of homeopathy have as yet produced absolutely no credible proof that a substance with a vague and unspecific connection to a symptom can, if diluted out of existence, cure a disease which can cause that symptom. That’s your task, the Nobel Prize awaits you.

@magufo I am sure you do wish that Dr. Lewis was wrong. Sadly for you, he is not.

@Chris: There are indeed several levels of evidence.

There is biased evidence from poor quality trials published almost exclusively in SCAM-sympathetic journals, which is largely positive; and there is robust evidence from well-constructed trials and meta analyses, which is overwhelmingly negative (see Linde et. al., 1999).

The fair minded observer will note that homeopaths, when asked to prove the basis of their claims, resort to endless repetitions of the type of study most likely to produce a biased result, and not one homeopath has ever mounted anything approaching an honest test (as in: testing if ti is true, rather than seeking to demonstrate that it is true) for the core doctrines of the religion.

The fair minded individual will also note the routine reversal of the burden of evidence by homeopathy advocates, their consistent use of fallacious arguments, and their almost universal failure to properly understand the scientific method.

@Nancy: More fallacious arguments. There is no reported case where homeopathy can be unequivocally demonstrated to have cured a single case of a single disease, ever.

Encourage different systems of medicine? Depends what you mean. I certainly encourage both surgery and pharmacology, two systems of medicine, but to use that as an argument to support, say, herbalism, which uses unknown doses of often poorly understood pharmacologically active compounds with unknown impurities? That would be silly. You have only to look at the kidney failures caused by aristolchia or the series of heavy metal poisonings among users of Chinese medicine in the US to realise that the correct approach is to analyse the active principle, isolate it and deliver it in a pure and carefully quantified dose. Which is, in fact, how a good many medicines start out (think aspirin here).

And of course none of this can even remotely justify systems of non-medicine such as homeopathy, reiki, faith healing and the like.

I find it very strange that those who critique the use of Homeopathy, and denounce it as quackery, rely on the flimsy and biased evidence of many Pharmaceutical Companies with a zeal bordering on faith and religion.
So who then are the real ‘quacks’? “The three companies who were fined an astonishing total of 6 billion $$$$ for illegal marketing and other misdemeanors”. At least one of these companies, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), considers $3 billion fines the cost of doing business, while fraud is endemic throughout Big Pharma.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. If you read books and articles by Ben Goldacre (as mentioned earlier) and Marcia Angell, the truth becomes abundantly clear: we simply can’t trust data provided by drug companies, no matter how large, well randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled or ‘gold standard’ they may be.
Dig even further, perhaps by reading Stats.con by Dr James Penston, and it becomes difficult to disagree with his conclusion that, “The claims of statistics-based research in medicine are, for the most part, imaginary, that the apparent success is based on the presentational skills of its advocates, and that the studies are devoid of anything of real value”.
While the smoke-and-mirrors charade of industrial, drug-based, statistics-led medicine trundles on, thousands of patients are killed and maimed every year. But the cries of ‘quackery’ are almost universally aimed at natural healthcare such as Homeopathy, which the figures show to be incredibly safe, while its users enthusiastically keep coming back for more – as they have done for centuries, and presumably because they do not work?
So who then are today’s greatest purveyors of quackery?
Answer: Those sitting at the boardroom tables of pharmaceutical companies.
Advocates of natural healthcare should feel entitled to reclaim the term, and to use it appropriately – without fear of retribution.

@Chris: You haven’t noticed, then, that some of the most prominent British critics of homeopathy, including Edzard Ernst, Ben GHoldacre, Simon Singh and David Colquhoun, are supporters, and in some cases co-founders, of the alltrials movement? You haven’t noticed that the same people who are skeptical of the terrible evidence produced by homeopaths are equally skeptical of the way pharmaceutical companies abuse science?

There are well-founded concerns over the quality of evidence for medical treatments that usually work but are overstated. Homeopathy has even weaker evidence (and mostly no evidence at all). To use the former to justify the latter is simply irrational.

To put it more simply, problems with medicine validate homeopathy in exactly the same way that plane crashes validate magic carpets.

@Nancy: So you want a free pass on nonsense because there are flaws with medicine? Sorry, not going to happen.

The appropriate use for homeopathy is in tea, as a sweetener. That is its only objectively provable value. And actually even then it spoils the tea.

@magufo: Young earth creationists dismiss the scientific evidence of speciation by evolution with the same kind of rhetoric. It is ineffective for exactly the same reasons.

Nancy, that is neither true nor relevant. Homeopaths are not part of evidence-based medicine so their view on medical transparency is irrelevant.

Transparency means that you’d have to tell your patients there is no credible evidence to support the doctrines of homeopathy and no good evidence it works other than as a placebo, that the pills you give them are inert as far as any objective test can tell, and that if they have anything actually wrong with them they should see a real doctor.

Somehow I doubt you give them this advice.

Nancy, as is plain to everyone but you, I very much do know.

Guy, You are talking about doctrines of homeopathy when you yourself do not what they are

The doctrine of similars is not a law of nature, it is a dogma of the homeopathy faith with no basis in reality. The doctrine of minimum dose is founded on further dogma, including Hahnemann’s own explicit (and explicitly wrong) statement that matter is infinitely divisible. The doctrine of simplex is also mere dogma, it has no basis in objective reality.

You also keep repeating the false claim that Arndt-Schulz is a law (it is not), with the implication that it supports homeopathy (it doesn’t). Hormesis, a more complete explanation than Arndt-Schulz, is not generalisable and still shows the normal exponential decline in effect with dilution below a threshold level.

There are no such things as miasms or vital force. The dogmas of potentisation and/or dynamisation are fictional constructs with no basis in reality.

Your articles of faith have as much relevance to medicine and human physiology as the statements of the Discovery Institute have to evolutionary biology. That is to say, none at all.

Nancy: That is a statement of faith, not a fact.

Actually homeopathic remedies are not medicines, are not colloidal, contain no nanoparticles (hint: nano is one part per billion), are not measurable, and potentisation is not a pharmacological process.

Feel free to cite any test that can blindly distinguish between two 30C remedies when presented as sugar globules, or between the remedy and the globules treated with the plain solvent.

Nelsons may be able to help you here as they were shipping remedies without the magic water for some time, so must have gathered some statistics.

Nancy: Why do you keep cherry picking isolated results that do not actually prove the claims of homeopathy? Do you not have any actual evidence proving similia etc.?

Guy, you have said that there is no evidence that Homeopathy has ever been successful at treating/curing any disease, well here’s some news for you.

There is actually some very good scientific evidence in favour of the effectiveness of homeopathy with over 60 positive outcomes in randomized controlled trials.

The evidence base………..
Up to the end of 2011, there have been 164 peer-reviewed papers reporting randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in homeopathy. This represents research in 89 different medical conditions. Of those 164 RCT papers, 71 (43%) were positive, 9 (6%) negative and 80 (49%) non-conclusive http://www.facultyofhomeopathy.org/research

In addition non-randomized, non-controlled CLINICAL outcomes studies make a useful contribution to the evidence base……………..
http://www.facultyofhomeopathy.org/research/clinical_outcomes_studies.html

Further……..

From EJMR (European Journal of Medical Research)….

“Basic science research suggests that classically-prepared homeopathic remedies (A) contain measurable source NANOparticles (NPs) and/or silica NANOparticles with adsorbed source materials [1-4] which are heterogeneously dispersed in colloidal solution……………..
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/12/191

It would also be fairly predictable of you to deny the highly beneficial effects of Colloidal Silver which is known to kill over 650 pathogens of a viral/fungal/bacterial nature, and simply the best antibiotic on the market. Of course you can’t buy it in Europe as an antibiotic, just as a “mineral supplement”, because Big Pharma arranged this with their political clout in Brussels. Now we can’t allow competition for drug-based antibiotics now can we.?
Here’s the SCIENCE for you, which you will no doubt attempt to and fail to debunk.
http://www.thesilveredge.com/studies.shtml

Chris: Feel free to cite a single reliably published report from a reputable source where homeopathy can be unambiguously and objectively proven to have cured a single case of a single disease.

So far, no homeopath has been able to do this. Why not be the first?