Poll: Homeopathy

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Dara O'Briain said it best.

Yes, in the past all medicine was just leaves and twigs and stuff, but then we tested it all and found what worked and what didn't. What worked became medicine, what didn't work is now being peddled at incredible prices by glorified con artists who don't have the sense they were born with.

 

[Souplex]

Most studies say it works on par with placebo.
So there you go, it works as well as thinking it works.

 

[King of Asgaard]

As quite a few have rightly referenced, Dara O'Briain pretty much nails my opinion on homeopathy.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

If homoeopathy wasn't complete nonsense, then technically, all we drink is urine and faeces.

It's a good job that it's complete bollocks.

What do we call alternate medicine that works? We call it medicine.

Some French dude said something like "There are no true poisons or cures" a long time back, and it is probably true.
.

Some French dude...

Paracelsus, one of the greatest minds of his age, the first real botanist, a man without whose work we would not have most of modern medicine, a pioneer of using cures that actually worked with scientific basis instead of any old horse shit, the man who first made mention of psychotherapy and the notion of the unconscious, is now 'some French dude a long time ago.'

And that wasn't his point either. His actual quote was: 'All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.'

He wasn't talking about poison in the sense that we would know it though, he considered every substance in the body to be a 'poison' ie. just another substance that makes things what they are. When anything was out of balance the body would become sick.

And he would have laughed homeopathy out into the street were he alive today. He was one of the first people to make actual medicine, as defined above by Daystar, where he used minerals and chemicals which had proven effects on the body instead of stuff like 'drink a cup of sheep's urine while fornicating with a bull in order to cure hiccoughs.'

Sure it was all zinc and lead based so would probably kill you, but the intent was there. He also invented laudenum and named zinc in the first place.

He was not a homeopath, he was the grandfather of modern medicine as we know it.

 

[Scrustle]

I know it's already been said in this thread but it's worth saying again. To quote Tim Minchin, you know what they call "alternative" medicine that's been proven to work? Medicine.

It's a placebo effect. It's been shown in double tests not to work with any more effectiveness than that. There isn't really anything else to say. The results are overwhelmingly conclusive.

 

[Eleuthera]

As been mentioned many times before by now, homeopathy is complete bull. if it worked we'd all be drinking nothing but seawater.

 

[Jamous]

I give you LRR's video on Snake Oil, Tim Minchin's Storm, and Mitchell and Webb's Homeopathic A&E. Something amusing and, I believe, on topic. Dara has already been cited.
But yes, I think it's safe to say that it's all bull. Is it really even that much of a question?

 

[RustlessPotato]

Nope. Not at all. I have to point out that sometimes when people say homeopathy, they mean phytotherapy (Using plants etc...). That I believe it can cure some smaller ailments.

Homeopathy is just utter crockery. Worst part is, I have to walk in front of a homeopath on my way to the Hospital where I study Biomedical Sciences ><.

 

[MetalMagpie]

Has homeopathic medicine ever passed a double-blind trial?

Someone must have put it to the test at some point.

Homeopathic remedies have undergone loads of trials. And some trials have found them to be more effective than placebo, but those trials are almost always characterized by bad methodology (not double-blind, very small test group, no control group, etc.) and are often directly sponsored by a company that makes homeopathic remedies! Reviews of trials using good methodology have concluded (a number of times) that homeopathic remedies do not outperform placebo.

I seem to recall this paper is fairly good: (the abstract summarizes the conclusions)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12492603

 

[Magikarp]

It does work sometimes, but only because it's a placebo, not for any of the reasons the homeopaths give you.

 

[Frankster]

I'm gonna go against the grain and the vast medical expertise of posters in this thread and say: homeopathys got a bad rap but there are existing effective treatments within it for light ailments, natural remedies that have proven to be effective for generations (ex: to cure a cough, try a spoon of honey. Forgot the mechanics of why it does, only that honey contains tons of good stuff, and is better to deal with a cough then cough medicine at your local pharmacy), but well when you say homeopathy you're basically putting under the same label everything from crystals to voodoo, course a lot of its gonna be daft, doesn't mean ain't some things that work.

I mean another example, when having an upset stomach have any of you tried sugary water? If its placebo then don't tell me cos i've never had to take tummy medicine in my life ^^

Course I'm heavy biased as the best doctor I know, uses homeopathy and explained to me there is a reason why doctors avoid using them (nothing to do with effectiveness, more a question of money and earnings) and how pharmaceutical and drug companies are involved in the trainning of doctors and their education to raise them to give drugs to deal with light cases that could be dealt more effectively with homeopathic treatments. Course this sounds rather conspiracy theory like and none of you know the guy so this isn't much of a support for my view, but was just to explain where I was coming from

 

[Lieju]

No, homeopathy doesn't work. Any better than just water would.

As for 'alternative' medicine, depends a bit on what it includes. Some people try to include healthy diet and such things to it, which seems to me like an attempt to make the more BS stuff like homeopathy seem legit.

Some 'natural' substances obviously will have a medicinal effect, but it's kinda less effective and more uncertain than just taking the chemical that has the desired effect. And if it's effect is scientifically proven, is it 'alternative' anymore?

Paracelsus, one of the greatest minds of his age, the first real botanist, a man without whose work we would not have most of modern medicine, a pioneer of using cures that actually worked with scientific basis instead of any old horse shit, the man who first made mention of psychotherapy and the notion of the unconscious, is now 'some French dude a long time ago.'

And that wasn't his point either. His actual quote was: 'All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.'

Isn't 'Dose makes the poison', the most common way to phrase that, or the thing that's always quoted? Maybe a different way to translate that, but that's the phrase I've always heard even before I knew who Paracelcus was.

 

[MetalMagpie]

I'm voting YOU, because I don't know what that means.

It best represents my feelings towards homeopathy. All I know is what people who understand the science tell me, my only option is to nod and follow blindly; or do the occasional read-up on it, and encounter even more contradictory and confusing points.

Much as I dislike linking to Wikipedia, the section on the plausibility of homeopathy does a pretty good job of explaining the problems with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy#Plausibility

Essentially:
1. Homeopathic remedies are diluted so much that there is almost zero chance of even one molecule of the active ingredient remaining.
2. This makes the remedy indistinguishable from ordinary water.
In addition, the idea that a more dilute medicine causes a greater result is contrary to both modern science and common sense. I.e. You would expect taking two headache tablets to have a greater effect than taking just one. A homeopathy believer would expect one tablet to have a greater effect than two, as it's more "dilute".

 

[direkiller]

Im going with proven not to work

if you can eat an entire bottle of "sleeping pills" and not die, hell not even fall asleep something is genuinely wrong with your product

 

[A.A.K]

Homeopathic methods? No.
Traditional Creepy Chinese Medicine? Yes.

Some people claim a difference, others don't. I'm just putting my opinion out there. I believe in ancient chinese medicine. I don't believe in a 'sniff sniff here, drink more water!' sorta thing.

 

[Woodsey]

Of course not. If you've had the process explained to you and you think it works then your brain has failed you from the fucking off.

It's a giant con.

Course I'm heavy biased as the best doctor I know, uses homeopathy and explained to me there is a reason why doctors avoid using them (nothing to do with effectiveness, more a question of money and earnings) )

Hahahaha, come on. If you do have that opinion then don't openly admit you take it from some quack who asserts themselves as some sort of great moral force in the medicine world.

Homeopathy is only about money.

 

[Loonyyy]

Has homeopathic medicine ever passed a double-blind trial?

Someone must have put it to the test at some point.

It's never been shown that Homeopathy, Acupuncture, or pretty much any "Alternative" medicine shows statistically significant results over the placebo. ie: It doesn't work (Medicines are tested against placebos).

About the "placebo effect"
1) Almost no placebo has any physiological effect-it affects the reporting of subjective experiences. For instance, placebo asthma medication has been shown to increase the subjects feeling of their lung capacity, but not their FEV.
2) The positive placebo effects can be produced by people feeling they are being treated and looked after: Medicine can provide this, and there's no need for unethical markups on it.

So Homeopathy doesn't work, and the Placebo effect (Which is a collection of effects and reporting biases) isn't worth spit.

 

[Cyfu]

I'll just leave this here

 

[Preacher zer0]

James Randi used to swallow a full bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills at the start of his lecture.

By the end not only was he still alive and well... he wasn't even sleepy!