That's helpful, thanks. I'm heavily reliant on chiropractic medicine for pain/injury rehabilitation and management. So, I recognize I'm quite biased.
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Will it be helpful to do more research in alternate medicine?
- Thread starter DawudTalut
- Start date
That's helpful, thanks. I'm heavily reliant on chiropractic medicine for pain/injury rehabilitation and management. So, I recognize I'm quite biased.
DawudTalut
Peace be upon you.
1-Example of working of homeopathy in India was given. Should we ignore it? There are other places too, where work is going on. If it was that fasle, it would not have gone that far. For example:
Homeopathy in Sweden
http://www.wholehealthnow.com/homeopathy_pro/sweden.html
The European Committee for Homeopathy
http://www.homeopathyeurope.org/
2-Why it works well for some, not for others. Research is needed....... May be their bodies resisted or doctor could not prescribe well.
3- I have used allopathic and homeopathic medicines personally and effectively so please do not question it. [as 9-10ths_Penguin said: "I have no doubt that you've seen people under the care of homeopaths, but I question whether you've ever been in a position to confirm that homeopathy is effective."]
4- If Samuel Hahnemann got better results than results of his-era's way of cure, then why not use same logic today when in poor countries, people cannot afford to pay fees of allopathic doctors and hospitals and expensive allopathic medicines. Let them use homeopathy for better than nothing. OR bring down these prices so that underprivileged people may get easy access to cure.
5-Original Post was not about homeopathy. It was about research in alternate medicine. I think it can be supportive.
Homeopathy in Sweden
http://www.wholehealthnow.com/homeopathy_pro/sweden.html
The European Committee for Homeopathy
http://www.homeopathyeurope.org/
2-Why it works well for some, not for others. Research is needed....... May be their bodies resisted or doctor could not prescribe well.
3- I have used allopathic and homeopathic medicines personally and effectively so please do not question it. [as 9-10ths_Penguin said: "I have no doubt that you've seen people under the care of homeopaths, but I question whether you've ever been in a position to confirm that homeopathy is effective."]
4- If Samuel Hahnemann got better results than results of his-era's way of cure, then why not use same logic today when in poor countries, people cannot afford to pay fees of allopathic doctors and hospitals and expensive allopathic medicines. Let them use homeopathy for better than nothing. OR bring down these prices so that underprivileged people may get easy access to cure.
5-Original Post was not about homeopathy. It was about research in alternate medicine. I think it can be supportive.
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mycorrhiza
Well-Known Member
False ideas often live on for a long time. Every single religion can't be the correct one, yet thousands of religions have lived on. There are still people who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old or that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
It could also be because it's placebo. People who don't believe in homeopathy have taken massive overdoses, just to show that it's placebo, with no effect whatsoever.
Some "alternative medicine" can be effective. Herbalism, for example. Many herbs that are sold actually do have medical properties, but in conventional medicine the active ingredients are isolated and set at a proper dosage. So the herbs are basically less effective, and often both more dangerous and more expensive, versions of conventional medicines.
Most alternative medicine, however, is simply placebo.
Draka
Wonder Woman
I truly don't see how someone can say it is nothing but placebo effect. Honestly, does no one really believe that there are natural remedies to things? That there can be things we can get from plants and extracts of which and so on that we can take to help correct things in our bodies? Are we not of the same planet where these very things grow? Can we not benefit from the vitamins and minerals and treat ourselves with them? Must we only rely upon made-made chemicals we pop and inject into our bodies to make ourselves better? Is taking a pill for everything really better than perhaps treating the root cause of something with diet or natural extracts or therapy or meditation or so on? Haven't we perhaps become a society too dependent on the many easy outs pharmaceuticals have given us? Not to say that modern medicine is bad and shouldn't be used when called for (of course it should), but to discount alternatives entirely and chalk them up to "placebos" just seems foolish to me.
ratikala
Istha gosthi
dear mycorrhiza ,
what do you concider peer review evidence ?
to settle the question of a 'peer rewiew' I quote an un biased source , ...wikipedia ....
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers.) It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field.
I draw your attention to ..."one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work" , when the reviews of homeopathy are caried out by non practicing homeopaths this does not constitute a peer review , when homeopathy is tested by scientific methods in laboritories geared up to test alliopathic medicines they are hardly tested by people of simmilar competence to trained homeopaths .
Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can damage an organism. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism,
many chemical drugs are highly toxic and capable of causing severe organ dammage .
again wikipedia says ...
Types of toxicity
There are generally three types of toxic entities; chemical, biological, and physical:
it is not dangerous if one consults an experienced practitioner .
what do you concider peer review evidence ?
to settle the question of a 'peer rewiew' I quote an un biased source , ...wikipedia ....
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers.) It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field.
I draw your attention to ..."one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work" , when the reviews of homeopathy are caried out by non practicing homeopaths this does not constitute a peer review , when homeopathy is tested by scientific methods in laboritories geared up to test alliopathic medicines they are hardly tested by people of simmilar competence to trained homeopaths .
what toxic sugar ? you just said there were no active ingredience
this is merely your opinion .
I did say "toxic" , and again to settle the arguement I quote dear wiki , ....
Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can damage an organism. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism,
many chemical drugs are highly toxic and capable of causing severe organ dammage .
again wikipedia says ...
Types of toxicity
There are generally three types of toxic entities; chemical, biological, and physical:
- Chemical toxicants include inorganic substances such as lead, mercury, asbestos, hydrofluoric acid, and chlorine gas, and organic compounds such as methyl alcohol, most medications, and poisons from living things.
- Biological toxicants include bacteria and viruses that can induce disease in living organisms. Biological toxicity can be difficult to measure because the "threshold dose" may be a single organism. Theoretically one virus, bacterium or worm can reproduce to cause a serious infection. However, in a host with an intact immune system the inherent toxicity of the organism is balanced by the host's ability to fight back; the effective toxicity is then a combination of both parts of the relationship. A similar situation is also present with other types of toxic agents.
- Physical toxicants are substances that, due to their physical nature, interfere with biological processes. Examples include coal dust and asbestos fibers, both of which can ultimately be fatal if inhaled.
however there have been numerous occasions in which I have seen homeopathy work remarkably well , in cases far more severe than that which might be influenced by a placebo efect .
I am not suggesting a conspiricy , just pointing out that the chemical industries are profit making industries and will attempt to protect their own interests .
I beleive there is a ballance to be acheived , I am level headed enough to realise that there is a place for both alternative methods and what you call actual medicine ,
it is not dangerous if one consults an experienced practitioner .
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
Most pharmaceuticals are 'natural' - I think 'alternative' refers to 'remedies' that are outside science, i.e. testing etc.
Homeopathy is not naturopathy. In the case of naturopathy, I agree with you: there probably are effective remedies out there. There's a lot of quackery too, and it can be hard to tell the real stuff from the snake oil, but there are good remedies to be found.
Homeopathy is a different animal. In the case of homeopathy, we're talking about "solutions" that are diluted over and over to the point where it's unlikely that the end product doesn't even contain one molecule of the purported active ingredient.
It really is nothing more than distilled water. I don't think it's unfair at all to chalk up any effects of a small vial of distilled water up to the placebo effect.
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
To answer the OP: yes, because then people will stop claiming "secret cures" and "things the government and corporations don't want you to know" and instead see the shams in black and white.
Musty
Active Member
If there is no reason to believe that these alternatives work on any other principle other than placebo then diverting finite medical research funding to alternative medicines would be wrong. Currently I don't believe that there is any strong evidence that alternative medicines have anything but a placebo affect.
We wouldn't expect research funding into soldiers body armour to be diverted into studying whether voodoo medicine is an effective defense against bullets to be accepted so it's not clear why diverting research funding to research into alternative medicine would be accepted either.
Funny you mention that, because many armed forces were duped into buying a "bomb detector" that is effectively no more than a dowsing rod (a $60,000 dowsing rod, but still):
ADE 651 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yep, I was about to mention that too. I used to beat you to the punch -- how the tables have turned!
Re: concerns that people are just chalking anything non-"Western" up as the Placebo effect -- that's not what's going on here. Each practice deserves to be looked at individually to be judged since they all rely on so many different principles.
As Penguin aptly pointed out, sometimes there is legitimate medicine *and* quackery in the same practice such that it will depend on the individual practitioner (see his examples on chiropracty).
Yes, there are very likely "natural" remedies for diseases that aren't known or utilized by modern medicine; but there's a reason why *some* forms of "medicine" are clearly labelled quackery/pseudoscience.
For instance, it's already been pointed out several times that homeopathic "remedies" are so diluted that statistically it's unlikely for them to contain even a single molecule of the purported active ingredients. No one who has defended homeopathy so far has responded to this devastating fact -- they've just said "but I've seen it work on people, and it's worked for me."
But HOW do you suppose it's working for people if there isn't any active ingredient in the actual "remedy?"
The principles of homeopathy (principle of similars, principle of dilution and so on) have no explanation for how they're even supposed to cure or alleviate anything, and in fact there are good physical reasons for why they couldn't possibly cure anything unless magic is involved.
For instance, even if we're generous and we say some tiny portion of "active ingredient" is actually imbibed with some homeopathic "remedy," why would it work? Say that there's some small amount of molecules in a homeopathic ADHD remedy -- but that my brain has BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of dopamine receptors that have something wrong with them.
Why on earth would having 10 or 100 molecules do anything towards helping my problem with BILLIONS of faulty receptors -- and why on earth would 10 homeopathic molecules be better than 100? (Since homeopathy says essentially "the more dilute, the better") Isn't that like giving someone a stick of gum to repair a damaged dam instead of trucks of concrete?
Pseudoscience isn't called such just because it's "different" from "normal" science (or medicine), it's called such because it operates on principles that are magical and nonsense.
As Penguin aptly pointed out, sometimes there is legitimate medicine *and* quackery in the same practice such that it will depend on the individual practitioner (see his examples on chiropracty).
Yes, there are very likely "natural" remedies for diseases that aren't known or utilized by modern medicine; but there's a reason why *some* forms of "medicine" are clearly labelled quackery/pseudoscience.
For instance, it's already been pointed out several times that homeopathic "remedies" are so diluted that statistically it's unlikely for them to contain even a single molecule of the purported active ingredients. No one who has defended homeopathy so far has responded to this devastating fact -- they've just said "but I've seen it work on people, and it's worked for me."
But HOW do you suppose it's working for people if there isn't any active ingredient in the actual "remedy?"
The principles of homeopathy (principle of similars, principle of dilution and so on) have no explanation for how they're even supposed to cure or alleviate anything, and in fact there are good physical reasons for why they couldn't possibly cure anything unless magic is involved.
For instance, even if we're generous and we say some tiny portion of "active ingredient" is actually imbibed with some homeopathic "remedy," why would it work? Say that there's some small amount of molecules in a homeopathic ADHD remedy -- but that my brain has BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of dopamine receptors that have something wrong with them.
Why on earth would having 10 or 100 molecules do anything towards helping my problem with BILLIONS of faulty receptors -- and why on earth would 10 homeopathic molecules be better than 100? (Since homeopathy says essentially "the more dilute, the better") Isn't that like giving someone a stick of gum to repair a damaged dam instead of trucks of concrete?
Pseudoscience isn't called such just because it's "different" from "normal" science (or medicine), it's called such because it operates on principles that are magical and nonsense.
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Well, then we'd be in the wonderful position of knowing the etiology of ADHD. Which would be great, considering that at the moment it's known only through symptoms (actually, most mental disorders are not so much known through symptoms as they are designated as mental disorders through the classification of various clusters of symptom into specific disorders). And at the moment, giving people amphetamine is the go-to rememdy. Of course if, instead of adderall, I took cocaine, or crystal meth, the effects would be very much the same once we took into account dosage levels and relative potency. But we don't do that, or even talk like that, because that would make it seem like we're not giving people pills to help them with a disease. It would make it appear as if we're masking symptoms using the equivalent of street drugs to treat disorders which were classified as such based on behavior and (again, like most of mental health disorders) lacking any substantive evidence for a genetic or physiological basis.
On the plus side, I am able to focus/concentrate and therefore study and the drugs I use are legally acquired through a licensed physician.
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Musty
Active Member
I can only assume that somewhere along the procurement chain there were a few backhanders to ensure the sales despite lack of performance. Corruption is pretty rife in countries like Iraq but the west is hardly clean either and the alternative medicine lobbies have influential friends in British politics and the Royal Family.
The British NHS has advertised jobs for homeopathic practitioners. In terms of injury and loss of life diverting funding away from real medicine in favour of fantasy medicine isn't all that different from spending money on fake bomb detectors rather than real ones .
The NHS's budget is finite and someone could be denied life saving/improving medicine because the NHS is paying for homeopathic practitioners and products instead.
mycorrhiza
Well-Known Member
Of course, they would have to be scientists and confirm it using scientific methods. Unless you're suggesting that homeopathy works because of magic or spirits (which I have heard people claim), it should be testable in labs.
When producing homeopathic products you start out with there being an actual ingredient. Then it's diluted and further diluted until the ingredient is no longer there. However, if it's badly diluted, then there might be very toxic ingredients left in it.what toxic sugar ? you just said there were no active ingredience
It's pretty much confirmed by every single study done on the subject.
You did call them "toxins". The dose makes the poison and the dosage set for nearly all medicine is below the toxic level.
Do you have any scientific studies to back up these effects?
If the "chemical industry" is actively trying to discredit homeopathy, despite homeopathy working, then there needs to be a massive conspiracy where they pay scientists to change the results every time homeopathy is scientifically tested. Otherwise, there would be scientific studies proving that the homeopathy works, yet there are none.
If the alternative medicine is effective and has a firm base of scientific evidence backing it up, then yes it has a place in medicine. However, there is no scientific evidence that homeopathy works.
It is dangerous, because you're using something that doesn't work instead of something that works.
DawudTalut
Peace be upon you.
Peace be on you.
Dear scholars, any thoughts? on :
"Homeopathy works on the principle that water retains a 'memory' and now scientists may have stumbled across proof that homeopaths are right.
Today a study reported in the New Scientist magazine shows that even when diluted to homeopathic levels, salt solutions change the structure of hydrogen bonds in water.
The alternative health practice involves treating patients with samples diluted many times until they are unlikely to contain a single molecule of therapeutic substance.
For this reason it is ridiculed by many scientists. But practitioners maintain that the water in samples retains a 'memory' of the substances dissolved in it.
Swiss chemist Louis Rey made the discovery while using a technique called thermoluminescence to study molecular structure............"
Read more: 'Proof' that homeopathy works | Mail Online
Dear scholars, any thoughts? on :
"Homeopathy works on the principle that water retains a 'memory' and now scientists may have stumbled across proof that homeopaths are right.
Today a study reported in the New Scientist magazine shows that even when diluted to homeopathic levels, salt solutions change the structure of hydrogen bonds in water.
The alternative health practice involves treating patients with samples diluted many times until they are unlikely to contain a single molecule of therapeutic substance.
For this reason it is ridiculed by many scientists. But practitioners maintain that the water in samples retains a 'memory' of the substances dissolved in it.
Swiss chemist Louis Rey made the discovery while using a technique called thermoluminescence to study molecular structure............"
Read more: 'Proof' that homeopathy works | Mail Online
mycorrhiza
Well-Known Member
1. It says in the article that the work was criticized and that there might have been impurities.
2. It was done under conditions much different to how homepathic products are made, and from the scientific article (which I understood very little of
) it seems like it was D2O, or heavy water, rather than the regular water that homeopathic products are made from. 3. Even if water did have memory that doesn't change the fact that homeopathy doesn't work. No studies done on homeopathic products have shown any results beyond placebo.
You understood the point of my analogy, though -- I was essentially just making the point that if the problem involves x amount of receptors and the "solution" offers x minus y molecules, how on earth is it better for y to be a larger subtraction? I was attacking one of the principles of homeopathy by example.
Also, I've er... participated in the street equivalent, especially when I worked as a dancer. At low dosage it actually DOES normalize my attentive abilities.
I hope you realize that if water has a "memory" then there are far, far, far, far, far more toxins and nasty things (such as er... bodily excretions) that water has been in contact with than nice and helpful things.
That glass of water you had with breakfast? Poop and insecticide water. Yum.
More seriously, "water memory" is a perfect example of what I mean when I say this stuff is quack pseudoscience. What mechanism is proposed for this "memory," and why does it only remember things you want it to instead of nasty, unhelpful, poisonous things? Magic?
Let's consider the simple physics and chemistry of water: where would this "memory" be stored? Water clusters are already extremely simple and they're already thermodynamically unstable: anything more complex would be even *less* stable. Worse, for water to "memorize" the chemical properties of some ingredient, there would have to be *lots* of highly complex structures in the water.
Everything known about thermodynamics says that's impossible -- again, unless you're just going to invoke "magic" as an explanation. Which, again, renders the whole claim pseudoscientific nonsense.
The actual study didn't get into homeopathy:
Rey, L. (2003). Thermoluminescence of ultra-high dilutions of lithium chloride and sodium chloride. Physica A: Statistical mechanics and its applications, 323, 67-74.
However, the author and others have used this and more ambitious studies to show that homeopathy is a scientific, legitimate, and empirically supported medical practice. Strangely enough, all the "studies" which demonstrate something about the effects of homeopathy are published in journals like Homeopathy, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, etc. However, mainstream journals have not ignored this research. In fact, homeopathy received a huge push in 1997 when a meta-study on the clinical effects of homeopathy was publiched in The Lancet:
"The meta-analysis soon became quite famous—not because of the subject matter of the study, but because of the way the results of the study were perceived in the scientific and the homeopathic communities. The study itself concluded that the results of the homeopathy trials were not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are due to placebo. The authors were careful to stress that the study did not show homeopathy to be superior to placebo either. Nonetheless, the homeopathy establishment now claimed to have final proof for the efficacy of homeopathy."
Hansen, K., & Kappel, K. (2012). Pre-trial beliefs in complementary and alternative medicine: whose pre-trial belief should be considered?. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 1-7.
Since then, researchers and journals have been more careful to ensure that their findings are not misunderstood (or misused), and have been more explicit in their conclusions (emphasis added):
"Homeopathy is an eloquent example of the natural tendency of human beings to delude themselves. It is a cure that does not make sense in the light of science and whose usefulness has not been firmly demonstrated in any disease. At best it probably is a waste of resources. Yet still the popularity of this practice seems to be intact if not on the increase. In Europe, pharmacies continue to sell questionable products like Oscillococcinum alongside “real” medicines, many doctors practice homeopathy full or part-time, medical faculties hold courses and confer Master qualifications in homeopathy, sympathizers react angrily to any factual criticism. Why?
Saying that homeopathy cannot possibly work because it has no scientifically plausible grounds has proven useless. Strangely enough, a clear-cut argument like the one stating that a molecule cannot have any biological effect after it has been totally removed from a given remedy has failed to dissuade patients and many health operators. Denounciations of the improbable water chemistry of homeopathy, the gratuitousness of the “Law of Infinitesimals” and of the principle of “similia similibus curantur” have proved equally ineffective. And finding faults in homeopathy – as well as in any other alternative medicine – is now seen in a broad sense as unbecoming. As the American mathematician Norman Levitt says, “we have moved from the concept of equality of individuals to equality of ideas and beliefs. Today it is politically incorrect to call something a dumb idea.”"
Pandolfi, M. (2010). Homeopathy: ex nihilo fit nihil. European journal of internal medicine, 21(3), 147.
Even the titles of articles demonstrate the irritation born out of constantly having to show the same problems with the same groups of researchers publishing in the only journals that will accept research of that quality:
Garattini, S., & Bertele, V. (2010). Alternative medical practices: flashbacks from the Dark Ages. European Journal of Internal Medicine, 21(3), 245-246.
from that paper: "People are induced to believe that whatever is called medicine or is evaluated and approved by experts who also assess real drugs is by definition effective and safe. Doctors, pharmacists, and nurses are rightly puzzled whether medicine should still be based on evidence or on tradition, suggestions, superstition or whatever else. Doubts arise from the European Commission's Directive regarding the evaluation of herbal medicinal products by the European Medicines Agency. That document refers to “bibliographic data ...submitted to provide evidence ...of traditional or well-established medicinal use ...with recognised efficacy and an acceptable level of safety”. What are we talking about? It is a nightmare, a flashback to subjective, anecdotal, auto-referential medicine."
It is also a matter of public health concern (emphasis added):
"If a public institution allows a product onto the market, that product needs some kind of evaluation. Even mineral water goes by that route. The aim is to protect consumers. However, product evaluation cannot be an excuse to legitimise any product, the use of which is well established. So far, the authorities have not checked and warranted for safety and efficacy of magic potions, reliability of the properties of this stone or that metal bracelet, and validity of this or that horoscope. Granting homoeopathic products marketing authorisation conveys the message that they merit consideration and respect. Even more worrying is the fact that regarding these products as medicines falsely convinces people that such products can be beneficial.
The obscurantist belief that a “nothing” can cure people suggests that homoeopathic products should be evaluated according to the same rules as medicines. But the EC Directive recognises “the difficulty of applying to them the conventional statistical methods relating to clinical trials”. Clearly, there is no way to look for evidence-based advantages of a product that contains nothing. Therefore the EC Directive's message is: let us be satisfied with a thing that, at least, can cause no harm but should stop claiming official recognition of the benefit it merely pretends to provide...Unfortunately, however, even these products can be harmful.
Garattini, S., & Bertelé, V. (2009). Homoeopathy: not a matter for drug-regulatory authorities. The Lancet, 374(9701), 1578-1580.
Apart from the numerous meta-analyses showing the problems with research published in journals like Homeopathy as well as clinical studies published in journals not devoted to proving alternative medicine works, there is also research on how the popularity of such practices spreads and with it (potentially dangerous) misinformation. Unsuprisingly, a central problem is the internet"
Kata, A. (2010). A postmodern Pandora's Box: anti-vaccination misinformation on the Internet. Vaccine, 28(7), 1709-1716.
"One website described smallpox as “harmless under proper treatment […] And not considered deadly with the use of homeopathy...Many anti-vaccination websites promoted alternative medicine. Most (88%) endorsed treatments such as herbalism, homeopathy, chiropractics, naturopathy, and acupuncture as superior to vaccination. This was linked to the idea of moving “back to nature” (on 88% of sites), where natural methods of disease prevention were preferable – this included breastfeeding, eating whole foods, and allowing children to experience illnesses naturally. Critiques and suspicions of biomedicine were present on 75% of sites. Most common were arguments against Louis Pasteur's germ theory – websites contended that diseases resulted from imbalanced bodily conditions and lifestyle choices rather than from microorganisms. Some staged ad hominem attacks against Pasteur, claiming he plagiarized his theory."
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