To ask whether or not people here believe in homeopathy?

[DaisyLovesMetronidazole]

I don't at all.

However, I'm not out for a bunfight!

Just curious, as was surprised by the response of a certain group to this question today.

Prunnhilda Why would you assume that?

I suspect a white coat is a great placebo. Also in some people it's probably a good nocebo as well.

I don't use homeopathy, I never asked. I imagine he would just give the official view. But then, you wouldn't go to a doctor and ask him to prescribe you homeopathy unless you had a belief in it.

Most people don't question that much about convential drugs and therapies. They just get this way about alternative treatments. Even if they asked, they probably wouldn't get the real deal. I suspect the "one in a million" figure would be wheeled out very often.

It is really weird actually thinking about it, conventional treatments are repeatedly shown to cause all sorts of problems, but there is more trust in them because they're "scientific" and there's a twirl of white coat, but somehow the same people come over very knowledgeable and dismissive when it comes to anything else. Nobody looks at the clinical research for drugs they're prescribed, or at the original peer reviewed studies, despite repeated drug withdrawals, strong anecdata or whatever it's called these days and statistics on conventional medical error and morbidity. There's still an element of "take the red pill, take the yellow pill".

Blind faith in anything is a bad idea in my experience, whether it be conventional medicine or flavoured water.

Always better to get as much info as you can and make the best decision from that.

People are just so damned gullible, it amazes me sometimes.

Anyway, the flavoured water which has significantly more than homeopathic levels of alcohol in it that I have been drinking has caught up with me and I am off to bed.

Gooseberry "One could just as well say you cannot bear fuckwits who think that alternative treatements are somehow evil, that anything conventional or pharmaceutical is ipso facto good, and that being credulous is the same thing as being sensible and rational."

Some people do believe this. I think they are fuckwits as well.

valiumredhead, If your GP refers you for NHS homoeopathy ask him about the statement by the head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association. The BMA has a policy calling for No NHS funding for homeopathy.

The government is opposed to it too of course.

Did I really put an extra e in treatments.

That's nice to hear manatee: but you could easily have chosen to say it abou the people earlier up the thread who were expressing views very close to this, and you chose not to. There's targets, and there's easy targets.

Just because it is not understood ,does not make it rubbish .

morloth this "natural selection/gene pool" you keep harping on about ...I have never seen any proof that works ...could you explain why that cheers you up ?

There are many weak fools around me IRL ,I would have hoped natural selection would have taken care of them for me ...and yet ,they are still here ?

Doley: you have an altruistic society to answer for that. If we were all a lot meaner they'd have been gone long ago

Gooseberrybushes - and that ultimately is I think the reason why homeopathy's dishonesty is not justifiable (even if it could be regulated to make sure it only treats stuff that gets better any way, not the stuff that can kill you..)

it's the corrosive effect on the public understanding of science. It's the ultimate 'trust the man in the White coat treatment'

Medicine is only going to get more complex and personalised, people need to understand risk, side effects etc..and not just take what the doctor ordered. But they need to do it on the basis of evidence.

I hear that Drs like it though because it keeps heartsink patients and the worried well out of the waiting room.

Nope, sorry. Homeopathy is just a drop in the ocean compared to the damage done to health and public trust by failing conventional treatments. Your anger has the wrong target. An easy target.

Drop in the ocean

I haven't read the entire thread (sorry - lazy) but you should read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. Very good book which basically explains why homeopathy is a pile of poop. And other things which are also piles of poop.

I refer people to the very useful and informative website

How Does Homeopathy Work?

There's a thing I also see a lot of in the religion threads where 'science' is spoken of as though it were just a club with its own beliefs on the same level as 'faith'.
Now it isn't of course. It's simply a method of evaluating information. Of looking at reality.

Imagine a room somewhere. It is empty except that it may or may not have a chair in the center.

Tom here has prayed/asked his homopath/wiggled a crystal and knows there is no chair in the room. There's no need for him to go look.

Fred has looked and 'seen' a chair. To gather evidence he takes photos of the chair and shows them to someone who has not been told what they are meant to contain. They report seeing a chair.
He has someone walk behind it and observes that his view of them is blocked. He has volunteers blindfolded and sent them walking about until they trip over the chair.

Fred reports that available evidence strongly suggests there is a chair there.

Tom says "oh well 'science!' just because they have white coats doesn't mean they are always right you know"

Science and technology (created by clever people) has also insulated the dumbasses quite a lot.

But some people are just so determined that they just cannot be helped.

Personally, I don't care that much. Less people means more resources for my kids.

So anyone dumb enough to entrust their lives to homeopathy deserves what they get IMO*.

*I contain this attitude to those in the developed world who have the opportunity to know better but choose idiocy instead.

Gooseberrybushes - you are not listening. or maybe I wasn't clear.

I didn't say it damages public trust
I said it damages public understanding

As you said people trust the white coats too much and don't understand stuff like statistics and risk enough.

Homeopathy and all the rest of the Daily Mail promoted woo just compounds that, because it says 'look here are some respectable people who have studied longer than you, they publish Journals on the stuff, hell some of them are even Royal, and they believe in this stuff so there must be something in it. Just don't worry your pretty little head with the actual science....'

Herbwoman 'It would be very difficult to do the trial as very often the same symptoms in different people need different remedies, and similarly one remedy can be used for a wide variety of symptoms, depending on the overall picture.'

So you get a bunch of people with the same symptoms and what would be described as the same illness in physiological terms. They all see your bank of homeopaths who prescribe them the 'right' remedy depending on their dreams, whether they like red apples or green apples etc.. Once the prescriptions are agreed you randomly assign half the group as control and the other half as treatment. The control group get regular non-homoepathic sugar pills, in a bottle that say arnica 30C or whatever the homeopath said they should have, the treatment group get the real homeopathic sugar pills in the same kind of bottle. Neither the homeopaths, the patients or the research know which is which because the randomisation is done double-blind. Then you reassess everyone on symptoms. You could even give the homeopaths several bites of the cherrry, as I know they sometimes try out different remedies to find the right one. As long as you do the same to both groups and no one knows who is getting the real sugar pills and who is getting the fake sugar pills.

Its really not very difficult at all.

Even putting homeopathic medicine to one side ,I am surprised more of you are not worried about subjecting yourselves to a lifetime of conventional medicine?

There are proven cases where that has caused problems .

The listed side-effects ARE real ~they do mess people up .

I keep an open mind for that reason alone .

If my brain falls out, at least it will be free of crap

It worked for me and I was and am very cynical about everything. I don't care if everyone thinks that I am a big old gullible idiot at least I don't have to endure the crippling pain of migraine any more. Don't knock it until you've tried it

I guess I was relating it more to the 'some remedies probably work and some are probably bollocks' comment that someone else made - you can't test whether one remedy works particularly in the same way as you can with modern drugs.

Seemingly GPs often need several bites of the cherry too.

doley - we are concerned about conventional medicine which is why we expect drugs to be tested and the results published. We then expect the NHS to act on those findings. If they don't, which they haven't with homeopathy, then we reserve the right to get @rsey.

Doley, well you are lucky you don't have diabetes, hypothyroidism, heart disease, HIV/AIDS or any number of chronic diseases where people have to weigh up the side-effects of a lifetime of real drugs with the alternative of dying.

doley, you say "There are proven cases where that has caused problems" and "the listed side-effects ARE real" as though this were some kind of revelation.

That is why they are listed.

What part of that was surprising to you or hard to understand?

Medicines are sold on the basis that either you are better of taking it. Eg: it cures cancer but gives you dandruff or that people are statistically better off taking it. Eg: it cures 60% and kills 1%.