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.

Right. So when the results are positive then that's ok. When the results are negative it's because rigorous scientific method doesn't suit homeopathy.

Well. That's a shame.

Coalition - Wow, you have read the entire body of evidence supporting Homeopathy in the links above and concluded that they said 100% of Homeopathy doesn't work. Yet relatively flimsy evidence on conventional medicine is OK?

By your comment regarding medical doctors telling you about limited evidence, you seem to be implying that Homeopaths do otherwise? Homeopaths that I have know have been very keen to pass on their knowledge and understanding and are also generally balanced when it comes to conventional medicine, understanding that each has it's place.

Re double blind: The trials that attempt to show that Remedy X is more effective against disease Y are those that tend to show low levels of effectiveness as what they should in fact be testing is as you describe. However. many trials are designed and carried out by those constrained by conventional medicine. The trials of the type - longer term effectiveness of Homeopathic treatment over conventional treatment are more complex to manage and less commonly funded - yes you need large scale trials but these are difficult and costly to carry out without large and centralised resources.

MistyB - I don't have to, I can just read the reviews, and even then I can just skip to the conclusions.

I don't think Homeopaths start by saying 'Well the balance of the evidence is that these pills don't do any good, but we think this nice chat will make you feel better'.

I've lost you on your re: double blind point - can you rephrase it?

I wonder if people are arguing that there is no value in placebo. I am beginning to think that unless you get better with a drug, there's no point in getting better.

Cases like northerngirl's astonish me exceedingly. But still I can't see how there is anything more than placebo. It seems impossible.

However I think there is real and active value in that placebo.

Coalition: as Torridon has become too bored to supply us with the links that show there is no need for deception in placebo, perhaps you would do so.

And at the same time, since you also think the placebo effect is easy to understand, you can explain how a state of belief affects physiology. How predictable is it. What are the mechanisms. In effect, mind over matter.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3008733/?tool=pmcentrez

Yes, I've seen that study, it shows nothing of the sort. Any more?

homeopathy, no. bollocks.

alternative therapies, it depends - yes, really. it depends what it is - are we talking about medicines or practices which haven't had their clinical trials yet, or done on a wide enough scale, or for a long period of time - or chinese medicine, or other relatively widely "tested" techniques vs. watered down pish which claims to cure cancer?

Huge variety in this sort of thing, and no one concrete answer from me. Other than I think the "1 part in a billion" water thing sounds like utter nonsense to me.

No. It's bollocks.

Really: "The homeopathic medicine was given to the 2.3 million population of the provinces usually worst affected. Within a few weeks the number of cases had fallen from 38 to 4 cases per 100,000 per week, significantly fewer than the historically-based forecast for those weeks of the year. The 8.8 million population of the other provinces did not receive homeopathic treatment and the incidence was as forecast. The effect appeared to be sustained: there was an 84% reduction in infection in the treated region in the following year (2008) when, for the first time, incidence did not correlate with rainfall. In the same period, incidence in the untreated region increased by 22%." That doesn't make you think twice?

No Homeopath's don't start like that any more than doctor's say, here are some drugs that may relieve your symptoms, have catastrophic risks, a list of possible side effects and unknown long term implications and if these don't work, because there is limited clinical evidence that they do, we will try some more potential damaging drugs.

Homeopathy has been subjected to double blind testing (while not always the most appropriate evidence for Homeopathy) - in 2009, there were 74 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of homeopathy published in peer-reviewed journals which describe statistically significant results, from which firm conclusions can be drawn. Of these RCTs comparing homeopathy either with placebo or established conventional treatments, 63 were positive for homeopathy and 11 were negative.

Gooseberrybushes - What you are asking for there is an explanation of the Placebo effect, not an understanding of it. You can understand how something works and how to use it without understanding the underlying mechanism, and indeed this has been the case for conventional medicines even in the modern era up until really quite recently.

We understood Morphine well enought to use it clinically well before we knew about receptors in the brain etc.

MistyB: interesting but do they all show statistically more significant results than placebo?

How is that study not evidence for the placebo effect working when the subjects know the pills were placeboes?

I am well aware of what I was asking for: I was told twice that placebo effect is not complicated and is easy to understand.

So it is a little understood mechanism, but you are ready to dismiss it out of hand. Without understanding. And your link doesn't show what that placebo works without deception.

Yes.

Misty B - But doctors DO say "here are some drugs that may relieve your symptoms, have catastrophic risks, a list of possible side effects and unknown long term implications and if these don't work, because there is limited clinical evidence that they do, we will try some more potential damaging drugs."

They just don't say it about the most commonly prescribed drugs where there aren't catastrophic risks etc.

Who's dismissing what out of hand? The palcebo effect is easy to understand. The mecahnism isn't. That doesn't make the effect difficult to understand.

If people think they will feel better they are more likely to feel better.

It obviously piggy packs on the deception of earlier placebo studies and depends heavily on the inculcation of belief that "this is very likely to work" (which is just what people complain about homeopaths stating to patients).

Show me a study that shows researchers stating : this is a placebo, nothing more, nothing less.

This is simply a more complex and ambiguous way of presenting placebo.

I don't see how you can give a placebo without saying that you think it will work. Otherwise it isn't a placebo. And if the placebo effect exists then you are not being deceptive.

You are dismissing the importance of the placebo effect. Or not, in which case you agree with me.

Obviously it is easy to understand that there is such a thing as placebo effect and that it sometimes works

Why would I ask that? How could you conflate the two? Obviously I was asking how it works.

I said it's valuable and little understood. You said it isn't little understood. Well plainly, it is. To claim I was mystified by placebo effect, when I plainly understand that the effect is there and is important, is -- I don't know, why would you do that? The effect, why and how it works, is little understood. Without understanding placebo it is difficult to dismiss out of hand (bollocks, yawn) the benefits it can bring.

No I suppose not. But the study says that with rigorous clinical testing it was shown to have an effect. Therefore piggy backing on the deception of other studies. The effect claimed has been produced by deception.

Unless the researchers were lying to the subjects, which would be deception anyway.

I'm not dismissing the placebo effect and if I was why would I want to provide a mechanism for how it works?