To ask whether or not people here believe in homeopathy - at the risk of floggin a dead horse...

[MistyB]

Winter: Homeopaths are not unqualified - they follow 3 or 4 year degree courses including anatomy and physiology.

Alistron1: The principle of Homeopathy has been known since the time of Hippocrates from Greece, the founder of medicine, around 450 BC.

I am tempted to answer the bottles falling on the floor question but feel that you would ridicule the answer in the way that the Spanish Inquisition determined that the theory that "the sun was imobile and at the centre of the universe" was "foolish and absurd".

We can ridicule it anyway you like, there are so many ways.

And anyone can call themselves a homeopath, I could stick a sign in my window right now and set up shop, so your first statement needs a rather large qualifier before you can accurately use it.

ps, the notion that the sun is immobile and the centre of the universe is foolish and absurd.

Homeopathy = sugar pills for fools for whom the placebo effect is enough to make their health improve

Ok, assuming homeopathy is real ... how on earth do you rinse out the bottles? Aren't you just making stronger and stronger medicines ... and then putting them heedlessly into the water supply?

I accept that the sun is obviously merely the centre of our solar system! Poorly worded post - my apologies!!

never worked for me.

gotta love quackademia

No, I do not believe that water and sugar constitute valid medicines for real illnesses and diseases.

But at least the powers that be are non-believers
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/45/45.pdf

No more NHS funding and no more money wasted on research, thank goodness.

i had a dog who was incredibly car sick and had to be sedated for long car journeys.

when he was about 3 a customer of mine offered me free homeopathic tablets as she was working on extending her practice in homeopathy from humans to animals, and wanted free feedback. the tablets given to me were for animal travel sickness.

the dog was NEVER sick again. not once, not so much as a wimper.

AMAZING

could be co-incidence, but certainly could not have been placebo (unless the dog was highly intelligent)

The placebo effect has been shown to work in animals - they trust the adult who gives them tablets.

I've got nothing new to say on the topic. Just wanted to say I've never been on a thread that got to 1000 posts before. Crikey!

As you were.

Rhian82 "No, I do not believe that water and sugar constitute valid medicines for real illnesses and diseases."

I do, it's called Lucozade for a hangover. :o Maybe I should repackage it as homeopathy and charge 10x as much for a bottle.

Absolutely not.

We'd have to rip up the science books if such tiny concentrations of active ingredients had any effect.

1000 posts..wow! Am bored now and talking about spiders instead.

But I'm right and homeopathy doesn't work.

Bye!!

Guessing the 1000 post limit is there for a reason! But glad a new thread was started as I came along too late to add my tuppenceworth.

You're right, of course it doesn't work - it's nothing more than witchcraft.

sorry StataLove but had to comment when I read your post. For the record I completely agree with you WRT homeopathy, it doesn't work and is a load of bullshit. What bothers me is your 'witchcraft' comment. Why is it 'nothing more than witchcraft'? Why isn't it 'nothing more than the christian religion' or 'nothing more than catholicism' or 'nothing more than islam'?

I am verging on athiest principles myself (if that makes any difference), it just annoys me when I see one religion singled out as being more 'unreasonable' or 'laughable' than others.

A1980 - Tiny concentrations do have an effect - read here

Quote in case you can't be bothered to click on the link "The study demonstrates that some bacterial DNA sequences are able to induce electromagnetic waves at high aqueous dilutions."
There are other studies that have shown how high dilutions alter the properties of water that go beyond the explainations provided by molecular theory.

It is a sad day when we humans think we have all the answers to the natural and scientific phenomena that make up our world. Thankfully, the generations of scientists that have gone before us didn't stop at thinking the world was flat and sun revolved around the earth.

I see your point browncoats. I'm afraid it was plaigarism from the BMA statement on homeopathy.

Misty
the idea of dilution violates both the laws of thermodynamics and the chemical law of mass action. the idea of like curing like is nothing but superstition. Of course science progressed, and as it has done, what might have been thought vaguely plausible 150 years ago has dwindled to the point of being quite ridiculous. The article you linked to is irrelevant to homeopathy's claims - whcih is why, unsurprisingly, homeopathy is mentioned nowhere in the article!

And if homeopathy worked, it would have been shown in the countless clinical trials that have been performed. It's been studied for over 150 years so there is plenty of time to develop a rich tradition of almost total failure in randomised controlled trials. The overwhelming scientific evidence that homeopathy has no effect beyond placebo is impressive and leaves little room for doubt for those who believe in scientific inquiry rather than mumbo-jumbo and woo.

StataLove - Another report on the effect of ultra dilute solutions on breast cancer cells. There are more linked above.

I would say again that a mere 11% of Treatments given on the MHS have clinical evidence to show that they are effective.

Another large scale trial using diluted substance here. 2.3M people were given the dilution and cases of Leptospirosis reduced from 38 per 100,000 to 4 with no corresponding reduction in the untreated population of 8.8M.

My dh is a clinical oncologist and we use homeopathy all the time. At first he was sceptical because of his brainwashing training in med school, however, he used for a number of complaints he had and found it worked.

If the placebo effect works, why not use it? I personally do not believe it's placebo but then who knows. It's not something that we understand yet.

Misty, did I read that link correctly? They gave the actual bacteria to millions of people who were already in the middle of a dangerous epidemic. The claim being that because the sample they were giving to them was watered down it would help cure them.

Then they say that it did help compared to how badly they thought it might have gone if they hadn't.

It's not clear if they told the population what they were doing. Are we talking about swarms of white coated 'doctors' giving out impressive looking doses "to stop you getting sick" and creating the placebo effect?.

If so I think Gooseberrybushes and others established in the last thread that this is the only way that it can work. Not because homoeopathy itself works because of course it doesn't.

I've been thinking that we really should be calling it 'Homoeopathic magic' as it seems to be the modern equivalent of 'Sympathetic magic'

The placebo effect only really works on non-specific symptoms. It can't cure cancer but can make people feel better.

i didn't get the point of the arguments about placebo in the last thread as it certainly doesn't make the case for homeopathy.

I've never seen that statistic about NHS treatments before but even if it's true it doesn't justify investing in homeopathy and making it even worse!

I've noticed that quackademia and pseudo-science like to dip into science when it suits them. Sure, search and search and cherry pick articles that vaguely seem to suggest something about homeopathy but ignore the huge body of evidence that says that it's a load of rubbish. You need to systematically review and appraise the literature which is something you won't do since it clearly shows that homeopathy is just mumbo-jumbo.

MistyB - you are misquoting again.

These are the categories and the % associated with them.

11% Beneficial For which effectiveness has been demonstrated by clear evidence from systematic reviews, RCTs, or the best alternative source of information, and for which expectation of harms is small compared with the benefits.

23% Likely to be beneficial For which effectiveness is less well established than for those listed under ?beneficial?.

7% Trade off between benefits and harms For which clinicians and patients should weigh up the beneficial and harmful effects according to individual circumstances and priorities.

51% Unknown effectiveness For which there are currently insufficient data or data of inadequate quality.

5% Unlikely to be beneficial For which lack of effectiveness is less well established than for those listed under ?likely to be ineffective or harmful?.

3% Likely to be ineffective or harmful For which ineffectiveness or associated harm has been demonstrated by clear evidence.

So that's 40% that it seems quite reasonable to use if you need them, and 8% you would tend to rule out.

By the way, anyone who can demonstrate that homeopathic water is different to normal water (note, not that homeopathy works) could pick up the million dollar Randi prize!!

What are you all waiting for?