not admit to my lovely df that i think homeopathy is a load of, well, nonsense?

[ForkInTheForeheid]

My df is a big believer in homeopathy, the homeopathic Dr was the first port of call when we were kids, I'm sure we as kids and my dad have had lots of benefit from the placebo effect over the years. :-) however, as an adult with a critical mind and some scientific knowledge I came to the conclusion that I didn't believe any of homeopathy's claims. So for several years every time DS or I get any illness my dad tells me which homeopathic remedy I need, emphatic that aconite will destroy the common cold if you "catch it early enough" and that rus. tox. (?) will cure chicken pox and stop the spots from turning into scabs, they will just disappear back into the body apparently...

So aibu to politely nod and agree despite thinking it's a load of rubbish (no placebo effect if you don't believe it will work either) or should I admit my scepticism to him? I'm usually pretty honest with people and so it makes me feel icky and uncomfortable but I don't want to hurt his feelings.

NO, they show the wisdom of trying to evaluate what needs to be done according to criteria which are rigorous and peer-reviewed.

As for QALYs, doesn't every patient want to have some idea about their chances of recovery and a useful life? Trying to imagine how it would be if a doctor said, "Oh, that's rather reductive. We've stopped gathering data about that."?

AS new information becomes available, the quality of the assessments becomes refined.

Unlike the faith base of homeopathy which admits no rigorous testing.

no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying QALYs aren't a very good measure of how beneficial a drug is when you are reviewing clinical and cost effectiveness wrt should it be provided on the NHS.

It is a way of attempting to measure wellbeing, which is something that's not necessarily amenable to measurement. Healthcare isn't like manufacturing widgets - it's about people, relationships and compassion at least as much as it's about high-tech surgery or blue flashing lights. You can't measure the value of compassion.

You can measure how much drug A reduces some proxy measure but that proxy measure may not be particularly meaningful, either in clinical terms (because it's all very well reducing cholesterol, but do people actually live any longer? Are they less disabled? These things don't necessarily follow) but attempting to measure how much whatever it is the drug does actually matters to the patient and his or her family and friends is incredibly difficult - and attempting to quantify the immeasurable may well create daft results. Health isn't accountancy.

I see what you're saying about QALYs, but not what it has to do with homeopathy.

The argument about homeopathy is about whether the "drug" works. It doesn't.

As an aside QALYs have many weaknesses as a theory but unfortunately if you have to make resource allocations on something as complex as health care benefits you do have to opt for some system and this one appears to be the best. NICE rely on objective data, e.g. actual outcomes in terms of years added to life, restoration of function, return to previous state of health, etc. but they also need to measure subjective experiences such as pain and suffering, disability, perception of life quality, etc. They do put quite a lot of effort into assessing the subjective elements with as much clarity as possible, e.g. comparative studies of the differences between life quality assessment of people thinking about what it would be like to have a condition vs actual life quality assessments of people who do have the conditions (apparently disability scores as highly undesirable in theory but in practice conditions like tinititus top the scales of most undesirable), but at the end of the day it remains a contentious measurement as it is based on subjective experiences.

cake was talking about money being spent on homeopathy instead of NICE-approved drugs, that's why we got on to NICE. Homeopathy costs the NHS peanuts and helps a great many patients. There just aren't perfect drugs for every human condition, sadly. And even if there were, they wouldn't work for everyone. Ask a GP - often they are frustrated at not being able to help people with chronic conditions, for instance. Or people where the drugs 'work' but stop working, or where the side effects are extremely unpleasant.

Agreed, booboo.

I can understand why you don't want to confront your DF but homeopathy is bunk, IMO.

A couple of links:

what's the harm?

The reason homeopathic "drugs" have no side effects is because they are water. Any help is purely the placebo effect.

Yes echt, but the fact that they are water doesn't mean that they don't work. For the right conditions, homeopathy is a relatively cheap and safe way to access the immense power of the placebo effect, and it outsources the lies in a way that enables GPs to square it with their conscience. Much as it sticks in my throat, I think it might be better to have this stuff in the hands of NHS professionals who can be trusted not to prescribe it for inappropriate things like infections and cancer.

Homeopathy does not work. It is bunkum

Wether you call it alternative or reinvent the name as complimentary it is still bunkum and snake oil. Whilst it may reduce stress in those anxious of any medical intervention it will not cure anything.

Sever toothache may mean a root canal. I may leave it for three days being scared of dentist and the pain passes because the tooth nerves are all dead. But it will still fester and become a greater problem at a later date if not treated.

If you want a prime example look at Steve Jobs and why is he dead. HE believed was deceived by the alternative therapy larks for too ling before he looked to proper medicine to combat his cancers and he left that until it was too late for a realistic cure. If he had instead followed proper medicine from his first diagnosis his prognosis would have been much better since his condition is curable if acted on directly.

Placebo effect cures NOTHING...It is an effect it is not a cure or else it would be called the placebo cure. Cancers can have a remisson with no intervention but you know what its not a cure nor is it a miracle answer to prayer. It's the nature of the disease.

Both my parents were major woo peddlers when I was a child. My mum has since mostly recovered - my father has just got worse: he has graduated from mere homeopathy to extraterrestrial conspiracies, chemtrails and the ridiculous, victim-blaming notion that everything that happens to us is a result of us willing it to.

As for confronting them about it: I did tell my mother how upset I was at finding out that a simple inhaler could have alleviated my childhood asthma, which she insisted on treating with sugar pills at the time. Her choices have done actual harm to me; I still have nightmares of suffocating. It was a good conversation in that it has helped me realise that she genuinely wanted the best for me and helped her understand how good intentions aren't always sufficient to make things okay.

I mostly leave my dad's delusions alone on the basis that there is simply no hope of ever changing his mind. I do contradict him vehemently about the harmful stuff. He recently came out with the notion that every "people" has a unique collective "spirit" and that Jews were therefore inherently interested in power and money whereas Muslims naturally tended towards violence and barbarism. This is not the kind of stuff I'd let stand unchallenged.

all those people who hate homeopathy but keep calling it complimentary... inadvertent praise indeed.

I love the idea of complimentary medicine. You open the bottle and Imran Khan [insert sexy voice of choice] says "my god you look amazingly beautiful today! That top is just stunning. And your hair! radiant!":

The placebo effect can be really really powerful, even in situations where you would think that it wouldnt be. If both practitioner and patient believe the bunk, and there is a certain ritual about the diagnosis and treatment (which, in a long session talking about your illness with a sharing caring therapist as opposed to a 2 min chat with your time pressed GP, is going to add an extra element of wellbeing and confidence) you can attain a placebo success rateof up to 90% for conditions such as high blood pressure and chronic pain.
I am a medical herbalist - 5 years in university - and I get REALLY pissed off when people confuse herbalism with homeopathy. I tend to tell them that the difference is that our medicine actually has active ingredients in it.
Sadly over the years homeopathy has had some bloddy good PR and wealthy backers (while the herbalists were too busy arguing with each other and missed the NHS inclusion boat) and as a result you can make a damn good living as a homeopath, whereas most herbalists I know can barely rub two willow sticks together. Hopefully the long awaited inclusion of herbalists as recognised 'medical professionals' should enable people to access it through the NHS at some point.
But homeopathy, as well as many many other woo woo therapies, is only as good as the well orchestrated therapist who administers it.

No offence to you nettletea.

Am I'm really hoping my taxes don't pay for MEDICAL HERBALIST courses?

ARGGH. I've gone as far as having to tell someone in a pharmacy (not Boots) that "if i wanted a placebo effect I'd probably have got it with paracetamol".

Placebo effect is very powerful, "whole person" medicine is very very important, and a bit of hand-holding can make a surprising number of aches and pains and sniffles seem unimportant. Also, a slightly scary amount of modern medicine isn't based on a whole lot of strong or well-tested evidence. Most people in western medicine would agree with this, and most NHS employees would add the rider "but we can't afford to do it because the system is at breaking point".

However, by definition, there's no evidence that placebos work, so if you want to intervene effectively, do it with something where there's actual evidence.

Haven't read the whole thread, but check out Sense about Science's website re homeopathy, acupuncture etc vs. evidence.

There is good evidence that some applications of acupuncture are doing something to do with neuroimmunomodulation, i.e. it works kind of, but we don't know how. There is good evidence that some herbal remedies do do quite potent stuff (but there are issues to do with regulation of contents and dosages, not to mention the lack of ability of people to identify the right plant in the first place, which is an increasingly massive problem in many parts of the world). Most doctors who know anything about the subject would admit that traditional chinese medicine (combination of various therapies) seems to get further in treating patients with long-term inflammation-related conditions, than traditional western medicine, but most would also agree that we don't know much about what's going on there.

NettleTea is right about woo woo therapies though... there is evidence linking homeopathy to the placebo effect but not much else... If they weren't actively dangerous in trying to replace real medicine (I'm another one who has had asthma treated with sugar pellets) I'd just put them in a class with hairdressers and interior designers - they can do something you could do for yourself, but they make you feel better about it (and make you part with a lot of money, which could possibly be related).

Frankly I'd put a copy of the Ernst/Singh book in the medicine cabinet at home (remove much other stuff to make room for it) and use it to decide whether any specific ailment needs
(0) an ambulance [get away from the medicine cabinet now then]

(1) real medicine
(2) a placebo and some hugs
(3) a bit of HTFU [to put it somewhat bluntly].

BTW seeker I like your version of complimentary medicine.

Compllementary therapy is just that, it complements the drugs and doctors. For instance when my mother had breast cancer (the first and second time, this is the third and final so not sure it will happen this time) she spent one day a week , for 10 weeks, at the local hospice, with other women being treated for breast cancer.

Their therapy included Ti Chi (?sp), art, yoga, having a nice meal with a glass of wine, talkls from various groups, (guide dogs for the blind, local history, local red cross).

There were also options of having a manicure / pedicure, other beauty treatments.

Non of it was any good to treat cancer in a medical sense, but it did give the users a relaxing day and a bit of a boost and I'm sure it did help people go through treatment.

Anna, on the contrary, there is very good evidence for the placebo effect. You can see it in any RCT, when the people on the placebo arm do better - they always improve too. There is loads of research evidence for sugar pills - even when you tell people they are sugar pills - sham surgery, sham acupuncture. Shedloads of evidence. It is real it works surprisingly well and it has an effect even in conventional medicine.

Sashh - that's why cancer hospitals provide complementary therapies (the Christie, for instance). Cancer treatment makes people feel like shit - some massage, or acupuncture, or tai chi, helps them cope and makes them feel a little better. It doesn't cure the cancer but it does help the patient at a horrible time.

None of that is a good argument for the lies of homeopathy. Sure, give treatments that make the patient feel better. Don't peddle lies to dying people though, it makes you a sick bastard.

It would harm the doctor-patient relationship if you knew that proper doctors could potentially give you a bunch of arse and tell you that it was proper medicine.

CallmeAl - there's a huge ethical and legal difference between the sort of shysters who promise false cures for cancer (or MS or anything else) and offering homeopathyor complementary therapy as something to alleviate the stress of cancer treatment.

There are enough ruddy doctors fleecing the sick by offering 'cures' in America or Germany. Of experimental unproven treatments that cost tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. Very little difference between them and the sort of bastards who offer 'stem cell therapy' for 'curing' MS.

Edam - I think we completely agree, but I expressed "work" in a way more restricted than your way of using it. I totally agree some placebos work (the ones that show a placebo effect as opposed to the ones that don't) in terms of making people feel better, but we wouldn't be calling them placebos if we actually understood how they worked and could use them with any predictive power.

Noblegiraffe - I think the issue is communicating/understanding what's the stress relief and what's the "proper" medicine. If everyone could distinguish between the two successfully, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion...

Homeopathy if taken during an IVF cycle can render the cycle unsuccessful (research proven ) I just wanted to point that out while we were on the subject.
Most IVF centres highlight this now, but the more people are aware the better ....