to think homeopaths really just make money out of the gullible?

[WidowWadman]

A remedy made from diluted bits of the Berlin Wall - seriously, that's surely just a test to find out how far they can push it, isn't?

"Nearly cried laughing."

I agree. I love SGB's posts, they crack me up, if you manage to read them before they get deleted

Loved TiggyD's post too- so astute!

Hi :) I think someone said I was bitter and defeated - not at all. Certainly not bitter, and I haven't read anything that comes near to challenging the points I've made, but I've read on with a sort of fascinated awe. I don't think I've seen such unthinking self-congratulation before so it's been quite an eye-opener.

Cote: I don't think it's funny because I think it masks a terrible and unquestioning gullibility to a pharmaceutical ideal which doesn't exist.

Ellie (was it Ellie?): You said you were going to look at those polio figures - did you bother? What did you think?

Crumbledwalnut- how is the way you are posting any less convinced in your rectitude and morally superior or more clever? Really? It looks exactly the same to me.

Yes, I think I'm right. But I was hoping for an interesting conversation rather than a lot of snickering on the back seat of the bus but it didn't happen. Nobody even said anything to make me rethink. And the awful posts about fuckwits and fucknuggets - I wouldn't talk to people like that under any circumstances, so why here? And naturally one wouldn't be very impressed by people who think that's funny and cool.

But it would be interesting if you could listen and consider the evidence.

What would you think would be an engaging approach?

What evidence has been presented to challenge anything I've said? There was some talk about relativism earlier but that seemed to come a cropper because the links I posted about the problems of blind faith in a pharmaceutical approach were dismissed with what can only be described as a "worth the sacrifice" tone. Beyond that, nothing.

Loads, I thought. Maybe look through again?

No, nothing at all. I have looked through again. I've been lurking.

I don't know what else to say then, really. I suppose I feel the same way about your arguments: they make no sense to me, and I can't find a hook to find a point at which we can relate at all.

What are the arguments I've made that don't make sense to you?

All of them. I went through the post you addressed specifically to me, for example, and I just could not see it in any way that made sense. I realise you believe it was systematic and logical, but it didn't read like that to me.

You mean this, about my convictions?

I certainly have a conviction that homeopathy helps a lot of people.

I certainly have a conviction that it contains no pharmaceutical active ingredients.

I certainly have a conviction that the best way to harness whatever power it does have is under controlled conditions in the NHS

I certainly have a conviction that people who dismiss it are also prepared to dismiss as paltry the terrible problems caused to many people by conventional treatment.

I'm not sure why any of these statements are difficult to understand, to be perfectly honest with you Bof. You didn't understand any of these?

Do you think everybody else didn't understand them too? That might explain a lot. But I don't know why they're so hard to understand. They seem very straightforward to me.

I agree with your first and second points. I think your third point is debatable, and I happen to disagree. I disagree with your fourth point: I've already pointed out that I've been involved in a campaign about Staffordshire, and lots of posters have made the rational point about net harm, which you haven't addressed.

Hi crumbled. Would it be ok if I address your convictions? I promise to do so without any form of abuse or attack.

I certainly have a conviction that homeopathy helps a lot of people.

In what way does it help people?
Do you have any scientific proof of its efficacy over and above the placebo effect?

I certainly have a conviction that it contains no pharmaceutical active ingredients.

What are "pharmaceutical active ingredients"? Do you mean that it contains nothing that will have a scientifically measurable effect?

I certainly have a conviction that the best way to harness whatever power it does have is under controlled conditions in the NHS

Surely you will agree that the NHS has a duty to only provide treatments that have a scientifically proven efficacy. If so, where is the proof for homeopathic treatment?

I certainly have a conviction that people who dismiss it are also prepared to dismiss as paltry the terrible problems caused to many people by conventional treatment.

Without logical, peer reviewed, repeatable, scientific proof, any claims of the efficacy of homeopathic remedies are just anecdotal. If you can direct me to such proof I would be very grateful.

Only a fool would deny that many people have been adversely affected by "conventional treatment", but by the same token vaccines, surgery, antibiotics, Etc. have been scientifically proven to have saved hundreds of millions of lives. They do so in ways that can be readily understood and replicated.

I have an interest in "alternative" remedies, but have yet to find any solid evidence for any of them. I have friends who swear by homeopathy for chronic medical conditions, but when I ask them about the results the conditions are never cleared, they just feel a bit better. Please help me to find some compelling answers.

I live in an area with a high middle class hippy fool/normal person quotient.

It's made me drink a lot more magic fucking water than I ever did whilst living up North.

My liver is shot.

I don't think all the magic water in the world could bring me back from my overexposure.

I'm fucked.

You bastards.

PS - You can't dance, & you dress like A BUNCH OF TWATS.

But your twatting facebook photos look the business. I sincerely hope your children smoke magic crack in infinitesimally small quantities (& just nick the smallest, most dilute bit of your humanity to pay for it).

All the posters here who are deriding homeopathy are believers in the placebo effect.

So basically the placebo effect is self healing, ie thinking yourself better.
Healing yourself with positive thinking.
Surely this is impossible.
Surely we all need expensive drugs to make us better, reduce our blood pressure etc.

Crumbledwalnuts: I'm in your camp, but cannot be bothered to argue with closed minds.

I am all for accepting the power of the placebo effect.
But let's call it that, shall we?
Not homeopathy.
It's the placebo effect from someone listening to you and giving you sugar pills.

I don't think anyone is denying that drugs can do harm but I still don't understand what you suggest the alternative is. Not treating people until we have absolutely perfect drugs? Would you really like to go back to pre-modern drugs times? Both my maternal grandparents died of TB a few years before there was a treatment for it available, my great grandmother lost two children under the age of 5 in one week to diphteria. Diseases modern medicine can deal with (although we might run into difficulties with TB in the future).
And surely we are allowed to question and judge HP independently from conventional medicine. The claims that HP makes wrt dilutions and water memory and like-heals-like have nothing whatsoever to do with other treatments. I don't understand this attitude at all.

"So basically the placebo effect is self healing, ie thinking yourself better.
Healing yourself with positive thinking.
Surely this is impossible.
Surely we all need expensive drugs to make us better, reduce our blood pressure etc."

Nope. The placebo effect is real. But homeopathy says that it is not the placebo effect. It says that the remedies have actual physical effects. That is what we are challenging. And I am adding a challenge to expensive drugs. Considering the cost of the intredients, homeopathic remedies are incredibly expensive.

For me, posting on this thread is like being a member of the Anti-Nazi League and going to an EDL meeting.

They wouldn't want to treat me with respect either for having an opposing view.

Let's not forgetthis warning letter from the FDA to Nelson's in 2012 regarding practices in their factory. One of the key findings was that the conveyor belts worked in such a way that 1 in 6 bottles of a particular remedy had none of the "active" ingredient in it at all. And that this was clearly visible to an observer. And none of their customers noticed. Which rather suggests that Nelson's are treating their customers with contempt.........

So basically the placebo effect is self healing, ie thinking yourself better.

It's one half of a two faced coin.

Placebo....by believing something helps, you pay less attention to the symptoms of what ails you and feel a degree of "better".

Nocebo....by believing something harms, you increase your attention on the symptoms of what ails you and fell a degree of "worse"

The first doesn't works on me, the second.....oh that works perfectly. I can end up on the verge of throwing up with just the merest (however false) suggestion that something I just ate or drank was off.

Doesn't work so well when the part of the brain involved no longer functions so well. People with dementia get less pain relief from pain meds, becuase the "placebo boost" of anticipation and expectation of relief isn't available to them due to impairment.

When my late MIL was in a particular form psycosis the effect either way could be boosted notably. She would either feel loads and loads better, or on deaths door, depending on whatever anticipation she had from a substance. When she believed that I was Gestapo, or Ukranian spies were lurking, a plate of rissotto prepared by the wrong person could make her actually ill. Cos she thought she's been poisened and her body produced the best possible interpretstion she could reslte to the concept of being poisened. In other cases she would "treat" her physical sysmptoms with holy water She wpuld splash it on herself. And feel better.

If we want to harness placebo we need to have the ethitcal debate about giving inert substances to people, when they think they are being treated. Something that I personally am not in favpur of. There are enough God Complexes in the medical profession as it is. I prefer the push towards an insistance that patiensts are fully informed, as in truthfully, of their treatemnt, so they can give informed consent. Informed consent goes put the window with the use placebos becuase their wider impact relies on people NOT KNOWING (or believing) they are placebos.

But if people disagree and want placebo as part of medical practice, we don't need homeopathy. The effect isn't exclusive to the practice. Not by a long chalk. We can pick a from a huge range of possibilities that don't include the profit margins of snake oil peddlers.

I took a course on the history of scientific thought (have a few science degrees myself) and homeopathy came up. It became popular because it worked better than anything else available at the time. Whether this was because it was actually doing anything or because it was simply dangerous to allow a doctor near you in the 18th century is debatable.

However, I have taken the same approach. I have a son with a condition that conventional medicine can offer very little so we started using alternative treatments many years ago. Some (eg diet) have now become so mainstream that his neurologist & paediatrician have suggested trying them (his paediatrician at the time laughed at us). Others (cranial osteopathy) didn't do much with him while others (eg homeopathy) have helped a great deal.

I can't explain why homeopathy worked (in the early days he had no understanding of what a medicine was and we weren't using a practitioner - the first remedy cost a couple of quid with very surprising results), nor to be fair do I really care. If it works I'll use it, if it doesn't I'll stop.

I AM interested in whether something is potentially dangerous - & how much it costs. If answers to those questions are acceptable we'll give it a shot. If it doesn't work nothing lost.

In our case the biggest surprise has been homeopathy. I didn't expect it to work, but as it did continued using it. It could be placebo now (but not the first time - maybe that was just coincidence?) but tbh I don't care. I'd rather harness placebo to treat a condition than a drug with side effects anyway. Especially in the case of my eldest son who cannot communicate side effects & who would potentially have to take drugs that I wouldn't want to risk for myself let alone him - except as a last resort.

Our homeopath has been great - fantastic support over the years -much cheaper than couselling & with remedies thrown in and the continued avoidance of drugs with potentially nasty side effects (which would need to be taken for years and years). What's not to like? Does it bother me that it might be placebo? No, why would it.

I find it quite strange that people would prefer that we had ds1 long term on drugs with potentially very nasty side effects tbh. If we get laughed at and called woo for wanting to avoid it I can live with that. I happily tell his doctors we'll try a quack remedy first & they're fine, they know that the drugs can have nasty side effects & that they often don't provide the results you want anyway.