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?

I know someone who genuinely believed that her children would not get head lice because their systems were so strong because they weren't vaccinated and had regular homeopathic treatments. She got a rather nasty surprise.....

Well all I can say is that as a scientist, homeopathy works for me. I don't know how it works, but it does work for me.

I have had really severe allergies to grass, tree pollen, dust, mould and animal dander.

And I tried all the normal allopathic remedies, steroids, inhalers: dilators and steroids, decongestants, antihistamines. But the only thing that cured me was homeopathy. I can now go out in summer without dying, and I have a cat too.

QED
So ner!

Yes, RichMan, goes for all the other alternative quacktitioners too. The scary thing is how readily and uncritically it is accepted and promoted by many some.

What branch of "science", Venus?

It's just that you would be the very first scientist that I have ever encountered who ignores the scientific method and the importance of peer reviewed data in order to say, "Well, it works for me so it works. QED".

Venus- so why has it never worked when properly tested? And how do you explain the fact that it has absolutely no active ingredients? As a scientist?

I think that a lot of people don't know what "works" actually means.

I took it and then I felt better does not mean it works.

venus - " I don't know how it works, but it works for me " is not something a scientist would say. What kind of 'science' do you do?

I used to give Homeopathic remedies to my old arthritic horse and it helped her symptoms massively.

To be fair though, LaQueen - it's water that's been very vigorously shaken and tapped. This is very important. Saying it's "just water" makes the whole thing sound stupid or something

Venus In my younger years (child and adult) I had severe seasonal allergies. Now I don't. It's called spontaneous remission and is well-documented. I don't know how it happens but I expect an immunologist could explain it.

Some children with a history life-threatening anaphylaxis eventually 'grow out of it' but I wouldn't recommend treating them with homeopathic remedies instead of 'allopathic'* adrenaline and hydrocortisone in the meantime.

*You do know this is a pejorative term, right?

But LaQueen, as I pointed out earlier, the water is dripped onto sugar pills and then the water evaporates, leaving just... the sugar pill.

'Tis truly wondrous.

Venus Like others on this thread, I find it extremely hard to believe that you're a scientist. What work do you do, and what are your qualifications? (You've been asked this already, and ignored it.)

I have yet to meet "a scientist" who thinks you can entirely ignore the need to prove that A causes B simply because B follows A. Do you have any idea at all what QED actually means?

Cross-posted, LaQ

I'm not a scientist, just a nurse, but even I understand that correlation does not = causation.

When I was 16 I had a temp job filing accounting firms in an office. I genuinely believed I was an accountant.
I wonder does Venus do science somewhere? [Wink] Thus making her a scientist?

"Crumble, You claimed to be a scientist. You don't happen to be employed in homeopathy do you?"

Binky I think you made all this up.

Ellie: I didn't ignore it - I said I don't use homeopathy.

"Large parts of the world are now free of polio - we are very close to eradicating this entirely." Actually you need to read up on this - my post will help you if you start there. As polio has gone down with opv in some areas, the increase of unspecified acute paralysis exactly mirrors the decline. Which seems to indicate that either polio was overdiagnosed in the first place, or there is something very wrong with the vaccination programme.

"This is also the case with measles, diphtheria, malaria, hookworm, rubella, and BSE." I think you are exaggerating here, and to little effect: you ignore the side effects and what's more argue against a case I haven't made.

"Like anything in science, it's a progression & if anything is holding up complete eradication of these, it is superstition & woo, and the ignorant, anti-science rubbish spouted by people like you."

That's nice. Enjoy the nice warm feeling of self-righteousness it gives you while you ignore the terrible suffering inflicted by conventional care. Yes - ignoring.

"You also have to take into account the treatments & medicines that prevent deaths that used to be common - bacteria killed millions and millions of people. Fighting them with antibiotics has saved more lives than can be counted." That's great - I've used antibiotics. But I try to avoid them because their overuse has caused problems in itself. We could go there if you like.

"Diabetes & asthma - once major, major killers - are mostly controllable now."
\www.diabetes.org.uk/About_us/News_Landing_Page/Report-shows-each-year-24000-people-in-England-with-diabetes-suffer-avoidable-death/

www.laia.ac.uk/97_3/asthma_mort.htm - look at the rise in asthma deaths from 1958 -1995

And calling people who go to homeopaths "fuckwits" is lower than low.

"after doing research for alternatives" suggests that if you found something that worked you would use it. Medicine is the collection of all the things so far that work. If your alternative worked then it would be medicine.

Usually though when people say 'alternative' they mean "I've no reason to think it works, but my hairdresser/Greengrocer swears by it". Why would people take health advice from a hairdresser or a Greengrocer and dismiss the advice of a doctor?

I completely agree by the way that it's a load of tosh and from what I understand, homeopathic medicine is a substance/chemical/product diluted down so many times that it only contains the 'blueprint' memory of what the original substance/chemical/product was so that the body is able to work with it and provide a cure. The more dilute it becomes, the more potent.

If that is so and homeopathy genuinly did work then wouldn't we all be 'cured' from every ailment going due to people pissing it out, and it finding its way back into our water system again by the natural cycle of our water???

Venus is usually a sensible and intelligent poster, so if she says she's a scientist then I believe her. It just makes me that intelligent people who should know better are prepared to suspend their critical faculties in favour of woo and magical thinking. Homeopathic hospitals, anyone?

it's water that's been very vigorously shaken and tapped

Ahhh, but....The entire body of available water has been vigerously shaken and tapped by going round the the water cycle again and again and again.

With dilution after dilution after dilution of every known element and compound being brought into contact with it ....for millions of years.

So all water is shaken and tapped.

Thus rendering references to "extra" shaking and tapping a touch redundant.

Bringing us back to "just water"

Excuse Wiki: "Pancreatic cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States[1] and the eighth worldwide.[2] Pancreatic cancer has an extremely poor prognosis: for all stages combined, the 1- and 5-year relative survival rates are 25% and 6%, respectively;[3] for local disease the 5-year survival is approximately 15% [3][4] while the median survival for locally advanced and for metastatic disease, which collectively represent over 80% of individuals,[4] is about 10 and 6 months respectively.

Didn't Steve Jobs live for eight years after diagnosis?