To be driven mad by how many people are utterly convinced by homeopathy?

[Wannabuyawatch]

I am just completely baffled by how many educated, clued up people I know, including family members and many close friends, that do not question homeopathy in any way. It is complete nonsense that bases its "science" on the memory of water?? You might as well wave your magic wand and say Hocus Pocus. Of course the placebo effect can be a cure in itself but not for children?? Even my brilliant pediatrician tries to give me homeopathy (probably bc she thinks it will calm me down rather than my children!!)
There is a mum at school whose son has horrendous allergies and asthma. She has taken him off all his inhalers as she wants to "cleanse his system" and only gives him homeopathy. Arrrgh. I see the little boy in tears every day in the spring as he can´t sleep and is exhausted due to his breathing.
My MIL insisted on giving their old dog who was in agony and riddled with cancer homeopathy instead of conventional medicine and god, did it suffer, why why??
Don´t know why but it drives me mad…such an irresponsible industry that suckers vulnerable people in and leads some to give homeopathy instead of conventional meds in dangerous situations.

I know many people who use alternative therapies. They are all normal, caring, sensible and nice.

Lucky you. Yes, many of the exploited customers buying expensive water are nice people.

Test that though. Get them on to the subject of childbirth or similar. I, as the child of a hippy, seem to give off hippy pheromones. That, or it's the sling! So, a certain type of person gets lulled into a false sense of security, and they tell me what they really think about health care, because they think they're speaking to a like-minded soul...

I've had complete random strangers strike up conversation with me, and then start telling me about how ill people's conditions would be cured by alternative methods. And they actively turn the conversation to therapies. Not me.

If you created a giant set of scales and put people severely harmed or killed by conventional medicine on one side and people severely harmed or killed by alternative therapies on the other side, the first would outnumber the second by hundreds of thousands to one. That is a fact.

People rarely access alternative therapies just once. The fact that they repeatedly turn to therapies which are apparently worthless speaks of value to them which is not open to measurement, as well as of the failure of conventional medicine, to meet the needs of some people. The existence of a thriving alternative therapy industry in a country where conventional medicine is widely available and free at the point of use is very, very telling.

As for people not being aware of the evidence - it is all out there. Everyone has a responsibility to themselves to ask questions about what they are putting in/doing to their bodies. Practitioners have a responsibility to 'first do no harm' and then to refer to the scientific literature.

And if you used the same scales to measure people cured/managed by conventional medicine against homeopathy the first would outnumber the other by millions to none
Homeopathy does not harm because it does not do anything
The harm comes because homeopaths claim it heals and make a lot of money claiming this

"Lucky you. Yes, many of the exploited customers buying expensive water are nice people."

My MIL saw a healer this week, the sister of her cleaner, who suggested it. MIL was an A&E nurse for 20 years in the busiest A&E department in the UK. She retired 15 years ago and gradually has declined into chronic ill health. She is on a massive number of medications which all have unpleasant side effects. She had surgery for a hernia 10 years ago. They nicked her spleen by accident and had to remove it. She is now on long term AB therapy. Then she went in last year for an investigation to see if she had pulmonary hypertension - she doesn't, it turns out, but during the investigation procedure they damaged a nerve in her leg and she now can't walk without a frame. The leg is constantly painful.

She has a good GP, is the least woo person I've ever met, and has always trusted conventional medicine, but she is at her wits end with her health, which has been made significantly worse in many ways by her treatment. She doesn't believe in healing. However, in this instance she has been so desperate she agreed to see the woman, and what do you know - she feels massively better. My SIL (who is also very anti alternative therapies is shocked by how well she could walk the day after the 'healing'.

I think people are very complex, and sometimes we need to leave it at that.

Apples and oranges. Medication with active ingredients naturally has the capability of side-effects! Whereas purified water has the placebo and the nocebo effect. It does not mean it is worth £30-£125 a session link.

My water bill for the year is £400! Also, someone on MN once tried homeopathy, and it was contaminated with an actual substance she was allergic too. So, not necessarily as pure as the stuff that comes out of my tap!

Yes, it's telling. Charlatans and the deluded prey on vulnerable, desperate people, who don't have the knowledge to wonder how water could remember. And people who like to be "different". And we don't have regulations to limit quackery.

What about the duty of people not to sell dubious goods? Don't they have a higher duty than their customers?

P.S. when I was a child, the child of a church-going family also broke an arm. And... got taken to a doctor.

Some people are killed by incompetence/mistakes by doctors. Some people are killed by badly tested drugs.

But the huge bulk of iatrogenic deaths are people who would have died anyway and the drugs they took were a last chance. Warfarin is a good example of this- highly toxic, but life saving for many. Life shortening for some. But shortening a life that was coming to an end anyway- the drug is a chance of a longer life that works for many.

A more interesting death rate comparison would be between people treated by conventiona medicine and people not treated at all. That would be pushing 100% morbidity for most cancers, heart attacks......

It's also important to remember that any drug which is actually effective will also have side effects. That's why many CAM treatments have no side effects..........

Still catching up, but let's start with the claim that conventional medicine is harmful. The huge numbers of people 'harmed' by medicine includes those who died while surgeons were operating to save their lives and those who died from chemotherapy and powerful drugs. If they had relied on drinking water that had been shaken by an 'expert' then ALL of the patients would have died instead of just a percentage.

The figures for 'harm' also generally include scars from operations. I know which I'd rather risk if I had appendicitis.

The very fact that there are adults out there who don't understand that demonstrates the harm woo is causing to medicine and lives.

What does that mean though, that prayer doesn't work? Surely prayer works as well as any other form of calming meditation?

Huge numbers of religious people claim that prayer actually heals (how can someone live on this planet and not have heard this?). They have been proven wrong by asking religious people to pray for half the patients in a study. It made no difference to recovery rates.

So that's that one settled.

If an adult chooses to have homeopathy for a serious illness and dies as a result, it's their look out. Sorry, but part of being an adult is making your own choices and some of them are the wrong ones. How many people die of smoking and alcohol related diseases? It was their choice to live that lifestyle.

Practically everyone knows that homeopathy isn't proper science so it's their fault if their condition worsens.

Also, some drugs from your GP do have really shitty side effects, which is probably what puts people off conventional medicine. I had Champix to stop smoking and it was the worst 3 months of my entire life. Then again, I chose to smoke in the first place and to take the drug when I knew that t could cause depression and suicidal ideation. So, I had nobody to blame but myself.

So, if adults choose homeopathy instead of something given to them by a health care professional they have to suck it up if it makes them worse I'm afraid.
Forcing things on children is another matter.

Well, this is my whole point. Why get het up about grown adults who choose to visit a homeopath? Aside from people who may use it in place of chemotherapy, it's their choice and frankly, I can think of people who have made far more questionable and risky decisions.

Generally I just think let them get on with it. Why interfere?

Practically everyone knows that homoeopathy isn't proper science

No they don't and that is the problem. Why should it be ok for people to pretend it is science and gradually convince a significant portion of the population that it is. To the point where on these threads we still have to explain to people that it's not herbal and that it's actually been proven not to work.

It seems to be getting worse, not better. Because so many people have a friend who told them it cured them.

some drugs from your GP do have really shitty side effects Of course they do because they contain active ingredients, but on the other thread we have people saying that conventional medicine is bad because some people treated with it die anyway. That's how confused people are and it's being done to them deliberately for profit.

What can possibly be more risky than using than using homeopathy to treat asthma, CVD, diabetes etc Paul. It is not just chemotherapy that saves lives.

Paul- I think you may have missed the "irony"typeface.....

I personally don't like seeing people being duped and I will always do anything I can to protect people from charlatans and hucksters. And to constantly put forward the sort of critical thinking that will protect people from being duped in the future. Rather than shrugging and saying "well, it's their own fault"

Didn't they use to tar and feather snake oil salesmen? I don't know if that is apocryphal, but it seems to me they had the right idea.

What happened to personal resposibility? I am 99% sure that people are talking about a minority. We just can't regulate everything because a minority of people may make the wrong choices.

In fact, the best solution would probably be for homeopaths (and their ilk) to be banned from treating people under the age of 18 and for people to have to sign a consent form saying that they understand any potential risks, such as the ones you would sign before an operation. I would have thought that most practitioners would do that anyway?

It's social responsibility we're talking about!

All homeopaths are either lying to their clients or are deluded. There is no question about that at all. So they should be stopped by law. In the same way that cowboy builders are.

People make the wrong choices because (in many cases) they are being misled, lied to and given incorrect information dressed up as "facts".

If people want to say - as you apparently have chosen to - "well, I've looked into it and I know it doesn't really work, but I enjoy it, I only use it for minor things and I've only got myself to blame for wasting money" then fair enough up to a point (although I'd argue that continuing to give charlatans money is contributing to the wider problem of legitimising them and helping them continue to peddle their claptrap).

The problem is that a substantial proportion of the people who use homeopathy AREN'T making any kind of informed choice, they're being given misinformation masquerading as science, they're reading bad journalism which gives credence to poorly-run and misleading "trials".

This thread alone is testament to the number of apparently well-educated people who can't even distinguish between homeopathy, herbalism or a number of other CAMs.

It's a grey area isn't it? Most of the people I know who are into homeopathy are Steiner school types. Sorry, that is the best way I can think of describing them. They are pretty responsible people and if they want to spend £50 on something that isn't backed up by studies. Well, that's their choice.

Obviously it can be more serious than that. But, making homeopathy illegal is like banning drinking because some people become alcoholics. Some people who drink will be vulnerable. I don't drink and I've seen the damage it can do. Sorry, but I just can't get fired up about the evils homeopathy in the same way.