Basically alot of vitamins with some weird looking gunk they found under a rock thrown in… and don’t forget the milk thistle and shark cartilage. I don’t know how we managed to get by for the past million yeasrs without shark cartilage…
However, don’t you think J&M’s protest signs agains homeopathy sound oddly familiar for some reason?
jONES, I believe you’ve confused something like naturopathy with homeopathy.
See, it’s possible there are medically active ingredients in plant extracts. Presumably several different ones with several different effects and side effects. Because they are sold as supplements, no-one knows the quantity or quality of any component that might be active in a patient’s body. We assume not much, because users don’t immediately show dramatic reactions.
Extracts of willow bark really do something and it is pretty well understood as to potency of the active ingredient and side effects. Likewise laudanum.
Homeopathy has no active ingredients, beyond imagination. Its premise that less is more should mean that everything that can dissolve in water will display stronger effects as the water sample becomes more pure. Ha!
…there are homoeopathic vets who successfully treat animals. Where is the placebo effect there?
This one time, at the park, my dog hurt her shoulder. I made a bit of a fuss of her, had a prod and a feel of the affected part and after a few minutes she trotted off all happy and “cured”. Most dog owners will have a similar story to tell.
I certainly wasn’t doing anything to directly treat her injury – I didn’t even know for sure what was wrong. But the fact remains a bit of attention from me did something to make her better. Since I don’t believe in magic, the effect of my actions must have been primarily psychological. That’s the placebo effect, surely.
I got a cold and, do you know what, I didn’t do any homeopathy and it got better. Homeopathy definitely works; it is so powerful that it even works at a distance without you having to do anything. Wow!
If science can’t explain how it works, is that because homeopathists don’t allow scientists to conduct double-blind experiments to demonstrate whether it works or not? I’d have thought that the most likely explanation.
Contrary to what “alternative” “medicine” may claim, doctors and medical scientists generally do want to cure people. And they readily pick up on things that appear to work, and conduct clinical tests, hoping to find results.
This means that “alternative” “medicine” that works, quickly becomes “conventional” medicine.
And this again means that the one thing that caracterises the whole spectrum of “alternative” “medicine”, is… that it doesn’t work 😉
The notion about homeopathic vets is interesting and would be valid but for three things.
1) Homeopathic vets typically use normal (i.e. working medicine) alongside the homeopathic
2) The placebo effect seems to involve being made to feel special. Why should not animals also respond to this? It would be intersting to see if social animals responded to homeopathy better?
3) I would love to see the findings published somewhere peer reviewed. i bet no-one has dared!
Gypsum Fantastic, “… my dog hurt her shoulder. I made a bit of a fuss of her, had a prod and a feel of the affected part and after a few minutes she trotted off all happy and “curedâ€Â.”
Ah, you must have healing hands! But joking apart, vets are too busy to make a horse feel special, even vets who are also homoeopaths; no more special than they’d make any animal feel while being treated anyway.
Kristian, lots of alternative medicine works at about the same percentage as conventional medicine and some conventional medicine which isn’t practised by many doctors my end up getting a thrashing by the medical community because it works and they are feeling threatened. I have unconventional but not alternative thyroid supplementation, I can’t get it on the National Health Service as I was diagnosed as having M.E. by them, however, with thyroid supplementation I am 100% well again.
mat, I realise a National Health Service isn’t what you have, perhaps (though Brits are always complaining about it) it is quite a good thing after all. P.S. lots of British Doctors use Homoeopathy alongside conventional medicine. Gets complex doesn’t it!
mat, you really, really don’t have an appreciation of what vaccinations and the rest of modern medicine do for you.
Did your mother bury as many kids as made it to age 15? How many times has your family fled the city when rumours of a plague got too close? Is your father on his third wife, the previous ones being lost in childbirth, including your own mother?
That words like cholera, small pox, tuberculosis, polio, etc. do not have intense personal and horrible memories for you is a sign of the value of the gift that you take for granted.
Medical science has done far more for people in the last 200 years than superstition has in the last 2000 or 20000 years.
Take out the word ‘modern’ and replace it with ‘alternate’ and you will have a much more truthful statement. Do you know how many billions of pounds, dollars and Euros are taken in by the supplemental and holistic medicine industry?
No, I am not a doctor or a pharma shill, in case you wanted to believe I am lying.
That’s good JohnnieCanuck, I hope mat comes back and reads it. I think the alternative industry in North America is much much bigger than here. Though there are a lot of fashionista types in it, when you get down to ordinary street level for ordinary people, it’s quite a good option for things that are minor worries rather than major life threatening events.
My mum is an ardent supporter of this nonsensical crap CRAP!!!
I kept discussing it with her, until she said, I do believe in it as I do believe in the holy ghost…
At that point, I just closed my mouth and felt like ARGH!
I don’t know whether you people watched Dawkin’s documentary “the enemies of reason”. It’s a nice piece of work that debunks this and lots of other bullshit…
I did not believe in homeopothy until I went to an MD who also practices homeopathy for recurring kidney stones just to please my wife who wanted me to cover every possibility before surgery. As a result of just two days course of sugar pills, not only was I able to avoid surgery and have nearly no stone problems since (and those few episodes since treated successfully homeopathically), my hiatal hernia healed after 20 years of agony. If this was due to a placebo effect, fine with me. No side effects, no surgery. Why don’t we use this and if it works, what’s the problem? If it doesn’t, no harm done. Many homeopaths by the way use and believe in convential medicine as well. Whatever works best!
Homeopathy is not harmless. The water may be, but it is mixed with belief. Belief that the ‘practitioner’ is right when telling you to drop conventional treatments for cancer, malaria, etc.
Many homeopaths also believe in conventional medicine? Really?
One of the British TV channels conducted a double-blind homeopathic experiment a few years back. If you did a google search you should find it somewhere (I can’t be bothered, sorry!) They made a pretty interesting show out of it. Amusingly, the first 30% or so of the results they checked were very positive and it started looking like the homeopathic treatment would have a significant positive effect. Once all the result were uncovered it had no discernible effect at all. That’s why it’s so much more sensible to have faith / belief in things that cannot be laboratory tested – you can’t do a double blind trial of whether God exists or not!
To be rational, you have to ask the same question of both homeopathy and religion:
If I feel good about it, but the science says I’m fooling myself, which am I going to believe?
Most people fail this test because our experiences seem so real and important to us. It takes a certain kind of person to say, “Well, maybe my feelings and experiences were mistaken, and I’m going with the science.”
Pat yourself on the back, all you who’ve done this. Right now.
If Jesus had worn socks with His sandals, would they have stayed dry automatically, or only while He was paying attention during His walking on water thing?
People that wear socks in sandals have a dress sense so poor that it can only be taken as examples of unintelligently designed human beings. Thus socks in sandals are demonic, and thus The Son of Man would have never had the urge to wear them.
If his socks got wet while walking the lake, it’s proof of evil extant in the world, and thus a proof of God.
Shouldn’t Jesus be all about the efficacy of water since as God he made pretty much everything out of it? I guess he didn’t put all the elements in and then take them out…oh well.
The homoeopathic version of evolution: 1 parts spark of life, 1 parts vitamins and minerals, 2×10^24 parts water. Appropriately banged against a leather glove. Sorry. “succussed”
They could at least be honest with the labelling; “Contains Placeborium, Madeupicillin and Bullshitticum Culture A”.
That’s both homeopathy and religion 😉
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January 16, 2019
Homeopathy == value-added water.
O how I hate homeopathy.
One true believer said to me, “I love how science can’t explain why it works.”
Actually, it can. Placebo effect and denial.
Basically alot of vitamins with some weird looking gunk they found under a rock thrown in… and don’t forget the milk thistle and shark cartilage. I don’t know how we managed to get by for the past million yeasrs without shark cartilage…
However, don’t you think J&M’s protest signs agains homeopathy sound oddly familiar for some reason?
Vitamins? Gunk? “High potency” homeopathic preparations have none of the active ingredient in them at all.
Homeopathy only works because God makes it work. Because God isn’t silly or made up or anything the way homeopathy is.
jONES, I believe you’ve confused something like naturopathy with homeopathy.
See, it’s possible there are medically active ingredients in plant extracts. Presumably several different ones with several different effects and side effects. Because they are sold as supplements, no-one knows the quantity or quality of any component that might be active in a patient’s body. We assume not much, because users don’t immediately show dramatic reactions.
Extracts of willow bark really do something and it is pretty well understood as to potency of the active ingredient and side effects. Likewise laudanum.
Homeopathy has no active ingredients, beyond imagination. Its premise that less is more should mean that everything that can dissolve in water will display stronger effects as the water sample becomes more pure. Ha!
I’m a programmer — I know that less is more!
Hmmm. it doesn’t sound as if you all realise that there are homoeopathic vets who successfully treat animals. Where is the placebo effect there?
And why does everyone leave the first of the two ‘o’s in Homoeopathy out?
Maybe you guys don’t realize, all medicine is made based on the effect that a plant gives you
“Hmmm. it doesn’t sound as if you all realise that there are homoeopathic vets who successfully treat animals.”
Well then you should have no trouble pointing us in the direction of the double-blind control trial that convinced you of this.
…there are homoeopathic vets who successfully treat animals. Where is the placebo effect there?
This one time, at the park, my dog hurt her shoulder. I made a bit of a fuss of her, had a prod and a feel of the affected part and after a few minutes she trotted off all happy and “cured”. Most dog owners will have a similar story to tell.
I certainly wasn’t doing anything to directly treat her injury – I didn’t even know for sure what was wrong. But the fact remains a bit of attention from me did something to make her better. Since I don’t believe in magic, the effect of my actions must have been primarily psychological. That’s the placebo effect, surely.
I got a cold and, do you know what, I didn’t do any homeopathy and it got better. Homeopathy definitely works; it is so powerful that it even works at a distance without you having to do anything. Wow!
If science can’t explain how it works, is that because homeopathists don’t allow scientists to conduct double-blind experiments to demonstrate whether it works or not? I’d have thought that the most likely explanation.
Contrary to what “alternative” “medicine” may claim, doctors and medical scientists generally do want to cure people. And they readily pick up on things that appear to work, and conduct clinical tests, hoping to find results.
This means that “alternative” “medicine” that works, quickly becomes “conventional” medicine.
And this again means that the one thing that caracterises the whole spectrum of “alternative” “medicine”, is… that it doesn’t work 😉
The notion about homeopathic vets is interesting and would be valid but for three things.
1) Homeopathic vets typically use normal (i.e. working medicine) alongside the homeopathic
2) The placebo effect seems to involve being made to feel special. Why should not animals also respond to this? It would be intersting to see if social animals responded to homeopathy better?
3) I would love to see the findings published somewhere peer reviewed. i bet no-one has dared!
More to the point is the fact that modern medecine does little to prevent diseases and Everything to sell you “cures”.
Gypsum Fantastic, “… my dog hurt her shoulder. I made a bit of a fuss of her, had a prod and a feel of the affected part and after a few minutes she trotted off all happy and “curedâ€Â.”
Ah, you must have healing hands! But joking apart, vets are too busy to make a horse feel special, even vets who are also homoeopaths; no more special than they’d make any animal feel while being treated anyway.
Kristian, lots of alternative medicine works at about the same percentage as conventional medicine and some conventional medicine which isn’t practised by many doctors my end up getting a thrashing by the medical community because it works and they are feeling threatened. I have unconventional but not alternative thyroid supplementation, I can’t get it on the National Health Service as I was diagnosed as having M.E. by them, however, with thyroid supplementation I am 100% well again.
mat, I realise a National Health Service isn’t what you have, perhaps (though Brits are always complaining about it) it is quite a good thing after all. P.S. lots of British Doctors use Homoeopathy alongside conventional medicine. Gets complex doesn’t it!
mat, you really, really don’t have an appreciation of what vaccinations and the rest of modern medicine do for you.
Did your mother bury as many kids as made it to age 15? How many times has your family fled the city when rumours of a plague got too close? Is your father on his third wife, the previous ones being lost in childbirth, including your own mother?
That words like cholera, small pox, tuberculosis, polio, etc. do not have intense personal and horrible memories for you is a sign of the value of the gift that you take for granted.
Medical science has done far more for people in the last 200 years than superstition has in the last 2000 or 20000 years.
Take out the word ‘modern’ and replace it with ‘alternate’ and you will have a much more truthful statement. Do you know how many billions of pounds, dollars and Euros are taken in by the supplemental and holistic medicine industry?
No, I am not a doctor or a pharma shill, in case you wanted to believe I am lying.
That’s good JohnnieCanuck, I hope mat comes back and reads it. I think the alternative industry in North America is much much bigger than here. Though there are a lot of fashionista types in it, when you get down to ordinary street level for ordinary people, it’s quite a good option for things that are minor worries rather than major life threatening events.
My mum is an ardent supporter of this nonsensical crap CRAP!!!
I kept discussing it with her, until she said, I do believe in it as I do believe in the holy ghost…
At that point, I just closed my mouth and felt like ARGH!
I don’t know whether you people watched Dawkin’s documentary “the enemies of reason”. It’s a nice piece of work that debunks this and lots of other bullshit…
I did not believe in homeopothy until I went to an MD who also practices homeopathy for recurring kidney stones just to please my wife who wanted me to cover every possibility before surgery. As a result of just two days course of sugar pills, not only was I able to avoid surgery and have nearly no stone problems since (and those few episodes since treated successfully homeopathically), my hiatal hernia healed after 20 years of agony. If this was due to a placebo effect, fine with me. No side effects, no surgery. Why don’t we use this and if it works, what’s the problem? If it doesn’t, no harm done. Many homeopaths by the way use and believe in convential medicine as well. Whatever works best!
i feel i should link to the obvious at this point.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/nov/16/sciencenews.g2
…oh, it already was at the top anyway 🙂
i guess i’ve now reduced the effectiveness of that link by increasing the dose.
Homeopathy is not harmless. The water may be, but it is mixed with belief. Belief that the ‘practitioner’ is right when telling you to drop conventional treatments for cancer, malaria, etc.
Many homeopaths also believe in conventional medicine? Really?
http://www.badscience.net/2006/07/homeopath-squirms-amusingly/
One of the British TV channels conducted a double-blind homeopathic experiment a few years back. If you did a google search you should find it somewhere (I can’t be bothered, sorry!) They made a pretty interesting show out of it. Amusingly, the first 30% or so of the results they checked were very positive and it started looking like the homeopathic treatment would have a significant positive effect. Once all the result were uncovered it had no discernible effect at all. That’s why it’s so much more sensible to have faith / belief in things that cannot be laboratory tested – you can’t do a double blind trial of whether God exists or not!
wow… I’m amazed that so many of you have so much to say about homeopathy…
To be rational, you have to ask the same question of both homeopathy and religion:
If I feel good about it, but the science says I’m fooling myself, which am I going to believe?
Most people fail this test because our experiences seem so real and important to us. It takes a certain kind of person to say, “Well, maybe my feelings and experiences were mistaken, and I’m going with the science.”
Pat yourself on the back, all you who’ve done this. Right now.
in perspective, all of you who’ve been tempted to wear socks with sandals but have resisted the urge, you can pat yourselves on the back too.
If Jesus had worn socks with His sandals, would they have stayed dry automatically, or only while He was paying attention during His walking on water thing?
People that wear socks in sandals have a dress sense so poor that it can only be taken as examples of unintelligently designed human beings. Thus socks in sandals are demonic, and thus The Son of Man would have never had the urge to wear them.
If his socks got wet while walking the lake, it’s proof of evil extant in the world, and thus a proof of God.
Shouldn’t Jesus be all about the efficacy of water since as God he made pretty much everything out of it? I guess he didn’t put all the elements in and then take them out…oh well.
Is that the watered down version of evoloution? 1 parts spark of life, 1 parts vitamins and minerals, 2 parts water?
what is the homeopathic use of the water, dripping off from the socks of Jesus in his sandals after walking on water?
The homoeopathic version of evolution: 1 parts spark of life, 1 parts vitamins and minerals, 2×10^24 parts water. Appropriately banged against a leather glove. Sorry. “succussed”
ah, that would be the gospel of evoloution according to john… 😛 Yeah, i read about that. set on 325 until half baked…
Consider homeopathic wine. How drunk could you get?
Is it me or has everyone missed the point of this cartoon?
http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html
Plenty o’ harm to be had with homeopathy!
They could at least be honest with the labelling; “Contains Placeborium, Madeupicillin and Bullshitticum Culture A”.
That’s both homeopathy and religion 😉