Homeopathy works so well...not

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1711


Do either of these yo-yos stop to think that they are just supervising this animal's demise? No. Even the homeopathic vet recommended real treatment.

Hyperthyroidism in cats really is a classic system in which to debunk homeopathy. Real treatment works very reliably and success can be measured objectively. It's a good example of a disease for which there is almost no scope for the credulous to look at the patient and pretend that real benefit has accrued. Instead these idiots are having to reach for the "not got the right remedy yet" excuse.

[Benguin]

But it must must must work if a million people in the netherlands consult homeopaths. Need I say more?

[Prester John]

Ah ha, notice the "Ostritch" tactics of the homeopaths, the classic
And tomorrow is another day.......

from Wim "Stonewall" Pardaan, a defence of homeopathy that surely is the "unmovable wall" of debate. The sheer logic is unrefutable, and not suprisingly, The RealMonkey posted no more, after the complete devestation to his entire skeptical case.

I am truly in awe.

It is an Ex Parrot
It has ceased to be.

[Rolfe]

Oh dear. This is awful.

Time to see if I'm still banned at H'pathy....

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Oh dear. This is awful.

Time to see if I'm still banned at H'pathy....

Rolfe.

Thanks

I'm not banned, but my membership is not 'activated' and the system is refusing to send out a new activation e-mail and I think I've run out of usable IPs as well.

[geni]

I've got a few spare accounts if anyone is interested.

[Rolfe]

I've intervened in both this and the other (new) hyperthyroid cat thread. Interestingly enough, I wasn't banned in spite of the Addison's episode. wonder how long it'll take JanZy to delete the posts?

Alphonse's Sarah, who is well advanced in thyrotoxicosis (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1711&PN=1)
Val's Morgana, in the relatively early stages of the condition (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1818&PN=1&TPN=1)

If the discussion continues, I intend to point out that this is much the same as the Addison's situation, it's just that the time couse of the disease is a lot slower. But it's still a case of denying a patient real, proven treatment which is known to work, in favour of homoeopathy which has never been proven to work. In fact this is worse, because the patient is an animal which has no choice in the matter.

Does anybody know if what Wim is doing is legal in Holland?

Rolfe.

[Eos of the Eons]

I'm a littel PO'd at the comment for you to go kill more animals Rolfe. I'm sure I'd be banned in a instant if I tried to post anything, and I have no idea what I'm talking about in the treatment of animals anyway.

I just wish I could put those horrible name callers in their plance!

And this post:PLEASE do not put your cat on allopathic meds as Rolfie, the troll, suggests, except as a last resort!

"Except as a last resort"???!!! Wait until your cat suffers and suffers until you can't stand it, and then finally help the poor thing.

I'm sorry, this just has me quite upset and feeling like my hands are so tied. :(

I really am starting to despise homeopaths, sighs.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I'd forgotten just how offensively stupid Cora and Shirley are.

Perhaps they didn't manage to read the part where you tell them that you've never ever seen T4 lowered by homeopathy and that Wim is at best a fantasist and at worst and outright liar.

But there we have it again: what homeopaths are really like.

[Rolfe]

I see Naturalhealth is back there. I thought she'd been banned after the business where she re-posted my Addison's "trick question" and Snoopy walked smack into it, but maybe she was only suspended.

Her suspension here was up at least a week ago, so maybe she'll come back here for some more batting around.

I'm saving those threads on H'pathy, just so we have proof of what they want to keep out of sight, assuming they delete it.

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Rolfe, can I suggest you remind Ms Reischman that against her assertion;

"Homeopathy is real medicine and much more effective than the garbage Rolfie, the troll, calls medicine."

you have never seen evidence of a cat being treated successfully and that it would be a very good idea to do as Ms R herself suggests in the other thread;

"it is a good idea to have lab tests run periodically".

What would those tests show, I wonder.

[Rolfe]

I'm on to it.

If I put a link to these threads in my sig line, do you think they won't delete them either?

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

I wonder what recourse these owners/patients think they if if (when) the homeo stuff fails. The best they've done is wasted time and prolonged suffering ...

I think it's animal cruelty myself, and I think the owners are as guilty as the moronopaths

[Pantastic]

God these people sicken me. They push their ridiculous cult of vital forces and energy and quantum whatever on unsuspecting, gullible people. It's easy to let the blind lead the blind, and let idiots be conned by delusional wannabe doctors. But when children and animals are subjected to suffering at the hands of these people, it goes too far. Sadly, we are helpless. Somewhere, right now, a cat is suffering and probably dying because of a cult that should have died out long ago.

They are preventing the successful treatment of a condition that will likely soon lead to death, and in my view that's pretty much murder. I mean, if you had a diabetic emergency and I deliberately withheld your insulin, I would be guilty of your death.

Homeopaths: Delusional, fraudulent, betrayers of the trust of the sick. And now, killers.

Sorry Im just so insanely angry at what is unfolding over in magic water land.

[Rolfe]

Morgana isn't in any immediate danger. If Val chooses to do nothing at all (which is what she'd be doing by choosing homoeopathy), it will still be quite a long time before she's seriously ill. Her T₄ is still only about 90 nmol/l, which isn't thyrotoxic yet, and it seems to be rising pretty slowly. And Val seems to be seeing real vets, and even if some of these real vets are homoeopaths, the chances are that they'll switch to something that works before things get utterly desperate.

Sarah, on the other hand, sounds seriously ill. I'm really worried it's getting to the "too late" stage, and if Alphonse does finally do the right thing she still won't recover. I'd really like to throttle someone. Starting with Wim Pardaan.

Rolfe.

[Pantastic]

Dr. Wim, I bet that gave him an ego trip. 'My daughter is skeptical and has cats healthy thanks to homeopathy. Need I say more?'
WTF? What are you talking about? Im sick of these endless appeals to authority avoiding the basic issue. Sadly, this crap seems to satisfy all the gullible idiots hanging around that place. I know someone who has loads of irrelevent letters after his name and he thinks homeopathy is good, thus it must work.

Whatever.

[Rolfe]

Well, I'm going to have a bath and go to bed now. I'm having to miss my morning off tomorrow because my colleague is on holiday.

So I'll just have to get up and go into work and sit there writing "Excellent" and "Doing really well" on the usual stack of hyperthyroid follow-up requests, thinking that sometimes a rubber stamp would be good. And crying inside for poor Sarah.

Rolfe.

[Eos of the Eons]

Thank you for your sound efforts there Rolfe, I only hope somebody listens.

As for the cat owner, she brings it down as a "choice"

should be respected for their choices.

It is her "choice" and the homeopath choices that should be respected? It is not a choice. It is believing in fantasy.

Now other living things have to suffer for it.

[NoZed Avenger]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Sarah, on the other hand, sounds seriously ill. I'm really worried it's getting to the "too late" stage, and if Alphonse does finally do the right thing she still won't recover.

It is even worse: the above will "prove" how harmful western medicine is, as that real medicine killed it after she lived so long on homeopathic "remedies."

N/A

[NoZed Avenger]

I did not see any message(s) from Rolfe on that thread, btw -- so the message has already been 1984'd.

N/A

[Eos of the Eons]

Geez, that is so sick, and they replaced her sound advice with this crap:

Conventional treatment offers 3 options.

The first is a drug to destroy thyroid tissue, thus reducing hormone output. In our experience, this is poorly effective and what`s more, the drugs are very liver and kidney toxic ! Vet. homeopaths do not recommend this approach, which is easy to understand.

The second possibility is surgical. Removal of the gland(s) will reduce or eliminate thyroid hormone.With this approach, however, hormone replacement is necessary. Additionally, the parathyroids gland are removed also. These glands control calcium balance within the body and this is critical !

The third conventional treatment choice is radioactive iodine therapy. The iodine goes directly to the thyroid gland and destroys part of the gland, reducing hormone output. We have concerns about the long-term effects of the radioactivity. Radioactive iodine is one of the most highly radioactive elements known !

Professional homeopaths such as Dr. Hershoff, choose homeopathic or other holistic methods first for people and animals affected with hyperthyroidism, because these are generally safer and can be effective.

Rofle, can you go over these and let us know what is crap?
It all sound really horrendous, so no wonder they are scaring people into trying something "safer" and "effective".

I can imagine Rolfie is now banned.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I see Wim has offered this gem of advice;

"You could wait until the situation has clearly improved before checking her T4 again"

Well I certainly hope this follow-up is done and we get to see the results.

[Eos of the Eons]

What is their definition of "clearly improved"?

***grumbles***

[LostAngeles]

From the thread:

...
It feels like she is dying.
...

Sweet Buddha, Alphonse, she is dying and you're making it a long, suffering-filled death.

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Eos of the Eons
Thank you for your sound efforts there Rolfe, I only hope somebody listens.

As for the cat owner, she brings it down as a "choice"



It is her "choice" and the homeopath choices that should be respected? It is not a choice. It is believing in fantasy.

Now other living things have to suffer for it.

I'd like to see that one rephrased

She should be prosecuted for animal cruelty as a result of her choices

[Rolfe]

Well, Stalin's airbrush strikes again. I'm glad I saved the threads before that happened. They're on my home computer and I can put them up tonight to let people see what was deleted. I see JanZy also deleted Naturalhealth's viciously unpleasant posts, and the more unpleasant of Shirley's. I would have thought that anyone reading that pure nastiness would soon have got the measure of the homoeopaths, but not Val, apparently.

Funnily enough, BSM's original comments (as "The Real Monkey") are still there. Hey what did he do not to get airbrushed! And I see that he has also returned and repeated a fair bit of what I said - this time as "BadShavedMonkey", which I thought originally wasn't him, but this time it must be as he refers to things we've discussed together. I've also saved the threads with his posts, as I doubt they'll last any longer than mine did.

Well, we have the evidence, it's just a pity it's not easy to publicise this sort of thing and let people see what dishonest, lying scumbags these people are.

I feel really upset about Sarah. It's not just that she might die soon, it's the suffering she's going through right now. You know, we don't have much data about how untreated hyperthyroid cases progress in the long run. Because it's not normal not to treat them! It's easy to say, oh, if you don't treat she'll be dead soon, but I just don't know how long a cat can stand up to this metabolic assault. The constant pounding tachycardia she's experiencing must be putting a terrible strain on her heart though.

Hyperthyroidism was only really recognised in the cat in the late 1980s. There are various theories about the reasons for this. But the practical effect is that virtually as soon as it was realised what was wrong with these cats, it was possible to treat them. The condition was already well studied in man, and the drugs were available, and fortunately they also worked in the cat. So really, the only long-term untreated cases we know about are the homoeopaths' victims. As a result, I can't say how long Sarah (or Morgana) might or might not live, or even how likely it is that either of them will experience periods when they appear to feel better. I just know that poor Sarah is currently having a really rotten time and it's entirely preventable.

Treatment, and its side-effects.

The first line of approach is medical. Carbimazole and methimazole are the drugs of choice. We used to use carbimazole exclusively in this country, as it was the human-licensed drug. It worked very well, but quite often cats kept long-term on this drug would relapse, and for this reason surgery was often recommended unless the patient was very elderly. More recently methimazole was licensed for feline use, and so has to be the drug of first choice. It has also been more recently licensed for long-term use rather than just as a "get the patient well enough for surgery" approach.

The main recorded side effect of these drugs is depression of the white cell count. However, I seldom see this, and I can't think of any case where it was a serious consequence - the patient was simply managed by changing the medication regime. The other little wrinkle is that sometimes hyperthyroidism can be protective of kidney failure. A cat with mild kidney problems may have these worsen when the thyroid problem is controlled. This can be a bit of a balancing act, but the generally recommended approach is to control the thyroid and then treat the kidney condition.

Contrary to Wim's assertion (remember Wim is not medically or veterinary qualified), the drugs work well in the majority of cases, and they are not toxic to either the liver or the kidneys.

Surgery will of course give the possibility of a more permanent cure. The message here is, get a good surgeon! It's technically difficult to avoid interfering with the nearby parathyroid glands, which is obviously a bad idea. Removing both parathyroids will kill the patient, but I've never heard of that happening (though it's possible it has happened). The problem is usually interfering with the blood supply to the parathyroids during surgery, which will cause a temporary calcium problem. This can be avoided by operating on one side at a time, so that there is always one intact parathyroid. However, if trouble does ensue, it's usually possible to support the cat for a few weeks with medication to normalise the calcium, until the problem resolves. I used to see a few cats being monitored and treated for this every month, but not for a long time now - I think as the surgeons have got better at the technique it happens very rarely. Still, make sure you get a good surgeon!

The other snag about surgery is that sometimes cats go on to develop another site of thyroid hormone production in the chest, where you can't get at it, and so you're back at square 1. These cats either have to go back on medical treatment, or it's a good time to consider radio-iodine.

Radio-iodine treatment is expensive, but very effective. It's the treatment of choice in man. Of course anything with radiation about it is going to be anathema to the homoeopaths, but there really isn't much of a radiation dose involved and personally, I wouldn't hesitate. But the main reason radio-iodine isn't used more is that most cases do very well on the other, more readily available treatments, and you don't need to go that far usually.

The fact is that although there are a few cases that don't do as well as you'd expect, the general experience with standard treatment of hyperthyroidism is one of predictable, uneventful recovery. It's really very rewarding.

This is what Sarah (and Morgana) are being denied, and I'd happily throttle every homoeopath on that forum.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Wow, I see someone is now blaming vaccination for the increased incidence of hyperthyroidism! That's a first, but I guess it had to happen.

I think it's probably due to all the radioactivity floating around the atmosphere in these post-war days. I tried to figure with the timing, but the onset of the high incidence was too late for Hiroshima/Nagasaki to be the likely trigger, and too early for Chernobyl. Also, I don't think the worldwide distribution of the condition easily supports a higher incidence in the more polluted places - I'm told it's just as common in New Zealand. It would be a good research topic for someone.

I see Alphonse has posted his reasons for opposing rational treatment.I have received the suggestion from a real vet. Put her on radioactive iodine. With this process, she will need to stay quarantine for over 2 weeks; this cat does not do well with strangers; she goes into hyper-panic if she is put into a cat carrier; she would die of fright from being caged for 2 weeks. The other option is to have her thyroid removed. Rather radical in my opinion. The other option is to give her drugs every day. She refuses medication, always, always has.This isn't an unusual reaction on the part of an over-protective owner, but it doesn't usually get taken quite so far. Most people do reconsider when the realities are explained to them.

I think he's probably over-reacting about Sarah's probable reaction to the two-week radioactive quarantine. Most cats will settle well enough after an initial period of anxiety. Or as well as they can settle when they're popping hyperthyroid that is!

Thyroidectomy is "rather radical"!!! Bloody hell, isn't letting the cat suffer through this awful thyrotoxicosis a bit radical? Like I said, choose a good surgeon, and my own advice would be to have the thyroids operated on one at a time (if indeed a bilateral operation is necessary).

She refuses medication. So do most cats if all you do is ask them nicely! I admit there are a few very stroppy individuals who simply can't be handled, but I've seldom met a cat who couldn't be medicated either by skullduggery or by firm and expert handling. If I had Alphonse and Sarah right here I could show him how to give her a pill and no nonsense about it, and I'm sure his own vet could do the same.

The simple fact is, Alphonse needs to pick one of these approaches, and go for it. Otherwise Sarah is going to go on feeling like hell, and eventually her heart will give out on her.

He'd probably accept this all right if it wasn't for these criminal idiots lying to him.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

It's typical one-sided woo-medical argument.

The side-effects are harsh and/or have risks so we'll opt for homeopathy as it is 'harmless' and 'risk-free'.

We'd all like treatments for ourselves and others that are harmless and risk free, and research goes on to that end.

Mmm, trying to think of an analogy to mangle ...

I could decide the risks and ill-effects of driving in to work are too high and I want a safe option. So I sit in my chair at home popping sugar pills soaked in Cubiclium ... it's harmless, risk-free right up until when I get fired, then I'd just take more of it until I got my job given back to me, or maybe try Sicknoteus or Teleworkium.

I suppose it's a whole self-deluding reality you can occupy, if the genuine reality of hard decisions and consequences are too much to deal with.

[Rolfe]

Badly Shaved Monkey's posts have now been airbrushed too. Leaving unchallenged Wim Pardaan's pack of lies about the alleged non-effectiveness and dangers of the proper treatment.

Georgiana has also started a thread by posting the potted biog of a Californian vet who believes in homoeopathy, as if this somehow counters all the remarks about lack of evidence of efficacy and so on.

I'm just so sorry for Sarah.

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Rolfe
And I see that he has also returned and repeated a fair bit of what I said - this time as "BadShavedMonkey"

No, that's still not me.

Could you post the unairbrushed versions, I'm losing track here!

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Hey! That damn penguin's wearing a monkey suit. ;)

A poor imitation of the real thing.

[Pantastic]

I don't know why we should bother anymore to educate these people. It is obvious from this latest display that they simply do not have the intellectual capacity to debate at the level required.

This lack of mental ability is coupled with a shocking amount of arrogance, that somehow they are better placed to judge this treatment than established bodies of experts with many decades experience of working and researching the field.

They paddle around in the shallows of medicine, making money from the stupid, the gullible and the desparate, getting kicks out of being called doctor. Mostly, they are merely obtaining money through fraud, sometimes they are causing serious injury and death by withholding vital treatment. And yet, though they love the status of being thought of as a doctor by the general woo public, they are unable to take on the resposibility that comes with it. They can't, ever, accept anything negative about homeopathy. Homeopathy never fails. There is nothing it can't do. If a patient dies, they simply did not come to homeopathy early enough. They are completely unable to take resposibility for their actions, yet they demand that their patients place their absolute trust in them.

You can not get through to these people. Their arrogance and lack of critical thinking ability leads them to value their own subjective, flawed observations over established, well designed science. We would laugh at them and their little cult, if they didn't cause so much suffering.

[Pantastic]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
No, that's still not me.

Could you post the unairbrushed versions, I'm losing track here!

I didn't think it was you, his grammar was significantly different than yours. Or should I say, significantly worse than yours.

[LostAngeles]

Originally posted by Rolfe
...

She refuses medication. So do most cats if all you do is ask them nicely! I admit there are a few very stroppy individuals who simply can't be handled, but I've seldom met a cat who couldn't be medicated either by skullduggery or by firm and expert handling. If I had Alphonse and Sarah right here I could show him how to give her a pill and no nonsense about it, and I'm sure his own vet could do the same.

...

Rolfe.

*raises hand* I think I know the answer to my own question, but if the cat refuses medication, how is she getting the homeopathy in?

...
I forced her into a corner after my frantic message, and dropped liquid Iodium remedy into her mouth.
...

We do something similar with my mother's cat who has the same condition. We feed her, and in mid-eat we stick the plunger into her mouth and pop the pill in.

She's on methimazole and while she's still very thin, she's not getting any worse and is stable, happy, and as usual, needy-needy-needy.

Oh wait, I was scrolling down because I wanted to check what was new. I had thought the cat was getting pills...

...
Dear Wim: I will try and do as you suggested; I always give the pellets dry on the tongue crushed between two spoons, except with Sarah. She is soooo difficult. But I will carry on.
...

Rolfe, you throttle, I'll escape with the pets, then come back and give you a hand.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
No, that's still not me.

Could you post the unairbrushed versions, I'm losing track here! My God, that's bizarre! It sounds just like you. (You sure????) It's been deleted anyway.

Yes, I'll get to posting the different versions now. I've been in again - I was blocked from activating my membership this time but I just re-registered (as "Rolfee", in homage to Kumar!). I'll just update the latest versions to include these posts, and then link the series.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

Go-on praise the stubbly primate on his avatar!

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
Go-on praise the stubbly primate on his avatar! Badly Shaved Monkey, your avatar is awesome.

Rolfe.

PS. PJ has a great avatar too! Cool! Everybody is getting great avatars, have you seen Dr.Stefano's?

[Rolfe]

Here goes on the various versions of the hyperthyroid threads.

Sarah, first page (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah1.html) - only one version, BSM (TRM)'s posts weren't deleted, or at least not yet.
Sarah, second page, first version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2.html) - Rolfe's posts uncensored.
Sarah, second page, second version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2a.html) - Rolfe's posts removed, but "BadShavedMonkey"'s posts present.
Sarah, second page, third version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2c.html) - "BadShavedMonkey"'s posts deleted, but a PS from Rolfe.

Morgana, first version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/morgana1.html) - Rolfe's posts uncensored.
Morgana, second version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/morgana1a.html) - Rolfe's posts removed, but "BadShavedMonkey"'s posts present.
Morgana, third version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/morgana1c.html) - "BadShavedMonkey"'s posts deleted, but a PS from Rolfe.

Note that the "next page" link on the first page of Sarah's story won't work, you have to get the links from here.

Note also the posts from Naturalhealth and Shirley Reichsman that were also deleted. Nice, sweet, friendly people, these homoeopaths!

Rolfe.

[Prester John]

Shocking, how they can effectively torture animals and yet are blind to what they do :(

edited to add: Didn't want to be left out on the Avatar front :) Kinda appropriate for my name too ;)

[Rolfe]

Love the avatar, boyo!

OK, that's it, I'm turning in. I expect "Rolfee" will be toast by the morning. My senior-partner-emeritus used to say I get too emotionally involved with patients, especially cats, and maybe it's just as well that I only see the lab reports for most of them, but I really do feel terribly upset about Sarah.

Rolfe.

[LostAngeles]

After reading all that, I think I feel sick.

Especially when Morgana's owner basically brushed off modern medicine as "that's your belief and not mine."

Folks, that only works when discussing respective religions, morals, and/or philosophies, not medicine and science.

Bloody twits.

[Goshawk]

Well, Rolfe, even though I know it's emotionally wrenching and rather sick-making, I hope you'll keep on offering rebuttals to these people, if only occasionally. It makes a world of difference to us watching on the sidelines, who know only that these folks are F.O.S., to have an actual vet check in with some actual science.

And keep saving those unedited threads--that's the best part, for me, seeing how paranoid they are, that they're so threatened by you that they can't afford to let your posts stand unchallenged. And that says to me that they know they've got a constituency that just might be swayed by something you wrote. So keep at it, if you can.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Rolfe
My God, that's bizarre! It sounds just like you. (You sure????)


BadShavedMonkey has picked up a few key words but the tone of voice is wrong.

Look. This is clearly an episode of Scooby Doo and the basic rule is that the baddy is someone we have met in the opening scenes. On that basis, we can be sure that BadShavedMonkey is not me, you, Benguin, PJ or any of the other members of the Mystery Mob. The shifty-looking amusement park owner is very obviously Kumar. I think pseudoBSM also sounds a bit like him. So, this pesky kid is going to ask Kumar/Vijay to pull off the rubber mask now.

What do you reckon Kumar? Your command of English is almost certainly greater than that which you choose to display as "Kumar", but if you want to deny ownership of pseudoBSM, whose sock is it?

[Eos of the Eons]

I'm too scared to go read the threads anymore. Their ignorance and accusations about things like vaccines is too much for me.

So, anyone gonna own up to the impersonation of BSM? I might go read Rolfe's links to see what he posted...

[Rolfe]

The Morgana thread has been altered again. "Rolfee"'s post is not entirely deleted but a severe rap on the knuckles has been administered.

New version (no. 4) is here (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/morgana1d.html).

The Sarah thread has had a complete airbrushing, de novo. "The Real Monkey" (BSM)'s posts have now been deleted from the first page, as has the "Rolfee" PS. Only pro-homoeopathy posts remain. Even the post where someone commented that maybe surgery was a bit radical but so was having your appendix out and yet it would save your life has been deleted.

JanZy has Spoken! Anyone who takes anything "out of context" to suggest that the remedies aren't actually helping the cat is a troll! And the "concern" is implied to be phoney! I wonder if that might even be found to include Barb, who also seems a little concerned and has pointed out that any side-effects from the evil allopathy can always be dealt with by homoeopathy....

And Wim has just pointed out that the cat is old. So maybe we should just let her die, I suppose.

The new sanitised thread is available by clicking on BSM's link in the opening post of this thread. The versions with the cautionary comments are only available now in my archived copies.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Well, whoever "BadShavedMonkey" is, he's probably banned like the rest of us by now. These last posts were a very deliberate impersonation of BSM though, even to claiming to be a vet. I should have noticed that the English was different, but quite honestly I've seen BSM change styles so radically in some of his "trolling" personae that I wouldn't have laid too much store by that. However, I know that BSM certainly knows how Mark Elliott actually spells his name, and yet "BadShavedMonkey" repeated Wim's mis-spelling of "Marc".

It's not just BSM, there was a "Rolfe" made just one post and got airbrushed, and an "Exarch". Exarch did manage to re-register himself with his username, but I suspect that might have been a matter of capitalisation, because I was told that "Rolfe" was already taken when I tried it.

A couple of posts is one thing though, this very overt impersonation is something else. I have to admit to extreme curiosity. I didn't imagine it could be Kumar, if it is we've all seriously underestimated him! Unfortunately I very much doubt if JanZy will co-operate to trace the posts.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Just to keep the archiving up to date, here is the 1984 version of the Sarah thread.

Censored page 1 (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah1b.html).
Censored page 2 (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2d.html). Note the last post. I suspect it won't last long. What was that about documented cases? And that was just the ones I bothered to take a note of, on one day. How come it's great for them to post little snippets of inspiring case reports, but it won't be for me?

Rolfe.

[LostAngeles]

Just so you now, when I saw you had made another post to this thread, I thought it was to let us know Alphonse had killed Sarah with her [series of adjectives suppressed so as to not go beyond violating rule #8 to stealing its girlfriend and bagging its mom] incompetance and negligence.

Oh, and homeopathy reviving a pet...

Sure.

Right.

Where is this documented, honey? The media would be all over that heart-warming story, pun intended.

[Rolfe]

Wim has also started a number of threads about veterinary homoeopaths. Funny that they're mostly from Britain, where even now there are only 41 of these animals, and yet none I think from all the 300 Wim tells us there are in Holland! He calls them all "Dr.", though in fact none of them has a doctorate.

These are all the yo-yos BSM and I know and love (OK, not all, Saxton and Hoare haven't yet reared their anti-vax heads). Wim's gush about the late and not very lamented George Macleod (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1832&PN=1) (who seemed to think that saying "it's energy medicine, it's not about molecules" explained everything) is particularly revealing. Insecure and threatened, anyone?

Mostly I hope these threads sink without trace, but I did intervene in one. You see, not all the yo-yos are quite as dizzy as Wim fondly imagines. And one of them tells me stuff sometimes.... Mark Elliott (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1836&PN=1), and archived here (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/mark.html) in anticipation of JanZy's airbrush (though it'll be especially revealing if she deletes what is in fact a post in praise of Mr. Elliott's open-mindedness!).

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by LostAngeles
Just so you now, when I saw you had made another post to this thread, I thought it was to let us know Alphonse had killed Sarah with her [series of adjectives suppressed so as to not go beyond violating rule #8 to stealing its girlfriend and bagging its mom] incompetance and negligence.I did PM Alphonse, because I think he isn't necessarily reading the posts before they get JanZy-ed. JanZy obviously thinks my concern for Sarah is simulated just to have a go at homoeopathy. However, I have some hope that Alphonse might realise I'm sincere.

Like I said, nobody has actually left a hyperthyroid cat deliberately untreated to see how long it will take it to die. The treatment was fortunately worked out pretty much as soon as the condition was identified, so we don't have that long tradition of helpless observation of the inevitable we have for diseases (like distemper) that were recognised long before they were cracked, or in some cases (like kidney failure or FIP) we still haven't cracked. The homoeopaths' victims are really the only data we have for the untreated hyperthyroid. (OK, sometimes people wait too long before they bring their cats to the vet, but again we don't hang about to see what's going to happen!)

I don't know how long this might go on for. I'm hoping that enough encouraging information about the routine normality of real treatment might finally get through to him.

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

From Wim the Woo

"My daughter`s cats have been treated homeopathically for several years now, one of them homeopathically_for hyperthyroidism for nearly_4 years now and both cats (18 + 20 !!!)_are still active and cheerful ! Two of their friends are experienced well known vets in my home town,_who_got very interested in homeopathy and gradually also apply homeopathy_more and more seeing this great results by homeopathy ! My daughter is a vet. homeopath too and knows very well what she is doing obviously_!_For me this means end of discussion !"

Well, I expect "active" might well describe a chronically untreated hyperthyroid cat, just like it would describe me after fifteen cups of espresso.

Does Wim have a single T4 measure to parallel this litany of success? No. He already told us that.

He really doesn't like it when he is challenged on the basics instead of receiving the gushing thanks of the ignorami of Hpathy. Once more we see that panicky resort to misdirection instead of questioning their assumptions when faced with accurately put questions.

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
From Wim the Woo

"My daughter`s cats have been treated homeopathically for several years now, one of them homeopathically_for hyperthyroidism for nearly_4 years now and both cats (18 + 20 !!!)_are still active and cheerful ! Two of their friends are experienced well known vets in my home town,_who_got very interested in homeopathy and gradually also apply homeopathy_more and more seeing this great results by homeopathy ! My daughter is a vet. homeopath too and knows very well what she is doing obviously_!_For me this means end of discussion !"


What is it about the wording of that, and the juxtaposition of cat conditions with his daughter's profession, that makes me smell a rat?

[Rolfe]

From Wim's earlier post where he mentions his daughter and her curriculum vitae:My daughter is a rather sceptical, highly educated and high ranking government official and a qualified teacher of English as well and not particularly gullible ! She studied vet. homeopathy as well, mainly to treat their own animals/cattle etc. and animals of many friends with homeopathy.She's some sort of bureaucrat who has dabbled in homoeopathy for animals - NOT a vet.

I notice that the part of my post where I gave some details of four cats being treated for hyperthyroidism the usual way, whose follow-up tests crossed my desk yesterday, has been deleted. I actually went home with a scribbled note of these cats' names and histories, in order to be able to give true examples (and to show the homoeopaths how easy it was to produce a few documented cases if you actually have some). I may just have to take some more notes today....

Of course Wim has presented no evidence at all that his daughter's cat has hyperthyroidism in the first place. One lab report I saw this morning was of a cat with quite suspicious clinical signs, but in fact a T₄ which was perfectly normal. I would imagine that one might be a very good candidate for homoeopathic treatment!

Funny how i'ts OK to post vague details with no actual data about selected cases which are doing ever so well on homoeopathy, but as soon as someone posts a couple of cases that are doing ever so well on the usual treatment, it has to be censored!

It's becoming increasingly obvious that these people have a fixed mindset that is pretty much summed up in Divina's words from earlier this year, "We all know allopathy never did anyone any good, ever." And they can't possibly allow any evidence that actually, "allopathy" quite often does a helluva lot of good, to stay visible.

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

From Alphonse

" I am not so very interested in putting her on allopathic drugs at this time although after hearing from Rolfe, had considered it for a minute._ Because she is old, I am also preparing for her passing. "

i.e. in my smug woo stupidity I have convinced myself that nothing more could have been done and I am sticking to this story.

" She has always had complete freedom to do whatever she pleased, has never had any sickness during her long life, and has never needed any medications until now."

"until now"!!!???

i.e. Until the last 2 years when she became ill and I was too shackled to my woo ideas to actually help her get better.


And Sister Janice editing Rolfe's posts to remove the evidence of real cats getting better from real medicine. Hells bloody bells! At least it makes it easier to present the case to outsiders that homeopaths know damn well what they are doing when they try to tie people into their mad cult. (Cf. http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30685&highlight=quacks+knowing+unknowing)

(Edited for typo)

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

BTW has anyone else noticed how frequently Wim the Woo breaks one of their supposedly sacred (break it and you're suspended) board rules?

"Any_person found suggesting combination medicines or multiple medicines or making suggestions without having proper case details is liable to receive suspension. All remedy and potency suggestions should be justifiable. "


He has recommends multiple simultaneous remedies and keeps saying that that particular circumstance is one of the few on which multiple remedies should be used.

But they let him do it because he's so keen.

That's Wim...stupid even for a woo.

[Lisa Simpson]

That whole thread got me so mad, I could hardly see straight. I had a cat who was 14 years old when he was diagnosed as hyperthyroidic. He lived for 2 more years on the "evil allopathic" medicine before he developed cancer and had to be put to sleep. He was a beautiful cat (an Ocicat) and the smartest cat I ever had. I can't imagine letting him suffer the way those nuts let theirs.:mad:

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
" I am not so very interested in putting her on allopathic drugs at this time although after hearing from Rolfe, had considered it for a minute..."That's a shame. I PMed him two days ago and he hadn't posted since, until now. I had vaguely hoped he might have thought a bit more about it.

I have tried to activate one more trick, though I have no idea at all if this will have any results. Maybe we're about to see how one case anyway progresses through to its "natural" conclusion without benefit of treatment.

Going home to cry a bit now.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

By the way, is there any way to present this to outsiders in a way that might get noticed? We've got some absolutely smoking-gun evidence, for once. I could make up a front page with all the links to the various versions, and some linking text. But where could it be showcased?

Rolfe.

[Pantastic]

Good idea. You would probably have to start your own webpage, and then encourage people to link to it to show what truly goes on over there.

[geni]

Originally posted by Pantastic
Good idea. You would probably have to start your own webpage, and then encourage people to link to it to show what truly goes on over there.

Hpathysucks?

[LostAngeles]

Something a bit nicer.

WhereHpathyFails

[drkitten]

Originally posted by Rolfe
By the way, is there any way to present this to outsiders in a way that might get noticed? We've got some absolutely smoking-gun evidence, for once. I could make up a front page with all the links to the various versions, and some linking text. But where could it be showcased?



What's wrong with a mainstream print journal (with a link to a personal web page or something)? Any of the public-health-scam newsletters should eat this stuff up like candy.....

[Benguin]

Originally posted by LostAngeles
Something a bit nicer.

WhereHpathyFails

Where doesn't it?

[LostAngeles]

Originally posted by LostAngeles
Something a bit nicer.

WhereHpathyFails
Originally posted by Benguin
Where doesn't it?

When you're thirsty, when you need to make dumplings, and when you need a quick mouth rinse after vomiting with disgust at what they do to their pets.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Rolfe
But where could it be showcased?


VeterinaryWatch when it is up and running.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Well done Rolfe, you've panicked one of the "allopathy kills" brigade into emergency double-think mode. Over to Shirl the Whirling Woo;

"I think of homeopathy as the first choice and allopathy as heroic medicine, to be used when all else fails or in a life threatening situation._ If you don't get some possitive results fairly soon with homeopathy, I would not hesitate to use allopathic meds rather than put the_cat down._ The point of homeopathy is not to prove that it works, but to_cure in the gentlest way possible._ However, if it does not work, it's much better to use allopathy and continue to_work on the case homeopathically, than to die._ A dead person (or purrson)_can't be cured! _As long as she is alive, there is always hope that you can find a remedy that will allow her to come off the allopathic meds and be cured."

I'm sorry to announce that she also calls cats "furrkids" in the cloyingly sentimental tone in which some of our colonial cousins seem to specialise. I'm picturing a home smelling strongly of cat's wee and heavily decorated with twee patchwork quilts and embroidery samplers conveying inspiring mottos on the subject of feline wisdom.

[Pantastic]

I think she's just covering her own behind. It's times like this that you wonder if they know, deep down, that homeopathy is bunk. I can't think of another reason why they would agree to use it since their whole philosophy seems to reject conventional medicine. Wim is also covering himself by constantly reminding everyone how old the cat is. This is what I was saying earlier about being children with no sense of responsibility. Blame anything other than yourself and your magic potions.

[Rolfe]

Actually, good for Shirley.If you don't get some possitive results fairly soon with homeopathy, I would not hesitate to use allopathic meds rather than put the cat down. The point of homeopathy is not to prove that it works, but to cure in the gentlest way possible. However, if it does not work, it's much better to use allopathy and continue to work on the case homeopathically, than to die.The point of homeopathy is not to prove that it works.... She's got it. Wim and Sigi and JanZy are nowhere close.

I was just guessing about Alphonse considering euthanasia, but there was a kind of hint that way in his last post. It's true, if Sarah's condition was incurable, it would be an owner's sad duty to have her put to sleep rather than suffer through terminal thyrotoxicosis. I had to say that. But never to suggest that this was a reasonable alternative to perfectly routine treatment! And yet for Wim it seems to have become a sort of pissing-up-the-wall competition where homoeopathy mustn't concede even if it means giving up on the case.

On another thread in the pets area, there is a poor student who is considering having her beloved Peke put to sleep because he was paralysed in an accident and she can't afford the treatment and the time for the nursing, although her vet thinks there's still a chance of recovery. It's a very very sad set of posts, but the only annoying thing about it is that this poor girl is spending any of the scarce cash on useless homoeopathy. But Shirley, to give her her due, is sensibly and diffidently suggesting putting the hat round on pro-Peke discussion groups.

She may be a whirling woo, but she's not in Wim's class.

And at least that vicious bitch Naturalhealth hasn't stuck her pointy nose in again.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Well that post didn't last long. Totally deleted, along with the earlier post of mine which had only been edited before, and the two posts that still remained in other threads. There is now no trace of a word I ever typed on that forum. JanZy must be getting cross. Interesting to realise they feel so threatened.

Wim has now come into the thread again posting the most astonishing list of adverse effects of the standard treatments for hypothyroidism. He's done radio-iodine and methimazole so far, I guess we'll be hearing all about removal of the parathyroids and anaesthetic deaths any minute now. Where he's getting this from I have no idea, except that the radio-iodine one seems to relate to humans (I doubt if either Sarah or Alphonse would be worrying about "genetic risks and subfertility" in a 15 year old cat who is probably spayed anyway!).

The methimazole bit is talking about cats but "kittens may be born hypothyroid"??? This is pure fantasy-land. I tried Googling on some of the phrases but didn't get a match - he's paraphrasing something I suspect. I've never seen such a pile of alarmist rubbish in my entire life. I note point 11 is just "etc. etc.", whatever that means! And while I was typing this he even started a new thread just to point people to his alarmist nonsense in the original thread!

I still have a spare ISP or two, so assuming that I'm now solidly banned I could still go in, but I wonder if it's worth it at all? Alphonse is either going to see the light next time Sarah starts mouth-breathing and so on, or he ain't, and we've got the evidence for any good that it'll do us.

Here it is, I'll re-link all the versions of the Sarah pages. (The Morgana thread isn't any different except that there is no no post by Rolfee, which makes the last two posts look a bit silly but there you go.)

Page 1, original version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah1.html)
Page 1, airbrushed version (shorter!) (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah1b.html)

Page 2, original version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2.html)
Page 2, second version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2a.html)
Page 2, third version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2c.html)
Page 2, fourth version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2d.html) (This now matches with the second version of page 1, so that some pages that were on page 2 got moved to the airbrushed and shorter page 1.)
Page 2, fifth version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2e.html)
Page 2, sixth version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2f.html)

The sixth is the current online page, with no dissent tolerated. We'll see what else Wim has dreamed up in the morning.

Rolfe.

[LostAngeles]

I'm getting a "stack overflow at line 0" when loading those in MSIE. (I'm at work!)

Wim claims the following
SIDE EFFECTS OF CONVENTIONAL METHIMAZOLE (TAPAZOLE)

1. 15 % (!) of cats suffer from lethargy, vomiting, loss of appetite, anorexia, depression
- I think that should read "15% of cats in the trials experienced some or all of these symptoms."

2. 3-4 % facial itching
- A rare side effect, clearly.

3. 3-4 % serious liver failure or bone marrow changes
- Another rare, yet serious side effects. Such things exist with all drugs.

4. Some cats even can`t take methimazole or carbimazole etc. due to side effects
- Bingo.

5. Methimazole is secreted/excreted in milk, kittens may be born hypothyroid !
- Most hyperthyroid cats are elderly and likely spayed. Your claim is likely silly.

6. Sometimes self mutilation of face and neck through scratching (have stop treatment then !)
- This would relate to #2 being very bad.

7. This so-called harmless bitter tasting medicine should be closely monitored for the first 3 months
- Such is the case with all medicines. While asprin is harmless to many folks, some people will react badly to it. Also, monitoring is done to see if the condition is responding to the treatment. Don't they do that with their patients?

8. Administering is very difficult as to dosage regime. Many mistakes are made !
- So you monitor and adjust as needed, as will all medications.

9. Cats should also receive a CBC, platelet counts, serum T 4 every 2-3 weeks, liver functioning and ANA testing as needed etc.
- Every 2-3 weeks? Are you sure that's not "months", because that's how often the diabetic and the hyperthyorid kitties my mom has go in.

9. The most serious side effects are bleeding, thrombocytopenia, agranulocytosis and hepatophy (have to stop treatment then)
- Yes, but how common are they?

10. Regular monitoring in cats with liver disease to avoid drug-induced hypothyroidism
- This is the fourth mention of monitoring, isn't it?

11. etc. etc.

-... Oh! That. Yes, yes. Wholly right on that one.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Rolfe

Have you read Mark Elliott's post at Hpathy?

He makes a remarkably grand claim for its effectiveness in HyperT. 60% success. Never mind that I have never yet found a cat taht failed to respond to its initial medical therpay so my medium success rate is 100%, but 60% is pretty good...if it were true.

1. How has "success" been judged? Have T4's been measured or not? He slides around that issue.

2. If T4's have been measured, how high were they and how low did they go? 67 goes to 60 is not very impressive, and may well be natural variation. I bet I know where his guesstimated "60%" comes from. 250 goes to 10 is impressive.

3. If T4's have been measured, how long have the cases been followed? He is claiming permanent control provided medication is permanent. Does he have any basis for this?

I have to say, Rolfe, you've called him "one of the good guys", but I'm afraid that post includes all the usual self-delusion that extends into misleading others.

I also see the usual inclusion of MRCVS amongst the woo qualifications expressly against RCVS requirements.

Also note that Wim can't quite bear to admit to Mark that he is not a real vet just a play-acting woo.

Anyone, please feel free to take these questions and run with them, I'm too busy this weekend to go through the rigmarole of creating a new account from scratch at Hpathy after my last banning.

Edited to add: and he can't spell, which is always a bit disconcerting in a member of my profession.

[Rolfe]

Well yes, that probaby wasn't one of my better ideas. I suspect he comes over a lot more rational than his normal self when he's actually talking to me. And his story to me (yesterday) was that his recipe for hyperthyroidism was only palliative and wasn't intended to be curative!

But who did he run to when his own dog was sick, and ask her to take a blood sample and see what was wrong? Oh yes, me.

Yes, I noticed that Wim is still pretending that he and his daughter (the bureaucrat) are vets. He doesn't seem to have got the underlying message that to be fair-ish is there in Mark's post:The message really is that there are no hard and fast rules other than to seek the best solution for the case and definately not allowing the patient to suffer for Human ideology.

To just chuck remedies at a case one has never seen, without obvious sounding improvements, is to my mind unethical. Assuming Wim is a Vet I hope he is liasing with the primary care Vet at all stages.Though actually I told Mark that Wim isn't a vet so I'm not sure what he's on right now.

I see what you mean about the numbers. I still don't think he measures anything, but if one did, and like you say 67 to 60 is bugger-all, the number has to go up or down, and if you tend to get the patient while it's in a bad patch then 60% going down would be easy especially if you massage the figures a bit. Point is, it's supposed to go down below the laboratory's reference limit and stay there. And I tend to go for less than 40 for preference and I'm always a bit uneasy if it's not below 30.

Oh, the great and mighty RCVS said they couldn't actually stop the woos using the VetMFHom. If they really had it that is (unlike Naturalhealth!). I suspect the same lawyer that told them they couldn't stop people running corporate practices got asked for a ruling. At least it isn't listed in the main Register.

I'm inclined to let it run for a day or two. See what happens. Wim does seem to have a lot of time on his hands these days. I don't think the cat is going to snuff it right this minute, and maybe the time to get back in is when Alphonse admits she's worse again. Though having said that for me it's not about the risk of Sarah dying, it's the fact that she's suffering while she's alive.

All this stuff about he can't have her treated because of the stress and so on. What the bloody blue blazes stress does he think thyrotoxicosis does to the system?

Rolfe.

Edited to add, if you make any more remarks like that about spelling, you'll have the great and mighty Grand Master to answer to. Know what I mean?

[LostAngeles]

Wim asked Mark what he thought of "certain collegeaus calling" them "homeopathic criminals". Sadly, I can only imagine Wim is reffering to you, Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by LostAngeles
Wim asked Mark what he thought of "certain collegeaus calling" them "homeopathic criminals". Sadly, I can only imagine Wim is reffering to you, Rolfe. I'm glad to say he isn't. Because I never used any such language.

OK, thought so. Found it. The user of that language was "BadShavedMonkey", the poster at H'pathy who has been impersonating Badly Shaved Monkey for some time, thus forcing our own BSM to register there as "The Real Monkey".

This page, near the bottom (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah2a.html).Do not let these homeopathic criminals hoodwink you with their fairy stories.Which of course reopens the question once more. Who is this guy?

Rolfe.

[LostAngeles]

Originally posted by Rolfe
I'm glad to say he isn't. Because I never used any such language.

Rolfe.

Oh phew. So Wim is just talking from the glutus again?

[Rolfe]

Ah, see above. I was searching for the reference while you were posting that.

(I've now checked the lot, including all the posts made by BSM and his real socks as well as me. Nothing even approaching that sort of language. The problem is that in his posts, "BadShavedMonkey" claims to be a vet.)

Rolfe.

[LostAngeles]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Ah, see above. I was searching for the reference while you were posting that.

(I've now checked the lot, including all the posts made by BSM and his real socks as well as me. Nothing even approaching that sort of language. The problem is that in his posts, "BadShavedMonkey" claims to be a vet.)

Rolfe.

OK, I was thinking Wim got it out of "implications" for all the times s/he was challenged and shown to be wrong.

Goddamn phony "Randiland trolls".

[Rolfe]

Page 3 of that thread has had its first airbrushing. RIP Starburn.

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Edited to add, if you make any more remarks like that about spelling, you'll have the great and mighty Grand Master to answer to. Know what I mean?

For what its worth, dyslexia is one thing, allegedly intelligent people not bothering to learn to spell common English words is another. It's a bit of a derail, but my general experience is that bad spellers are not very bright in other fields either and that actual dyslexia is such a qualitatively different brain state there is very little overlap between the two. The reason I point it out sometimes in others is that when our fragile woo friends are trrying to show off how clever they are, their bad spelling rather undermines the effect.

Maybe the ability to hold the arbitrary orthography of English in your head, although not the same as the ability to analyse and process, is quite highly correlated with it. In addition, the discipline to check bad spelling may be a relevant demonstration of mental skill as well- I sometimes bring myself up short with sudden uncertainty over a fairly common word I have not used for a long time, so I look it up before I use it.

[geni]

From our old friend chachaheels at otherhealth

There are about 2500 remedies, or so. More are coming all the time. In clinical practice, you really use about 80 remedies most often--so it is a good idea to keep these very commonly used remedies handy in different potencies, and to have at some fundamental understanding of these remedies so that you can have some ground on which to differentiate between them. Of course, lots of other, less commonly used remedies may be needed too.

http://www.otherhealth.com/showthread.php?t=2815

So down to 80 remedies now.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Rolfe
I see what you mean about the numbers. I still don't think he measures anything, but if one did, and like you say 67 to 60 is bugger-all, the number has to go up or down, and if you tend to get the patient while it's in a bad patch then 60% going down would be easy especially if you massage the figures a bit.

"60%" is also safely in that roughly 50/50 territory which allows you to take the credit if it 'works' but not to cause surprise and disappointment if it doesn't. Claiming 60% rather than 50% however serves to bolster the impression of a fairly effective therapy but is not casually falsifiable in the way that claiming 90% efficacy would be- 2 clients from the same gullible referring vet coming back with negative reports would immediately raise suspicion, but with a 60% claim I think I would need 5 or 6 failed outcomes to start questioning something that I had an a priori assumption of effectiveness.

Also for much of what the woos treat, real cases get better about half the time, real medicine may work about half the time. So, real success is hard to judge without proper trials.

I've found a 50/50-ish claim to be a common one in reports of woo medicine and in general, the consequences of making this size of claim are very advantageous to the woo.

Hyperthyroidism is a real problem to them because they can be informally judged against near-100% success.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
[snobbery]For what its worth, dyslexia is one thing, allegedly intelligent people not bothering to learn to spell common English words is another....Well you know perfectly well I agree with you on that, also there's an argument somewhere with Eos who objected to being picked on here, it was a joke dammit.

I do look at old posts of mine and see the odd typo and think dammit, it's too easy to do that when you're posting fast. But actual bad spelling is usually distinguishable from mere typos as well as dyslexia and yes, it does correlate with being generally thick in my opinion. Now I just have to square that one with the lab request forms I get with these vomitting (or manybe vommiting or even vommitting) animals with heart murmers and so on....

I remember taking a seminar with one of my final year elective classes. I'd given each student a case number and told them to go look it up and present the case to the rest of the class. I gave them pens and acetate sheets. The first one started off and there was a mis-spelled word. I corrected him. There was another. I corrected him again. The third time I stopped him and read down the acetate. Lots more. I asked him if he'd never seen these words printed before. Did he read papers or textbooks on the subject? So didn't he notice how the words were spelled?

I realised the rest of the class was sniggering. Then I realised they weren't sniggering at the student, but at the idea that spelling of technical and medical words was a matter worth any consideration at all.

That was when I had a real go. Statistcs suggest that the vast majority of you lot are going to be qualified vets in about three months. God help the animal kingdom. And you know what? You'll have to keep case notes. And you might even want a more senior colleague to take a look at one of your cases that might be a bit tricky. And you'll have to write a letter about this.

Wake up and smell the coffee. Your competence will be judged by the presentation in that letter. Literate, proper spelling and grammar, well laid out, and yes, content suggesting that you've understood the case and approached it rationally up to now is good too, but basically if the thing is semi-literate you're going to be judged as a moron. You may think that's unfair, but it's reality. Deal with it.

And I don't think I had a single mis-spelling from the rest of the whole boiling of them that term.

I blame the teachers.

Rolfe.

Edited to add: Oh for God's sake will someone fix that bloody software so that it stops sticking stupid asterisks in the middle of a perfectly ordinary and inoffensive English word!

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
Hyperthyroidism is a real problem to them because they can be informally judged against near-100% success. You know it's occurring to me it's also a really good protocol for a different slant at the Challenge. (Did I tell you Niall has had precisely six takers, and he's running three right three wrong on these, of course like I told him, that will be used by the woos to declare that 50% of them have proved they can tell a remedy of their choice from the chemically identical stock solvent....)

Hyperthyroidism is bloody common. You wouldn't have much trouble dredging up even 50 cases whose owners were up for a bit of science. OK, you'd have to winnow it down a bit, no concurrent disease maybe and so on but even so, it's not at all impossible. And although I don't know how long the woos would insist they be allowed to demonstrate their effect, I don't think the RSPCA would really get that aerated about real treatment being delayed for a few weeks.

I'm not even clear that you'd need a control group or a properly treated group. Maybe a baseline of three weekly samples for T₄, and then start homoepathic treatment. This is where it gets tricky. I'd be inclined to do it with just Mark's standard recipe, and to hell with even involving the woos at all (.... gets a bit pensive about the real, obvious feasibility of this....), but then we know what will be said then, repeat afer me, "no individualisation".

So in fact you do have to involve the woos, realistically, to get the individualisation. Which is where you find that the whole thing goes off the rails as they won't co-operate with anything that might falsify their beliefs.

But suppose you could. Start the homoeopathic routine. Just go on measuring the T₄ every week. You know, you don't even need blinding, so far as the clients and so on are concerned. We aren't talking about subjective "how does he seem" impressions, we're talking about £25,000 worth of chemiluminescence instrumentation that's immovably programmed to give the objective concentration without fear or favour. OK, you wouldn't let on to the technical staff which samples were part of the trial, they'd just go in among the routine clinical stuff, but that would be enough.

Give it a month? All you have to do is to show that there has been a statistically significant decrease in T₄ over the period of treatment. What could be easier?

Then if you really wanted to get cute, just dole out Felimazole b.i.d. to the entire group and continue for two more weeks.

God this is tempting. Political dynamite, but (using the standard recipe), oh so doable.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

But for your homeo group what are the ethics of that? YOU are knowingly denying treatment to a group of patients.

I understand your motives (and believe them honourable) but you must take care. The woos are always looking for targets of allopathic cruelty, and irony is not in their dictionary.

[Rolfe]

Actually you coudn't do it without getting ethical permission anyway, I don't think. The idea would be to ask for volunteers, stipulating that the cats shouldn't be particularly sick, and it would only be a case of delaying their normal treatment by 6-8 weeks. You'd have to allow for a wastage level too, because the owners would be completely free to break loose any time they liked if they believed that real treatment ought to be started.

But like I said, I don't think you could do it without getting approval from the PtB. I saw a paper about a woo-ish arthritis snake-oil, and they pretty much did this except that there was a clause allowing the owners to give a codeine-based painkiller if they felt the dogs needed it. There was no difference in the amount of codeine consumed by the placebo or the test group, but nevertheless I thought that bit muddied the study to the point where it was pretty useless. It was the PtB who had insisted on that being allowed though. I think for the hyperthyroidism thing the get-out clause would simply be withdrawal from the study at will.

You wouldn't have to get them all simultaneously though, you could just keep recruiting until n having completed the study was sufficiently large.

Oh yes, you'd get it all approved. Not like Mark, when he did his "study" of homoeopathic treatment for Cushing's. Not a word about ethical approval at all in that paper.

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Rolfe
I'm not even clear that you'd need a control group or a properly treated group. Maybe a baseline of three weekly samples for T₄, and then start homoepathic treatment. This is where it gets tricky. I'd be inclined to do it with just Mark's standard recipe, and to hell with even involving the woos at all (.... gets a bit pensive about the real, obvious feasibility of this....), but then we know what will be said then, repeat afer me, "no individualisation".

So in fact you do have to involve the woos, realistically, to get the individualisation.

But they don't do any feckin individualisation, as that thread has well-demonstrated. Nonetheless, you are right, if we want to shove it right down their throats then they should get to cast the runes or dowse or whatever the hell it is they do before they go and get the same remedy off the shelf that they've doled out dozens of times before.

I'm going to phone Idexx ("Boo, hiss", says Rolfe. By the way I have got your price list now and will suggest we make a change) and get a list of 10 consecutive cases from 2001 (giving a minimum 2.5yr follow-up) so I can call Mark's bluff.

[Benguin]

Kind of brings us back to the pointlessness of testing ... as they all happily coexist while disagreeing about what homeo is and how it is practised.

Whenever a test is conducted they can shift position just ever so slightly and call 'not real homeo' (no true scotsman). I think you can apply that to every past attempt at testing.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
I'm going to phone Idexx ("Boo, hiss", says Rolfe. By the way I have got your price list now and will suggest we make a change) and get a list of 10 consecutive cases from 2001 (giving a minimum 2.5yr follow-up) so I can call Mark's bluff. I'm not responsible for the company you keep.... :D By the way there's a half-price (for a month) introductory offer going on right now, or I think it starts next week, and you wouldn't have been included in the mailing about that because you're not in the current target catchment area, but if you fancy half-price lab work for a month (with a few exceptions like rabies antibody), drop me an email and we can discuss it. If I can get north of the Thames past Antonio.

I was thinking it might be possible to send out letters with every new-diagnosis hyperthyroid case we see in the lab, first for the vet to chuck in the bin if he thinks it's not a good idea, then for the owner to decide. The take-up rate wouldn't be spectacular, but there are so many cases it could be a runner. But it would need approval, and I wonder how good the take-up would be when it would have to be straight-up that we actually didn't believe the stuff would help the cats (but there are ways of wording these things), but the main downside might simply be killjoys saying why do it because you just have your knife in the homoeopaths and live and let live and all that you nasty person.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Yayyyy!!! Told you there was a God!!! (Sorry, wrong place to make that remark....)Originally posted by Alphonse (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1711&PN=1&TPN=3)
Meanwhile, Sarah today, with her open mouth breathing finally pushed me to take her to an emergency room for animals. $400 later, I have a cat that is still open mouth breathing, the vet said her sympathetic nervous system is ruling that; she does not have heart failure, x-rays were taken, she probably has hyperthyroidism, blood work, urinalysis etc. are all at the labs awaiting results. Meanwhile, after contemplating this whole thing and struggling with her difficulties I have decided to go along with allopathic treatment for her, if that is the prognosis and advice given tomorrow.I was actually going in there to post the real deal on the contraindications and warnings for Felimazole, and challenge JanZy to delete a verbatim quote from the data sheet and leave Wim's souped-up paraphrase intact, but while I was amusing myself reading an anti-cat-vax thread in the same forum that managed to say not one single useful thing and totally failed to mention the real genuine concern about cat vaccines, Alphonse posted again.

I'm going to leave it for now. The cat is the important person, and even a simple post of best wishes from me or any of the Illuminati might turn the situation ugly.

Two things intrigue me about Alphonse's post. First, his suggestion that the "well-respected homeopathic vet" he consulted, and who said that hyperthyroidism is a very difficult disease to treat homoeopathically, should join H'pathy Forums - is this for the education of the vet or the forum? (I hope the latter but I sort of doubt it.) Second, Sarah's lab samples are still in the system, naturally. In the meantime, the vet says she's probably hyperthyroid. Good grief, I thought Alphonse had at least established that before all this mess started!

Of course, all that BSM or I (or even Mark) ever said was, get to a real vet. But the first thing you need to know if you're going to treat a case like this is what the T₄ and a few other figures are running at. Wim, bless his little cotton socks, didn't even ask if the tests had ever been done, just wired in with the remedy suggestions. Now, is the implication of the first part of my sig maybe relevant here?

By the way, Alastair says his info isn't up to date, but from what he said, it's likely Wim isn't allowed to treat animals in Holland. I need to find out who my BVA rep to the FVE is. Tomorrow.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Wim's in there already.Hello Alphonse, It`s also possible to give the Flor the piedra, the Iodum and the Thyroidinum twice a day, instead of one time. Have you tried this yet !This is quite funny. Maybe someone could enlighten me about the homoeopathic propriety of not only giving three remedies at once, but twice daily????

Now personally, I don't care a button if Alphonse wants to waste his money on giving Sarah the entire homoeopathic pharmacopoeia. Whatever floats your boat so long as the poor cat gets proper treatment too. But I just wonder what dear Mark (assuming he ever goes back to that thread) would think of the propriety of that advice, or indeed how Wim squares it with his brown-nosing of Mark, and Mark's (obviously barbed) remark:To just chuck remedies at a case one has never seen, without obvious sounding improvements, is to my mind unethical.Still, I suspect that Wim has a hide of rhinocerous-skin.

Rolfe.

[LostAngeles]

Once more I feared that Sarah had died. Thankfully this isn't the case. YAY!

One the other hand, note the post following that by Wim. Clearly Wim's still trying to sell Alphonse on the homeopathy. Guess Wim can't "bear to lose money" on her homeopathic treatments.

Pot, Kettle...

[Prester John]

I purchased Dana Ullmans - Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century. Ok it was only 20p in the works book trolley for charity. I thought it was a service to humanity and science by taking it out of circulation.

Had a quick look through,nothing special, although early on he keeps refering to microdilutions without specifying exactly what sort of dilutions they are (no mention of avagadro). Then talking about 1/200, 1/1000, 1/50,000 dilutions of homepathic remedies being high potency. Later she mentions about the C scale. Bit of deliberate misrepresentation by infering there are remedy particles in homeopathic remedies. Even gets in the immunisation is based on the [dramatic voice] LAW OF SIMILARS [/dramatic voice] rubbish. All the usual pro-homeopathy arguments seem to be contained within.

Anyway consider it illuminati reference material should anyone have need!

edited for gender reassignment.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Prester John
I purchased Dana Ullmans - Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century. Ok it was only 20p in the works book trolley for charity. I thought it was a service to humanity and science by taking it out of circulation.

Had a quick look through,nothing special, although early on she...


I think she's a he.

My understanding is he is one of the big money-earners in their little world so is very pro-active at defending them.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Prester John
I purchased Dana Ullmans - Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century. Ok it was only 20p in the works book trolley for charity. I thought it was a service to humanity and science by taking it out of circulation.

Had a quick look through,nothing special, although early on she keeps refering to microdilutions without specifying exactly what sort of dilutions they are (no mention of avagadro). Then talking about 1/200, 1/1000, 1/50,000 dilutions of homepathic remedies being high potency. Later she mentions about the C scale. Bit of deliberate misrepresentation by infering there are remedy particles in homeopathic remedies. Even gets in the immunisation is based on the [dramatic voice] LAW OF SIMILARS [/dramatic voice] rubbish. All the usual pro-homeopathy arguments seem to be contained within.

Anyway consider it illuminati reference material should anyone have need! He's a he.

Edited to add: This is what Steve G was quoting when he tried to oppose our opposition to homoeopathy without having the faintest idea what he was on about. He kept saying stuff about "nano" concentrations, but went a bit quiet when we went on through pico and femto and atto and whatever the next one is I can never remember (Zeppo or Harpo or something), and then somebody linked to that great Powers of 10 (http://www.powersof10.com/) web site.

I think Ullmann is trying to sound scientific some of the time, and conceal the impossibilities, but at the same time he says things like it isn't possible to understand homoeopathy scientifically so who knows. He's making pots of money out of it anyway.

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Rolfe
By the way, Alastair says his info isn't up to date, but from what he said, it's likely Wim isn't allowed to treat animals in Holland. I need to find out who my BVA rep to the FVE is.

I've had a reply from the VKO (the Dutch regulatory body) referring my questions to a Prof Vaarkamp, so I have now e-mailed him.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Quotes from Alphonse and WonderWiman

"This was an interesting experience for me; most of the animals in the emergency room could have been treated homeopathically for many of their symptoms."

!!!!! Yeah, just like your cat was, you idiot.

"Hello Alphonse, It`s also possible to give the Flor the piedra, the Iodum and the Thyroidinum twice a day, instead of one time. Have you tried this yet "


Before or after the cat is dead?

[Prester John]

Originally posted by Rolfe
He's a he.

Rolfe.

Corrected, i blame Dana International.

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
Quotes from Alphonse and WonderWiman

"This was an interesting experience for me; most of the animals in the emergency room could have been treated homeopathically for many of their symptoms."

!!!!! Yeah, just like your cat was, you idiot.

"Hello Alphonse, It`s also possible to give the Flor the piedra, the Iodum and the Thyroidinum twice a day, instead of one time. Have you tried this yet "


Before or after the cat is dead?

Well yes, if you can get their mouth's open you could homeopathically treat them. Or you could do reflexology on their paws, or do a little dance ... or ... or ....
well, you could cure them, but who cares about that?

[Rolfe]

As Sarah is mouth-breathing, you could just sort of aim....

Since it's looking as if Alphonse didn't have a definite diagnosis of hyperthyroidism in the first place, I just hope to God she has that, or at least something treatable. OK, for the cat's sake, but really, if she doesn't improve on normal treatment, that'll just prove allopathy is expensive and ineffective, won't it.

Actually, to get that lot in an emergency clinic for $400 wasn't any sort of rip-off. And how can he complain she's still mouth-breathing if she's still being diagnosed and he hasn't actually given her real medicine yet?

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Seriously, does anyone have a reference from Hahnemann or one of the ur-gurus about the three remedies b.i.d. bit? It sounds seriously unclassical to me.

Rolfe.

[Eos of the Eons]

Thank you for posting Sarah updates. I do hope the owner posts how she does with actual treatment. It is sad that the cat had to get to a point of "scarily unwell" before the owner panicked and went to get the cat some real help.

[Zep]

But never fear - if the cat DOES get well, the homeotwits will try desperately to take all the credit for it. They will say the homeo treatment given before/with the alopathic treatment was what ACTUALLY worked on the cat.

Lies, crap, and delusion.

[Rolfe]

Slightly off-topic, but related to the homoeopaths' constant accusations that real medicine is harmful.

Yesterday I had to assist at a very "sensitive" post-mortem. A dog had died because a vet had made a serious mistake during an operation. Worse still, the operation wasn't an essential one, it was a routine, elective neutering operation on a previously healthy two-year-old dog.

There was no two ways about it. It was negligence. The fact that the guilty party was a new graduate isn't any sort of mitigating factor either. The dog was dead and it was the vet's fault.

So what will happen? The Veterinary Defence Society had already been called in. Once they receive the post-mortem report they will accept liability without question. The owner's claim for damages will be met in full. Sincere and heartfelt apologies will be offered. Simultaneously, the culprit will be receiving the chewing-out of his life. I really wouldn't like to be that guy today. He may be dismissed from his job, and I'd like to see anyone try to claim unfair dismissal after pulling something like that.

Something good may come out of it. An overconfident and rash new graduate may have learned the lesson of his life. He may be a better person and a better vet for the rest of his life as a result of having such a sobering experience so early in his career. We all hope. But it's a lousy way to find out, and dreadful for the poor dog's owners.

Now it's true that you can find similar examples in both veterinary and human medicine all over the place. But is it the case that if you decide to have your dog neutered there is a high probability that he won't survive?

Of course not. This is only the second case I've encountered in 16 years. The operation is being done every day in veterinary surgeries all over the country with perfect success. The tragedy rate must be in the tiny fractions of one per cent.

The point is that the homoeopaths don't want to hear about the times when nothing goes wrong. Like Barb did, in relation to the case of a neighbour's dog where something may or may not have been done wrong (hard to tell form the garbled account), and this single incident was used to damn all vets comprehensively. Damn vets (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1722&PN=1). And Wim persists in declaring that 15% of cats will have side-effects from anti-thyroid drugs, never mind that most of these will be trivial, but in particular don't turn that round to point out that 85% of cats will experience no side-effects whatsoever.

When I posted a few case details of cats doing extremely well on standard hyperthyroid treatment, these details were deleted. Twice. But any anecdotes describing when something goes wrong wil be cherished and repeated and elaborated on. And please don't point out what a tiny fraction of treated cases these situations represent.

Now I described what will happen about the dead dog. Liability is accepted and insurance is carried. Apologies will be offered all round (meagre consolation, but usually appreciated). In sufficiently serious cases that amount to gross professional misconduct, the vet concerned will find himself talking to the disciplinary committee and may well be struck off or at least suspended.

So what about the homoeopaths? Well, if you don't actually do anything, you're in a much stronger position when it comes to being accused of doing harm. But have we ever heard of anyone going after them for negligence when a patient has a bad aggravation? Which we're told can even kill an animal? And then there's the sins of omission, are they ever held responsible for these?

I've never heard that any of them even carry insurance. And there's no professional body that can stop them practising whatever they do. And is it ever likely that any of them will hold their hands up and say, I made a mistake?

No. But professionals who do admit to errors will have their noses rubbed not just in their own mistakes but those of every single one of their professional colleagues, real and imagined, till the end of time.

Rolfe.

[Pantastic]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Seriously, does anyone have a reference from Hahnemann or one of the ur-gurus about the three remedies b.i.d. bit? It sounds seriously unclassical to me.

Rolfe.

On the hpathy website itself they have a section saying how you must never use more than one remedy at a time. Would be a good idea to post that at some point, but I agree we should not interfere with the thread right now, as any appearance of wandering in and claiming victory against homeopathy may push Alphonse back to the Land of Woo.

Wim seems to be able to do whatever the hell he likes over there.
3 remedies twice daily? Sure! Why not?

[Rolfe]

Barb, bless her little cotton socks, seems well on to it. She's commented, perceptively, on both what now seems to be the lack of a definite diagnosis (and yet Wim has been prescribing away), and the polypharmacy. And Shirley has repeated the idea of continuing with the homoeopathy during conventional treatment, which certainly sounds like a good way of managing Alphonse to me (while making no difference to Sarah).

Wim, however, knows it all.Hello Barb, The approach of giving animals sometimes more than 1 remedy already started many years ago and yielded very good results, because the animal organism seems to easily select the appropriate components from the administered remedies. I think this is not because of having a different vital energy etc. Homeopathic treatment is obviously less easy with animals than it is with humans, who are able to express themselves in words. With animals we have only the objective symptoms to go by. If there aren`t enough symptoms or other circumstances to indicate the choice of a single remedy, we wiil have, as a matter of necessity, to use 2 or 3 in combination. This is of course not the ideal situation for the vet. homeopath, who wants to cover the whole morbid situation with a single remedy. Sometimes, however, it is unavoidable in order to save the animal ! Also there is ample empirical proof that some remedies clearly support each other in particular treatments.Alphonse seems resentful of the vet's bill. Well he only has himself to blame. He waited until panic set in, then rang an emergency service. He got a full clinical work-up including laboratory tests and so on, at emergency service prices. It wasn't any sort of rip-off. In fact a hyperthyroid should usually be worked up by routine consultations and would never require emergency panic measures.

I was thinking about the question of the diagnosis, and I tend to think Sarah was diagnosed previously. Alphonse said that the homoeopathic vet he'd consulted had recommended radio-iodine treatment. Nobody recommends that before they've got a diagnosis, and that goes double for homoeopaths! The impression Alphonse gave in his OP was that Sarah had been under homoeopathic treatment for diagnosed hyperthyroidism for two years, but she was deteriorating and the homoeopath had recommended real treatment at last. Alphonse was reluctant so he came to H'pathy and had the misfortune to encounter Wim. I suspect this is the actual situation.

Instead of sticking with one vet, or organising a proper supersession if he wanted to change vets, Alphonse has abandoned his original advisor, then flown to the emergency service in a panic when Sarah deteriorated under Wim's amateur and long-distance administrations. So of course the emergency service would have had no access to any medical data from previous investigations and would have had to start from scratch. How to make things unnecessarily expensive in one easy lesson.

I'd actually like to see the results of the tests they requested yesterday, but I don't suppose Alphonse will even get hold of the report never mind post the results. And in my day job, I wouldn't let him do that if I could possibly avoid it! I just hope Sarah's condition is treatable.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

This is playing out rather nicely without any sceptical nudging at all. Sigi is now asking some rather penetrating questions.sorry that I cannot stop myself for putting a question:

If more than one remedy is given during a single day - how can their (inter)action within the living being be predicted?

I do believe, if three remedies are given - the sum of action can be like the picture of a fourth remedy, the actions may add, multiply, substract,... each other. And - if there is a positive or negative effect - which remedy was the cause for it? Or was it the combination? If the selection of the combination of remedies is done based on experiences in the past - is there no individualization necessary?I expect Wim to refute this is the skilful way he's rebuffed all our clumsy attempts to trap him - simply by asserting that it works for his daughter's cats and besides there are several vets who use homoeopathy, and for him, that means no more needs to be said.

I suppose it's too much to hope that Alphonse might realise that these woo-woos don't have the foggiest idea what they're doing?

Rolfe.

PS. Wim's being extraordinarily predictable. First he pretty much admits that he's just parroting things other people have written on the subject, so it's "they say it works", then another post which essentially just says "it works".Empirical proof/Empiricism is experience as a guide to practice or to the therapeutic use of any remedy rather than theories or scientific deduction or investigation.With any luck at all he might be about to get an interesting empirical demonstration of what actually does work in this situation.

[Rolfe]

Sorry to keep posting in this thread, but I'm sure as hell not going to post in Sarah's thread while everything is going so well for her.Originally posted by Alphonse (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1711&PN=1&TPN=3)
Hello to everyone: Sarah's numbers just came back and her numbers are off the chart >24 [ug/dl - pedantic biochemist], the normal range is .7-5.2. I thank everyone, even the trolls for helping me see that I need to put her on allopathic drugs, which is happening within the hour. I feel terrible for not doing this sooner; part of my hesitation for going to a vet is that they vaccinate, each and every animal, they decide whether the animal is healthy enough to vaccinate. So I have that to worry about now too, because whenever she goes in for bloodwork in the future there is that possibility. I am going to try and find an allopathic vet who won't vaccinate, but it's the law in our state. At any rate, thank you all, and Sarah says thanks, she wants to feel better again and hopefully will, even though we do realize that there may be side affects. I will be open to continuing with one of the three remedies suggested, but am going to pause for now.OK, I'd have liked to see the whole report, but that'll do for now. Hardly a surprise. (Quick conversion to SI units, bloody mediaeval Yanks....) Well, strictly >309.6 nmol/l, but I just report that as >300. Rang the bell on the top of the scale.

The fact that Sarah is to be started on medication and no downside reported by Alphonse is extremely encouraging. I was worried that she might have some other untreated disaster that was going to gum up the works, but so far no indication of that. And 15 isn't that old. I signed out some lab results this afternoon for a 17½ year old cat who was started on medication in May and is doing just dandy.

If Alphonse comes back in three or four weeks and declares that Sarah is a new cat thanks to the "allopathic meds", do you think JanZy will delete his post? I think I'm going to keep a close watch on this thread.

Bloody hell, vaccination is the least concern right now as far as Sarah is concerned. It must be rabies that Alphonse is so concerned about because as far as I know that's the only one that's mandatory anywhere. However, I'd seriously doubt whether this would be exactly top priority for a vet who was dealing with a thyrotoxic 15-year-old!

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Update, looks like very good news.Alphonse again (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1711&PN=0&TPN=4)
She already seems better after two 1/2 tablets. No crying during the night, and she just was chasing a stream of water in the backyard, which she used to do. Vet said that though she has a heart murmur, her heart seemed good and strong, respiration was good and kidneys looked very good.I have to say that Alphonse is probably reading too much into the effects of two ½ tablets of Felimazole (or whatever they call it in Merikan-land). Let's face it, that cat has been up and down the whole time, and that's why the homoeopathy has managed to get its insubstantial foot in the door. I'd expect it to be more like 2-4 weeks before there was a really obvious improvement. Still, it's looking good. I just hope there aren't too many setbacks before things start to look consistently better.

The news about the kidney function and the heart is also extremely encouraging. (And note to BSM, Alphonse can even spell "murmur"!) Sarah might well be going to make it here.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Sorry to keep belabouring this one, but I'm basically chuffed to bits. This juxtaposition is pretty funny.Alphonse, 26th July (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1711&PN=0&TPN=1)
The other option is to give her drugs every day. She refuses medication, always, always has.Then followed several pretty fraught descriptions of struggles to get magic sugar pills into the cat's mouth. Then the change of heart, the resorting to "allopathy", and....Barb, 6th August (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1711&PN=0&TPN=4)
Oh Alphonse - that is great news about Miss Sarah! Are you getting the tablets in her okay?And Alphonse's reply
About pilling Sarah, these smart pet pharmacies made the pills into tasty tuna flavored and chicken flavored treats. She "scarfs" them down. Much happier kitty today, still hungry must feels relaxed. Yeah. Thanks again everbody.:dl:

I'm not quite sure who's being thanked here, but don't knock it.

Rolfe.

[LostAngeles]

In regards to Sarah's condition, there is much rejoicing. I am amused at Alphonse giving thanks to the "trolls" and even more amused that Wim's subsequent posts amount to, "I'm going on vacation, la-la-la-la-la-la!"

Wim = Goddamned twit.

[Rolfe]

Oh, Alphonse is now saying Wim deserves a malt whisky, and wishing him a good holiday! I suppose he'll soon have convinced himself that it was Wim's excellent advice to go to the real vet all the time!

:dl:

Rolfe.

[asthmatic camel]

LOL! Rolfe, if I could I'd hug you. Keep going; your efforts are appreciated. :)

[Eos of the Eons]

Let's hope Wimp takes a permanent vacation. Yeah, wishful thinking, I know. I wish all hpaths would take a vacation...hike...

[Zep]

With Wim on vacation, I would suggest a more wholehearted raft of posting by the troll-set. Furthermore, I would do it by quoting all of Wim's idiot postings along with Alphonse's posts about the startling improvements on allopathic meds. No need to comment further, just put them adjacent to each other...

[Rolfe]

Give it time, give it time....

I'm not expecting an instant clinical turn-round here. Couple of weeks, we might be seeing a real difference, but at the moment I suspect the "improvement" may be little more substantial than the improvements reported after the homoeopathic remedies.

Alphonse seems to be a she, by the way. I looked at her profile, and her name's Barbara. And she's a "homeopathic student and practitioner". Sigh. Let's hope the "empirical observation" of what happens with the methimazole causes her to think a bit.

Funny, I was just talking to my neighbour Juanita about her cat. (Her elderly father is very ill and the whole family has to fly to Seattle at short notice. And I can't look after the cat because I'm off to Scotland in a week. So we were discussing what to do, and the answer might be mother-in-law.) Anyway, I mentioned I'd been wondering for a few weeks if Rainbow (the cat, don't ask) might be a bit thyroid-ish. I wasn't sure, he just looks older than his age somehow. Juanita mentioned that he has a very big appetite and yet he'd lost a bit of weight. Sounds suspicious.

Well, I reassured her that if it was that it was easily treated, and in fact she might as well wait till she gets back from America in a month as Rainbow really isn't ill. But she said she'd get an appointment for him as soon as she gets back, and if his T₄ is up he can start medication then.

That's how it ought to be, and that's how it usually is. Rainbow won't have to suffer two years of getting worse and worse and being forced to take magic sugar pills before he gets proper treatment, and I hope that by autumn he'll be his old self again.

It's a good thing homoeopathy is such a small backwater, really!

Rolfe.

[Eos of the Eons]

If she is still a student, there may be hope. This link is something that she may find interesting.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/new-age.html

A reformed "healer" that is trying to bridge the gap to communicating between the believers and the "scientific types".

This person wants to be a healer, but has seen firsthand how "allopathy" isn't so bad.

I wish she would go to med school instead of giving money to any "homeopath training".

The author claims to have been here, to these forums, and I was wondering if anyone could recognize her? Karla McLaren-which name did she post under if any?

[Rolfe]

No more news about Sarah yet, but as I said, it's likely to take a few weeks.

I was just thinking about how Wim's and Alphonse's attitudes illuminated the question of adverse effects and regulation of homoeopathic medicine.

Wim at first seems to have some appreciation of the concept that homoeopathic remedies are capable of having undesirable effects - in his original advice to pile straight in with three remedies in combination, he said;If reactions to the remedies are too strong (too vehement) leave out the Iodum.So, obviously something not entirely desirable is admitted to be capable of happening. Later he gives a bit of a clue what he's talking about.When a reaction to it is too strong you can judge this by looking at sudden impulses of all kinds, such as a very/too busy cat, too hurried, too fearful etc. [That is, popping hyperthyroid - Ed.]Still no information though about what proportion of patients might experience this, is it permanent or does it go away when the remedy is discontinued, or the other sorts of stuff you'd want to know about an adverse reaction.

However, when we started talking about conventional medication, Wim promptly found (and paraphrased and sexed-up) the list of recorded side-effects for methimazole. Implying that these were so dangerous that the drug should be avoided at all costs, up to and including letting the cat die. A bit of a contrast to his attitude to the side-effects of the homoeopathic remedies!

Then when Alphonse decided to go with real medicine, and Wim's immediate response was to suggest doubling the frequency of the three-remedy cocktail, Alphonse revealed that she believed the remedies were capable of having undesirable effects.She has aggravated from both Iodium and Thyroidium in the past so I am hesitant to use them right now.Wim's response to this seems to me to be implying that because there's nothing in the remedies then they can't possibly have any ill effects (rather a contrast to the earlier remarks about remedies perhaps being "too strong")Bear in mind that a 30c has no material substance left in the remedy, not even 1 molecule, so only the energy pattern is present !Alphonse, more rational, seems to understand that if "energy patterns" can affect the body, that effect might well be undesirable.I'm just trying to understand this whole thing. So maybe the energy pattern is enough to affect her adversely, I am observing, observing, observing, and thinking about it as I go.So, real medicine has to be properly investigated and any possible side-effects documented, no matter if they are quite unusual. And that information is pounced upon by the homoeopaths to "prove" that real medicine is dangerous and shouldn't be used.

But where is the equivalent information for homoeopathic remedies?

Face it, guys, the only reason that there is no requirement for homoeopathic remedies to meet the same standards as real medicine is that the people who make the law don't believe there's anything in the remedies, don't believe they have any effects at all, desirable or undesirable. So they just leave the homoeopaths to play in their sandbox.

Should the potential adverse effects of homoeopathy not perhaps be more widely discussed? The aggravations, the "healing crises", the unpleasant consequences that are ascribed to proving effects? Because, after all, if these remedies have any effect at all, it cannot be denied that adverse effects occur. It's all there to be found in the homoeopaths' own writings.

At least when a real medicine is licensed, I know that it has been deemed to be safe within a reasonable definition of safe under the circumstances within which it will be used, and I know exactly what to look out for and how serious it's likely to be.

With homoeopathy, what do we know? Nothing.

Let those who believe that it has physiological effects prove that it's safe, to the same criteria that real medicines have to prove safety.

Rolfe.

[geni]

It would appear that quite a few pet owners have noticed a failing with alt med when dealing with hyperthyroidism

I've had two hyperT cat's that I treated homeopathically it took one to a peaceful death and only delayed the need to seek traditional treatment with the other. Alternative medicine should only be used in consultation with some one highly trained. If you have a limited budget you may want to try Tapazole. It is the drug used to treat HyperT. I don't know that it is any cheaper in the long run than the more expensive treatments but the cost is spread over a longer period of time.

http://altvetmed.com/Forum/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=704&

Of coruse in this case they blame lack of training but at least they figured out something was wrong.

[Rolfe]

Interesting link, Geni.I've had two hyperT cat's that I treated homeopathically it took one to a peaceful death ....:a2: :a2: :a2: :a2:

Don't we have an even more furious, chewing the crockery, wanting to chew some woo's head off smilie????

:hb:

Hyperthyroidism is so treatable. As we've just been discussing. Hyperthyroid cats ought to die of something else. Eventually.

The very idea that some woo hasn't just sat and watched her pet suffer and die of a treatable condition, she's actually boasting about it on the Internet....

Smiley list inadequate. Can we have tarring, feathering, hanging, drawing and quartering, please?

Rolfe.

[Eos of the Eons]

Hmm, how about some of these

http://www.members.shaw.ca/eostory/NONO4.GIFhttp://www.members.shaw.ca/eostory/bash.GIF http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/armed/hanged.gif http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/armed/Headz.gif http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/armed/MissileSmilie_anim.gif

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Wim's in there already.This is quite funny. Maybe someone could enlighten me about the homoeopathic propriety of not only giving three remedies at once, but twice daily????



I knew I'd be able to track it down with enough googling.

Hahnemann's Organon
Section 272-274
§ 272 Fifth Edition

In no case is it requisite to administer more than one single, simple medicinal substance at one time.1

1 Some homœopathists have made the experiment, in cases where they deemed one remedy homœopathically suitable for one portion of the symptoms of a case of disease, and a second for another portion, of administering both remedies at the same time; but I earnestly deprecate such a hazardous experiment, which can never be necessary, though it may sometimes seem to be of use.


§ 272 Sixth Edition

Such a globule,1 placed dry upon the tongue, is one of the smallest doses for a moderate recent case of illness. Here but few nerves are touched by the medicine. A similar globule, crushed with some sugar of milk and dissolved in a good deal of water (§ 247) and stirred well before every administration will produce a far more powerful medicine for the use of several days. Every dose, no matter how minute, touches, on the contrary, many nerves.

1 These globules (§ 270) retain their medicinal virtue for many years, if protected against sunlight and heat.


§ 273 Fifth Edition

It is not conceivable how the slightest dubiety could exist as to whether it was more consistent with nature and more rational to prescribe a single well-known medicine at one time in a disease, or a mixture of several differently acting drugs.


§ 273 Sixth Edition

In no case under treatment is it necessary and therefore not permissible to administer to a patient more than one single, simple medicinal substance at one time. It is inconceivable how the slightest doubt could exist as to whether it was more consistent with nature and more rational to prescribe a single, simple1 medicine at one time in a disease or a mixture of several differently acting drugs. It is absolutely not allowed in homœopathy, the one true, simple and natural art of healing, to give the patient at one time two different medicinal substance.

1 Two substances, opposite to each other, united into neutral Natrum and middle salts by chemical affinity in unchangeable proportions, as well as sulphurated metals found in the earth and those produced by technical art in constant combining proportions of sulphur and alkaline salts and earths, for instance (natrum sulph. and calcarea sulph.) as well as those ethers produced by distillation of alcohol and acids may together with phosphorus be considered as simple medicinal substances by the homœopathic physician and used for patients. On the other hand, those extracts obtained by means of acids of the so-called alkaloids of plants, are exposed to great variety in their preparation (for instance, chinin, strychnine, morphine), and can, therefore, not be accepted by the homœopathic physician as simple medicines, always the same, especially as he possesses, in the plants themselves, in their natural state (Peruvian bark, nux vomica, opium) every quality necessary for healing. Moreover, the alkaloids are not the only constituents of the plants.


§ 274

As the true physician finds in simple medicines, administered singly and uncombined, all that he can possibly desire (artificial disease-force which are able by homœopathic power completely to overpower, extinguish, and permanently cure natural diseases), he will, mindful of the wise maxim that "it is wrong to attempt to employ complex means when simple means suffice," never think of giving as a remedy any but a single, simple medicinal substance; for these reasons also, because even though the simple medicines were thoroughly proved with respect to their pure peculiar effects on the unimpaired healthy state of man, it is yet impossible to foresee how two and more medicinal substances might, when compounded, hinder and alter each other’s actions on the human body; and because, on the other hand, a simple medicinal substance when used in diseases, the totality of whose symptoms is accurately known, renders efficient aid by itself alone, if it be homœopathically selected; and supposing the worst case to happen, that it was not chosen in strict conformity to similarity of symptoms, and therefore does no good, it is yet so far useful that it promoted our knowledge of therapeutic agents, because, by the new symptoms excited by it in such a case, those symptoms which this medicinal substance had already shown in experiments on the healthy human body are confirmed, an advantage that is lost by the employment of all compound remedies.1

1 When the rational physician has chosen the perfectly homœopathic medicine for the well-considered case of disease and administered it internally, he will leave to irrational allopathic routine the practice of giving drinks or fomentations of different plants, of injecting medicated glysters and of rubbing in this or the other ointment.


Pass it on to Wim, someone.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
Pass it on to Wim, someone. I already posted the real data sheet side-effects text for methimazole last night (to contrast with his lying, exaggerated paraphrase), and a post discussing the evident adverse effects of his homoeopathic remedy suggestions both as cautioned about by him and as reported by Alphonse.

Neither post is there this morning of course, though his personally-souped-up claims about the side-effects are of course still there. I'm trying to prevent bloodboiling, as it's exactly what I was expecting, but when a board admin agrees that it's important to retain information about side-effects then chooses to leave the false list up and delete the true one, it's galling.

Yes, perhaps it's time to see if they'll delete a post which consists of nothing but quotes from Hahnemann.

You wanna do it, or will I?

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

Oh I suppose I can, my IP here should be unrecognised

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
Oh I suppose I can, my IP here should be unrecognised My dear chap, I've re-registered from the same dial-up connection with about five different spelling variations on "Rolfe", without any difficulty at all. I'll soon be forced to start adding numbers.

Let me know if you post anything, I'll want to save it before JanZy gets there. That woman has a lot she needs to hide, evidently.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

PM to ya puss

[Rolfe]

Got it, Tweetie-Pie.

Hey, it's not private! (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1711&PN=0&TPN=4) Nice one.

Any bets on how long that will stay there? I'll post links to the saved versions of this and the posts of mine that were deleted overnight when I get home tonight.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Got it, Tweetie-Pie.

Hey, it's not private! (http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1711&PN=0&TPN=4) Nice one.

Any bets on how long that will stay there? I'll post links to the saved versions of this and the posts of mine that were deleted overnight when I get home tonight.

Rolfe.

Did you get it before 'Sigi' removed my final comment?

I pointed out that, even if you are a not a 'Classical' homeopath you cannot still describe yourself as a homeopath if you do not follow that fundamental ruling by Hahnemann. Not without pointing out explicitly you differ from the teachings, that is.

I can see that might be considered a 'challenging' assertion !!!

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
Did you get it before 'Sigi' removed my final comment?

I pointed out that, even if you are a not a 'Classical' homeopath you cannot still describe yourself as a homeopath if you do not follow that fundamental ruling by Hahnemann. Not without pointing out explicitly you differ from the teachings, that is.

I can see that might be considered a 'challenging' assertion !!! Damn! That's utterly bizarre! I could swear I read exactly what you just said you posted, and then clicked on "save", but it's the edited version that's on my hard disc. How can that be?

Do you have your exact (or approximately exact) wording? I might be able to edit it back in.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

I'll check the cache at work. I might have, but probably not ...

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
I'll check the cache at work. I might have, but probably not ... I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't find any copies of that page in my cache.

It's utterly, utterly bizarro. I definitely read the bit where you accused Wim of not being a "true homoeopath". Because I thought, my God, he's accusing Wim (who styles himself "classical homoeopath") of not being a "true homoeopath"! I only recall viewing the page once, and as I had opened it precisely in order to save it, why should I have reloaded it before saving? I'm sure I didn't. I just saved it. And I only saved it once.

When you asked if I'd got the whole thing, I immediately thought, yes I have, but I opened the saved copy just to make sure. And it was edited.

I suppose it's just a computer hiccup of some sort, but it's things like this that send people woo-woo you know!

Look in your damn cache, OK? I simply can't find it at all in mine.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

OK, here are the two versions I have of page 4 of the Sarah thread. The first one has my two posts which disappeared completely overnight, the second has Benguin's Sigi-edited post.

First version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah4.html)
Second version (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/JREF/sarah4b.html)

Benguin, if you can't find the deleted text, can you rewrite is as close as you can remember? I can easily put it back in. PM me if you like.

Note to anyone posting anti-homoeopathy remarks on that forum - as soon as you've posted, log out (to remove the information regarding who has saved the page), and return to the page with your post. Save it. This will ensure that there's some sort of record of what they've deleted if they jump on it very quickly.

(I still can't make out where Benguin's deleted text went. I know I read it, and I could swear that was the page I clicked on "save" from. This is woo.)

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

On the basis I haven't been banned yet I reposted the essence of the original comment phrased differently.

PMed to you for forensics, Puddy-tat.

[Rolfe]

That version is now the archived one. I like the injured innocent tone.

I wonder who saw my deleted posts, apart from JanZy? Well a lot of this is about being able to demonstrate what they feel they have to censor.

Rolfe.