More Fun with Homeopath Dana Ullman, MPH(!)

[Mojo]

Pimlico 30C.

[Rolfe]

South Kensington

Rolfe.

[krazyKemist]

Some new research on the silicates in water provide some very provocative possibilities on how the structure in water can change and how these nano-sized "silica chips" and the nano-bubbles can influence the water.

Sure. As long as the silicates stay there. Everybody who knows a little of material science knows how the behavior at the liquid/solid interface is not the same as the one in the bulk liquid. Nothing in that work proves that water aquires 'vibrations' or whatnot and stays that way once material is removed (which is what they would have us believe for homeopathy).

As for homeopathy being used for more than 50 years, then translation would be "I'm old, so consequently, I'm right." Where would we be if that was true ?

Think I'll still be hanging on to my old chemistry and physics books for the time being.

[Mojo]

As for homeopathy being used for more than 50 years, then translation would be "I'm old, so consequently, I'm right."


This is sounding like "super peer review" again.

[Madalch]

Think I'll still be hanging on to my old chemistry and physics books for the time being.

KrazyKemist, meet Mad Alchemist. Mad Alchemist, KrazyKemist.

[krazyKemist]

Originally Posted by MRC_Hans
Quote:
P.W. Bridgman, PhD, former professor of physics at Harvard for a couple of decades, and he is a Nobel Laureate. He wrote a book called THE PHYSICS OF HIGH ALTITUDE. He found that whenever one takes water to certain altitudes and freeze it, it freezes in a different pattern based on the high pressure of altitude.
Ehr, surely you mean low pressures?

I was wondering about this as well, but for another reason. Are homoeopathic remedies prepared at high altitude?

Mmmm...

More importantly, are they sold frozen ? I don't know, they pretend that LIQUID water retains information...(no, entropy does not exist) What does that have to do with the different types of ice formations ?

[Michael C]

James Gully, Dana Ullman, or whoever you are: I posted this question a while back but you didn't reply. I'd be very interested to know your answer: could a group of homeopaths determine the composition of a certain number of samples of different remedies (which would be labelled simply with randomly assigned code numbers) using the technique of proving?

The test could be designed to satisfy the needs of the homeopaths:

- The homeopaths would choose the substances to be used in the test: these would be substances that are considered to produce clearly-defined and easily distinguishable symptoms.

- The homeopaths would choose the people to do the provings: they could choose people that they know well (themselves included), so that they would be able to predict how these people would react to the different substances. They could do as many provings as they deem necessary.

Could the homeopaths determine which remedy was in which sample?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

While no one is obliged to continue contributing to discussions and some of us may even have "lives" that distract us from this forum, there is also such a thing as running away...

On which appropriate note I really can play only one move:

Dagenham East

[Rolfe]

As in, three stops beyond Barking?

When I asked some physicyst cronies to comment on the early papers in Millgrom's "Quantum Metaphor" series, the first email I got back said simply "Dagenham East". I checked the map, and sure enough.... But now, I think they added another station or something, because Dagenham East seems to be four stops beyond Barking, and the appropriate move is now Dagenham Heathway.

Given the proximity of the place, it's the disappointment of my life that there isn't a tube station at Havering, and that it isn't three stops beyond Barking.

Hmmm, now for the countermove. Ha, I have it!

Great Portland Street (at 6X).

Now get out of that.

Rolfe.

[Mojo]

That would have been tricky at a higher potency, but at only 6X I am still free to play Turnham Green*.









*As a proving symptom, of course.

[malbui]

Assuming that my leather-bound copy of the 1927 rulebook is an appropriate means of succussion, I think I'm now free to play a 12X Silvertown.

[JamesGully]

Ahhh...it is so sweet that so many of you miss me.

Sadly, I've grown tired of you, primarily due to your intellectual dishonesty. You claim that the homeopathic doses are too small to have any effect, and yet, you ignore the various basic science and clinical studies that I have referenced, only critiquing a small number of them, and even these critiques are usually inadequate.

No one has remarked about the work of the Italian chemist Elia:
--Elia, V, and Niccoli, M. Thermodynamics of Extremely Diluted Aqueous Solutions, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 879, 1999:241-248.

--Elia, V, Baiano, S, Duro, I, Napoli, E, Niccoli, M, Nonatelli, L. Permanent Physio-chemical Properties of Extremely Diluted Aqueous Solutions of Homeopathic Medicines, Homeopathy, 93, 2004:144-150.

The best critique that someone gave to the work of Swiss physicist Louis Rey who published in a major physics journal was a statement by Jacques Benveniste (whose words and experiments you ridicule! So what is it going to be: do you trust Benveniste's words or not?)

No one has remarked about the 3 large clinical trials in the treatment of influenza...and the best critique offered was that the medicine used was made from duck's heart and liver (obviously a "quack medicine"), despite the fact that homeopaths have been hip to avian sources and connections to flu virus since the 1920s!).

No one has remarked substentatively on the four trials at the University of Glasgow on various allergic disorders.

No one has given a scintilla of critique of the study at the University of Vienna Hospital in the treatment of people with COPD (the #4 reason that people die in the US):
--Frass, M, Dielacher, C, Linkesch, M, Endler, C, Muchitsch, I, Schuster, E, Kaye, A..
Influence of Potassium Dichromate on Tracheal Secretions in Critically Ill Patients, Chest, March, 2005.

Instead, you show your intellectual dishonesty. If I cite a study in a peer-review CAM journal, you call it a quack journal, and yet, when a peer-review CAM journal publishes a negative result to a homeopathic trial, you cite it without hesitation (and without acknowledgement of the irony).

I refer you to the work of Rustum Roy and emphasize his previous article on homeopathy and the structure of water, and then, I made reference to a NEW soon-to-be-published study (not theory) using spectoscopic analysis of homeopathic medicines that differentiate one from another and one potency from another (just what YOU requested), and then, several of you write sloppy accounts of a non-homeopathic writing of Dr. Roy's.

Some of you even went off the deep-end by saying that the 13 papers that Dr. Roy got published in NATURE are meaningless (I will be surprised if anyone on this list has gotten a single paper published in NATURE, let alone 13).

The bottomline here is that whether you agree with Dr. Roy or me or whomever, be intellectually honest. Acknowledge positive and negative studies.

When I referenced a four university replication study led by M. Ennis (a former skeptic of homeopathy), someone properly (!) made good reference to a failed replication study. Although this negative result was published in a CAM journal, I referenced one of its authors, Stephan Baumgartner, PhD, as an obviously honest researcher (he can and will publish whatever real data he gets, whether it is pro homeopathy or not). I encourage people to review the MANY studies he has done...and the best criitique that you folks get provide is that he is not the FIRST author on every study (wow...that was a weak critique...and yet, no one here critiqued this critique).

I will be the first to acknowledge that good research is very hard, especially on "frontier subjects" in science. Further, I am suspicious and cautious when researchers report consistently positive results on these frontier subjects. I am therefore pleased when my colleagues report both positive and negative results. This is good science, not party line junk science.

I sincerely hope that the SILENT people on this list read inbetween the lines to see the elephant in the room. In your efforts to be the "defenders of science," you have been shown to have a very unscientific attitude towards homeopathy.

But heck, don't just listen to me...listen to your God, Charles Darwin.

Sometimes study with an N=1 provide important substantiation.

I take great pleasure to telling you a historical fact. Our greatly beloved Charles Darwin not only sought care from a highly respected homeopathic physician, Darwin could not have completed his seminal work, Origin of Species, in 1859, if he didn't receive this homeopathic care 10 year prior to its publication.

Just read Darwin's letters to read about this story and learn something about his life...

From 1837 onwards Darwin was frequently incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, heart palpitations, trembling, and other symptoms. In 1847, Darwin's illness worsened. He was again experiencing frequent episodes of vomiting and weakness, but he now was also experiencing fainting spells and seeing spots in front of his eyes. Darwin wrote that he was so sick that he was “unable to do anything one day out of three.” He was so ill that he wasn’t even able to attend his father’s funeral when he died on November 13, 1848.

In March 1849, an old HMS Beagle shipmate told him about a different type of medical treatment provided by James Manby Gully, MD (1808-1883), and his cousin told Darwin that two friends had benefited greatly from Gully’s care. Darwin decided to go and to take the entire family (his wife Emma and their seven children) (Keynes, 2002). Dr. Gully and his health spa were situated in Malvern (just southwest of Birmingham), which is around 125 miles from the Darwin’s home.

Dr. Gully was a medical graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and he was an unyielding opponent of the use of drugs of that time and age. His medical practice did not simply provide hydrotherapy or dietary advice; he also prescribed homeopathic medicines and recommended medical clairvoyant readings. After being at Dr. Gully’s spa for just nine days, Darwin laments that Gully had prescribed homeopathic medicine to him, “I grieve to say that Dr. Gully gives me homeopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.”

And even though Darwin was extremely skeptical, just two days later (March 30, 1849) Darwin acknowledged, “I have already received so much benefit that I really hope my health will be much renovated” (Burkhardt, 1996, 107). After being there just eight days Darwin a skin eruption broken out all over his legs, and he was actually pleased to experience this problem because he had previously observed that his physical and mental health improved noticeably after having skin eruptions.

He went a month without vomiting, a very rare experience for him, and even gained some weight. One day he surprised himself by being able to walk seven miles. He wrote to a friend, “I am turning into a mere walking & eating machine” (Quammen, 2006, 112)

And after just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all. After spending 16 weeks there, he felt like a new man, and by June he was able to go home to resume his important work (Grosvenor, 2004). Darwin actually writes that he is “of almost perfect health” (Burkhardt, 1996, 108).

Some other people of significant notoriety who benefited from Dr. Gully’s care include Charles Dickens (the novelist and writer), Lord Alfred Tennyson (the poet), Florence Nightingale (the famed nurse), George Eliot (the British novelist), Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)(the Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian), John Ruskin (the art critic and the social critic), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)(the British novelist, playwright, and politician), Thomas Babington Macaulay--1st Baron Macaulay (the poet and politician), and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873)(Desmond and Moore, 1991, 363). Further, three Prime Ministers sought Dr. Gully’s care, including William Gladstone (1809-1898)(England’s Prime Minister), Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)(England’s Prime Minister), George Hamilton Hamilton-Gordon (known as Lord Aberdeen)(1784-1860), as well as Queen Victoria herself. Lord Aberdeen described Dr. Gully as “the most gifted physician of the age” (Ruddick, 2001, 2).

And I bet that none of you know about the experiments that Darwin conducted using homeopathic doses.

I encourage you to do some homework on homeopathy before you respond to this email. Read the research on homeopathy (not just the quackbusters' interpretations on it) and read medical history (one historical FACT: homeopathy gained its greatest popularity in the US and Europe due to the impressive successes that it experienced in the treatment of infectious disease epidemics of the 19th century...any good medical history book confirms this...and yes, a forthcoming writing of mine will provide all of the detailed references...but they are readily available to those who look.

Most of all, maintain humility. Life and nature is full of mysteries, and your close-mindedness is not an effective strategy for learning.

Finally...I cannot help but sense that many (not all) of the people on this list were nerds as kids who were beat-up and/or ridiculed by others. Now, you take great pleasure to beating up and ridiculing others. I was neither a nerd nor someone who ridiculed them, but as a homeopath, I have learned to sympathize with those who had these experiences. I sincerely hope that you do not choose pass on the ridicule and that you learn to communicate with wisdom and compassion. To date, my experiment with you has shown that this experiment was a failure, but prove me wrong (the experiment isn't over yet).

[Michael C]

Sadly, I've grown tired of you, primarily due to your intellectual dishonesty.

Why not show some intellectual honesty yourself and answer the simple, direct questions that many have been asking. Here (for the third time) is mine:

Could a group of homeopaths determine the composition of a certain number of samples of different remedies (which would be labelled simply with randomly assigned code numbers) using the technique of proving?

The test could be designed to satisfy the needs of the homeopaths:

- The homeopaths would choose the substances to be used in the test: these would be substances that are considered to produce clearly-defined and easily distinguishable symptoms.

- The homeopaths would choose the people to do the provings: they could choose people that they know well (themselves included), so that they would be able to predict how these people would react to the different substances. They could do as many provings as they deem necessary.

Could the homeopaths determine which remedy was in which sample?

[gmanontario]

Some other people of significant notoriety who benefited from Dr. Gully’s care include Charles Dickens (the novelist and writer), Lord Alfred Tennyson (the poet), Florence Nightingale (the famed nurse), George Eliot (the British novelist), Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)(the Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian), John Ruskin (the art critic and the social critic), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)(the British novelist, playwright, and politician), Thomas Babington Macaulay--1st Baron Macaulay (the poet and politician), and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873)(Desmond and Moore, 1991, 363). Further, three Prime Ministers sought Dr. Gully’s care, including William Gladstone (1809-1898)(England’s Prime Minister), Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)(England’s Prime Minister), George Hamilton Hamilton-Gordon (known as Lord Aberdeen)(1784-1860), as well as Queen Victoria herself. Lord Aberdeen described Dr. Gully as “the most gifted physician of the age” (Ruddick, 2001, 2).

How typically dishonest of the sCAM crowd. Use people long-dead as references for their quackery. Very convenient since not one of these cases can be examined by medical experts today.

Got any modern people who can prove they benefitted from your particular brand of idicoy or are you going to contunually use unverifiable references..:confused:

Oh wait I just remembered who I was addressing. Never mind I know the answer.

BTW I had a homeopath a-hole tell me my brain cancer could be cured easily and quickly by drinking magic water and burning brown candles in my ears. I hope you're at least a little smarter than that fool, but I may be asking way too much.

[Michael C]

But heck, don't just listen to me...listen to your God, Charles Darwin.

No, he's not my God: I don't believe in God. Darwin was a genius, but being a genius doesn't prevent people from saying or doing stupid things. Look at all the astrological and alchemical nonsense that Newton spent so much time on, for instance. The fact that I respect Darwin's work on evolution does not mean that I believe his theories on the supposed inferiority of women, or any other bad ideas he may have had.

Darwin could not have completed his seminal work, Origin of Species, in 1859, if he didn't receive this homeopathic care 10 year prior to its publication.

That's a pretty wild assumption! How can you know what would have happened to Darwin if he hadn't been treated by Gully?

Finally...I cannot help but sense that many (not all) of the people on this list were nerds as kids who were beat-up and/or ridiculed by others. Now, you take great pleasure to beating up and ridiculing others. I was neither a nerd nor someone who ridiculed them, but as a homeopath, I have learned to sympathize with those who had these experiences. I sincerely hope that you do not choose pass on the ridicule and that you learn to communicate with wisdom and compassion.

Condescending Ad Hominem attacks have no place in a scientific discussion.

[JamesGully]

Well...we're going to a predictably bad start.

Once again, you are ignoring the evidence that I present and then choose to bring up other issues...but to answer those issues, I challenge anyone to read a homeopathic materia medica and compare the symptoms of a medicine with its presently known toxicology. You'll be impressed (or surprised). The only difference is that homeopathic text will provide even greater detail.

As to the question, will a homeopath be able to predict what medicine was used in a proving? Yes and no. If there are an adequate number of provers who give an adequate number of symptoms, a significant number of homeopaths will be able to determine which medicine was proven, except if a strange and rare medicine was used.

As for modern-day people using homeopathy...you know that you're asking an easy question. The answer to this question will be in my forthcoming book. I just wanted to whet your appetite about homeopathy by describing its use by your God, Charles Darwin.

Please stop avoiding the issues presented. Let's keep a focus. Your scientific training should come in handy for this, even though it seems that an unscientific attitudes seems to prevail here. Sad but true.

I'm really hoping that a real dialogue takes place here, not just posturing.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

<< SNIP >>

I sincerely hope that the SILENT people on this list read inbetween the lines to see the elephant in the room. In your efforts to be the "defenders of science," you have been shown to have a very unscientific attitude towards homeopathy.

<< SNIP >>



I have not posted in this thread before so I guess I am one of those SILENT ones.

You don't have to convince me that homeopathy "works", you don't have to convince any of the other skeptics who have posted. However, I would think that, after 200 years, that homeopaths could have convinced the scientific community in general that it is valid. A good start would be unambiguious evidence that has any effect other than that of a placebo. :boggled:

[Mojo]

Some other people of significant notoriety who benefited from Dr. Gully’s care include Charles Dickens (the novelist and writer), Lord Alfred Tennyson (the poet), Florence Nightingale (the famed nurse), George Eliot (the British novelist), Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)(the Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian), John Ruskin (the art critic and the social critic), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)(the British novelist, playwright, and politician), Thomas Babington Macaulay--1st Baron Macaulay (the poet and politician), and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873)(Desmond and Moore, 1991, 363). Further, three Prime Ministers sought Dr. Gully’s care, including William Gladstone (1809-1898)(England’s Prime Minister), Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)(England’s Prime Minister), George Hamilton Hamilton-Gordon (known as Lord Aberdeen)(1784-1860), as well as Queen Victoria herself. Lord Aberdeen described Dr. Gully as “the most gifted physician of the age” (Ruddick, 2001, 2).


I think you'll find that all these patients died.

[JamesGully]

Dear Gord in Toronto and other silent ones...
Actually, 40% of French MDs and 20% German MDs prescribe homeopathic medicines...over 40% of British MDs refer to homeopaths and 45% of Dutch MDs consider homeopathic medicines to be effective.
Once again, please do your homework, and think before writing.
As for providing "evidence" again to scientists, I again refer to just some of the references that I provide above...but the REAL PROBLEM is that most scientists are CLERGYMEN in disguise holding dearly to their faith.

As for all of Dr. Gully's patients dying...yeah...in old age. Darwin living over 30 years after his 1st visit to his homeopath.
Is this really the best ya got? I'm expecting you to become homeopaths shortly.

[SYLVESTER1592]

...
Well, to get an idea of my knowledge of homeopathy, you might read my article here: http://www.hans-egebo.dk/skeptic/Homeopathy%20article.htm

I have invited other homeopaths to comment on it and point out any factual errors in it. So far there have been no takers. Perhaps you ...?

...

It is not Dr. Green's duty, or mine, or any other skeptic's, to know how homeopathy works. It is your duty, as a proponent of the practice.

See above, but a perfectly valid answer would be: "I haven't the slightest idea. You tell me."

Hans

I think you are right, but we have to be careful what we say when we address specific people. I see you have removed your snippets on the webpage.
Some of these homeopaths don't take being called a quack very lightly and go to court over it. In some countries, the rules are set up in such a way that homeopaths or "alternative healers" can't always be called quacks based on the law. Recently one of these alternative healers has won a lawsuit against the anti-quackery association in my country and demanded rectification of the statements. The cost of this is threatening to put the anti-quackery association out of business...

Doctors have very few rights, they have the right to make the decision about a therapy based on their knowledge ( in my country at least), but all the rest are duties and requirements. Quacks are well versed in dealing with the laws and the institutions that watch over the quality of medical practice and the disciplinary board. As a matter of fact if you need to address the disciplinary board, you are most likely to get the best arguments for your defense from them. For a quack, medicine is a business, nothing more. As long as they can make money of of it, they will exist. They are immune to the law in some cases or tolerated by the law in others as long as they don't go too far. When this is the case, the law is basically on their side...

As long as people can't understand why homeopathy can't work or give it "a chance" because it can't do any harm (except to your wallet) they are not getting proper evidence based treatment. I think this is possibly the only argument that will sway people to look skeptically at homeopathy and alternative healers. I think a skeptical approach towards homeopathy and alternative medicine should also include the law, it's not about science or medicine, we all agree on that, it's about business...

My point is: dealing with quacks is not only about medicine or science, but also about the law. You can be right in every possible way, but you need a lot more to get justice...
a skeptical approach and providing a better understanding of what they are selling, may be an eye-opener to some people. Demanding proper scientific evidence is another. Making evidence based medicine the guideline for medical practice is the key to end quackery in combination with the proper application of the law and people's desire to change the law accordingly...

Just a thought...

SYL :)

[politas]

Homeopathic "provings" do not in any way demonstrate the effectiveness of a homepathic treatment regimen.

Also, in homeopathic provings which include a placebo group, the provers on placebo have in some circumstances been observed to produce symptoms similar to those who are taking the remedy, which one would think would result in those symptoms being discounted. Strangely, this does not seem to be the case, and homeopaths instead consider that the placebo person has been affected by some kind of magical resonance.

Homeopaths are unable to explain their craft without resorting to magic.

[gmanontario]

Well...we're going to a predictably bad start.
Nope a predictably bad countinuance is more accurate.

Once again, you are ignoring the evidence that I present and then choose to bring up other issues...but to answer those issues, I challenge anyone to read a homeopathic materia medica and compare the symptoms of a medicine with its presently known toxicology. You'll be impressed (or surprised). The only difference is that homeopathic text will provide even greater detail.

I'd be surprised if even on quack remedy worked or even made sense scientifically. Otherwise it's all fantasy hopefulness.

As to the question, will a homeopath be able to predict what medicine was used in a proving? Yes and no. If there are an adequate number of provers who give an adequate number of symptoms, a significant number of homeopaths will be able to determine which medicine was proven, except if a strange and rare medicine was used.

Impressive way to try and explain away the shortcomings. Got any stats to back up the BS?

As for modern-day people using homeopathy...you know that you're asking an easy question. The answer to this question will be in my forthcoming book. I just wanted to whet your appetite about homeopathy by describing its use by your God, Charles Darwin.

Chales Darwin is nobody's god, but you are Hahnemann's fool. I wouldn't waste a dime on your pulp trash.

Please stop avoiding the issues presented. Let's keep a focus. Your scientific training should come in handy for this, even though it seems that an unscientific attitudes seems to prevail here. Sad but true.

I'm really hoping that a real dialogue takes place here, not just posturing.
You first.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Dear Gord in Toronto and other silent ones...
Actually, 40% of French MDs and 20% German MDs prescribe homeopathic medicines...over 40% of British MDs refer to homeopaths and 45% of Dutch MDs consider homeopathic medicines to be effective.
Once again, please do your homework, and think before writing.

OK. The first thing I note is that MDs are not scientists. So, so what?

As for providing "evidence" again to scientists, I again refer to just some of the references that I provide above...but the REAL PROBLEM is that most scientists are CLERGYMEN in disguise holding dearly to their faith.

In 1986 J. G. Bednorz and K. A. Müller published that they had discovered "high temperature superconductivity"; a material that conducted electricity without resistance at 35-degrees Kelvin. They had no theory as to how this was possible and even today there is no good explanation. They got the Nobel Prize. How does this differ from Homeopathy? Replication. So much for "most scientists are CLERGYMEN in disguise holding dearly to their faith".

As for all of Dr. Gully's patients dying...yeah...in old age. Darwin living over 30 years after his 1st visit to his homeopath.
Is this really the best ya got? I'm expecting you to become homeopaths shortly.

If homeopathy cured so many and it so obviously worked, why did it fall out of favour among the educated? Why did the markeplace not work? :boggled:

[gmanontario]

snipped more anti-science bullcrap as repeated ad mauseum by the woo crowd ....

As for all of Dr. Gully's patients dying...yeah...in old age. Darwin living over 30 years after his 1st visit to his homeopath.

Prove it was the homeostupidity that cured him of something or other. Suprise everyone by using some real verifiable evidence.

I've lived 40 years (and counting) after my first visit to Dairy Queen.
Correlation != causation, even the dumbest of researchers realize that. I would imagine it's tough to continue the delusions if you start to use logic.


Is this really the best ya got? I'm expecting you to become homeopaths shortly.
Nope I refuse to allow a lobotomy any time soon. Yours has worked quite well it seems.

[SYLVESTER1592]

Dear Gord in Toronto and other silent ones...
Actually, 40% of French MDs and 20% German MDs prescribe homeopathic medicines...over 40% of British MDs refer to homeopaths and 45% of Dutch MDs consider homeopathic medicines to be effective.
Once again, please do your homework, and think before writing.
As for providing "evidence" again to scientists, I again refer to just some of the references that I provide above...but the REAL PROBLEM is that most scientists are CLERGYMEN in disguise holding dearly to their faith.

As for all of Dr. Gully's patients dying...yeah...in old age. Darwin living over 30 years after his 1st visit to his homeopath.
Is this really the best ya got? I'm expecting you to become homeopaths shortly.

I’m a bit confused here. I think you got your numbers for the Netherlands from this site (http://www.homeopathyhealthcenter.com/index.html).
The last survey in the Netherlands was done in 1988 and 1990 (http://fampra.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/7/3/227) as far as I know showing 47% of the doctors prescribing alternative therapies on occasion. The numbers were not near as high when looking at doctors who considered alternative medicine was enough of a therapy on its own. 8% considered alternative medicine a good alternative (NTvG 1988; 132(20): 904-6). You have to keep in mind that some of the doctors do both regular and alternative medicine and alternative medicine also included manual therapy (which in some practices includes physiotherapy).

Also the number of doctors that were prescribing alternative therapies (47%) did so in a small amount of cases mostly referring to their colleagues who did something like this on the side before the introduction of the law BIG, which regulates medical interventions in the Netherlands. In 1990 there were a lot of doctors willing to send people in for alternative medical treatments, there was no legal problem doing this and no real problems had occurred.

Since that time, some people have died by the lack of proper care by alternative healers ans charges have been brought to the practitioners. A case of a TV personality who died. This changed things even further. 3 doctors were suspended from practice for the rest of their lives.

Furthermore, over the counter medicine in the Netherlands also includes many regular drugs. The most common one paracetamol is actually one that is recommended by doctors to be bought over the counter, due to insurance costs for the patient and the higher cost of prescription. Some other drugs are also moved from prescription to the over the counter variant. This leads to a reduced control over the drug use by patients and less of a need to support requests from patients requesting alternative medicine, they can get it without intervention of a medical doctor…

So I think that these numbers need updating. It has not been done yet as far as I know, but 17 year old numbers seem less relevant at this time.

The problem is that alternative medicine keeps changing its face, reinventing the old idea under a new name. This leads to doctors and patients trying similar things again and again. It says a lot about the scientific decay among clinicians. The lack (or erosion) of scientific insight and knowledge about fundamental sciences, physiology and pharmacology makes them easy prey for all who make up a good story... I´m sorry to say that the education of medical staff has declined beneath an academic level in some cases... :(

I´m still hopeful about the future and the way evidence based medicine may spark critical thought and a new awareness among clinicians.

SYL :)

[JJM]

{snip} My point is: dealing with quacks is not only about medicine or science, but also about the law. You can be right in every possible way, but you need a lot more to get justice...
a skeptical approach and providing a better understanding of what they are selling, may be an eye-opener to some people. Demanding proper scientific evidence is another. Making evidence based medicine the guideline for medical practice is the key to end quackery in combination with the proper application of the law and people's desire to change the law accordingly...

Just a thought...

SYL :)I agree with you. Among the problems:
1- It is profitable (and easy) to convince an ignorant legislature to allow licensure of quackery. Easy because the quacks get their customers to write in favor of it (and it is not a budget item for the legislature), and because the opposition has no funding or time to mount a strong opposition.
2- The standard of care is then set by the respective licensing boards. Recently, a video of a chiropractor in the state of Washington showed her practicing "touchless" chiropractic. Thousands of people saw it (including me). Yet, when a doctor filed a fraud complaint- the chiro board said they saw her touching the customer; therefore, it was not fraud!? Also, two and a half years ago, a naturopath killed a woman in Utah. The ND's lawyer said he would not be in trouble if he had a license. It seems you can kill with impunity if you have a license.

[fls]

Dear Gord in Toronto and other silent ones...
Actually, 40% of French MDs and 20% German MDs prescribe homeopathic medicines...over 40% of British MDs refer to homeopaths and 45% of Dutch MDs consider homeopathic medicines to be effective.
Once again, please do your homework, and think before writing.
As for providing "evidence" again to scientists, I again refer to just some of the references that I provide above...but the REAL PROBLEM is that most scientists are CLERGYMEN in disguise holding dearly to their faith.

Physicians are not necessarily scientists. That there are physicians that have not yet fully embraced evidence-based medicine, especially in Europe, is not particularly wonderful - old habits die hard. Also, I'd be interested in the source for your numbers. Considering that you have demonstrated a willingness to misrepresent information and make stuff up, it would be foolish for any of us to believe those numbers without a reference.

On the other hand, physicians in Canada (where the evidence-based movement originated) don't prescribe homeopathic medicines.

Linda

[JJM]

(snip) Also the number of doctors that were prescribing alternative therapies (47%) did so in a small amount of cases mostly referring to their colleagues who did something like this on the side before the introduction of the law BIG, which regulates medical interventions in the Netherlands. In 1990 there were a lot of doctors willing to send people in for alternative medical treatments, there was no legal problem doing this and no real problems had occurred. {snip}

SYL :)I recently read an account of an orthopedist who retired from the military. S/He said that supervisors wanted him/her to clear patients off medical care. The solution, in some cases, was to refer them to chiropractors. Not because chiro is legitimate; but because it solved the immediate problem. Many people present in doctors' offices with no diagnosis/treatment available. Shipping them off to homeopaths is easy, as is homeopathy adopted by the doctor. The office visits last longer; but the doctor is being paid by the hour.

[Michael C]

As to the question, will a homeopath be able to predict what medicine was used in a proving? Yes and no. If there are an adequate number of provers who give an adequate number of symptoms, a significant number of homeopaths will be able to determine which medicine was proven, except if a strange and rare medicine was used.

OK, let's imagine an example: you, the homeopath, choose three homeopathic remedies that will produce different, easily-distinguishable symptoms. We'll call them substance A, B and C. You are given a sample, and your task is to ascertain if the sample is substance A, B, C or a placebo. You may choose provers whom you already know, so you should have a clear idea of how they react to the three different substances. How many provers would you need in order to find the answer?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

So, James Gully pops up to give us a quick run through of the most popular logical fallacies, starting with argument form antiquity, with a quick combination of argument from antiquity plus uncontrolled anecdote and moved on to argument from authority. Though that loast one, I will confess, is actually more a disingenuopus misrepresentation. I, after all, have also allowed referral to magic water retailers. This is not because I believe in it but because I ran out of breath trying to explain to the client why they are wasting their money.

James Gully/Dana Ullman, we have discussed your favourite papers. They are all worthless trash. What you have failed to do is answer a number of simple and direct questions. Now, I wonder what would be a better qualification for the description of "intellectual dishonesty".

I return to your clinical evidence base;

4. Can you tell us whether either of these machines works?

http://www.bio-resonance.com/elybra.htm

http://www.remedydevices.com/voice.htm

Bear in mind that the users of these machines rely on exactly the same anecdotal experience and fallacious post hoc reasoning that every other homeopath does. Are the homeopaths who use these machines right or wrong in thinking they work?

It's a very simple question and capable of a single-word answer.

I'll give you a new question just so you can show how well you understand the interpretation of clinical trial data;

9. I set a p-value for significance of 0.05 and run 100 trials. In no trial is the test substance distinguishable from the control. How many trials can I expect to show an apparent "effect" from my test substance?

[SYLVESTER1592]

I recently read an account of an orthopedist who retired from the military. S/He said that supervisors wanted him/her to clear patients off medical care. The solution, in some cases, was to refer them to chiropractors. Not because chiro is legitimate; but because it solved the immediate problem. Many people present in doctors' offices with no diagnosis/treatment available. Shipping them off to homeopaths is easy, as is homeopathy adopted by the doctor. The office visits last longer; but the doctor is being paid by the hour.
Yes... back problems are notorious. The patient's desire for a diagnosis and treatment is so overwhelming that doctors sometimes "chicken out" and choose to give in to the patient's request for an alternative treatment they found on the internet instead of explaining what is happening to them. As long as they know for sure it won't do any harm and the patient will return for their check up, they feel the doctor-patient relationship is more important to insure proper care. I don't know this particular case, but I imagine it is something similar.

SYL :)

[JamesGully]

Well, several of us agree on something important: modern physicians are NOT scientists. This is an important point, and I'm glad that we have common ground here.

If you think about it, how many conventional drugs have stood the test of time?

I am rarely surprised to read about a new drugs seemingly wonderful ability to temporarily provide some relief of symptoms or a disease, but I am never surprised when further research uncovers the fact that the drug causes some serious side effects...and then, later on, more research uncovers the fact that the drug causes more harm than good...but we are assured and reassured that this dangerous drug has now been replaced by a new drug that has (at least initially) been found to provide seemingly real relief of symptoms...until further research uncovers the same pattern that we have all seen before.

I defined quackery as the promotion of ineffective treatment by providers who claim fantastic results and who charge a lot of money. Wow...perfect...this describes our own "medical industrial complex" perfectly.

And what is so so surprising here is that YOU people on this list seem to be the defenders of this conventional medical paradigm.

Dear Politas...I never (!) said that "homeopathic provings" prove homeopathic medicines to be effective. Homeopathic provings are experiments in which homeopaths conduct to determine what syndrome of symptoms a substance CAUSES and therefore what syndrome of symptoms it can cure in nanodoses. The point here is that homeopathy is primarily based on experimental toxicology, and this is in part why homeopathy has ALWAYS attracted the "educated elite" (all types of surveys have verified that users of homeopathic medicines are more educated than non-users).

As for Mr. Monkey...it seems that you disbelieve in Darwinian thinking because you have not yet evolved and are still asking the same tired and innane questions. Please evolve...for your own good.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Some real medicine from real science -- based on research done at Oxford University in the '40s and '50s researchers invented the Oral Rehydration Solution.

This was tested in the field in the '60s and '70s and proved to work.

See: http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/O_0045.htm
for a bit of history.

To quote our friends at Wiki: Between 1980 and 2000, ORT decreased the number of children under five dying of diarrhea from 4.6 million worldwide to 1.8 million—a 60% reduction. According to The Lancet (1978), ORT is "potentially the most important medical discovery of the 20th century".

ORT? Why it's just a solution of salt and sugar? In measurable quantities. ;)

Rubbing the patient with water in which an atom or two of camphor once was present and giving him "one or two globules of the finest preparation of copper" just doesn't seem to cut it. :boggled:

[fls]

Well, several of us agree on something important: modern physicians are NOT scientists. This is an important point, and I'm glad that we have common ground here.

Cute.

If you think about it, how many conventional drugs have stood the test of time?

Silly you. You should always know the answer to your rhetorical questions before you ask. Else you run the risk of looking silly.

The answer is 18,361.

I am rarely surprised to read about a new drugs seemingly wonderful ability to temporarily provide some relief of symptoms or a disease, but I am never surprised when further research uncovers the fact that the drug causes some serious side effects...and then, later on, more research uncovers the fact that the drug causes more harm than good...but we are assured and reassured that this dangerous drug has now been replaced by a new drug that has (at least initially) been found to provide seemingly real relief of symptoms...until further research uncovers the same pattern that we have all seen before.

Pesky things those effects.

I defined quackery as the promotion of ineffective treatment by providers who claim fantastic results and who charge a lot of money. Wow...perfect...this describes our own "medical industrial complex" perfectly.

Careful. Now that the conspiracy threads no longer show up on the main page, you'll lose whatever audience it is that you think you're playing to if you get this thread moved.

And what is so so surprising here is that YOU people on this list seem to be the defenders of this conventional medical paradigm.

You seem to think you are at some other place. Next time, ask for directions when you get lost.

Linda

[SYLVESTER1592]

Well, several of us agree on something important: modern physicians are NOT scientists. This is an important point, and I'm glad that we have common ground here. ...


Well, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I disagree. Medicine is still an academic study and rightfully so. I contest the idea that it is merely a trade... Exactly for the reasons you present. Conventional medicine has as one of its goals research and requires members of the medical community to contribute to the progress of medical sciences. Regrettably modern doctors forget this task too often or see it as a demeaning task or a distraction from their "real" work or as a part of a career building opportunity. The increasing complexity of medical research contributes to this phenomenon. This is a possible problem with evidence based medicine, the ability to interpret the evidence...
So, no I disagree, modern physicians are still scientists. Many of them have just forgotten how to do it...

This however, is a mistake that will in the end render the medical community toothless and incapable to handle emerging problems, relying on the conscious or interested few that have taken the task to engage in scientific work. It further makes them susceptible to the great many that aim to profit from the lack of skepticism and tools to interpret evidence and gain their support from misled patients rather then scientific proof. Luckily there are still interested few that differ from the majority and do deliver good work in several fields. Medical science progresses in small steps, but always on well-founded evidence. Of course it does not always succeed completely, hence the complexity of medical trials to evaluate possible effects and side-effects. This is a big difference with alternative medicine, which does not hold up in a well designed experiment yet.

I would not be so presumptuous as to claim that no alternative treatment could ever be effective, but I would like to see it happen. If you can prove that it does in a well-designed controlled blinded experiment and repeat it independently as is done in conventional medicine, that would certainly make my day. Past results make me wonder if it will ever happen, and after so many failures one could wonder if the negative results could ever outweigh the positives, but I'm not a cynic. I can still question myself and if there is some convincing evidence that some of this may be possible I'm all for testing it in a phase I/IIa/IIb trial and even a following phase III trial if the evidence holds up. Conventional medicine sometimes does and that's when we make progress. So eventhough it does not always give us the results we wish for, it still gives us the best results available and that is the best effort any physician can and should make for his/her patient.

SYL :)

[JamesGully]

[QUOTE=Gord_in_Toronto;2696052]Some real medicine from real science -- based on research done at Oxford University in the '40s and '50s researchers invented the Oral Rehydration Solution.

This was tested in the field in the '60s and '70s and proved to work.

See: http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/O_0045.htm
for a bit of history.

This IS one of the great contributions to public health, and because of my own background in public health, I appreciate it. However, did you know that there have been three randomized double-blind clinical trials published in peer-review journals that have used individually prescribed homeopathic medicines that improved upon the results of ORT?

Here's the reference to a meta-analysis of these three studies. Although the lead research was the same MD, the actual prescribers for each of the three trials were different homeopaths.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12634583&ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsP anel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

This meta-analysis was published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

Its abstract:
Homeopathy for childhood diarrhea: combined results and metaanalysis from three randomized, controlled clinical trials. Jacobs J, Jonas WB, Jiménez-Pérez M, Crothers D.
Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown a positive treatment effect of individualized homeopathic treatment for acute childhood diarrhea, but sample sizes were small and results were just at or near the level of statistical significance. Because all three studies followed the same basic study design, the combined data from these three studies were analyzed to obtain greater statistical power. METHODS: Three double blind clinical trials of diarrhea in 242 children ages 6 months to 5 years were analyzed as 1 group. Children were randomized to receive either an individualized homeopathic medicine or placebo to be taken as a single dose after each unformed stool for 5 days. Parents recorded daily stools on diary cards, and health workers made home visits daily to monitor children. The duration of diarrhea was defined as the time until there were less than 3 unformed stools per day for 2 consecutive days. A metaanalysis of the effect-size difference of the three studies was also conducted. RESULTS: Combined analysis shows a duration of diarrhea of 3.3 days in the homeopathy group compared with 4.1 in the placebo group (P = 0.008). The metaanalysis shows a consistent effect-size difference of approximately 0.66 day (P = 0.008). CONCLUSIONS: The results from these studies confirm that individualized homeopathic treatment decreases the duration of acute childhood diarrhea and suggest that larger sample sizes be used in future homeopathic research to ensure adequate statistical power. Homeopathy should be considered for use as an adjunct to oral rehydration for this illness.

I hope that ill-informed people will STOP saying that there is no good research testing homeopathic medicines.

By the way, the 1st trial (which was published in the famed journal, PEDIATRICS) showed that the best results were in children who had a confirmed infection based on stool lab analysis.

[SYLVESTER1592]

[QUOTE=Gord_in_Toronto;2696052]Some real medicine from real science -- based on research done at Oxford University in the '40s and '50s researchers invented the Oral Rehydration Solution.

This was tested in the field in the '60s and '70s and proved to work.

See: http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/O_0045.htm

for a bit of history.

This IS one of the great contributions to public health, and because of my own background in public health, I appreciate it. However, did you know that there have been three randomized double-blind clinical trials published in peer-review journals that have used individually prescribed homeopathic medicines that improved upon the results of ORT?

Here's the reference to a meta-analysis of these three studies. Although the lead research was the same MD, the actual prescribers for each of the three trials were different homeopaths.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12634583&ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsP anel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

This meta-analysis was published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

Its abstract:
Homeopathy for childhood diarrhea: combined results and metaanalysis from three randomized, controlled clinical trials. Jacobs J, Jonas WB, Jiménez-Pérez M, Crothers D.
Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown a positive treatment effect of individualized homeopathic treatment for acute childhood diarrhea, but sample sizes were small and results were just at or near the level of statistical significance. Because all three studies followed the same basic study design, the combined data from these three studies were analyzed to obtain greater statistical power. METHODS: Three double blind clinical trials of diarrhea in 242 children ages 6 months to 5 years were analyzed as 1 group. Children were randomized to receive either an individualized homeopathic medicine or placebo to be taken as a single dose after each unformed stool for 5 days. Parents recorded daily stools on diary cards, and health workers made home visits daily to monitor children. The duration of diarrhea was defined as the time until there were less than 3 unformed stools per day for 2 consecutive days. A metaanalysis of the effect-size difference of the three studies was also conducted. RESULTS: Combined analysis shows a duration of diarrhea of 3.3 days in the homeopathy group compared with 4.1 in the placebo group (P = 0.008). The metaanalysis shows a consistent effect-size difference of approximately 0.66 day (P = 0.008). CONCLUSIONS: The results from these studies confirm that individualized homeopathic treatment decreases the duration of acute childhood diarrhea and suggest that larger sample sizes be used in future homeopathic research to ensure adequate statistical power. Homeopathy should be considered for use as an adjunct to oral rehydration for this illness.

I hope that ill-informed people will STOP saying that there is no good research testing homeopathic medicines.

By the way, the 1st trial (which was published in the famed journal, PEDIATRICS) showed that the best results were in children who had a confirmed infection based on stool lab analysis.

First of all it’s in Pediatr Infect Dis J. not PEDIATRICS :D
Pediatric Inf Dis J. : Impact factor 1.819
Pediatrics : Impact factor 2.710

BTW the article can be found here (http://cam.utmb.edu/resources/journalclubarticles/Homeopathy&Diarrhea2003PediInfectDisJ.pdf) you might want to show it so we can all see what we are discussing.


But you are right, indeed most of the research in it is based on data from Nicaragua (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=8165068&ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsP anel.Pubmed_RVDocSum), from previously published data. It has been looked at quite extensively…

Just click on the other links to see the discussion…
Final death blow can be found in Pediatrics: Sampson W, London W. Pediatrics. 1995 Nov;96(5 Pt 1):961-4
Also see this (http://www.homeowatch.org/articles/wagner.html)

A report in May 1994 examined the homeopathic treatment of diarrhea in children who lived in Nicaragua [7]. On Day 3 of treatment the homeopathic group had one less unformed stool than the control group (3.1 Vs 2.1; p <.05). However, critics [8] pointed out that not only were the sickest children excluded, but there were no significant differences on Days 1, 2, 4, or 5. This suggests that the conclusion was not valid. Further, there was no assurance that the homeopathic remedy was not adulterated (contaminated). Finally, standard remedies which halt diarrhea were not used for comparison purposes.

And : The Nepal trial was not significant p=0.06 as you may have read in the paper you suggested

Maybe also have a look at this list (http://www.quackwatch.org/search/webglimpse.cgi?ID=1&query=childhood+diarrhea&case=&whole=&lines=&errors=0&age=&maxfiles=50&maxlines=30&maxchars=10000&filter=&cache=yes&ids=1%2C2%2C14%2C18%2C16%2C20%2C15%2C13%2C3%2C19%2 C8%2C12%2C17%2C4%2C10%2C5%2C6%2C9%2C10%2C7%2C21&rankby=DEFAULT) that discusses this subject of childhood diarrhea

Just a few questions right of the bat… :)

1) Why do you think it is relevant or a good study?
2) What conclusion would you attribute to the fact that on day 3 there were less then 2 unformed stools but on the days before day 3 and after day 3 there was no significant difference?
3) What do you think has a better effect ORS or a homeopathic drug (yet undefined, since it changed according to the prescriber)

SYL :)

[Mojo]

As for all of Dr. Gully's patients dying...yeah...in old age. Darwin living over 30 years after his 1st visit to his homeopath.


But we have no way of knowing whether the homoeopathic treatment they received prolonged their lives, shortened them, or had no effect at all. It's just a series of uncontrolled anecdotes.

And, BTW, do you have any evidence to support your claim that all of Gully's patients died in old age?

[fls]

This IS one of the great contributions to public health, and because of my own background in public health, I appreciate it. However, did you know that there have been three randomized double-blind clinical trials published in peer-review journals that have used individually prescribed homeopathic medicines that improved upon the results of ORT?

Correction. Two of the studies you reference did not show a significant difference in the outcome measure and one of them did.

Someone with the same name as the lead researcher for two of the studies in the metanalysis and of the metanalysis also performed this study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17034278&dopt=Citation).

I hope that ill-informed people will STOP saying that there is no good research testing homeopathic medicines.

The point is not that there is no good research testing homeopathic medicines. It is that the results of the good research do not show an effect that is different from chance and wishful thinking.

By the way, the 1st trial (which was published in the famed journal, PEDIATRICS) showed that the best results were in children who had a confirmed infection based on stool lab analysis.

Yes. Data dredging almost always produces something for the effort. That the violation of the assumptions of statistical significance testing makes the drawing of any conclusions invalid is conveniently forgotten - i.e. chance and wishful thinking.

Linda

[Mojo]

Someone with the same name as the lead researcher for two of the studies in the metanalysis and of the metanalysis also performed this study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17034278&dopt=Citation).OBJECTIVE: A homeopathic combination medicine, if effective, could be used by health personnel on a widespread basis.


An, er, interesting stated objective for a trial of a therapy.

[Mojo]

Sadly, I've grown tired of you, primarily due to your intellectual dishonesty.

...

I take great pleasure to telling you a historical fact. Our greatly beloved Charles Darwin not only sought care from a highly respected homeopathic physician, Darwin could not have completed his seminal work, Origin of Species, in 1859, if he didn't receive this homeopathic care 10 year prior to its publication.

Just read Darwin's letters to read about this story and learn something about his life...

From 1837 onwards Darwin was frequently incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, heart palpitations, trembling, and other symptoms. In 1847, Darwin's illness worsened. He was again experiencing frequent episodes of vomiting and weakness, but he now was also experiencing fainting spells and seeing spots in front of his eyes. Darwin wrote that he was so sick that he was “unable to do anything one day out of three.” He was so ill that he wasn’t even able to attend his father’s funeral when he died on November 13, 1848.

In March 1849, an old HMS Beagle shipmate told him about a different type of medical treatment provided by James Manby Gully, MD (1808-1883), and his cousin told Darwin that two friends had benefited greatly from Gully’s care. Darwin decided to go and to take the entire family (his wife Emma and their seven children) (Keynes, 2002). Dr. Gully and his health spa were situated in Malvern (just southwest of Birmingham), which is around 125 miles from the Darwin’s home.

Dr. Gully was a medical graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and he was an unyielding opponent of the use of drugs of that time and age. His medical practice did not simply provide hydrotherapy or dietary advice; he also prescribed homeopathic medicines and recommended medical clairvoyant readings. After being at Dr. Gully’s spa for just nine days, Darwin laments that Gully had prescribed homeopathic medicine to him, “I grieve to say that Dr. Gully gives me homeopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.”

And even though Darwin was extremely skeptical, just two days later (March 30, 1849) Darwin acknowledged, “I have already received so much benefit that I really hope my health will be much renovated” (Burkhardt, 1996, 107). After being there just eight days Darwin a skin eruption broken out all over his legs, and he was actually pleased to experience this problem because he had previously observed that his physical and mental health improved noticeably after having skin eruptions.

He went a month without vomiting, a very rare experience for him, and even gained some weight. One day he surprised himself by being able to walk seven miles. He wrote to a friend, “I am turning into a mere walking & eating machine” (Quammen, 2006, 112)

And after just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all. After spending 16 weeks there, he felt like a new man, and by June he was able to go home to resume his important work (Grosvenor, 2004). Darwin actually writes that he is “of almost perfect health” (Burkhardt, 1996, 108).


Sadly for you, it appears that the therapy that Darwin thought responsible for his improvement was hydrotherapy, not homoeopathy. Gully seems to have been regarded primarily as a hydrotherapist by everyone apart from homoeopaths.

You say that "even though Darwin was extremely skeptical, just two days later (March 30, 1849) Darwin acknowledged, 'I have already received so much benefit that I really hope my health will be much renovated'". Is there any indication that he ascribed this improvement to homoeopathy?

In fact, far from being convinced of the effectiveness of homoeopathy by 1849 as you claim, on 4th September 1850 he wrote (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1352.html): You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything— when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr. Chapman; & himself as Hydropathist! & the girl recovered.—

[Mojo]

It would also appear that Gully himself may not have regarded homoeopathy as a primary mode of treatment, but rather as an adjunct to his use of hydrotherapy, and used as a palliative or suppressive treatment rather than to treat the underlying condition. A footnote to one of the letters quoted above (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1234.html) says: Gully was strongly against the administration of medical drugs for chronic disorders (Gully 1846, p. 513 n.) and cautious in his use of homoeopathic remedies: ‘although I might be induced to try to subdue a passing but troublesome symptom, I could not trust to remove the essential nature of a chronic malady by homœopathic means’ (Gully 1846, p. 83 n.).

[Mashuna]

Sadly for you, it appears that the therapy that Darwin thought responsible for his improvement was hydrotherapy, not homoeopathy. Gully seems to have been regarded primarily as a hydrotherapist by everyone apart from homoeopaths.

You say that "even though Darwin was extremely skeptical, just two days later (March 30, 1849) Darwin acknowledged, 'I have already received so much benefit that I really hope my health will be much renovated'". Is there any indication that he ascribed this improvement to homoeopathy?

In fact, far from being convinced of the effectiveness of homoeopathy by 1849 as you claim, on 4th September 1850 he wrote (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1352.html):

So the best example for homeopathy in the thread so far is someone who lived almost 200 years ago and wasn't actually a homeopath? Sounds par for the course.

[manioberoi]

So the best example for homeopathy in the thread so far is someone who lived almost 200 years ago and wasn't actually a homeopath? Sounds par for the course.
Complement Ther Med. 2007 Jun;15(2):115-20. Epub 2006 Nov 29.
Effect of homeopathic treatment of 60 Japanese patients with chronic skin disease.
.Itamura R.
Department of Dermatology, Obitsu Sankei Hospital, 1-4 Namikinishi-machi, Kawagoe-city, Saitama-ken 350-0025, Japan.
BACKGROUND:
Many individuals who appear to suffer from incurable chronic skin disease use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Homeopathy has recently increased in popularity among patients with skin disease. The effects of homeopathic treatment have yet to be fully investigated in patients for whom conventional dermatological treatment is not sufficiently effective.
OBJECTIVES: To describe patient-reported and clinically observed effects of individualized homeopathic treatment of chronic skin disease.
PATIENTS AND METHODS: The effectiveness of individualized homeopathic treatment was measured using the patients' own assessments of seven elements (overall impression, improvement of skin condition, reduction of itchiness, reduction of sleep disturbance, satisfaction in daily life, fulfillment at work and satisfaction in human relations) using a nine-point scale similar to the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital Outcome Scale (GHHOS). Sixty patients with chronic skin disease were included in the study: atopic dermatitis (AD) (n=25), eczema other than AD (n=20), severe acne (n=6), chronic urticaria (n=6), psoriasis vulgaris (n=2) and alopecia universalis (n=1). These patients received individualized homeopathic treatments in addition to conventional dermatological treatments for a period of from 3 months to 2 years 7 months.
RESULTS: Six patients reported a score of 4 (complete recovery), 23 patients a score of 3 (75% improvement), 24 patients a score of 2 (50% improvement) and 7 patients a score of 1 (25% improvement). A total of 88.3% of patients reported over 50% improvement. Around one-half the patients with AD and eczema reported greater satisfaction in daily life, greater fulfillment at work and greater satisfaction in human relations. CONCLUSIONS: The psychological, physical and psychosomatic symptoms and effects of chronic skin diseases are inextricable. Individualized homeopathic treatment can provoke a good response in patients with chronic skin disease; therefore, the holistic approach used in homeopathy may be a useful strategy alongside conventional treatment.

[Mojo]

How many patients were in the control group?

[fls]

Complement Ther Med. 2007 Jun;15(2):115-20. Epub 2006 Nov 29.
Effect of homeopathic treatment of 60 Japanese patients with chronic skin disease.
.Itamura R.
Department of Dermatology, Obitsu Sankei Hospital, 1-4 Namikinishi-machi, Kawagoe-city, Saitama-ken 350-0025, Japan.
BACKGROUND:
Many individuals who appear to suffer from incurable chronic skin disease use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Homeopathy has recently increased in popularity among patients with skin disease. The effects of homeopathic treatment have yet to be fully investigated in patients for whom conventional dermatological treatment is not sufficiently effective.
OBJECTIVES: To describe patient-reported and clinically observed effects of individualized homeopathic treatment of chronic skin disease.
PATIENTS AND METHODS: The effectiveness of individualized homeopathic treatment was measured using the patients' own assessments of seven elements (overall impression, improvement of skin condition, reduction of itchiness, reduction of sleep disturbance, satisfaction in daily life, fulfillment at work and satisfaction in human relations) using a nine-point scale similar to the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital Outcome Scale (GHHOS). Sixty patients with chronic skin disease were included in the study: atopic dermatitis (AD) (n=25), eczema other than AD (n=20), severe acne (n=6), chronic urticaria (n=6), psoriasis vulgaris (n=2) and alopecia universalis (n=1). These patients received individualized homeopathic treatments in addition to conventional dermatological treatments for a period of from 3 months to 2 years 7 months.
RESULTS: Six patients reported a score of 4 (complete recovery), 23 patients a score of 3 (75% improvement), 24 patients a score of 2 (50% improvement) and 7 patients a score of 1 (25% improvement). A total of 88.3% of patients reported over 50% improvement. Around one-half the patients with AD and eczema reported greater satisfaction in daily life, greater fulfillment at work and greater satisfaction in human relations.

Yes. Exactly what you'd expect to see in the absence of any effect from homeopathy.

I'm not sure what your point was, new person. We are already aware that much of the homeopathic literature consists of incredibly poorly-designed studies, such as this.

Linda

[JJM]

Complement Ther Med. 2007 Jun;15(2):115-20. Epub 2006 Nov 29.
Effect of homeopathic treatment of 60 Japanese patients with chronic skin disease.
{snip} PATIENTS AND METHODS: The effectiveness of individualized homeopathic treatment was measured using the patients' own assessments of seven elements {snip} Sixty patients with chronic skin disease were included in the study {snip} These patients received individualized homeopathic treatments in addition to conventional dermatological treatments
{snip}[Emphasis added]This is typical homeopathic nonsense published in a magazine that is not fit to line my parrot's birdcage. Note the feeble evaluation protocol. The sample size renders this little better than testimonial. There is no blinding, and no placebo control group. Finally, they credit homeopathy despite the fact their customers also had conventional treatments (a common homeopathic failing).

Thanks, manioberoi, I had a good laugh.

[manioberoi]

This is typical homeopathic nonsense published in a magazine that is not fit to line my parrot's birdcage. Note the feeble evaluation protocol. The sample size renders this little better than testimonial. There is no blinding, and no placebo control group. Finally, they credit homeopathy despite the fact their customers also had conventional treatments (a common homeopathic failing).

Thanks, manioberoi, I had a good laugh.
“Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2007 Jan-Mar;8(1):98-102.
Inhibition of chemically induced carcinogenesis by drugs used in homeopathic medicine.
Kumar KH, Sunila ES, Kuttan G, Preethi KC, Venugopal CN, Kuttan R.
Amala Cancer Research Centre, Amala Nagar, Thrissur, Kerala State, India. 680555. amalaresearch@rediffmail.com.
Homeopathy is considered as one modality for cancer therapy. However, there are only very few clinical reports on the activity of the drugs, as well as in experimental animals. Presently we have evaluated the inhibitory effects of potentized homeopathic preparations against N'-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA) induced hepatocellular carcinoma in rats as well as 3-methylcholanthrene-induced sarcomas in mice. We have used Ruta, Hydrastis, Lycopodium and Thuja, which are commonly employed in homeopathy for treating cancer. Administration of NDEA in rats resulted in tumor induction in the liver and elevated marker enzymes such as gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, glutamate pyruvate transaminase, glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase and alkaline phosphatase in the serum and in liver. Concomitant administration of homeopathic drugs retarded the tumor growth and significantly reduced the elevated marker enzymes level as revealed by morphological, biochemical and histopathological evaluation. Out of the four drugs studied, Ruta 200c showed maximum inhibition of liver tumor development. Ruta 200c and phosphorus 1M were found to reduce the incidence of 3-methylcholanthrene-induced sarcomas and also increase the life span of mice harboring the tumours. These studies demonstrate that homeopathic drugs, at ultra low doses, may be able to decrease tumor induction by carcinogen administration. At present we do not know the mechanisms of action of these drugs useful against carcinogenesis. “

[Mojo]

Here's (http://www.curantur.de/Research/research.html) your next one: Homeopathy. 2007 Jan;96(1):49-51
Homeopathic treatment for infertility in a prize Nelore bull.
Lobreiro J.

ETA: By the way, spamming the forum is considered a no-no. You might be better advised to post some argument rather than just cutting and pasting from a web page.

[Mojo]

And I bet that none of you know about the experiments that Darwin conducted using homeopathic doses.


Can you post any information about these experiments?

And perhaps define what you mean by "homeopathic doses" in this context?

[Pipirr]

Two proponents of homeopathy, in the same thread? One's cup runneth over.

Welcome to the forums, manioberoi.

[manioberoi]

Two proponents of homeopathy, in the same thread? One's cup runneth over.

Welcome to the forums, manioberoi.
Not a proponent of homeopathy but a proponent of better science for better health. I do believe that if cure is achieved without killer side effects, more horrific than the cure sought for, the cause of scientific cure would be advanced and not retarded.

Can anyone prove that homeopathy does not work? I also cannot prove how homeopathy works. However I can demonstrate that homeopathy works about as often as any other system of medicine in most (but not all areas of the field of medicine) MOSTLY WITHOUT THE KILLER SIDE EFFECTS OF MATERIAL DOSAGE DRUGS.

[manioberoi]

Yes. Exactly what you'd expect to see in the absence of any effect from homeopathy.

I'm not sure what your point was, new person. We are already aware that much of the homeopathic literature consists of incredibly poorly-designed studies, such as this.

Linda
All of the patients had previously been treated with conventional medicine and various psychological interventions but had shown no signs of improvement.

[manioberoi]

Here's (http://www.curantur.de/Research/research.html) your next one:

ETA: By the way, spamming the forum is considered a no-no. You might be better advised to post some argument rather than just cutting and pasting from a web page.
Point conceded. Shall post arguments where required in future.

[fls]

Not a proponent of homeopathy but a proponent of better science for better health. I do believe that if cure is achieved without killer side effects, more horrific than the cure sought for, the cause of scientific cure would be advanced and not retarded.

Yes, that is one of the principles of evidence-based medicine.

Can anyone prove that homeopathy does not work?

That our detailed knowledge of physiology and pharmacology excludes the possibility that it can work, and that clinical research does not demonstrate that it works, is reasonable proof that it does not work.

I also cannot prove how homeopathy works. However I can demonstrate that homeopathy works about as often as any other system of medicine in most (but not all areas of the field of medicine) MOSTLY WITHOUT THE KILLER SIDE EFFECTS OF MATERIAL DOSAGE DRUGS.

Published research does not support your assertion.

Linda

[fls]

All of the patients had previously been treated with conventional medicine and various psychological interventions but had shown no signs of improvement.

Doesn't matter. Chronic skin conditions are characterized by a highly variable course. One would still expect to see varying levels of improvement with continued conventional treatment. And even without treatment, ten to thirty (or more) percent of patients recover completely, and the majority of the remainder show some recovery. That's even without taking into consideration wishful thinking when making subjective evaluations.

Linda

[manioberoi]

Yes, that is one of the principles of evidence-based medicine.



That our detailed knowledge of physiology and pharmacology excludes the possibility that it can work, and that clinical research does not demonstrate that it works, is reasonable proof that it does not work.



Published research does not support your assertion.

Linda
Would you be kind enough to quote 100 published research references that support your assertion that "Published research does not support your assertion."?

[manioberoi]

Doesn't matter. Chronic skin conditions are characterized by a highly variable course. One would still expect to see varying levels of improvement with continued conventional treatment. And even without treatment, ten to thirty (or more) percent of patients recover completely, and the majority of the remainder show some recovery. That's even without taking into consideration wishful thinking when making subjective evaluations.

Linda
Varying levels conceded. But we are talking of ZERO LEVELS in all 17 cases with prolonged conventional treatment - FOLLOWED BY over 50 percent improvement in 6 categories (for 40 to 85 percent of 17 cases) over 6 to 31 months with homeopathic treatment (some conventional teatment also given which had earlier failed to show any result.

[Mojo]

Would you be kind enough to quote 100 published research references that support your assertion that "Published research does not support your assertion."?Don't try to reverse the burden of proof like that: we might think you're Rodney.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

[QUOTE=Gord_in_Toronto;2696052]Some real medicine from real science -- based on research done at Oxford University in the '40s and '50s researchers invented the Oral Rehydration Solution.

This was tested in the field in the '60s and '70s and proved to work.

See: http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/O_0045.htm
for a bit of history.

This IS one of the great contributions to public health, and because of my own background in public health, I appreciate it. However, did you know that there have been three randomized double-blind clinical trials published in peer-review journals that have used individually prescribed homeopathic medicines that improved upon the results of ORT?

Here's the reference to a meta-analysis of these three studies. Although the lead research was the same MD, the actual prescribers for each of the three trials were different homeopaths.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12634583&ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsP anel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

This meta-analysis was published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

Its abstract:
Homeopathy for childhood diarrhea: combined results and metaanalysis from three randomized, controlled clinical trials. Jacobs J, Jonas WB, Jiménez-Pérez M, Crothers D.
Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown a positive treatment effect of individualized homeopathic treatment for acute childhood diarrhea, but sample sizes were small and results were just at or near the level of statistical significance. Because all three studies followed the same basic study design, the combined data from these three studies were analyzed to obtain greater statistical power. METHODS: Three double blind clinical trials of diarrhea in 242 children ages 6 months to 5 years were analyzed as 1 group. Children were randomized to receive either an individualized homeopathic medicine or placebo to be taken as a single dose after each unformed stool for 5 days. Parents recorded daily stools on diary cards, and health workers made home visits daily to monitor children. The duration of diarrhea was defined as the time until there were less than 3 unformed stools per day for 2 consecutive days. A metaanalysis of the effect-size difference of the three studies was also conducted. RESULTS: Combined analysis shows a duration of diarrhea of 3.3 days in the homeopathy group compared with 4.1 in the placebo group (P = 0.008). The metaanalysis shows a consistent effect-size difference of approximately 0.66 day (P = 0.008). CONCLUSIONS: The results from these studies confirm that individualized homeopathic treatment decreases the duration of acute childhood diarrhea and suggest that larger sample sizes be used in future homeopathic research to ensure adequate statistical power. Homeopathy should be considered for use as an adjunct to oral rehydration for this illness.

I hope that ill-informed people will STOP saying that there is no good research testing homeopathic medicines.

By the way, the 1st trial (which was published in the famed journal, PEDIATRICS) showed that the best results were in children who had a confirmed infection based on stool lab analysis.

Please note that I did not say most of the above. I ownly said the part up to: "See: http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/O_0045.htm
for a bit of history."

For the part I did not say, I have a one word response: REPLICATION

[manioberoi]

Don't try to reverse the burden of proof like that: we might think you're Rodney.
A study with CONTROLS at Georgetown University Medical Center found homeopathic Sabal serrulata to have biologic effect significantly stronger to controls AND specific to human prostate cancer.

"Integr Cancer Ther. 2006 Dec;5(4):362-72.
Effects of homeopathic preparations on human prostate cancer growth in cellular and animal models.
MacLaughlin BW, Gutsmuths B, Pretner E, Jonas WB, Ives J, Kulawardane DV, Amri H.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA.
Our study clearly demonstrates a biologic response to homeopathic treatment as manifested by cell proliferation and tumor growth. This biologic effect was
(i)significantly stronger to Sabal serrulata than to controls and
(ii)specific to human prostate cancer.

PMID: 17101766 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

So now if you wish to disprove "that homeopathy works about as often as any other system of medicine in most (but not all areas of the field of medicine) MOSTLY WITHOUT THE KILLER SIDE EFFECTS OF MATERIAL DOSAGE DRUGS." you would have to prove that homeopathy does not work - as per the universally accepted laws of burden of proof. I do not say that homeopathy always works. Let he who says that homeopathy never works prove it.

[Mojo]

So now if you wish to disprove "that homeopathy works about as often as any other system of medicine in most (but not all areas of the field of medicine) MOSTLY WITHOUT THE KILLER SIDE EFFECTS OF MATERIAL DOSAGE DRUGS." you would have to prove that homeopathy does not work - as per the universally accepted laws of burden of proof. I do not say that homeopathy always works. Let he who says that homeopathy never works prove it.


You're still trying to reverse the burden of proof: your claim was "However I can demonstrate that homeopathy works about as often as any other system of medicine in most (but not all areas of the field of medicine) MOSTLY WITHOUT THE KILLER SIDE EFFECTS OF MATERIAL DOSAGE DRUGS." You are now asking others to prove a negative.

[JJM]

Would you be kind enough to quote 100 published research references that support your assertion that "Published research does not support your assertion."?Well, some reviews: http://www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/htsearch

One of the articles cited in the above reference concludes:
Much of the argument about homeopathy ends up being about trivial differences of little or no clinical relevance. Until large and well conducted randomised trials tell us differently, the conclusion is that homeopathy does not work, and its use instead of remedies of proven effectiveness is not a matter of trivial implication. Members of the public are relieved of much money each year by homeopaths. There's little evidence they are relieved of any suffering.

[Pipirr]

A study with CONTROLS at Georgetown University Medical Center found homeopathic Sabal serrulata to have biologic effect significantly stronger to controls AND specific to human prostate cancer.

"Integr Cancer Ther. 2006 Dec;5(4):362-72.
Effects of homeopathic preparations on human prostate cancer growth in cellular and animal models.
MacLaughlin BW, Gutsmuths B, Pretner E, Jonas WB, Ives J, Kulawardane DV, Amri H.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA.
Our study clearly demonstrates a biologic response to homeopathic treatment as manifested by cell proliferation and tumor growth. This biologic effect was
(i)significantly stronger to Sabal serrulata than to controls and
(ii)specific to human prostate cancer.

PMID: 17101766 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

-snip-


Just out of interest, is that sufficient evidence for you personally to use that homeopathic treatment for prostate cancer?

If not, what more evidence would you require?

[manioberoi]

You're still trying to reverse the burden of proof: your claim was "However I can demonstrate that homeopathy works about as often as any other system of medicine in most (but not all areas of the field of medicine) MOSTLY WITHOUT THE KILLER SIDE EFFECTS OF MATERIAL DOSAGE DRUGS." You are now asking others to prove a negative.
"our detailed knowledge of physiology and pharmacology excludes the possibility that it can work" flies in the face of Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center study that " clearly demonstrates a biologic response to homeopathic treatment as manifested by cell proliferation and tumor growth. This biologic effect was
(i)significantly stronger to Sabal serrulata than to controls and
(ii)specific to human prostate cancer." So the burden of proof that homeopathic treatment does not work is indeed on you ( rather Linda) for claiming "our detailed knowledge of physiology and pharmacology excludes the possibility that it can work" because it has been shown that it works - no one has disputed this study.

[manioberoi]

Well, some reviews: http://www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/htsearch

One of the articles cited in the above reference concludes:
The open letter of 23 May 2006 from some of the UK's leading doctors urging NHS trusts to stop using complementary therapies has very broad and sweeping statements that can neither be supported nor refuted since it lacks in specifics.

[manioberoi]

Just out of interest, is that sufficient evidence for you personally to use that homeopathic treatment for prostate cancer?

If not, what more evidence would you require?
Of course not! I would be foolish to try Sabal serrulata alone for prostate cancer unless it is of venereal origin with soft core. Sabal serrulata helps in prostate problems. For cancer of the prostate individualization would lead to teatment with Conium maculatum and other remedies found to be more effective. The cured cases are published, however this forum refuses to accept homeopathic results (individualized) on account of CONTROLS problem!!! I would NOT take chemotherapy till such time as it is proved to be more effective ie in the region of 20 percent cure rate. I would at the present state of the art prefer homeopathy with the 15 to 30 percent cure rate at stages not too advanced, achieved by master homeopaths like Dr AU Ramakrishnan or Dr SK Banerjea.

[JJM]

manioberoi, you are citing obscure journals. And, I guess you have learned to avoid abstracts with sufficient detail to allow criticism. Keep in mind, that the AltMed literature is exceedingly poor quality. That would be any journal with one (or more) of the words - complementary, alternative, integrative, holistic - in the title; or any journal devoted to a particular AltMed treatment. How about citing papers that are in good medical journals.

Keep in mind that one report of success with one treatment does not prove the effectiveness of homeopathy- it only supports that one preparation (if it can be replicated). Also, we need independent confirmation that a truly homeopathic preparation was used- these people have been caught using actual drugs at times.

[manioberoi]

manioberoi, you are citing obscure journals. And, I guess you have learned to avoid abstracts with sufficient detail to allow criticism. Keep in mind, that the AltMed literature is exceedingly poor quality. That would be any journal with one (or more) of the words - complementary, alternative, integrative, holistic - in the title; or any journal devoted to a particular AltMed treatment. How about citing papers that are in good medical journals.

Keep in mind that one report of success with one treatment does not prove the effectiveness of homeopathy- it only supports that one preparation (if it can be replicated). Also, we need independent confirmation that a truly homeopathic preparation was used- these people have been caught using actual drugs at times.
Is the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA an obscure organisation? Are you insinuating that the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA have not been using actual drugs at times? Is it not possible that their paper was not accepted for publication in the journals which you find NOT obscure on account of bias against homeopathy perhaps? Why blame the journal or try to tarnish its image because you do not like what they publish? I do not say that any journal is obscure to suit my convenience. Kindly accept that all journals have a good standing so long as they have not been proven to be fraudulent or lax in their duties.

[JJM]

Is the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA an obscure organisation? {snip}When you ask a rhetorical question you should know the answer. The (formerly respected) Georgetown U Med School has been deeply infiltrated by quacks: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/11/not_so_stealthily_sneaking_cam_into_the_1.php
Today, it is decending into scientific obscurity.

At this point, you have had plenty of time to provide high-quality (human) clinical data, and I can only conclude you don't have it (i.e., it doesn't exist) for even one homeopathic treatment.

[SYLVESTER1592]

Sorry Gord_in_Toronto, I just quoted the message in the reply. I didn't notice it was your name that showed up in it. I think the original message by JamesGully was constructed like this...

BTW I think we broke our homeopath, then again, maybe he's just busy... but I see we got a new contender.

Welcome to the forum manioberoi, Namasté

Good luck presenting the evidence for your opinions. Please be precise, honest and unbiased in presenting your arguments and you'll be fine. I see Mojo, fls and JJM have already pointed out some problems here...

I agree with Mojo: No spamming please :(

SYL :)

[manioberoi]

When you ask a rhetorical question you should know the answer. The (formerly respected) Georgetown U Med School has been deeply infiltrated by quacks: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/11/not_so_stealthily_sneaking_cam_into_the_1.php
Today, it is decending into scientific obscurity.

At this point, you have had plenty of time to provide high-quality (human) clinical data, and I can only conclude you don't have it (i.e., it doesn't exist) for even one homeopathic treatment.
GUMC website's claim has not been challenged by Orac:

"With more than 1,100 physicians, Georgetown University Hospital is the Washington, DC area's most recognized academic teaching hospital, and our clinical services represent one of the largest, most geographically diverse and fully integrated healthcare delivery networks in the area. For 11 years in a row, Georgetown University Hospital has been ranked among the best in the nation by U.S. News and World Report in a number of specialty areas. "

Having been ranked among the best in the nation by U.S. News and World, the charge of quackery made against some in GUMC does not hold.

Would you still like to insist on insinuating that the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA have not been using actual drugs at times?

Orac admits "Another study published in JAMA in 1998 reports that 75 of the 117 participating U.S. medical schools offer CAM elective courses or include CAM topics in required courses. "

Some vote of confidence that for homeopathy and CAM.

The GUMC study published in Integr Cancer Ther. 2006 Dec;5(4):362-72. PMID: 17101766 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] found "This biologic effect was
(i)significantly stronger to Sabal serrulata than to controls and
(ii)specific to human prostate cancer."

You might like to admit that there is a fairly high degree of possibility that homeopathy works some of the time.

Before we can go on to other proofs we must get this proof settled one way or the other- amicably.

Regards.

Sarvadaman

[JJM]

... Still you provide no high-quality, definitive, clinical study showing efficacy for any homeopathic remedy, let alone all of their claims.

[Pipirr]

Of course not! I would be foolish to try Sabal serrulata alone for prostate cancer unless it is of venereal origin with soft core. Sabal serrulata helps in prostate problems. For cancer of the prostate individualization would lead to teatment with Conium maculatum and other remedies found to be more effective. The cured cases are published, however this forum refuses to accept homeopathic results (individualized) on account of CONTROLS problem!!! I would NOT take chemotherapy till such time as it is proved to be more effective ie in the region of 20 percent cure rate. I would at the present state of the art prefer homeopathy with the 15 to 30 percent cure rate at stages not too advanced, achieved by master homeopaths like Dr AU Ramakrishnan or Dr SK Banerjea.


Thanks, that's an interesting answer. Personally, I would prefer to put my life in the hands of conventional medicine, but you clearly take a different view.

Another question, if you don't mind. Out of interest, what is a 'master homeopath'? It's not a concept with which I am familiar.

If you mean that not all homeopaths are equal, then in what ways are they unequal? What makes one a 'master'?

[fls]

Would you be kind enough to quote 100 published research references that support your assertion that "Published research does not support your assertion."?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=16125589&ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsP anel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-2125.2002.01699.x

Linda

[fls]

Varying levels conceded. But we are talking of ZERO LEVELS in all 17 cases with prolonged conventional treatment - FOLLOWED BY over 50 percent improvement in 6 categories (for 40 to 85 percent of 17 cases) over 6 to 31 months with homeopathic treatment (some conventional teatment also given which had earlier failed to show any result.

What are you talking about?

Linda

[fls]

A study with CONTROLS at Georgetown University Medical Center found homeopathic Sabal serrulata to have biologic effect significantly stronger to controls AND specific to human prostate cancer.

"Integr Cancer Ther. 2006 Dec;5(4):362-72.
Effects of homeopathic preparations on human prostate cancer growth in cellular and animal models.
MacLaughlin BW, Gutsmuths B, Pretner E, Jonas WB, Ives J, Kulawardane DV, Amri H.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA.
Our study clearly demonstrates a biologic response to homeopathic treatment as manifested by cell proliferation and tumor growth. This biologic effect was
(i)significantly stronger to Sabal serrulata than to controls and
(ii)specific to human prostate cancer.

PMID: 17101766 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Gosh. It turns out that if you make 38 separate comparisons, three of them differ at a level of p<0.05. Wow. There's only a 30% chance of finding at least 3 significant differences. Who'd have thunk that something that has a 30% chance of happening would actually happen?

So now if you wish to disprove "that homeopathy works about as often as any other system of medicine in most (but not all areas of the field of medicine) MOSTLY WITHOUT THE KILLER SIDE EFFECTS OF MATERIAL DOSAGE DRUGS." you would have to prove that homeopathy does not work - as per the universally accepted laws of burden of proof. I do not say that homeopathy always works. Let he who says that homeopathy never works prove it.

I tell you that I have the ability to defy gravity at will using only the power of my mind. Whenever I try to demonstrate this to others, Randi points out how I cheated. I state that maybe this time it was a trick, but you can't prove that it was a trick every time and become quite petulant when you roll your eyes and walk away.

Linda

[fls]

"our detailed knowledge of physiology and pharmacology excludes the possibility that it can work" flies in the face of Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center study that " clearly demonstrates a biologic response to homeopathic treatment as manifested by cell proliferation and tumor growth. This biologic effect was
(i)significantly stronger to Sabal serrulata than to controls and
(ii)specific to human prostate cancer." So the burden of proof that homeopathic treatment does not work is indeed on you ( rather Linda) for claiming "our detailed knowledge of physiology and pharmacology excludes the possibility that it can work" because it has been shown that it works - no one has disputed this study.

I dunno. Those results that were significantly different were inconsistent. And none of them would qualify if you adjust the significance levels for multiple comparisons. Plus, the lack of blinding allows bias to creep into the assessments. It's suspicious to me that the signficance testing was done by comparing the active treatments to untreated controls, rather than placebo-treated controls. Especially since the placebo-treated controls were also "significantly different" from the untreated controls.

And again, isolated results, even if accepted as real, do not serve as proof of the underlying idea of homeopathy any more than my demonstration that penicillin treats pneumonia is proof of alfabetopathy.

Linda

[Ivor the Engineer]

Gosh. It turns out that if you make 38 separate comparisons, three of them differ at a level of p<0.05. Wow. There's only a 30% chance of finding at least 3 significant differences. Who'd have thunk that something that has a 30% chance of happening would actually happen?

How'd you get 30%? I got 17.5% from 38C3 * 0.05^3 * 0.95^35

Am I missing something?

[MRC_Hans]

Ahhh...it is so sweet that so many of you miss me.

Well, as I told you, literate homeopaths are rare guests. Unfortunately, homeopaths who make sense are even rarer.

Sadly, I've grown tired of you, primarily due to your intellectual dishonesty.

I can understand it. That and all the pesky question we ask, which you seem unable to answer.

You claim that the homeopathic doses are too small to have any effect, and yet, you ignore the various basic science and clinical studies that I have referenced, only critiquing a small number of them, and even these critiques are usually inadequate.

James, Dana, or whoever you are: You are referencing old studies that have been picked apart ages ago. I'm sorry, but I for one have better things to do with my time than reiterating all the criticism that have been levelled at those studies over the years.

Do you have any NEW research in favor of homeopathy?

I made reference to a NEW soon-to-be-published study (not theory) using spectoscopic analysis of homeopathic medicines that differentiate one from another and one potency from another (just what YOU requested),

DO forgive us if we wait to comment Roy's article till after it has been published.

... And do forgive us for not holding out breath in the meantime.

I encourage people to review the MANY studies he has done..

Encourage all you will, but this is a debate. We will study subjects as we please, but in a debate, you must provide your arguments and evidence. You cannot just refer people to do a lot of studying. If that is the way we are to "debate" I encourage you to study the multitide of physics, pharmacology, and pathology reports that show that homeopathy cannot work.

I will be the first to acknowledge that good research is very hard, especially on "frontier subjects" in science.

Excuse me: Your claim is that homeopathy can cure real diseases. How hard is it to conduct a clinical trial that confirms that? What is the use of spectography, basophil, rat ileum, etc. etc. studies? None of these provide any conclusive evidence, even in the most positive scenario, all they provide is indirect evidence. Take a group of patients, divide it into two, and make a double-blind, placebo controlled, randomized trial, and publish the result. What is so difficult about that?

But heck, don't just listen to me...listen to your God, Charles Darwin.

Darwin is nobody's god.

Sometimes study with an N=1 provide important substantiation.

No. Isolated, an N=1 study is meaningless. The situations where such a study can provide useful evidence is if we have an experience base with which to compare. For instance, until the 1920, no type 1 diabetes patient had ever been observed to recover. Thus, when one patient was given insulin, and subsequently recovered, this was significant evidence.

However, the case story you present with Darwin has no such base.

I take great pleasure to telling you a historical fact. Our greatly beloved Charles Darwin not only sought care from a highly respected homeopathic physician,

In Darwin's time, homeopathy had a certain advantage over contemporary mainstream medicine: It is harmless.

Darwin could not have completed his seminal work, Origin of Species, in 1859, if he didn't receive this homeopathic care 10 year prior to its publication.

You have no proof of this claim. Darwin was ill, and he recovered. This is all the fact we have.

Just read Darwin's letters to read about this story and learn something about his life...


From 1837 onwards Darwin was frequently incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, heart palpitations, trembling, and other symptoms

Yada, yada, yada...



Facts:
- Darwin was ill.
- Darwin received various kinds of treatment.
- Darwin recovered from his illness.

Since we have no diagnosis of his illness, we have no way of knowing what the chances were of a natural recovery.

Since we have no detailed account of which treatments he receoved, we can make no assessment of which of them could have influenced his recovery.

There is a word for this kind of accounts: Anecdotes.

And I bet that none of you know about the experiments that Darwin conducted using homeopathic doses.

Do enlighten us, but remember, Darwin is not a medical authority.


I encourage you to do some homework on homeopathy before you respond to this email. Read the research on homeopathy (not just the quackbusters' interpretations on it)


I have done my homework. Now provide your evidence.

and read medical history (one historical FACT: homeopathy gained its greatest popularity in the US and Europe due to the impressive successes that it experienced in the treatment of infectious disease epidemics of the 19th century...any good medical history book confirms this...and yes, a forthcoming writing of mine will provide all of the detailed references...but they are readily available to those who look.

I already explained why those results are not comparable with mainstream medicine of the time, but by all means, let's look at medical history:

Which great results have homeopathy achieved AFTER the 19th century? Which great advantages have been recorded for homeopathy AFTER conventional medicine became science based?


Finally...I cannot help but sense that many (not all) of the people on this list were nerds as kids who were beat-up and/or ridiculed by others.



Ad hominem. We can play that way, if you will: I can't help but sense that all homeopaths I have met are either completely lost in delusions or are rutless quacks who will stop at nothing to keep their lucrative scam alive.

.....Are you sure you wanna do it this way?

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

Well...we're going to a predictably bad start.

Yes. It seems always to go this way with homeopaths. Sometimes you kind of miss the illiterate ones. At least those are FUN.

Once again, you are ignoring the evidence that I present and then choose to bring up other issues

No, we are dismissing your evidence. That's a different thing.

...but to answer those issues, I challenge anyone to read a homeopathic materia medica and compare the symptoms of a medicine with its presently known toxicology. You'll be impressed (or surprised). The only difference is that homeopathic text will provide even greater detail.

EHr, for silica (just to take an example)? But, yes, early homeopaths did indeed record the toxicology of a number of substances. So what? You ARE aware that the foundations of the MM was laid down in the early years of Hahnemann's studies, right? You know, back before he started diluting the substances. So yes, he got the toxiology right on a number of them. Heureka.

As to the question, will a homeopath be able to predict what medicine was used in a proving? Yes and no. If there are an adequate number of provers who give an adequate number of symptoms, a significant number of homeopaths will be able to determine which medicine was proven, except if a strange and rare medicine was used.

Yes? Prove it! There is a million bucks waiting for you. But more importantly, there is the question of your intellectual and scientific honour: Design a valid protocol, do the experiment, publish the results. We will all bow down.

Please stop avoiding the issues presented. Let's keep a focus. Your scientific training should come in handy for this, even though it seems that an unscientific attitudes seems to prevail here. Sad but true.

I'm really hoping that a real dialogue takes place here, not just posturing.

You can help that. Start by not dodging issues. Cut out the ad hominems, silly assertions ("your God Darwin" indeed :rolleyes: ), actually answer questions, provide evidence.

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

Well, several of us agree on something important: modern physicians are NOT scientists. This is an important point, and I'm glad that we have common ground here.

If you think about it, how many conventional drugs have stood the test of time?

I can think of quite a few.
However, we are discussing homeopathy here. You have just gone into yet another typical fallacy of homeopaths: When you can't defend your own system, attack conventional meds.

I'm perfectly willing to discuss the virtues and vices of conventional medicine, but that is NOT the subject of this thread.

As for Mr. Monkey...it seems that you disbelieve in Darwinian thinking because you have not yet evolved and are still asking the same tired and innane questions.

Well, you could quickly put an end to that. Just answer the questions. I mean, how hard is that?

Hans

[fls]

How'd you get 30%? I got 17.5% from 38C3 * 0.05^3 * 0.95^35

Am I missing something?

Admittedly, I'm not at home, so I had to use an online calculator and I'm too lazy (or not willing to commit the time to the poster I was replying to) to do it by hand, so I didn't doublecheck the accuracy....

I got 17+% for exactly 3 and 29+% for 3 or more. You will note that I said "at least 3".

Linda

[manioberoi]

Thanks, that's an interesting answer. Personally, I would prefer to put my life in the hands of conventional medicine, but you clearly take a different view.

Another question, if you don't mind. Out of interest, what is a 'master homeopath'? It's not a concept with which I am familiar.

If you mean that not all homeopaths are equal, then in what ways are they unequal? What makes one a 'master'?
Some master homeopaths, historical and contemporary are:
Adolph Lippe
Bara Waters
Blair Lewis
Clemens M. F. von Boenninghausen
Constantine Hering
David Little
Douglas Falkner
Farokh J. Master
Frans Vermeulen
George Heinrich Gottlieb Jahr
George Vithoulkas
James Tyler Kent
John Epps, one of Britain's earliest and most well known homeopaths. As an allopath, he had been a frequent contributor to The Lancet. In 1843 his homeopathically treated case of haematemesis was published in the Lancet provoking "an avalanche of letters" which led to the rejection of further homeopathic cases.
Luc De Schepper
Louis Klein
Marion Rood
Massimo Mangialavori
Samuel Hahnemann
Vega Rozenberg



U.S.
Many homeopaths have different initials after their names. These are usually titles awarded by different homeopathic boards and schools. Because homeopathic education and certification in the US have not been standardized yet there are several groups certifying their members. Any certification, of course, speaks only of the particular homeopath's ability to satisfy the particular board's minimum competency requirements and may not reflect the practitioner's true level of mastery.

CTHom
(Certified Trained Homeopath): This is a first level diploma given by ESSH School of Homeopathy in Flagstaff, AZ, to students demonstrating a certain degree of mastery in classical homeopathy.

MHom
(Master Homeopath): second and highest level diploma from the ESSH School of Homeopathy.



U.K.
MFHom
(Member of the Faculty of Homeopathy): Given by the Faculty of Homeopathy, the British equivalent of the AIH, to doctors passing their exam. This title is recognized by medical authorities throughout European Community and other countries having historical ties to the United Kingdom. The Faculty runs a fairly intensive educational program attracting doctors from all over the world.

FFHom
(Fellow of the Faculty of Homeopathy): Awarded to doctors holding the title of MFHom and showing certain extra achievement, particularly in the area of homeopathic education.



India
B.H.M.S.
Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine & Surgery

M.D. (Hom.)
Doctor of Medicine in Homeopathy (Organon of Medicine, Homoeopathic Materia Medica, Repertory, Homoeopathic Pharmacy, Practice of Medicine, Paediatrics and Psychiatry.)

The Homoeopathy Central Council Act, 1973

No. 59 OF 1973

An Act to provide for the constitution of a Central Council of Homoeopathy and maintenance of a Central Register of Homoeopathy and for matters connected therewith.

Be it enacted by Parliament in the Twenty fourth Year of the Republic of India as follows: -

Preliminary

1.(1)This Act may be called the Homoeopathy Central Council Act, l973.

(2)it extends to the whole of India.

--------------

14. (1) The medical qualifications granted by medical institutions outside India which are included in the Third Schedule shall be recognized medical qualifications for the purposes of this Act.

(2)(a) the Central Council may enter into negotiations with the authority in any State or country outside India, which by the law of such State or country is entrusted with the maintenance of a Register of practitioners of Homoeopathy for settling of a scheme of reciprocity for the recognition of medical qualifications in Homoeopathy, and in pursuance of any such scheme, the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, amend the Third Schedule so as to include therein any medical qualification which the Central Council has decided should be recognized and any such notification may also direct that an entry shall be made in the last column of the Third Schedule against such medical qualification declaring that it shall be recognized medical qualification only when granted after a specified date.

(b) Where the Council has refused to recommend any medical qualification which has been proposed for recognition by any authority referred to in clause (a) and that authority applies to the Central Government in this behalf, the Central Government, after considering such application and after obtaining from the Council a report, if any, as to the reasons for any such refusal, may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare that such qualification shall be a recognized medical qualification and the provisions of clause(a) shall apply accordingly.



Homeopaths in Three Major Conventional Hospitals at New Delhi, India.



1. Dr. Suman Niranjan,

Homoeopathic Physician and Consultant.

Batra Hospital and Medical Research Centre.

1, Tughlakabad Institutional Area,

Mehrauli Badarpur Road,

New Delhi-110062

E-Mail: info@batrahospitaldelhi.org

+911129958747

+911129958747



2. Dr Rachna Khanna Singh

Homoeopathic Consultant & Lifestyle Management Expert

Escorts Heart Institute & Research Center

New Delhi, India

E-Mail: rachnaksingh@hotmail.com



3. Dr. M. Shahid

BHMS

Hony. Consultant

Department of Homeopathy

SIR GANGA RAM HOSPITAL

Rajinder Nagar, New Delhi 110060, INDIA

Email: dr_shahid67@hotmail.com

Tel: +911125735205, +911125861463

Fax: +911125861002

[MRC_Hans]

Not a proponent of homeopathy but a proponent of better science for better health.

Yes, you are a proponent of homeopathy.

I do believe that if cure is achieved without killer side effects, more horrific than the cure sought for, the cause of scientific cure would be advanced and not retarded.

So do we all.


Can anyone prove that homeopathy does not work?


Basically, you can't prove a negative. The claimant must provide the evidence.


I also cannot prove how homeopathy works. However I can demonstrate that homeopathy works about as often as any other system of medicine in most


This is a self-contradiction. Which is it, can you demonstrate that homeopathy works, or not?

Hans

[manioberoi]

Still you provide no high-quality, definitive, clinical study showing efficacy for any homeopathic remedy, let alone all of their claims.
What high quality are you referring to? I do hope not one of these:
"Suit Says Company Promoted Drug in Exam Rooms
By MELODY PETERSEN, New York Times, May 15, 2002

Warner-Lambert also hired two marketing firms to write articles about the unapproved uses of Neurontin and find doctors willing to sign their names to them as authors. According to an invoice from one of the marketing firms, Warner-Lambert agreed to pay the firm $12,000 to write each article and $1,000 to each doctor willing to serve as author.

Other drug companies also use marketing firms to help them ''ghost write'' medical studies, a practice that angers editors of the leading medical journals.

''It is a form of marketing, although it is disguised not to look like marketing,'' said Dr. Frank Davidoff, the former editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. ''Authors should be authors and should not be signing on to work by someone else, particularly not for money.''
The case details marketing practices that experts say have become standard practice for many pharmaceutical companies as they spend billions of dollars trying to persuade physicians to prescribe their drugs.

It is illegal for a drug company to promote a medicine for uses not approved by the government, though it is not illegal for doctors to prescribe medicines for so-called off-label uses.

One internal memo listed doctors the company considered to be ''movers and shakers,'' including some at prestigious medical schools such as Harvard, Cornell and Columbia. "

[manioberoi]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=16125589&ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsP anel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-2125.2002.01699.x

Linda
These are both highly controversial studies with no controls / trials and have been adequately countered in various fora.

See the riposte in "Open letter to the editor of The Lancet from the Swiss Association of Homoeopathic Physicians (SVHA)" in Homeopathy. 2006 Jan;95(1):61-2.

[manioberoi]

What are you talking about?

Linda
The proper reference is:
"Homeopathy can be an efficient treatment for intractable atopic dermatitis.
Itamura R, Hosoya R. Homeopathic treatment of Japanese patients with intractable atopic dermatitis.
Homeopathy 92 (2): 108-114, Apr 2003.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of homeopathic treatment of intractable atopic dermatitis.

17 patients with this condition were given individualized homeopathic treatment in addition to conventional dermatological therapy for a period varying from 6 months to 31 months. All of the patients had previously been treated with conventional medicine and various psychological interventions but had shown no signs of improvement.

The treatment was evaluated by objective assessments of skin condition and by patients' own perception of their skin, using a 9 point scale.
Over 50% improvement was reported in the following categories: in overall impression and overall skin condition by all patients; in itchiness by 15 patients; in sleep disturbance by 10 patients; in satisfaction with daily life by 9 patients; in fulfilment at work by 7 patients; and in satisfaction with human relations by 10 patients.

Two detailed case studies are reported in this paper."

[manioberoi]

Gosh. It turns out that if you make 38 separate comparisons, three of them differ at a level of p<0.05. Wow. There's only a 30% chance of finding at least 3 significant differences. Who'd have thunk that something that has a 30% chance of happening would actually happen?



I tell you that I have the ability to defy gravity at will using only the power of my mind. Whenever I try to demonstrate this to others, Randi points out how I cheated. I state that maybe this time it was a trick, but you can't prove that it was a trick every time and become quite petulant when you roll your eyes and walk away.

Linda
This from the Mayo Clinic is even more confusing - what with drug companies touting the latest 100000 dollars chemotherapy EXTENDING LIFE BY ALL OF 3 MONTHS and making the person so ill that she feels more like a zombie than a thinking person:

"Cancer survival rate A tool to understand your prognosis

Mayo Clinic Last Updated: 05/27/2005


What can't cancer survival rates tell you?
Cancer survival statistics can be frustrating because they can't give specifics about you. ... This can be frustrating and for that reason, some people choose to ignore cancer survival rate statistics.

Survival rates have other limitations. For instance, they can't:
• Give you information about the latest treatments. People used in the latest cancer statistics were diagnosed more than five years ago. The effects of any recent treatment discoveries won't impact survival statistics for at least five years.
• Tell you what treatments to choose. .. For some people, the treatment with the greatest chance for remission is the one they'll choose. But many people figure other factors, such as side effects and the treatment schedule, into their decision.


You might choose to ignore cancer survival rates
It's entirely up to you whether you want to know the survival rates associated with your type and stage of cancer. Because survival rates can't tell you about your situation specifically, you might find the statistics are impersonal and not very helpful.

If you have a very localized cancer and you are using statistics that include many people with a more widespread cancer, then that data may not apply to you.

Tell your doctor if you'd prefer not to pay attention to the numbers. "

Homeopathy is individualized to the case and gentle as well as curative; for life, not just 3 months. All cases of cancer cannot achieve cure with homeopathy; can they with any other system of medicine.?

[Mojo]

What high quality are you referring to? I do hope not one of these:
"Suit Says Company Promoted Drug in Exam Rooms
By MELODY PETERSEN, New York Times, May 15, 2002

Warner-Lambert also hired two marketing firms to write articles about the unapproved uses of Neurontin and find doctors willing to sign their names to them as authors. According to an invoice from one of the marketing firms, Warner-Lambert agreed to pay the firm $12,000 to write each article and $1,000 to each doctor willing to serve as author.

Other drug companies also use marketing firms to help them ''ghost write'' medical studies, a practice that angers editors of the leading medical journals.

''It is a form of marketing, although it is disguised not to look like marketing,'' said Dr. Frank Davidoff, the former editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. ''Authors should be authors and should not be signing on to work by someone else, particularly not for money.''
The case details marketing practices that experts say have become standard practice for many pharmaceutical companies as they spend billions of dollars trying to persuade physicians to prescribe their drugs.

It is illegal for a drug company to promote a medicine for uses not approved by the government, though it is not illegal for doctors to prescribe medicines for so-called off-label uses.

One internal memo listed doctors the company considered to be ''movers and shakers,'' including some at prestigious medical schools such as Harvard, Cornell and Columbia. "


Totally irrelevant to the question of whether homoeopathy works.

[Curnir]

The proper reference is:
"Homeopathy can be an efficient treatment for intractable atopic dermatitis.
Itamura R, Hosoya R. Homeopathic treatment of Japanese patients with intractable atopic dermatitis.
Homeopathy 92 (2): 108-114, Apr 2003.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of homeopathic treatment of intractable atopic dermatitis.

17 patients with this condition were given individualized homeopathic treatment in addition to conventional dermatological therapy for a period varying from 6 months to 31 months. All of the patients had previously been treated with conventional medicine and various psychological interventions but had shown no signs of improvement.

The treatment was evaluated by objective assessments of skin condition and by patients' own perception of their skin, using a 9 point scale.
Over 50% improvement was reported in the following categories: in overall impression and overall skin condition by all patients; in itchiness by 15 patients; in sleep disturbance by 10 patients; in satisfaction with daily life by 9 patients; in fulfilment at work by 7 patients; and in satisfaction with human relations by 10 patients.

Two detailed case studies are reported in this paper."

How did the people in the placebo control group fare?

[Curnir]

Homeopathy is individualized to the case and gentlepure water is rather gentle as well as curative;Prove it. for life, not just 3 months.Ahh that reminds me of a quote from a newscast regarding the modern HIV treatments:
"the modern HIV treatments can allow you to live 5, 10 years. Maybe even your whole life with a HIV infection"..
If someone drops dead tomorrow...that was the rest of their life! All cases of cancer cannot achieve cure with homeopathy; Prove it. can they with any other system of medicine.?

There is only one type of medicine, the ones that work. That has been proven to work in test after test after test, WITH proper test conditions.

Mmmkay?

Oh and I wish to say hi to the MAS collective.

[JJM]

What high quality are you referring to? I do hope not one of these:
"Suit Says Company Promoted Drug in Exam Rooms {snip}Huh? That does not relate to the topic- h o m e o p a t h y.

[Capsid]

Some of you even went off the deep-end by saying that the 13 papers that Dr. Roy got published in NATURE are meaningless (I will be surprised if anyone on this list has gotten a single paper published in NATURE, let alone 13).
I got a something published in Nature! Only a little letter though, does that count?
Still waiting for the killer evidence to show that homoeopathy works.

[manioberoi]

Yes, you are a proponent of homeopathy.



So do we all.



Basically, you can't prove a negative. The claimant must provide the evidence.



This is a self-contradiction. Which is it, can you demonstrate that homeopathy works, or not?

Hans
For that we must first agree on a true and fair definition of what is true cure and what is symptomatic cure (suppression).

I repeat that proof in the form of physical (material drug - controls - large numbers of non- homogeneous patients treated with one specific drug )evidence of the type that you are trying to manouevre me into is nothing but intellectual dishonesty; you very well know that homeopathy works with no material above 12C or 24X; further homeopathy is individualized treatment of one person with one or more remedies over time with a view to complete cure.

And this can be proved in thousands of cases recorded - unrecorded cases would run into large numbers since self prescription is possible in homeopathy with much greater safety than conventional medicine OTC drugs.

Even so unsuitable trials of single remedies used on large non- homogeneous persons with a mechanically selected remedy have shown surprisingly good results at times, and expectedly poor results at other times!!

This is as it should be, and cannot in any way be construed as a proof that homeopathy has failed to work consistently in all the trials.

Millions of people on this planet use homeopathy because it works just as the billions who use conventional medicine because it works .

[Ivor the Engineer]

Admittedly, I'm not at home, so I had to use an online calculator and I'm too lazy (or not willing to commit the time to the poster I was replying to) to do it by hand, so I didn't doublecheck the accuracy....

I got 17+% for exactly 3 and 29+% for 3 or more. You will note that I said "at least 3".

Linda

Ok. Missed the >= bit.

[JJM]

These are both highly controversial studies with no controls / trials and have been adequately countered in various fora. {snip}Are you being deliberately unknowing?

The articles fls (and I) referred you to are reviews of the literature on homeopathy- they do not require controls or separate clinical trials.

The reviews fls cited are not controversial in the world of evidence-based medicine. And that (evidence) is what counts.

[manioberoi]

Still you provide no high-quality, definitive, clinical study showing efficacy for any homeopathic remedy, let alone all of their claims.
The drug companies are worst affected by the increasing evidence of efficacy of homeopathy - shall post more on that later- so it is relevant to know how they operate(d)!! I did not denigrate the GUMC. Just telling you that if you allege fraud in homeopathic trials at GUMC the same could well be true of conventional medicine trials controlled by the drug companies or their agents (FDA?).

Next you will denigrate all the conventional medical facilities in India because they provide limited facilities for homeopathic consultation and at times remedy trials.

So lets agree that fraud can be there but would be detected over time - the large majority of trials are expected to be professionally done. If we cannot have this basic agreement there is no point in stating proofs only to be rejected on one flimsy ground or the other.

[manioberoi]

Are you being deliberately unknowing?

The articles fls (and I) referred you to are reviews of the literature on homeopathy- they do not require controls or separate clinical trials.

The reviews fls cited are not controversial in the world of evidence-based medicine. And that (evidence) is what counts.
Conventional medicine does not have the license to comment negatively on efficacy of homeopathy by exclusion of evidence published in homeopathic etc journals which are open to publishing comments from critics.

You are putting the shoe on the wrong foot when you use only results convenient to your argument and ignore the vast aggregate of data in hundreds of journals.

[Curnir]

Next you will denigrate all the conventional medical facilities in India because they provide limited facilities for homeopathic consultation and at times remedy trials.


Ok so now we have two paranormal claims from Manioberoi.

1. That homeopathy works.
2. That he, Manioberoi, can predict the future.

Oh and say hi to the MAS collective the next time you see them.

[Ivor the Engineer]

This from the Mayo Clinic is even more confusing - what with drug companies touting the latest 100000 dollars chemotherapy EXTENDING LIFE BY ALL OF 3 MONTHS and making the person so ill that she feels more like a zombie than a thinking person:

"Cancer survival rate A tool to understand your prognosis

Mayo Clinic Last Updated: 05/27/2005


What can't cancer survival rates tell you?
Cancer survival statistics can be frustrating because they can't give specifics about you. ... This can be frustrating and for that reason, some people choose to ignore cancer survival rate statistics.

Survival rates have other limitations. For instance, they can't:
• Give you information about the latest treatments. People used in the latest cancer statistics were diagnosed more than five years ago. The effects of any recent treatment discoveries won't impact survival statistics for at least five years.
• Tell you what treatments to choose. .. For some people, the treatment with the greatest chance for remission is the one they'll choose. But many people figure other factors, such as side effects and the treatment schedule, into their decision.


You might choose to ignore cancer survival rates
It's entirely up to you whether you want to know the survival rates associated with your type and stage of cancer. Because survival rates can't tell you about your situation specifically, you might find the statistics are impersonal and not very helpful.

If you have a very localized cancer and you are using statistics that include many people with a more widespread cancer, then that data may not apply to you.

Tell your doctor if you'd prefer not to pay attention to the numbers. "

Homeopathy is individualized to the case and gentle as well as curative; for life, not just 3 months. All cases of cancer cannot achieve cure with homeopathy; can they with any other system of medicine.?

Wow. There's some really big claims being made in this thread. Homeopathy curing Cholera, Syphilis and now Cancer! It there no illness that it cannot be used to treat effectively?

Clearly it fails to treat the symptoms of credulousness, naivety and stupidity which are so often displayed by its proponents. Alas, the only potential cure for these is education and hard work. Even then relief is not guaranteed.

[Curnir]

Conventional medicine does not have the license to comment negatively on efficacy of homeopathy by exclusion of evidence published in homeopathic etc journals which are open to publishing comments from critics.I'm sorry... that sentence made no sense at all. Were you trying to say that Practitioners of real medicine should be prohibited from giving negative comments on qua.. err sorry 'homeopathy', because the don't consider the tosh.. sorry. articles in woo publications credible?

You are putting the shoe on the wrong foot when you use only results convenient to your argument and ignore the vast aggregate of data in hundreds of journals.
Oh but if it worked in those cases... surely it will work during proper test conditions ie double blinded placebo trials?

[manioberoi]

Ok so now we have two paranormal claims from Manioberoi.

1. That homeopathy works.
2. That he, Manioberoi, can predict the future.

Oh and say hi to the MAS collective the next time you see them.
Can't predict anything.
Homeopathy works - but not always - just as conventional medicine works only till the patient dies.

[fls]

These are both highly controversial studies with no controls / trials and have been adequately countered in various fora.

Controls? That criticism makes no sense.

See the riposte in "Open letter to the editor of The Lancet from the Swiss Association of Homoeopathic Physicians (SVHA)" in Homeopathy. 2006 Jan;95(1):61-2.

I see from that letter and from the rest of your comments that we have now moved on to the next layer of the Homeopathy Cop Out. "Homeopathy cannot be evaluated by methods that reduce the effects of chance and bias." So what you and the rest of the homeopaths are saying is that unless we allow you to make full use of chance and wishful thinking, you will be unable to demonstrate any effect from homeopathy?

Linda

[fls]

The proper reference is:
"Homeopathy can be an efficient treatment for intractable atopic dermatitis.
Itamura R, Hosoya R. Homeopathic treatment of Japanese patients with intractable atopic dermatitis.
Homeopathy 92 (2): 108-114, Apr 2003.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of homeopathic treatment of intractable atopic dermatitis.

17 patients with this condition were given individualized homeopathic treatment in addition to conventional dermatological therapy for a period varying from 6 months to 31 months. All of the patients had previously been treated with conventional medicine and various psychological interventions but had shown no signs of improvement.

The treatment was evaluated by objective assessments of skin condition and by patients' own perception of their skin, using a 9 point scale.
Over 50% improvement was reported in the following categories: in overall impression and overall skin condition by all patients; in itchiness by 15 patients; in sleep disturbance by 10 patients; in satisfaction with daily life by 9 patients; in fulfilment at work by 7 patients; and in satisfaction with human relations by 10 patients.

Two detailed case studies are reported in this paper."

Chance and wishful thinking.

Linda

[manioberoi]

I'm sorry... that sentence made no sense at all. Were you trying to say that Practitioners of real medicine should be prohibited from giving negative comments on qua.. err sorry 'homeopathy', because the don't consider the tosh.. sorry. articles in woo publications credible?

Oh but if it worked in those cases... surely it will work during proper test conditions ie double blinded placebo trials?
Practitioners of homeopathic medicine are as real as the practitioners of 'real' medicine. They have large following of patients who have been cured and have sent many others to be treated, at first disbelieving and later cured believers - all the hype created by the so called practitioners of real medicine and the poor quality of quite a few homeopaths does cause about half of these to switch to other schools - yoga, naturopathy etc - typically homeopathy begins to work slowly at first and today people want to be cured yesterday - homeopathy is slow gentle and sure footed. Those who stick it out are greatly benefited and often permanently cured. There is no golden shortcut to perfect health in todays polluted environment with contaminated food, water, air etc taking its toll.

[Mojo]

These are both highly controversial studies with no controls / trials You do realise that those are a meta-analysis and a systematic review, don't you? ...and have been adequately countered in various fora.

See the riposte in "Open letter to the editor of The Lancet from the Swiss Association of Homoeopathic Physicians (SVHA)" in Homeopathy. 2006 Jan;95(1):61-2.OK, so homoeopaths don't like them.

The proper reference is:
"Homeopathy can be an efficient treatment for intractable atopic dermatitis.
Itamura R, Hosoya R. Homeopathic treatment of Japanese patients with intractable atopic dermatitis.
Homeopathy 92 (2): 108-114, Apr 2003.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of homeopathic treatment of intractable atopic dermatitis.

17 patients with this condition were given individualized homeopathic treatment in addition to conventional dermatological therapy for a period varying from 6 months to 31 months. All of the patients had previously been treated with conventional medicine and various psychological interventions but had shown no signs of improvement.

The treatment was evaluated by objective assessments of skin condition and by patients' own perception of their skin, using a 9 point scale.
Over 50% improvement was reported in the following categories: in overall impression and overall skin condition by all patients; in itchiness by 15 patients; in sleep disturbance by 10 patients; in satisfaction with daily life by 9 patients; in fulfilment at work by 7 patients; and in satisfaction with human relations by 10 patients.

Two detailed case studies are reported in this paper."


In view of your complaint, in the immediately preceding post, that a meta-analysis and a systematic review had no controls, perhaps you should tell us how many patients there were in the control group for this trial.

[Mojo]

Practitioners of homeopathic medicine are as real as the practitioners of 'real' medicine.


The practitioners of homoeopathy are certainly real; it's just the homoeopathy that isn't.

[fls]

This from the Mayo Clinic is even more confusing - what with drug companies touting the latest 100000 dollars chemotherapy EXTENDING LIFE BY ALL OF 3 MONTHS and making the person so ill that she feels more like a zombie than a thinking person:

"Cancer survival rate A tool to understand your prognosis

Mayo Clinic Last Updated: 05/27/2005


What can't cancer survival rates tell you?
Cancer survival statistics can be frustrating because they can't give specifics about you. ... This can be frustrating and for that reason, some people choose to ignore cancer survival rate statistics.

Survival rates have other limitations. For instance, they can't:
• Give you information about the latest treatments. People used in the latest cancer statistics were diagnosed more than five years ago. The effects of any recent treatment discoveries won't impact survival statistics for at least five years.
• Tell you what treatments to choose. .. For some people, the treatment with the greatest chance for remission is the one they'll choose. But many people figure other factors, such as side effects and the treatment schedule, into their decision.


You might choose to ignore cancer survival rates
It's entirely up to you whether you want to know the survival rates associated with your type and stage of cancer. Because survival rates can't tell you about your situation specifically, you might find the statistics are impersonal and not very helpful.

If you have a very localized cancer and you are using statistics that include many people with a more widespread cancer, then that data may not apply to you.

Tell your doctor if you'd prefer not to pay attention to the numbers. "

Nice selective quoting. Interesting that you are willing to refer to data that is gathered following the scientific method when it suits your purpose. Although I can't tell what your purpose is with this, since it seems to have nothing to do with anything.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer/CA00049

Homeopathy is individualized to the case and gentle as well as curative; for life, not just 3 months. All cases of cancer cannot achieve cure with homeopathy; can they with any other system of medicine.?

Data gathered without the influence of chance and wishful thinking shows that homeopathy does not cure anyone of cancer.

Linda

[manioberoi]

Controls? That criticism makes no sense.



I see from that letter and from the rest of your comments that we have now moved on to the next layer of the Homeopathy Cop Out. "Homeopathy cannot be evaluated by methods that reduce the effects of chance and bias." So what you and the rest of the homeopaths are saying is that unless we allow you to make full use of chance and wishful thinking, you will be unable to demonstrate any effect from homeopathy?

Linda
Not so fast. You missed the part where I said such trials are not appropriate but are being done.

They are increasingly showing (double blind placebo) that they work.

What I am saying is that the so called good journals of your liking do not readily publish the studies.

Then you must accept the studies (double blind placebo) published in ALL journals and not have your way in all things - judge, jury and executioner!!!

[manioberoi]

The practitioners of homoeopathy are certainly real; it's just the homoeopathy that isn't.
Tell that to the thousands who fly across the world to consult with top homeopaths and benefit in cancer, asthma, diabetes, psoriasis.......

[Curnir]

Can't predict anything.
Homeopathy works - but not always - just as conventional medicine works only till the patient dies.
in post #348 you wrote:
Next you will denigrate all the conventional medical facilities in India........

That looks an awful lot like an attempt to predict the future. Or an attempt at mindreading.

But ok, if you say that you make no predicitons, I'll take your word for it.

[Curnir]

Tell that to the thousands who fly across the world to consult with top homeopaths and benefit in cancer, asthma, diabetes, psoriasis.......
That is what we are trying to do. Please pay attention, will you?

[manioberoi]

Nice selective quoting. Interesting that you are willing to refer to data that is gathered following the scientific method when it suits your purpose. Although I can't tell what your purpose is with this, since it seems to have nothing to do with anything.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer/CA00049



Data gathered without the influence of chance and wishful thinking shows that homeopathy does not cure anyone of cancer.

Linda
Too broad and sweeping a statement to be commented upon.

[manioberoi]

That is what we are trying to do. Please pay attention, will you?
I am paying attention- they benefit with permanent cures , tell others, who come and benefit - reputation travels by word of mouth - REPEAT THEY BENEFIT!!!

[Curnir]

Originally Posted by Curnir
I'm sorry... that sentence made no sense at all. Were you trying to say that Practitioners of real medicine should be prohibited from giving negative comments on qua.. err sorry 'homeopathy', because the don't consider the tosh.. sorry. articles in woo publications credible?

Oh but if it worked in those cases... surely it will work during proper test conditions ie double blinded placebo trials?


Practitioners of homeopathic medicine are as real as the practitioners of 'real' medicine. They have large following of patients who have been cured and have sent many others to be treated, at first disbelieving and later cured believers - all the hype created by the so called practitioners of real medicine and the poor quality of quite a few homeopaths does cause about half of these to switch to other schools - yoga, naturopathy etc - typically homeopathy begins to work slowly at first and today people want to be cured yesterday - homeopathy is slow gentle and sure footed. Those who stick it out are greatly benefited and often permanently cured. There is no golden shortcut to perfect health in todays polluted environment with contaminated food, water, air etc taking its toll.

Oh I say, nice evasion there.
I'll post the question again, just in case you missed it the first time.

Oh but if it worked in those cases... surely it will work during proper test conditions ie double blinded placebo trials?

[fls]

For that we must first agree on a true and fair definition of what is true cure and what is symptomatic cure (suppression).

Yes. And that is one of the main criticisms of homeopathy - that rather than measuring true cures, they measure "cure" only by symptom suppression.

I repeat that proof in the form of physical (material drug - controls - large numbers of non- homogeneous patients treated with one specific drug )evidence of the type that you are trying to manouevre me into is nothing but intellectual dishonesty; you very well know that homeopathy works with no material above 12C or 24X; further homeopathy is individualized treatment of one person with one or more remedies over time with a view to complete cure.

We have made no requirements for the material presence of the drug. And both individualized and single treatments are amenable to the kind of study that allows us to remove the effects of chance and wishful thinking.

And this can be proved in thousands of cases recorded - unrecorded cases would run into large numbers since self prescription is possible in homeopathy with much greater safety than conventional medicine OTC drugs.

Even so unsuitable trials of single remedies used on large non- homogeneous persons with a mechanically selected remedy have shown surprisingly good results at times, and expectedly poor results at other times!!

This is as it should be, and cannot in any way be construed as a proof that homeopathy has failed to work consistently in all the trials.

Yes. These are exactly the kinds of results one would expect if homeopathic treatments have no real effect.

Linda

[Curnir]

I am paying attention- they benefit with permanent cures , tell others, who come and benefit - reputation travels by word of mouth - REPEAT THEY BENEFIT!!!

Then surely the authenticity of the homeopathic "remedies" can be proven in proper testing conditions? Right?

[fls]

Not so fast. You missed the part where I said such trials are not appropriate but are being done.

I didn't miss it. I was making direct reference to it.

They are increasingly showing (double blind placebo) that they work.

You have yet to provide any reasonable evidence of this with your references.

What I am saying is that the so called good journals of your liking do not readily publish the studies.

Then you must accept the studies (double blind placebo) published in ALL journals and not have your way in all things - judge, jury and executioner!!!

You have missed your target. I never said I was unwilling to look at all the studies. In fact, I completely agree that one must look at all the studies. And the publishers of those metanalyses also agree, as they describe in detail the efforts they made to make sure that they included all the relevant studies that had been performed (including studies published in non-conventional journals).

Linda

[manioberoi]

Wow. There's some really big claims being made in this thread. Homeopathy curing Cholera, Syphilis and now Cancer! It there no illness that it cannot be used to treat effectively?

Clearly it fails to treat the symptoms of credulousness, naivety and stupidity which are so often displayed by its proponents. Alas, the only potential cure for these is education and hard work. Even then relief is not guaranteed.
Homeopathy can treat all conditions other than cases requiring surgery. It has cured a number of conditions and has alleviated a larger number of conditions WITHOUT LIFE THREATENING SIDE EFFECTS. Conventional medicine is 99 percent of medicine but 1 percent of medicine is a large enough area that homeopathy covers wonderfully well - treated cases library of any good homeopath runs into thousands.

[Curnir]

Homeopathy can treat all conditions other than cases requiring surgery.HIV? Ebola? Hanta? Anthrax? Smallpox? Oh sorry you wrote treat, Ok fair enuff you can treat just about anything with just about anything. For instance I can treat sinus infections by dancing around the person with the infection, singin 'kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit ki-ill the wabbit...' that doesn't mean that it works/cures the infection.WITHOUT LIFE THREATENING SIDE EFFECTS. No side effects? Fair enuff, if there's no effect then it would logically follow that there are no side effects. Conventional medicine is 99 percent of medicine but 1 percent of medicine is a large enough area that homeopathy covers wonderfully well - treated cases library of any good homeopath runs into thousands.
1. can you support these number or are you just writing random percantages?
2. there is only one type of medicine, the ones that work.
If homeopathy worked it would be part of real medicine.

And you know.
The best way of convincing practitioners of real medicine that homeopathy works, and thus turn it into medicine (instead of quackery) is to PROVE that it work under proper testing conditions.

[Mojo]

Tell that to the thousands who fly across the world to consult with top homeopaths and benefit in cancer, asthma, diabetes, psoriasis.......


What a nice argumentum ad populum.

[Ivor the Engineer]

Homeopathy can treat all conditions other than cases requiring surgery. It has cured a number of conditions and has alleviated a larger number of conditions WITHOUT LIFE THREATENING SIDE EFFECTS. Conventional medicine is 99 percent of medicine but 1 percent of medicine is a large enough area that homeopathy covers wonderfully well - treated cases library of any good homeopath runs into thousands.

I rest my case;)

[manioberoi]

I rest my case;)
Whew! Thanks.

Sarvadaman

[manioberoi]

Then surely the authenticity of the homeopathic "remedies" can be proven in proper testing conditions? Right?
Yes! But the "proper testing conditions" will surely be disputed by you!! What is the proper testing condition for individualized treatment/remedy(s)?

There will be regulatory problems, ethical problems, choice problems, duration problems etc. since typically homeopathic treatment will result in cure (for diabetes or asthma or dengue or chikungunya or AIDS or syphilis or TB or tetanus or cancer etc).

Nevertheless the All India Institue of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India is helping the Central Council for Research in Homeopathy (CCRH) in the process of carrying out conventional double blind studies using homeopathic remedies; presently the homeopaths are being trained in the scientific methods of double blind studies.

That homeopathy works is beyond doubt in India - to prove it works - the process is now in the works.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

The practitioners of homoeopathy are certainly real; it's just the homoeopathy that isn't.

Damn! You beat me to it.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Yes! But the "proper testing conditions" will surely be disputed by you!! What is the proper testing condition for individualized treatment/remedy(s)?

Allo wth homeopath to go through the entire "individualisation" rigmarole but then just randomly allocate whether the patient will recevie the prescribed remedy or a blank control.

I'm afraid if you thought that was the difficult bit then you have not really understood how to test anything at all and have rather disqualified yourself from commeting on the tests that have been done.

[MRC_Hans]

What high quality are you referring to? I do hope not one of these:
"Suit Says Company Promoted Drug in Exam Rooms
By MELODY PETERSEN, New York Times, May 15, 2002

Warner-Lambert also hired two marketing firms to write articles about the unapproved uses of

*snip*


The virtues and vices of the conventional pharmaceutical industry is an interesting and imprtant topic. However, it is NOT the topic of this thread, and it is completely irrelevant to the validity of homeopathy. No matter how many side effects conventinal meds may have, and no matter how devious the practices of some pharma companies may be, it will not in ANY way vindicate homeopathy.

The only thing that can vindicate homeopathy is proof that it works.

Hans

[Curnir]

Yes! But the "proper testing conditions" will surely be disputed by you!!Only if you cheat. What is the proper testing condition for individualized treatment/remedy(s)?
Ok let take some illness that isn't life threatening (where the patients would die or suffer if they were to go without their real medicine)... Like oh... Fur allergy for instance.

1. the patients have their allergy confirmed with simple allergy tests.
2. the patients are given a number and visit the qua.. sorry homeopath one by one so that he can determine the individualized treatment.
3. the patient leaves the room.
4. the homeopath prepares the individualized treatment, marking the container of the treatment with the patients number (nothing else).
5. the homepath transports the treatment to the BLINDER.
6 the blinder uses an advanced randomizer to determine (he flips a coin) whether the patient should get a the homepathic pills or the placebo.
6a. if the cointoss denotes that the patient should get the placebo, the blinder takes prepares a pill bottle with placebo and marks it with the patients number.
7. the blinder notes the patients number and if he/she got a placebo or a homopathic dose.
8. the blinder transports the treatment to the patient.
9. After the treatment is over the patient reports back to the homeopath, to indicate whether it worked or not.
10. the homeopath prepares a list recording which of the patients reported a successfull treatment.
11. the lists of the blinder and homepath are compared.
12. the allergy test preformed in step 1 is repeated. To see whether the allergy is gone.


The blinder should have no contact with the homeopath and patient, all transports should be done by proxy.

That is a simple test protocol, the details need some tuning.
Took me 5 minutes to come up with.


That homeopathy works is beyond doubt in India - to prove it works - the process is now in the works.Good luck.

[MRC_Hans]

This from the Mayo Clinic is even more confusing - *sniiiip*Tell your doctor if you'd prefer not to pay attention to the numbers. "

Irrelevant to the discussion of homeopathy.

Homeopathy is individualized to the case and gentle as well as curative; for life, not just 3 months.

Unfounded claim.

Hans

[manioberoi]

Allo wth homeopath to go through the entire "individualisation" rigmarole but then just randomly allocate whether the patient will recevie the prescribed remedy or a blank control.

I'm afraid if you thought that was the difficult bit then you have not really understood how to test anything at all and have rather disqualified yourself from commeting on the tests that have been done.
It is not rigmarole - it is consultation leading to an individualized remedy or series of remedies to be decided as the case progresses that we are talking here - and the series would nearly always be different for each person.

So we are not testing a remedy - we are rather testing homeopathy against placebo( and I have noted that some here call the remedy placebo!).

Such are the difficulties in deciding "proper testing conditions "

If there is consensus that randomly allotting patients to receive placebo and homeopathy (series of remedies as required) (placebo?) is acceptable proof - then if there is any significant difference (favourable to the latter) - would it be acceptable proof that homeopathy is not placebo?

[MRC_Hans]

For that we must first agree on a true and fair definition of what is true cure and what is symptomatic cure (suppression).

That is a very strange thing to say for a proponent of homeopathy. Homeopathy only recognizes symptoms. Any remission where symptoms disappear is a true cure on the book of homeopathy.

I repeat that proof in the form of physical (material drug - controls - large numbers of non- homogeneous patients treated with one specific drug )evidence of the type that you are trying to manouevre me into is nothing but intellectual dishonesty;

The intellectual dishonesty is that you make this claim. I do not ask you to treat patient with one specific drug. You can individualize all you will, I don't care.


you very well know that homeopathy works with no material above 12C or 24X;


I know very well that homeopathy doesn't work at all.

further homeopathy is individualized treatment of one person with one or more remedies over time with a view to complete cure.

I never said otherwise.

And this can be proved in thousands of cases recorded - unrecorded cases would run into large numbers since self prescription is possible in homeopathy with much greater safety than conventional medicine OTC drugs.

How would you document anything with unrecorded cases? Unrecorded cases = hearsay.

Thousands of cases? That is exactly one of the beefs I have with the so-called clinical record of homeopathy: It is so incomplete that it is ridiculous. This works right from the start; how many case accounts do we have from Hahnemann's hand? About 200? Hahnemann practiced for almost 50 years. He must have treated thousands of cases.

One of the most prolific recorders of homeopathic cases of the present, Vitoulkas [sp?], has recorded what? About 1500 cases. However, he has practiced very actively for decades and must have treated tens of thousands of patients.

What about all the cases that homeopaths fail to report? Why do they only report some of their cases? Well, I know the answer: They report the cases they find characteristic. We have another term for that: Cherry picking.


Even so unsuitable trials of single remedies used on large non- homogeneous persons with a mechanically selected remedy have shown surprisingly good results at times, and expectedly poor results at other times!!


Yes, and I can predict the throw of a coin about 50% of the times.


This is as it should be, and cannot in any way be construed as a proof that homeopathy has failed to work consistently in all the trials.


I'm sorry, but you cannot make your own rules. Either it works consistently, or it doesn't. You would require no less of a conventinal medicine.

Millions of people on this planet use homeopathy because it works just as the billions who use conventional medicine because it works .

Wrong. All those people use whatever they use because they believe it works. The difference is that we can prove that the conventional meds actually do work.

Hans

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

No one has remarked about the work of the Italian chemist Elia

It has been discussed before. I don't think anyone here has seen a copy of the full text. Have you?

[MRC_Hans]

Practitioners of homeopathic medicine are as real as the practitioners of 'real' medicine.

In what way do you mean "real"? Of course they are real people, nobody doubts that, but do they have a real and certified education? Are they under public control and registration? Is there an official complaint system? ( I realize that the situation in India is special on this account).


They have large following of patients who have been cured and have sent many others to be treated, at first disbelieving and later cured believers -


So have woodo practitioners, healers, witch doctors, reiku healers, etc. etc.

homeopathy is slow gentle and sure footed.

If it is so sure-footed, how come the results are so fleeting in controlled trials?


Hans

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

As for Mr. Monkey...it seems that you disbelieve in Darwinian thinking because you have not yet evolved and are still asking the same tired and innane questions. Please evolve...for your own good.

Hmm...but here's the really funny thing. They are not difficult questions but you keep resorting to tedious ad hominems rather than answering them.

So, yet again, I return to your clinical evidence base;

4. Can you tell us whether either of these machines works?

http://www.bio-resonance.com/elybra.htm

http://www.remedydevices.com/voice.htm

Bear in mind that the users of these machines rely on exactly the same anecdotal experience and fallacious post hoc reasoning that every other homeopath does. Are the homeopaths who use these machines right or wrong in thinking they work?

It's a very simple question and capable of a single-word answer.

I'll give you a new question just so you can show how well you understand the interpretation of clinical trial data;

9. I set a p-value for significance of 0.05 and run 100 trials. In no trial is the test substance distinguishable from the control. How many trials can I expect to show an apparent "effect" from my test substance?

p.s. To return to that Elia paper for a moment. I do hope it will not turn out that you have cited it in evidence without having read the full text. I have ordered a copy so at least we can see what they claimed to have found. I'm sure you already have one, so perhaps you could give us a brief resume including a discussion of the controls. I also note that the second paper you cite has retreated back into a homeopathic house journal.

[MRC_Hans]

Not so fast. You missed the part where I said such trials are not appropriate but are being done.

They are increasingly showing (double blind placebo) that they work.

What I am saying is that the so called good journals of your liking do not readily publish the studies.

Then you must accept the studies (double blind placebo) published in ALL journals and not have your way in all things - judge, jury and executioner!!!This is lies. Simple as that. Journals live by circulation. If a properly conducted study showing a sensational result is presented, then they will publish it. If there existed results that proved efficacy of homeopathy, not only would the "good journals" publish it, but pharmaceutical companies would be scrambling to get their hands on it.

Face it: There exists no consistent, properly conducted research that supports homeopathy.

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

Tell that to the thousands who fly across the world to consult with top homeopaths and benefit in cancer, asthma, diabetes, psoriasis.......Kindly refer me to reports that show how homeopathy can cure diabetes (I want to be rich).

Hans

[Mashuna]

It is not rigmarole - it is consultation leading to an individualized remedy or series of remedies to be decided as the case progresses that we are talking here - and the series would nearly always be different for each person.

This shouldn't be a problem in creating a DBRCT. BSM and Curnir have already provided methods for you.


So we are not testing a remedy - we are rather testing homeopathy against placebo( and I have noted that some here call the remedy placebo!).

Yes, that's how you conduct a DBRCT. Some call the remedy placebo because that's exactly how well it performs in such trials.


Such are the difficulties in deciding "proper testing conditions "

Nope, not seeing the difficulties.


If there is consensus that randomly allotting patients to receive placebo and homeopathy (series of remedies as required) (placebo?) is acceptable proof - then if there is any significant difference (favourable to the latter) - would it be acceptable proof that homeopathy is not placebo?

Likewise, when they don't, this is evidence that homeopathy is placebo.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

It is not rigmarole - it is consultation leading to an individualized remedy or series of remedies to be decided as the case progresses that we are talking here - and the series would nearly always be different for each person.

So we are not testing a remedy - we are rather testing homeopathy against placebo( and I have noted that some here call the remedy placebo!).

Such are the difficulties in deciding "proper testing conditions "



I've just pointed out to you that there are no difficulties. What is your problem?

If there is consensus that randomly allotting patients to receive placebo and homeopathy (series of remedies as required) (placebo?) is acceptable proof - then if there is any significant difference (favourable to the latter) - would it be acceptable proof that homeopathy is not placebo?

I'm sorry, but the syntax of this is too impenetrable to answer without risking answering the wrong question.

If you are asking whether a rational sceptic would accept the outcome of well-run trials, then the answer would be yes, subject to independent replication. Homeopathy has failed this simple test, so you should simply accept defeat and find something else to do.

[Delusions_O_Grandeur]

Where did JamesGully go!? I just got "the physics of high pressure" I can't find ANYTHING in the book about water that freezes in different patterns depending on pressure history (like going from .2 bar at high altitude to 1 bar at seal level). In fact, below 500 times atmospheric pressure all water ice looks the same.

[MRC_Hans]

Yes! But the "proper testing conditions" will surely be disputed by you!! What is the proper testing condition for individualized treatment/remedy(s)?

There will be regulatory problems, ethical problems, choice problems, duration problems etc. since typically homeopathic treatment will result in cure (for diabetes or asthma or dengue or chikungunya or AIDS or syphilis or TB or tetanus or cancer etc).

Proper testing condition, in broad terms are:

Sufficiently large groups (several hundred).
Clearly defined treatment goals.
Ethical recruiting.
Effective randimization.
Effective data collection.
Proper double blinding.

Nevertheless the All India Institue of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India is helping the Central Council for Research in Homeopathy (CCRH) in the process of carrying out conventional double blind studies using homeopathic remedies; presently the homeopaths are being trained in the scientific methods of double blind studies.

That homeopathy works is beyond doubt in India - to prove it works - the process is now in the works.

If authorities in India are so certain it works, then why are they so interested in opening conventional clinics?

I'm sorry, I can tell you why: REAL medicine is expensive. It suits the Indian government very well to have a cheap and harmless form of medicine to use on the masses. It saves them a LOT of money.

You homeopaths are always so eager to hit at big comercial conspiracies to promote conventional medicines and suppress things like homeopathy. However, the only ones that would benefit from this are the pharma companies, but big as they are they are not the world. The REST of the world would have an interest in suppressing expensive medicines and promote the cheap alternatives. Governments, insurance companies, patients, would reap enourmous benefits, economically and otherwise, if diseases could be treated with cheap safe homeopathic sugar pills, and the like. Guess why they stick to the expensive and sometimes risky conventional meds? Well, it seems people want something that works.

Except in India, apparantly (and Pakistan).

A note: Somebody referred to the MAS collective. MAS et al are in Pakistan.

At least our friend Manioberoi here writes excellent English.

Hans

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Where did JamesGully go!? I just got "the physics of high pressure" I can't find ANYTHING in the book about water that freezes in different patterns depending on pressure history (like going from .2 bar at high altitude to 1 bar at seal level). In fact, below 500 times atmospheric pressure all water ice looks the same.

Oh, come now, you're surely not saying that James would be unable to substantiate one of his claims from his cited cource. I find that hard to believe.

Just I am sure he's read all of Elia's paper, so we'll be on an even footing when my copy arrives.

[Mojo]

No one has remarked about the work of the Italian chemist EliaIt has been discussed before. I don't think anyone here has seen a copy of the full text. Have you?


It was one of Olaf's, wasn't it?

[fls]

Data gathered without the influence of chance and wishful thinking shows that homeopathy does not cure anyone of cancer.
Too broad and sweeping a statement to be commented upon.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Citation&list_uids=16376071

Linda

[JamesGully]

I think that it is touching that several of you miss me. It is ironic that some of you were worried that I was scared off. Heck, yesterday was Father's Day. I have a life (every heard of having one?).

That said...I'm leaving the country for a couple of weeks and will probably not do much internet stuff. That said...I am reiterating part of my old posting to this list (and adding to it) because all of these issues below remained unanswered by skeptics...

Sadly, I've grown tired of you, primarily due to your intellectual dishonesty. You claim that the homeopathic doses are too small to have any effect, and yet, you ignore the various basic science and clinical studies that I have referenced, only critiquing a small number of them, and even these critiques are usually inadequate.

No one has remarked about the work of the Italian chemist Elia:
--Elia, V, and Niccoli, M. Thermodynamics of Extremely Diluted Aqueous Solutions, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 879, 1999:241-248.

--Elia, V, Baiano, S, Duro, I, Napoli, E, Niccoli, M, Nonatelli, L. Permanent Physio-chemical Properties of Extremely Diluted Aqueous Solutions of Homeopathic Medicines, Homeopathy, 93, 2004:144-150 (once again, some of you make reference to this peer-review journal in a disparaging way, and yet, whenever it and other CAM journal publish negative trials, you are quick to quote and reference them...once again, this is part of the unscientific attitudes that pervades this list.)

The best critique that someone gave to the work of Swiss physicist Louis Rey who published in a major physics journal was a statement by Jacques Benveniste (whose words and experiments you ridicule! So what is it going to be: do you trust Benveniste's words or not?)

No one has remarked about the 3 large clinical trials in the treatment of influenza...and the best critique offered was that the medicine used was made from duck's heart and liver (obviously a "quack medicine"), despite the fact that homeopaths have been hip to avian sources and connections to flu virus since the 1920s!).

No one has remarked substentatively on the four trials at the University of Glasgow on various allergic disorders.

No one has given a scintilla of critique of the study at the University of Vienna Hospital in the treatment of people with COPD (the #4 reason that people die in the US):
--Frass, M, Dielacher, C, Linkesch, M, Endler, C, Muchitsch, I, Schuster, E, Kaye, A.. Influence of Potassium Dichromate on Tracheal Secretions in Critically Ill Patients, Chest, March, 2005.

I previously referenced 3 clinical trials in the treatment of children with diarrhea, including a meta-analysis of the 3 combined trials with a P-value=0.008. While one person on this list showed that 2 of the 3 studies had barely missed significance (P=0.06 and 0.07), intellectual dishonest again pervaded because s/he didn't acknowledge that combined statistically analysis (this is good science, especially when the clinical trial design was alike)...but the weasels come out and do what you can to look ONLY at data that serves your needs (and to hell with good science?).

The good news of this study is that all children were given oral rehydration therapy, and this study showed that homeopathic treatment provided additional benefits as compared with those children given a placebo (and isn't that the idea!?).

Ironically, one of you brought up ORT as an example of a "drug" that has persisted more than a couple of decades...and ironically, this "drug" is more of a public health measure than a drug (bless public health advocates out there!).

Here's the reference to a meta-analysis of these three studies. Although the lead research was the same MD, the actual prescribers for each of the three trials were different homeopaths.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/en...ubmed_RVDocSum

This meta-analysis was published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal (I'm now waiting for someone to call this a "quack publication.")

I also referred you to the work of Rustum Roy and emphasize his previous article on homeopathy and the structure of water, and then, I made reference to a NEW soon-to-be-published study (not theory) using spectoscopic analysis of homeopathic medicines that differentiate one from another and one potency from another (just what YOU requested), and then, several of you write sloppy accounts of a non-homeopathic writing of Dr. Roy's.

Some of you even went off the deep-end by saying that the 13 papers that Dr. Roy got published in NATURE are meaningless (I will be surprised if anyone on this list has gotten a single paper published in NATURE, let alone 13). (Someone of this list got one "letter" published in NATURE, and s/he wondered if this counts as an article. Hmmm. Does it approach your own standards?)

The bottomline here is that whether you agree with Dr. Roy or me or whomever, be intellectually honest. Acknowledge positive and negative studies.

When I referenced a four university replication study led by M. Ennis (a former skeptic of homeopathy), someone properly (!) made good reference to a failed replication study. Although this negative result was published in a CAM journal, I referenced one of its authors, Stephan Baumgartner, PhD, as an obviously honest researcher (he can and will publish whatever real data he gets, whether it is pro homeopathy or not). I encourage people to review the MANY studies he has done...and the best criitique that you folks get provide is that he is not the FIRST author on every study (wow...that was a weak critique...and yet, no one here critiqued this critique).

And please (!) do not make reference to the "junk science" efforts that the BBC's Horizon programme did or ABC's 20/20 did. For a critique that blows these junk journalism/junk science reports out of the water, go to:
http://homeopathic.com/articles/media/index.php

For the record, I previously asked if ANYONE on this list wants to stand up and say that this stand by and stand with the "researchers" for the BBC and ABC-TV. Come on...who has the courage?

And the reason why I consider totally bogus James Randi's proposal to give $1 million to someone who will prove that homeopathy works is that James Randi has stood with the BBC's and ABC's researchers and has not condemned their studies as "junk science." James Randi will deserve credit when he stands with good science and when he condemns junk science, and as yet, I haven't seen that happen as this incident has shown.

I will be the first to acknowledge that good research is very hard, especially on "frontier subjects" in science. Further, I am suspicious and cautious when researchers report consistently positive results on these frontier subjects. I am therefore pleased when my colleagues report both positive and negative results. This is good science, not party line junk science.

I sincerely hope that the SILENT people on this list read inbetween the lines to see the elephant in the room. In your efforts to be the "defenders of science," you have been shown to have a very unscientific attitude towards homeopathy.

But heck, don't just listen to me...listen to your hero, Charles Darwin.

Sometimes study with an N=1 provide important substantiation.

I take great pleasure to telling you a historical fact. Our greatly beloved Charles Darwin not only sought care from a highly respected homeopathic physician, it is unlikely that Darwin could have completed his seminal work, Origin of Species, in 1859, if he didn't receive this homeopathic care 10 year prior to its publication.

Just read Darwin's letters to read about this story and learn something about his life...

From 1837 onwards Darwin was frequently incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, heart palpitations, trembling, and other symptoms. In 1847, Darwin's illness worsened. He was again experiencing frequent episodes of vomiting and weakness, but he now was also experiencing fainting spells and seeing spots in front of his eyes. Darwin wrote that he was so sick that he was “unable to do anything one day out of three.” He was so ill that he wasn’t even able to attend his father’s funeral when he died on November 13, 1848.

He went a month without vomiting, a very rare experience for him, and even gained some weight. One day he surprised himself by being able to walk seven miles. He wrote to a friend, “I am turning into a mere walking & eating machine” (Quammen, 2006, 112)

And after just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all. After spending 16 weeks there, he felt like a new man, and by June he was able to go home to resume his important work (Grosvenor, 2004). Darwin actually writes that he is “of almost perfect health” (Burkhardt, 1996, 108).

Although some medical historians have referred to Gully as a hydrotherapist, this is just the historians way of writing homeopathy out of history. Gully considered himself to be a homeopath, and while his staff provided various treatments to Darwin, Gully's treatment was primarily homeopathic medicines.

And for the record, there are many tangents of homeopathy, including those machines to which Mr. Monkey and Hans have repeatedly referred. Please evolve past your present state and listen when I say that I do not know about every tangent in homeopathy, nor does proving one tangent wrong disprove anything else.

Best of all...I love it that some of you have declared that all of Georgetown's school of medicine is a quack institution. The wide paintbrush that you use is evidence of the sloppy-thinking and unscientific attitudes that you embody.

Good-bye for now...

[Mashuna]

I take great pleasure to telling you a historical fact. Our greatly beloved Charles Darwin not only sought care from a highly respected homeopathic physician, it is unlikely that Darwin could have completed his seminal work, Origin of Species, in 1859, if he didn't receive this homeopathic care 10 year prior to its publication.

Just read Darwin's letters to read about this story and learn something about his life...

From 1837 onwards Darwin was frequently incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, heart palpitations, trembling, and other symptoms. In 1847, Darwin's illness worsened. He was again experiencing frequent episodes of vomiting and weakness, but he now was also experiencing fainting spells and seeing spots in front of his eyes. Darwin wrote that he was so sick that he was “unable to do anything one day out of three.” He was so ill that he wasn’t even able to attend his father’s funeral when he died on November 13, 1848.

He went a month without vomiting, a very rare experience for him, and even gained some weight. One day he surprised himself by being able to walk seven miles. He wrote to a friend, “I am turning into a mere walking & eating machine” (Quammen, 2006, 112)

And after just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all. After spending 16 weeks there, he felt like a new man, and by June he was able to go home to resume his important work (Grosvenor, 2004). Darwin actually writes that he is “of almost perfect health” (Burkhardt, 1996, 108).

Although some medical historians have referred to Gully as a hydrotherapist, this is just the historians way of writing homeopathy out of history. Gully considered himself to be a homeopath, and while his staff provided various treatments to Darwin, Gully's treatment was primarily homeopathic medicines.


Most recent example you can find still 170 years old? Thought so.

[Rasmus55]

On the discussion regarding India and its homeopathic goodness:

India is the scam artist's dream land. Every sort of quackery imaginable is practiced there. It is a land of incredible superstitions and mass quantities of poor, uneducated people. Given the incredible corruption of the wonderful socialist government of India, competent medical care is available only for the select few. Often times, whether a person will receive good medical care depends upon his caste; low caste people lose. In fact, those Indians who can afford the expense will travel to Europe or (their favorite place to go) the U.S. for serious problems. Furthermore, aspiring Indian medical students do all they can to get out of India and study abroad. Why is this? Visit India sometime and it will become apparent to.

It is no wonder that in a land where superstition rules the mind and credible medical care is unavailable to the plebs sordida that homeopathy and faith healing should flourish. After all, there are no alternatives. Of course, this sort of stupidity is reinforced by the likes of Deepak Chopra; a man who has one set of spiritual and scientific convictions for those in his homeland but an alternative set for his Western prey.

Beware Indian made homeopathic remedies as they may kill you. Indian water represents some of the most polluted water in the world.

Of course, let us not forget that the famed homeopathic Greek quack "professor" George Vithoulkas was trained in homeopathy in India. Vithoulkas' writings are nearly incomprehensible, always bitter, and reflect a confused, afflicted mind. Search youtube for some of his "teaching" clips and be astounded at how little sense it all makes. Vithoulkas is exactly the type of quality loon that one would expect from an Indian university of quackery.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

My goodness, all those words and still no answers to a couple of simple questions;

So, yet again, I return to your clinical evidence base;

4. Can you tell us whether either of these machines works?

http://www.bio-resonance.com/elybra.htm

http://www.remedydevices.com/voice.htm

Bear in mind that the users of these machines rely on exactly the same anecdotal experience and fallacious post hoc reasoning that every other homeopath does. Are the homeopaths who use these machines right or wrong in thinking they work?

It's a very simple question and capable of a single-word answer.

I'll give you a new question just so you can show how well you understand the interpretation of clinical trial data;

9. I set a p-value for significance of 0.05 and run 100 trials. In no trial is the test substance distinguishable from the control. How many trials can I expect to show an apparent "effect" from my test substance?

By the way, I have just downloaded my copy of the Elia paper. So, Dana, I assume you have read the full text, where do you want to begin...

[SYLVESTER1592]

I think that it is touching that several of you miss me. It is ironic that some of you were worried that I was scared off. Heck, yesterday was Father's Day. I have a life (every heard of having one?). ..

Ironically, one of you brought up ORT as an example of a "drug" that has persisted more than a couple of decades...and ironically, this "drug" is more of a public health measure than a drug (bless public health advocates out there!).

Here's the reference to a meta-analysis of these three studies. Although the lead research was the same MD, the actual prescribers for each of the three trials were different homeopaths.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/en...ubmed_RVDocSum

This meta-analysis was published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal (I'm now waiting for someone to call this a "quack publication.")

...The wide paintbrush that you use is evidence of the sloppy-thinking and unscientific attitudes that you embody.

Good-bye for now...

Wow...

Well I think all of your questions have been answered, but you have failed to answer mine. I have addressed this already and have given you the correct references in order to have a discussion. Obviously you have not read the article or my criticism of it or choose not to address it. So I can not speak very highly of your scientific approach, sadly enough, it seems that bad science is good science in your opinion if it endorses your point of view....

Please address my criticism and answer my questions in my previous post (link here) (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2696452#post2696452). I have waited patiently and without any pressure, but this reply is just incorrect and dismissive of all the relevant criticism you have received, and in doing so even plain rude.

SYL :)

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Dana,

First comment on the Elia paper- even if true, what bearing do you think it has on the issue of homeopathy? It has no relevance whatsoever.

[Dragon]

... snip ,,,

But heck, don't just listen to me...listen to your hero, Charles Darwin.

...snip ...

Good-bye for now...

Ok then,

You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things.It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything— when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr. Chapman; & himself as Hydropathist! & the girl recovered.—

Letter to W.D. Fox, September 4th, 1850
(http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1352.html)

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Dana,

First comment on the Elia paper- even if true, what bearing do you think it has on the issue of homeopathy? It has no relevance whatsoever.

Second comment:

What is your opinion of the statistical methods used?

By the way, I would really hate to be wasting my time with this. I have paid real money, £28.43 to be precise, to download this paper and I would not be happy to be attempting to discuss its contents with a bullsh!tter who has not read the paper, but just tries to bluff his way using abstracts and second-hand quotations. So, simple question, what is the penultimate word on page 823?

[Mojo]

I am reiterating part of my old posting to this list (and adding to it) because all of these issues below remained unanswered by skeptics

...

Sadly, I've grown tired of you, primarily due to your intellectual dishonesty. Since you are so keen on "intellectual honesty", I'll assume that it's your comprehension skills that are the problem. I'll reiterate what I posted here (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2696641#post2696641) (and add to it). I'll try to type slowly this time.


But heck, don't just listen to me...listen to your hero, Charles Darwin. At least you aren't referring to him as anyone's God this time. That's progress, I guess.

Sometimes study with an N=1 provide important substantiation.

I take great pleasure to telling you a historical fact. Our greatly beloved Charles Darwin not only sought care from a highly respected homeopathic physician, it is unlikely that Darwin could have completed his seminal work, Origin of Species, in 1859, if he didn't receive this homeopathic care 10 year prior to its publication. Do you have any evidence to support this assertion?

Just read Darwin's letters to read about this story and learn something about his life...A good idea.

From 1837 onwards Darwin was frequently incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, heart palpitations, trembling, and other symptoms. In 1847, Darwin's illness worsened. He was again experiencing frequent episodes of vomiting and weakness, but he now was also experiencing fainting spells and seeing spots in front of his eyes. Darwin wrote that he was so sick that he was “unable to do anything one day out of three.” He was so ill that he wasn’t even able to attend his father’s funeral when he died on November 13, 1848.

He went a month without vomiting, a very rare experience for him, and even gained some weight. One day he surprised himself by being able to walk seven miles. He wrote to a friend, “I am turning into a mere walking & eating machine” (Quammen, 2006, 112) Here's the letter (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1240.html), dated 18th April 1849, from which that quotation was taken. Note the description of Gully's treatment: "the Water Cure".

And after just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all. After spending 16 weeks there, he felt like a new man, and by June he was able to go home to resume his important work (Grosvenor, 2004). Darwin actually writes that he is “of almost perfect health” (Burkhardt, 1996, 108). And only 15 months later, in September 1850, he wrote (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1352.html): You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything— when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr. Chapman; & himself as Hydropathist! & the girl recovered.—He doesn't seem to have been very convinced of the merits of homoeopathy, does he?

Although some medical historians have referred to Gully as a hydrotherapist, this is just the historians way of writing homeopathy out of history. Gully considered himself to be a homeopath, and while his staff provided various treatments to Darwin, Gully's treatment was primarily homeopathic medicines.Note that in the letters above, Darwin refers to Gully's regime as "the Water Cure". Note that he describes Gully as acting as a "Hydropathist", who needed a second "doctor", one "Dr. Chapman", to provide homoeopathic treatment for his daughter. Note the description of Gully's regime in this letter (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1234.html), from which you quoted the last time you told your Darwin story: As you say you want my hydropathical diary, I will give it youf1 —though tomorrow it is to change to a certain extent.— 1⁄4 before 7. get up, & am scrubbed with rough towel in cold water for 2 or 3 minutes, which after the few first days, made & makes me very like a lobster— I have a washerman, a very nice person, & he scrubs behind, whilst I scrub in front.— drink a tumbler of water & get my clothes on as quick as possible & walk for 20 minutes—f2 I cd. walk further, but I find it tires me afterwards— I like all this very much.— At same time I put on a compress, which is a broad wet folded linen covered by mackintosh & which is “refreshed”—ie dipt in cold water every 2 hours & I wear it all day, except for about 2 hours after midday dinner; I don't perceive much effect from this of any kind.— After my walk, shave & wash & get my breakfast, which was to have been exclusively toast with meat or egg, but he has allowed me a little milk to sop the stale toast in. At no time must I take any sugar, butter, spices tea bacon or anything good.—f3 At 12 oclock I put my feet for 10 minutes in cold water with a little mustard & they are violently rubbed by my man; the coldness makes my feet ache much, but upon the whole my feet are certainly less cold than formerly.— Walk for 20 minutes & dine at one.— He has relaxed a little about my dinner & says I may try plain pudding, if I am sure it lessens sickness.—

After dinner lie down & try to go to sleep for one hour.— At 5 olock feet in cold water—drink cold water & walk as before— Supper same as breakfast at 6 oclock.— I have had much sickness this week, but certainly I have felt much stronger & the sickness has depressed me much less.— Tomorrow I am to be packed at 6 oclock A.M for 1 & 1⁄2 hour in Blanket, with hot bottle to my feet & then rubbed with cold dripping sheet;f4 but I do not know anything about this.— I grieve to say that Dr Gully gives me homoœopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.The homoeopathy seems to have been only a small component of these shenanigans.

In your earlier post on this subject, you posted, After being at Dr. Gully’s spa for just nine days, Darwin laments that Gully had prescribed homeopathic medicine to him, “I grieve to say that Dr. Gully gives me homeopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.”

And even though Darwin was extremely skeptical, just two days later (March 30, 1849) Darwin acknowledged, “I have already received so much benefit that I really hope my health will be much renovated” Thus giving the impression that he ascribed his "cure" to the homoeopathic treatment. Here's (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1237.html) the letter from which your quotation comes; the whole sentence, of which you quoted only part, reads: I am now not at home (though I have so dated this letter) but have come to Malvern for two months to try the cold water cure, and I have already received so much benefit that I really hope my health will be much renovated.Does he attribute his improvement to homoeopathy?

Even Gully does not seem to have been entirely convinced about the merits of homoeopathy. From here (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1234.html#mark-1234.f5): Gully was strongly against the administration of medical drugs for chronic disorders (Gully 1846, p. 513 n.) and cautious in his use of homoeopathic remedies: ‘although I might be induced to try to subdue a passing but troublesome symptom, I could not trust to remove the essential nature of a chronic malady by homœopathic means’ (Gully 1846, p. 83 n.). He "might be induced to try" homoeopathy to "subdue a passing but troublesome symptom"? Hardly a resounding endorsement of a "holistic" therapy.

And, just in case you missed it the second time I posted it, I'll repeat what Darwin wrote about a year and a half after you claim he conceded that homoeopathy had cured him: You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything— when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr. Chapman; & himself as Hydropathist! & the girl recovered.—

[krazyKemist]

I took a look at the Elia paper. It does relate to an homeopathy concept indeed ('structure of water'). I have a slight problem however :

The actual experimental procedure, ie, materials & methods, type of water used ('bidistilled' looks cool, but does not tell me much), containers, ect. is incomplete.

The thing is that ultrapure water (water that has been purified up to having a resistance around 18 MOhms) will dissolve pretty much anything. Even some of the boron contained in ordinary glass (I personnaly have measured this). If walls of container were attacked somehow, it could explain slight deviation in calorimetric testing, without resorting to 'structure of water'.

[JamesGully]

[QUOTE=JamesGully;2696261]

First of all it’s in Pediatr Infect Dis J. not PEDIATRICS :D
Pediatric Inf Dis J. : Impact factor 1.819
Pediatrics : Impact factor 2.710

BTW the article can be found here (http://cam.utmb.edu/resources/journalclubarticles/Homeopathy&Diarrhea2003PediInfectDisJ.pdf) you might want to show it so we can all see what we are discussing.


But you are right, indeed most of the research in it is based on data from Nicaragua (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=8165068&ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsP anel.Pubmed_RVDocSum), from previously published data. It has been looked at quite extensively…

A report in May 1994 examined the homeopathic treatment of diarrhea in children who lived in Nicaragua [7]. On Day 3 of treatment the homeopathic group had one less unformed stool than the control group (3.1 Vs 2.1; p <.05). However, critics [8] pointed out that not only were the sickest children excluded, but there were no significant differences on Days 1, 2, 4, or 5. This suggests that the conclusion was not valid. Further, there was no assurance that the homeopathic remedy was not adulterated (contaminated). Finally, standard remedies which halt diarrhea were not used for comparison purposes.

And : The Nepal trial was not significant p=0.06 as you may have read in the paper you suggested

WELL...LOOK AT THE ENTIRE SET OF STUDIES...OR DO YOU PREFER TO SQUINT YOUR EYES SO MUCH THAT YOU CANNOT SEE THEM?

Just a few questions right of the bat… :)

1) Why do you think it is relevant or a good study?
BECAUSE THE TREATMENT GROUP DID SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER THAN THE PLACEBO GROUP, VERIFYING THAT THE PLACEBO "EXPLANATION" TO HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT IS INADEQUATE.

2) What conclusion would you attribute to the fact that on day 3 there were less then 2 unformed stools but on the days before day 3 and after day 3 there was no significant difference?

ACTUALLY...FROM THE 1ST DAY TO THE 5TH DAY, THE TREATMENT GROUP EXPERIENCED LESS DIARRHEA (p=0.013).

3) What do you think has a better effect ORS or a homeopathic drug (yet undefined, since it changed according to the prescriber)

YOU MEAN ORT...SOMETIMES, IT IS NOT EITHER/OR. IN THIS CASE, THE GROUP WHO GOT HOMEOPATHY AND ORT DID BETTER THAN THOSE WHO JUST GOT ORT.

SYL :)

[QUOTE=Mojo;2700512]
Here's the letter (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1240.html), dated 18th April 1849, from which that quotation was taken. Note the description of Gully's treatment: "the Water Cure".

DARWIN COULD NOT SEEM TO BE A SUPPORTER OF HOMEOPATHY IF HE WANTED ANY SUPPORT FROM ORTHODOX SCIENTISTS AT THAT TIME. AND YET, THE RESULTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. AFTER 12 YEARS OF VERY SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH HIS HEALTH AND AN INABILITY TO WORK ONE OUT OF THREE DAYS, HE EXPERIENCED REAL RELIEF FOR THE FIRST TIME. HMMMMM.

IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT NO ONE HERE HAS COME FORWARD TO DECLARE THAT HYDROTHERAPY IS AN IMPORTANT TREATMENT. COME ON NOW...EVERYONE INTO COLD WATER TREATMENT NOW!

IN THE MEANTIME, I WON'T DISCLOSE THE "HOMEOPATHIC STUDIES" THAT DARWIN CONDUCTED UNTIL MY FORTHCOMING BOOK IS PUBLISHED.

Note that in the letters above, Darwin refers to Gully's regime as "the Water Cure". Note that he describes Gully as acting as a "Hydropathist", who needed a second "doctor", one "Dr. Chapman", to provide homoeopathic treatment for his daughter. Note the description of Gully's regime in this letter (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1234.html), from which you quoted the last time you told your Darwin story: The homoeopathy seems to have been only a small component of these shenanigans.

YOU HAVE TO LOVE THE FACT THAT YOU CALL SOMETHING THAT PROVIDED IMPRESSIVE BENEFITS TO CHARLES DARWIN AS "THESE SHENANIGANS."

ONCE AGAIN, DARWIN COULD NOT ADMIT OPENLY THAT HE SOUGHT OUT HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT. COULD HE? LOOK AT WHAT YOUR REACTIONS HAVE BEEN.

Even Gully does not seem to have been entirely convinced about the merits of homoeopathy. From here (http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1234.html#mark-1234.f5): He "might be induced to try" homoeopathy to "subdue a passing but troublesome symptom"? Hardly a resounding endorsement of a "holistic" therapy.

BY THE WAY...I HAVE A COPY OF GULLY'S 1846 BOOK, AND THERE IS NO REFERENCE TO THAT STATEMENT ON PAGE 83...AND THE BOOK ENDS ON PAGE 405, SO ANOTHER PERSON'S STATEMENT ABOUT PAGE 500+ IS DUBIOUS TOO.

MEDICAL HISTORIANS CONFIRM THAT GULLY WAS A HOMEOPATHY AND A HYDROTHERAPIST...BUT HECK, PEOPLE HERE HAVE BLINDERS ON AND HAVE NO SENSE OF HISTORY.

[Chris Haynes]

An awful lot of shouting from someone who has yet to answer some simple questions, including mine.

I won't copy them all (again)... I'll just ask one simple one:

What is the success rate for syphilis with Hahnemann's homeopathic methods versus antibiotics? (knowing that one of the miasms that Hahnemann thought that existed was "syphilis").

[JamesGully]

Hey HC...
I apologize for the shouting. I haven't figured out how to do the quoting with a posting. I instead chose to differentiate my words from others by using capital letters.
Hahnemann was respected enough that he was voted as an honorary member of the NY medical society in 1832, though he was voted out in 1843 just one week after his death because the medical society said that homeopathy was too much of an ideological and "economic" threat.
Although many people who were uninformed about homeopathy make fun of Hahnemann's concept of miasms, this concept were some of the earliest sophisticated insights about genetic disease. Hahnemann determined that people with syphilis, gonorrhea, and TB didn't die immediately, but during their disease process they gave birth (or sperm), and this new human being's health was influenced by the diseases of the mother and father. Such child would not have syphilis, gonorrhea, or TB, but they would have specific symptoms that were associated with each of their "miasms."
As for other biographical info about the man, here's an excerpt from my forthcoming book:

In America’s capital city, Washington, DC, the only monument honoring a physician is one to the founder of homeopathic medicine, Samuel Hahnemann, MD (1755-1843). This monument was dedicated in 1900 by President William McKinley.
Although trained as a medical doctor, Hahnemann was a learned chemist and author of the leading German textbook for apothecaries (pharmacists) of the day. He was conversant in at least nine languages and even supported himself in his mid-20s teaching languages at the famed University of Leipic.
Learning these languages enabled him to become familiar with the latest developments in medicine and science throughout the western world. He further expanded his knowledge and his growing prestige by translating 22 major textbooks, primarily medical and chemistry textbooks (several of which were multi-volume works). Over a 29 year period, Hahnemann translated a total of 9,460 pages.
Prior to his discovery of homeopathy, Hahnemann’s respect as a physician brought German royalty to seek his medical care, and modern medical historians confirm that Hahnemann “showed sound balance and good judgment” in his advocacy of proper diet, fresh air, and exercise as a method of treatment. His promotion of hygienic measures during epidemics won him praise as a public health advocate, and his kind rather than cruel and harsh treatment of the insane granted him a place in the history of psychiatry (Rothstein, 1972, 152).
It is not surprising to know that Hahnemann was a Freemason, the esoteric fraternal organization and secret society of men who shared certain moral and metaphysical ideals.
Hahnemann stopped practicing conventional medicine of that day because he felt that he was doing more harm than good. Instead, he made a living for his family of 11 children as a translator. During the translation of a book by William Cullen, the leading physiologist of that time, Hahnemann noted that Cullen asserted that the reason that Peruvian bark was an effective drug for malaria was due to its bitter and astringent properties. Hahnemann thought this was a peculiar statement because he knew more bitter and astringent medicines, but they provided no benefit in the treatment of malaria. He then conducted an experiment upon himself where he took this herb twice a day until he developed symptoms of its toxicology, and here he discovered that it created a fever with chills as well as other symptoms that were similar to malaria. Hahnemann proposed that Peruvian bark (which contains quinine) may be effective for treating people with malaria because it has the capacity to cause similar symptoms.
Hahnemann ultimately conducted upon himself experiments with 90 other substances, and his colleagues and friends also engaged in these experiments. He had found a consistent pattern from these experiments, that is, he found that various substances in overdose create their own unique syndrome of symptoms and that whatever syndrome a substance causes in toxic dose, it can and will elicit a healing response when given in specially prepared small doses to people who have similar symptoms of pathology.
Hahnemann observed that sick people were hypersensitive to the medicine to which might cause similar symptoms as they were experiencing, and because of this, Hahnemann began using smaller and smaller doses. Being a chemist, he experimented with various ways to make these doses of medicines both safe and effective. At different times over the next 40 years, he diluted the medicines 1:10, 1:100, or 1:50,000, with vigorous shaking in-between each dilution, and he consistently found that exceedingly small doses of medicines had powerful therapeutic effects when prescribed according to his principle of similars.
Being the incredibly avid experimenter, Hahnemann did not come easily or quickly to his conclusions about the exceptionally small doses he and his colleagues found effective. In fact, he first wrote about homeopathy in 1796, and for the next 30 years (!) he primarily used doses that are today considered “low potencies.” Further, in 1829, a homeopathic physician wrote him about his successes in using potencies that were dilution 1:10 over 200 times, and Hahnemann expressed several skepticism for such actions until he himself found that these “higher potencies” were surprisingly effective Bradford, 1895, pp 455-6).
Although people who are unfamiliar with homeopathy have questioned the logic and the efficacy of the doses that homeopaths use, these people are inevitably inadequately informed of the history of development of homeopathy and are similarly ignorant of the body of scientific and empirical evidence of homeopathy’s successes.
Ultimately, Hahnemann authored three major books on homeopathy, including six editions of his seminal work on homeopathy, The Organon of the Healing Art, continually updating and refining this science and art.
Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, MD (1762-1836), Germany’s most well known and respected physician of his day, was as famous as Goethe and Schiller in the early 19th century. As the editor of the leading medical journal in Germany called Journal of Practical Medicine, Hufeland published some of Hahnemann’s writings, and he held an extremely high regard for him. “I have discovered in him an amplitude of knowledge, clearness of mind, and a spirit of tolerance, which last is the more worthy of notice in him.” Hahnemann is “one of our most distinguished, intelligent and original physicians” (Everest, 186).
Even though Robert Koch first discovered the cholera bacteria in 1883, as early as 1831 Hahnemann ascribed the cause of the cholera epidemics that raged during that time to a “an enormously increased brood of those excessively minute, invisible, living creatures so inimical to human life, of which the contagious matter of the cholera most probably consists” (Hahnemann, 1831).
Nicholas Von Hoffman, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote, “Samuel Hahnemann lived from 1755 to 1843 and, although this German physician never visited the U.S., for 70 years or more his ideas tore up and divided American medicine. No other single individual causes the settled and comfortable structures of this profession the trouble Hahnemann did, and even now many of the questions he raised have not been answered.”
Even many of homeopathy’s most severe critics have had kind words for Samuel Hahnemann. Morris Fishbein, the Executive Director of the American Medical Association, wrote that “the influence of Hahnemann was, on the whole certainly for the good. He emphasized the individualization of the patient in the handling of disease…and he demonstrated the value of testing the actual virtues of a drug by trial” (Fishbein, 1925, 37).
Despite Hahnemann’s significant contributions to medicine, pharmacy, chemistry, psychiatry, and public health, he remained a humble man. “I do not ask during my lifetime any recognition of the beneficent truth, which I, without any thought of myself, offer. What I have done, I did from higher motives for the world. Non inutilis vixi (I have not lived in vain).”
On the Hahnemann Monument in Washington, DC, are those Latin words. Indeed, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann did not live in vain.

[SYLVESTER1592]

Syl:
First of all it’s in Pediatr Infect Dis J. not PEDIATRICS
Pediatric Inf Dis J. : Impact factor 1.819
Pediatrics : Impact factor 2.710

BTW the article can be found here you might want to show it so we can all see what we are discussing.


But you are right, indeed most of the research in it is based on data from Nicaragua , from previously published data. It has been looked at quite extensively…

A report in May 1994 examined the homeopathic treatment of diarrhea in children who lived in Nicaragua [7]. On Day 3 of treatment the homeopathic group had one less unformed stool than the control group (3.1 Vs 2.1; p <.05). However, critics [8] pointed out that not only were the sickest children excluded, but there were no significant differences on Days 1, 2, 4, or 5. This suggests that the conclusion was not valid. Further, there was no assurance that the homeopathic remedy was not adulterated (contaminated). Finally, standard remedies which halt diarrhea were not used for comparison purposes.

And : The Nepal trial was not significant p=0.06 as you may have read in the paper you suggested

James:
WELL...LOOK AT THE ENTIRE SET OF STUDIES...OR DO YOU PREFER TO SQUINT YOUR EYES SO MUCH THAT YOU CANNOT SEE THEM?

Syl:
Just a few questions right of the bat…

1) Why do you think it is relevant or a good study?

James:
BECAUSE THE TREATMENT GROUP DID SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER THAN THE PLACEBO GROUP, VERIFYING THAT THE PLACEBO "EXPLANATION" TO HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT IS INADEQUATE.

Syl:
2) What conclusion would you attribute to the fact that on day 3 there were less then 2 unformed stools but on the days before day 3 and after day 3 there was no significant difference?

James:
ACTUALLY...FROM THE 1ST DAY TO THE 5TH DAY, THE TREATMENT GROUP EXPERIENCED LESS DIARRHEA (p=0.013).

Syl:
3) What do you think has a better effect ORS or a homeopathic drug (yet undefined, since it changed according to the prescriber)

James:
YOU MEAN ORT...SOMETIMES, IT IS NOT EITHER/OR. IN THIS CASE, THE GROUP WHO GOT HOMEOPATHY AND ORT DID BETTER THAN THOSE WHO JUST GOT ORT.

SYL :)
:) Indeed a screemer, but I'll take your word for it that you were trying to differentiate the text. There are other ways to do that then using CAPS lock. (CAPS lock is basically considered rude/ bad behaviour)


I suggest you play with the method of quoting, copying and pasting for a while. You just have to click the add quotation square before you reply. Then you move the /quote to the point you want to quote something. Move the start of the quotation to the start of the next part you want to quote.
If this sounds to complicated… Just select the add quotation square and edit out the parts you are not responding or which you want to skip for brevity. You can do this several times by copying and pasting the same original quote.

I have especially tried to be nice by asking the simple questions that would invite you into the discussion. There are a lot more general damning questions that can be asked about homeopathy…
So I propose you remain civil and try to look at them from an open point of view as we have.

----------------

Now for my questions… :D
Let me explain what is said here so you understand the criticism:

“A report in May 1994 examined the homeopathic treatment of diarrhea in children who lived in Nicaragua [7]. On Day 3 of treatment the homeopathic group had one less unformed stool than the control group (3.1 Vs 2.1; p <.05).”

I'll get back to this further down...

“ However, critics [8] pointed out that not only were the sickest children excluded, but there were no significant differences on Days 1, 2, 4, or 5.”

This points to something called selection bias. The significance of time is something I will get back to in a minute.

“ This suggests that the conclusion was not valid. Further, there was no assurance that the homeopathic remedy was not adulterated (contaminated).”

We don’t have a guarantee of what was actually given, so the actual effect and composition of the medication is at best dependent on hearsay. Remember that IR spectroscopy can identify crystals and salts, but needs preparation of the sample and the end result merely states that there was no difference between them, not what was in it.

“ Finally, standard remedies which halt diarrhea were not used for comparison purposes.”

So what was the benefit? If both ORT (=ORS in my part of the world) was given in together with homeopathic solutions, how do you know the effect was to be attributed to the homeopathic solution? How do you know it did better or worse than ORT?
The effects were compared in a meta-analysis of different population groups in different parts of the world with different causes of diarrhea, different water supply, general health etc…
They say they have no reason to think there was a difference between the groups, but show no data, furthermore cultural and socio-economic differences are to be expected between Nepal and Nicaragua. No data, just a statement without any foundation for it. Basically microbiological agents in different parts of the world are different with different virulence. No data again, not even a statement this time. Some of these are endemic, some are not, but I'll leave that out of this discussion. You have enough to worry about.

If we would compare the effect of homeopathic treatment here and in a third world country, I recon that in third world countries the effects might be better. At least they are getting clean water and enough attention… ;)

---------------------
In response to :” WELL...LOOK AT THE ENTIRE SET OF STUDIES...OR DO YOU PREFER TO SQUINT YOUR EYES SO MUCH THAT YOU CANNOT SEE THEM?”

I am looking at the total picture… and at the details of the study like anyone with a critical mind would do. Since the criticism above is on half of the data, this is relevant to address.

-----------------

In response to: “2) What conclusion would you attribute to the fact that on day 3 there were less then 2 unformed stools but on the days before day 3 and after day 3 there was no significant difference?

ACTUALLY...FROM THE 1ST DAY TO THE 5TH DAY, THE TREATMENT GROUP EXPERIENCED LESS DIARRHEA (p=0.013).”

The p=0.013 tells you there is a difference between the two curves, but it does not tell you the end-result. It merely tells you that the curves are significantly different. When you look at the curves, they diverge on day 3, but come together on day 4 at day 5 they are almost the same as on day 2. This is why many of the better Infectious Disease Jornals require that you also give the percentiles table, which shows you the survival distribution for the first, median and third quartile of the survival distribution.

Kaplan Meier curves are often used to evaluate survival, this has a purpose because you can tell at a certain point in time that more or less people have survived after treatment. In this case the divergence of the curve occurs in the middle of the disease process during treatment. The end result however, does not seem to be affected.

By placing the cut-off point the way the authors did, a significant difference in the curves resulted is a difference achieved on day 3.1 vs 3.8, but looking at the curves of patients with diarrhea, you see they converge after day 3. This is questionable. Furthermore the reporting was done by the parents. This is not a very reliable way of doing so, and by measuring the number of stools, not volume or diaper weight. Furthermore, daily visit concerning the health of the child may lead to observer bias by the parent. So double blind

110 controls x 51.4%= 57 diarrhea , 53 cured
120 cases x 38.1%= 46 diarrhea, 74 cured

If you want to get this exact table the probability of the getting this exact table is p=0.013, but the significance of the Chi Square value for the Odds ratio’s (which is is Pearson uncorrected if you want it to be significant is 4.22 with p=0.047 in SPSS) is questionably significant (Yates corrected Chi-Square= 3.693 with a p= 0.055 this is normally done when one of the cells reaches 10 and df =1 because Pearson uncorrected Chi-Square becomes too unreliable, not strictly necessary but reveals a more certain evaluation of significance) and resembles the major contribution to the meta-analysis, the Nepal trial. This last trial was not significant. These numbers tell you something about the differences between the groups ( not the chance of getting the exact distribution, which has little to do with the effect of a drug). If you think I'm wrong, let me know... :)

Basically there is no or a barely significant improvement on day 5 when you look at it objectively and their results all pivots on what you call diarrhea, who you exclude, when you exclude them, who does your evaluation and how they do it, not to mention dredging for statistically significant results at all cost.

Furthermore the repeated study by the same author (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17034278&dopt=Citation)( presented by fls in her post) corrects her statements and says there is no significant difference. That should tell you enough... :)
--------------------

In response to:
3) What do you think has a better effect ORS or a homeopathic drug (yet undefined, since it changed according to the prescriber)

YOU MEAN ORT...SOMETIMES, IT IS NOT EITHER/OR. IN THIS CASE, THE GROUP WHO GOT HOMEOPATHY AND ORT DID BETTER THAN THOSE WHO JUST GOT ORT.

Now they both got a drug ORT and were treated for parasites and bacteria and all other diseases, yet the difference that was seen was attributed to the homeopathic solution….

These other things could be called confounding factors and they disrupt the analysis of the effect of the homeopathic solution, which does not seem to be very strong in the first place.

It also raises the question, what differences in the cause of the diarrhea were observed. A general remark is made but the numbers are absent. The cause of the diarrhea and the type of diarrhea seem important in the design of the study… Don’t you agree?

---------------
Now you said something interesting while answering the question why you thought this study was relevant or a good study: "BECAUSE THE TREATMENT GROUP DID SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER THAN THE PLACEBO GROUP, VERIFYING THAT THE PLACEBO "EXPLANATION" TO HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT IS INADEQUATE."
You are saying that it is relevant or good merely because 1) homeopathy did better then the placebo 2)because the placebo explanation seemed inadequate.
This says nothing about the quality of the study or it's relevance to medical practice. It does however say something about the way you look at a study. The study was poorly designed, not well executed and poorly analyzed with the intent to show a significant result, overstating the significance and meaning of the results. Your answer to my question was not about the quality of the study or the relevance to medical practice or science as a whole, but about the importance of the study to the endorsement of homeopathy.
So let's not lecture about science, but rather try to contribute to it. We are all fallible, even scientists... :D

I don’t want to swamp you. So I’ll leave the other questions for the other members.

SYL :)

[Mojo]

YOU HAVE TO LOVE THE FACT THAT YOU CALL SOMETHING THAT PROVIDED IMPRESSIVE BENEFITS TO CHARLES DARWIN AS "THESE SHENANIGANS." All hail the post hoc fallacy.

[SYLVESTER1592]

BTW James

Many are aware of the medical history surrounding both conventional medicine and homeopathy. I don't think many of us would contradict that Hahnemann did some good in his time, when medicine was built on different foundations as modern medicine and used things such as blood letting and mercurochrome solutions. It is very well possible that his brand of medicine compared to the medical practice of his time was less bad for the patient and led to better results. Many things have changed, modern medicine has evolved using science to better itself. Homeopathy hasn't. There is the rub.

You might want to leave the past and look into the present and future...
It's more productive...

SYL :)

[Mojo]

DARWIN COULD NOT SEEM TO BE A SUPPORTER OF HOMEOPATHY IF HE WANTED ANY SUPPORT FROM ORTHODOX SCIENTISTS AT THAT TIME. you chose Darwin's letters as the text to consider, and claimed that they showed that he supported homoeopathy. Just read Darwin's letters to read about this story and learn something about his life... Can you produce any evidence that this is the case?

IN THE MEANTIME, I WON'T DISCLOSE THE "HOMEOPATHIC STUDIES" THAT DARWIN CONDUCTED UNTIL MY FORTHCOMING BOOK IS PUBLISHED. Drosera?

[Mojo]

DARWIN COULD NOT SEEM TO BE A SUPPORTER OF HOMEOPATHY IF HE WANTED ANY SUPPORT FROM ORTHODOX SCIENTISTS AT THAT TIME.


Of course, Darwin is famous for never publishing anything that he feared might upset prevailing viewpoints (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Species). ;)

On the origin of Species... also shows us Darwin's approach to ideas he thought plausible but feared might be controversial: while reluctant to publish, he discussed the idea of evolution by natural selection in his private correspondence. If, as you claim, he supported homoeopathy but was reluctant to do so publicly, his letters would be the very place we would expect to see statements of his views on the matter.

What we actually find there is:You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything—

If he wished not to be seen as a supporter of homoeopathy, all he had to do was not support it. However, what we find is a clear opposing statement.

[Capsid]

IN THE MEANTIME, I WON'T DISCLOSE THE "HOMEOPATHIC STUDIES" THAT DARWIN CONDUCTED UNTIL MY FORTHCOMING BOOK IS PUBLISHED.
Not a publication in Nature then?

[Michael C]

DARWIN COULD NOT SEEM TO BE A SUPPORTER OF HOMEOPATHY IF HE WANTED ANY SUPPORT FROM ORTHODOX SCIENTISTS AT THAT TIME. [...] ONCE AGAIN, DARWIN COULD NOT ADMIT OPENLY THAT HE SOUGHT OUT HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT. COULD HE? LOOK AT WHAT YOUR REACTIONS HAVE BEEN.

So Charles Darwin, who was not afraid to shock the world by asserting that humans and apes descended from a common ancestor, would have been afraid to admit that he did something as daring as using a homeopathic treatment?

[Professor Yaffle]

IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT NO ONE HERE HAS COME FORWARD TO DECLARE THAT HYDROTHERAPY IS AN IMPORTANT TREATMENT. COME ON NOW...EVERYONE INTO COLD WATER TREATMENT NOW!

Well after reading his "hydropathical diary", I find that part of the hydrotherapy treatment included an increase in exercise and an improved diet. Both (now) well known to be helpful in the promotion of good health...

[MRC_Hans]

It is not rigmarole - it is consultation leading to an individualized remedy or series of remedies to be decided as the case progresses that we are talking here - and the series would nearly always be different for each person.

Well, yes. Homeopathic procedure.


So we are not testing a remedy - we are rather testing homeopathy against placebo( and I have noted that some here call the remedy placebo!).

Yes, we are testing the remedy, because the only difference between the placebo group and the verum group is that the latter receives remedies.

Both groups are subjected to the "homeopathic procedure". So, if there is a difference, it must be due to a property of the remedies. If there is no difference, the conclusion is that the remedies have no properties different from placebo.

And yes, one of the claims of the skeptics is that homeopathic remedies equal placebo.


Such are the difficulties in deciding "proper testing conditions "


I still fail to see the difficulties. Admitted, a properly conducted trial, with individualized treatment, will be fairly complex. More complex than a single drug trial, but there are certainly no insurmountable problems.

If there is consensus that randomly allotting patients to receive placebo and homeopathy (series of remedies as required) (placebo?) is acceptable proof - then if there is any significant difference (favourable to the latter) - would it be acceptable proof that homeopathy is not placebo?

A properly designed and executed double blinded, randomized, placebo controlled trial of homeopathy with a positive result would be considered important evidence that there is reason for further research.

The reason for this rather reserved position is that IF homeopathy works, a considerable part of present science will have to be revised, thus overthrowing the very solid body of evidence that exist for it. Therefore, such a revision will require extremely strong evidence (remember, even a statistical 99% confidence still leaves a 1% possibility of a spurious result)

Therefore, I don't think a single trial result, even if well conducted, will immidiately convert the scientific world in favor of homeopathy. It will, however, no doubt motivate further serious research. And it will certainly open the door to widespread publication.

Hans

[manioberoi]

On the discussion regarding India and its homeopathic goodness:

India is the scam artist's dream land. Every sort of quackery imaginable is practiced there. It is a land of incredible superstitions and mass quantities of poor, uneducated people. Given the incredible corruption of the wonderful socialist government of India, competent medical care is available only for the select few. Often times, whether a person will receive good medical care depends upon his caste; low caste people lose. In fact, those Indians who can afford the expense will travel to Europe or (their favorite place to go) the U.S. for serious problems. Furthermore, aspiring Indian medical students do all they can to get out of India and study abroad. Why is this? Visit India sometime and it will become apparent to.

It is no wonder that in a land where superstition rules the mind and credible medical care is unavailable to the plebs sordida that homeopathy and faith healing should flourish. After all, there are no alternatives. Of course, this sort of stupidity is reinforced by the likes of Deepak Chopra; a man who has one set of spiritual and scientific convictions for those in his homeland but an alternative set for his Western prey.

Beware Indian made homeopathic remedies as they may kill you. Indian water represents some of the most polluted water in the world.

Of course, let us not forget that the famed homeopathic Greek quack "professor" George Vithoulkas was trained in homeopathy in India. Vithoulkas' writings are nearly incomprehensible, always bitter, and reflect a confused, afflicted mind. Search youtube for some of his "teaching" clips and be astounded at how little sense it all makes. Vithoulkas is exactly the type of quality loon that one would expect from an Indian university of quackery.
Unfortunately we all have our scam artists, whether it is the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, India, China etc but there is a legal system which does catch and at times punish such scamsters. The enforcement standards vary and we in India are gradually improving the standards of enforcement - aka India is the only country where PepsiCo is being compelled to put a seal of quality assurance "One Quality Worldwide" across all its product labels.

Good Manufacturing Practices have been legislated in India for manufacturing Homeopathic drugs. Homeopathic education is standardised under the relevant legislation. Homeopathic clinical field units and research centres have been set up across the country.

India takes quality in health very seriously - the Courts have stepped in very often on complaints of the public about poor standards in government health facilities - they are being upgraded and improved - re-usable needles are banned/ phased out.

As for the private sector this article from Canada is quite revealing about the high standards achieved in India:

"Medical tourism: Need surgery, will travel
CBC News Online | June 18, 2004
India

India is considered the leading country promoting medical tourism-and now it is moving into a new area of "medical outsourcing," where subcontractors provide services to the overburdened medical care systems in western countries.

India's National Health Policy declares that treatment of foreign patients is legally an "export" and deemed "eligible for all fiscal incentives extended to export earnings." Government and private sector studies in India estimate that medical tourism could bring between $1 billion and $2 billion US into the country by 2012. The reports estimate that medical tourism to India is growing by 30 per cent a year.

India's top-rated education system is not only churning out computer programmers and engineers, but an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 doctors and nurses each year.

The largest of the estimated half-dozen medical corporations in India serving medical tourists is Apollo Hospital Enterprises, which treated an estimated 60,000 patients between 2001 and spring 2004. It is Apollo that is aggressively moving into medical outsourcing. Apollo already provides overnight computer services for U.S. insurance companies and hospitals as well as working with big pharmaceutical corporations with drug trials. Dr. Prathap C. Reddy, the chairman of the company, began negotiations in the spring of 2004 with Britain's National Health Service to work as a subcontractor, to do operations and medical tests for patients at a fraction of the cost in Britain for either government or private care.

Apollo's business began to grow in the 1990s, with the deregulation of the Indian economy, which drastically cut the bureaucratic barriers to expansion and made it easier to import the most modern medical equipment. The first patients were Indian expatriates who returned home for treatment; major investment houses followed with money and then patients from Europe, the Middle East and Canada began to arrive. Apollo now has 37 hospitals, with about 7,000 beds. The company is in partnership in hospitals in Kuwait, Sri Lanka and Nigeria.

Western patients usually get a package deal that includes flights, transfers, hotels, treatment and often a post-operative vacation.

Apollo has also reacted to criticism by Indian politicians by expanding its services to India's millions of poor. It has set aside free beds for those who can't afford care, has set up a trust fund and is pioneering remote, satellite-linked telemedicine across India."

[manioberoi]

Well, yes. Homeopathic procedure.



Yes, we are testing the remedy, because the only difference between the placebo group and the verum group is that the latter receives remedies.

Both groups are subjected to the "homeopathic procedure". So, if there is a difference, it must be due to a property of the remedies. If there is no difference, the conclusion is that the remedies have no properties different from placebo.

And yes, one of the claims of the skeptics is that homeopathic remedies equal placebo.



I still fail to see the difficulties. Admitted, a properly conducted trial, with individualized treatment, will be fairly complex. More complex than a single drug trial, but there are certainly no insurmountable problems.



A properly designed and executed double blinded, randomized, placebo controlled trial of homeopathy with a positive result would be considered important evidence that there is reason for further research.

The reason for this rather reserved position is that IF homeopathy works, a considerable part of present science will have to be revised, thus overthrowing the very solid body of evidence that exist for it. Therefore, such a revision will require extremely strong evidence (remember, even a statistical 99% confidence still leaves a 1% possibility of a spurious result)

Therefore, I don't think a single trial result, even if well conducted, will immidiately convert the scientific world in favor of homeopathy. It will, however, no doubt motivate further serious research. And it will certainly open the door to widespread publication.

Hans
Valid point.

[manioberoi]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Citation&list_uids=16376071

Linda
You can't write off an entire area of medicine on the basis of just 6 studies by a few authors especially when leading homeopathic bodies have published public refutations about this collated study.

[manioberoi]

Yes. And that is one of the main criticisms of homeopathy - that rather than measuring true cures, they measure "cure" only by symptom suppression.



We have made no requirements for the material presence of the drug. And both individualized and single treatments are amenable to the kind of study that allows us to remove the effects of chance and wishful thinking.



Yes. These are exactly the kinds of results one would expect if homeopathic treatments have no real effect.

Linda
Symptom suppression!!! Apparently you have no knowledge of homeopathy.

Homeopathy individualizes treatment based not only on symptoms - in addition to symptoms a homeopath needs to consider mentals, generals, pathology and sometimes genus epidemicus.

[Mojo]

Some of you even went off the deep-end by saying that the 13 papers that Dr. Roy got published in NATURE are meaningless.


Unless they have some bearing on whether homoeopath works, they are meaningless in the context of this thread.

Here are all 15 of "the 13 papers that Dr. Roy got published in NATURE", plus a letter for good measure:


R. Roy, D. Agrawal, J. Cheng, and S. Gedevanishvili, “Unexpected sintering of powdered metals parts in microwaves”, Nature, 399, 664 (June 17, 1999)
R. Roy, D. Agrawal, J. Cheng, and S. Gedevanishvili, “Full sintering of powder-metal bodies in a microwave field,” Nature, 399, 668 (1999).
Roy, R. and D. Agrawal, "Thermal-Expansion Materials Not So New," Nature 388:433 (July 31, 1997).
Zhao,X-Zhong, R. Roy, K. A. Cherian, and A. Badzian, "Hydrothrmal Growth of Diamond in Metal-C-H2O Systems," Nature 385(6): 513-515 (1997).
Paulus, William J., S. Komarneni and R. Roy, "Bulk Synthesis and Selective Exchange of Strontium Ions in Na4Mg6Al4Si4O20F4 Mica," Nature 357:571-573 (June 18, 1992).
Malla, P.B., P. Ravindranathan, S. Komarneni and R. Roy, "Intercalation of Copper Metal Clusters in Montmorillonite," Letters to Nature 351:555-557 (June 13, 1991).
Roy, R., "Diamonds at Low Pressure," Nature 325:17-18 (Jan. 1, 1987).
Yarbrough, W.A. and R. Roy, "Extraordinary Effects of Mortar-and-Pestle Grinding on Microstructure of Sintered Alumina Gel," Nature 322(6077):347-349 (24 July 1986).
Komarneni, S. and R. Roy, "Use of g-Zirconium Phosphate for Cs Removal from Radioactive Waste," Nature 299:707-708 (1982).
McCarthy, G. J., W. B. White, R. Roy, B. E. Scheetz, S. Komarneni, D. K. Smith and D. M. Roy, "Interactions Between Nuclear Waste and Surrounding Rock," Nature 273:216-217 (1978).
Katz, G., A. W. Nicol and R. Roy, "New Topotaxy in Precipitation from Spinel," Nature 223:609-610 (1969).
Datta, R. K. and R. Roy, "Dependence on Temperature of the Distribution of Cations in Oxide Spinels," Nature 191:169-170 (1961).
Roy, R. and H. M. Cohen, "Effects of High Pressure on Glass: A Possible Piezometer for the 100-Kilobar Region," Nature 190:798-799 (1961).
Dachille, F. and R. Roy, "High Pressure Phase Transformations in Laboratory Mechanical Mixers and Mortars," Nature 186:34 (1960).
Aramaki, S. and R. Roy, "Revised Equilibrium Diagram for the System Al2O3-SiO2," Nature 184:631-632 (1959).
Dachille, F. and R. Roy "The Spinel-Olivine Inversion in Mg2GeO4," Nature 183:1257 (1959).


If you think any of these is relevant to homoeopathy, please say which, and what it says that supports homoeopathy.

[MRC_Hans]

Dear JamesGully:

I noted with pleasure that you complimented me for being a "gentleman" (I here take the liberty to assume that you were referring to my conduct, not my gender). I very much try to conduct my part of debates in a gentlemanly manner, however, such conduct is greatly expedited if the opposition does the same. So, could you perhaps try to give me anopportunity ot terutn the compliment, sometime soon?

I know that you are very well versed in internet debates, so you cannot be unaware that writing whole sentences in capitals is considered shouting, and is certainly incompatible with gentlemanly conduct.

[quote=SYLVESTER1592;2696452]
DARWIN COULD NOT SEEM TO BE A SUPPORTER OF HOMEOPATHY IF HE WANTED ANY SUPPORT FROM ORTHODOX SCIENTISTS AT THAT TIME. AND YET,

This does not make sense. At the time in question, homeopathy was not particularly controversial. It was new, and under debate, but it had certainly not been thoroughly ridiculed as I admit it has now. Finally, Charles Darwins track record is not exacly one of avoiding controversy.


THE RESULTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. AFTER 12 YEARS OF VERY SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH HIS HEALTH AND AN INABILITY TO WORK ONE OUT OF THREE DAYS, HE EXPERIENCED REAL RELIEF FOR THE FIRST TIME. HMMMMM.

IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT NO ONE HERE HAS COME FORWARD TO DECLARE THAT HYDROTHERAPY IS AN IMPORTANT TREATMENT. COME ON NOW...EVERYONE INTO COLD WATER TREATMENT NOW!


It is obvious from the quited sources that the therapy he received was quite complex, at least consisting of homeopathy, hydrotherapy, diet, and exercise, maybe more. For one who keeps requesting intellectual honesty from others, it is very inappropriate to insist on arbitrarily attributing Darwin's recovery to a specific part of this regimen.

IN THE MEANTIME, I WON'T DISCLOSE THE "HOMEOPATHIC STUDIES" THAT DARWIN CONDUCTED UNTIL MY FORTHCOMING BOOK IS PUBLISHED.

That is your privilege, but then I suggest you refrain from referring to them. Not to mention shouting about them.

YOU HAVE TO LOVE THE FACT THAT YOU CALL SOMETHING THAT PROVIDED IMPRESSIVE BENEFITS TO CHARLES DARWIN AS "THESE SHENANIGANS."

Again, you cannot make any conclusions about which part of the extensive regimen caused the improvement of Darwin's condition. In fact, you cannot even conclude that any part of it was the cause. We don't know what Darwin's ailment was, so we don't know the probabilities of a spontaneous remission. The anecdote is interesting, but remains an anecdote.


ONCE AGAIN, DARWIN COULD NOT ADMIT OPENLY THAT HE SOUGHT OUT HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT. COULD HE? LOOK AT WHAT YOUR REACTIONS HAVE BEEN.


Allow me to remind you that this happened over a century before any of us was born, so I assume we would not have commented much. As for Darwin's contemporaries, they would have considered it at worst controversial, but certainly not a base for ridicule.


BY THE WAY...I HAVE A COPY OF GULLY'S 1846 BOOK, AND THERE IS NO REFERENCE TO THAT STATEMENT ON PAGE 83...AND THE BOOK ENDS ON PAGE 405, SO ANOTHER PERSON'S STATEMENT ABOUT PAGE 500+ IS DUBIOUS TOO.


Perhaps different reprints have differet pagination, but i don't think the referens was totha book.

MEDICAL HISTORIANS CONFIRM THAT GULLY WAS A HOMEOPATHY AND A HYDROTHERAPIST...BUT HECK, PEOPLE HERE HAVE BLINDERS ON AND HAVE NO SENSE OF HISTORY.

This is a good opportunity to clear up some therminology; in your opinoin, what exactly defines a "homeopath"?

Hans

[Mojo]

Perhaps different reprints have differet pagination, but i don't think the referens was totha book.


According to the bibliography on the Darwin Correspondence Project website, the reference is to:

Gully, James Manby. 1846. The water cure in chronic disease: an exposition of the causes, progress, & terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs, & skin; and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means. London.

It is possible that JamesGully has the 1846 edition published in New York by Wiley & Putnam.

[kieran]

It is not rigmarole - it is consultation leading to an individualized remedy or series of remedies to be decided as the case progresses that we are talking here - and the series would nearly always be different for each person.

So we are not testing a remedy - we are rather testing homeopathy against placebo( and I have noted that some here call the remedy placebo!).

Such are the difficulties in deciding "proper testing conditions "

If there is consensus that randomly allotting patients to receive placebo and homeopathy (series of remedies as required) (placebo?) is acceptable proof - then if there is any significant difference (favourable to the latter) - would it be acceptable proof that homeopathy is not placebo?

No-one seems to have addressed this one directly so I'll have a go ... I think that manioberoi was proposing a tweak to the proposed conceptual test protocols.

Manioberoi seems reluctant to buy into the protocols proposed so far because there is some kind of sequence of steps that homoeopathic practioners go through with the patients wherein they use a sequence of "medicines" and modify the next "prescription" based on the outcome of the previous administration.
The test protocols proposed so far randomly (and blindly) substitute each prescription with a placebo. This will make the analysis of the results hard to interpret (unless we are only interested in the final administration of the sequence).
To keep with manioberoi's description of homoeopathic practices, the randomization should be applied to a particular homoeopath-patient link instead ... so that all remedies provided to a particular (randomly and blindly chosen) patient are substituted. I think that this is what manioberoi is proposing above - I'll leave it to him to correct me if I have misinterpreted his meaning.

The direct answer to his follow up question is YES!!! (Sorry for shouting.) If such a simple test was conducted properly (large enough sample, proper blinding, no data mining, no meta-analysis with less well conducted studies, etc) then it would be the start of a beautiful relationship between homoeopathy and the real world.

If there is a significant difference between homoeopathy and placebo, and this can be consistently reproduced, then we have something very, very interesting to consider.

What is there to be afraid of in seeing the results of such simple studies? Why come up with blocking tactics and resort to obscure and poorly conducted work? I think I know why there is not a mountain of good evidence (note - not hear-say) for homoeopathic effectiveness in respected peer-reviewed literature ... do you have any ideas that do not involve a persecution complex???

[MRC_Hans]

No-one seems to have addressed this one directly so I'll have a go ... I think that manioberoi was proposing a tweak to the proposed conceptual test protocols.

Manioberoi seems reluctant to buy into the protocols proposed so far because there is some kind of sequence of steps that homoeopathic practioners go through with the patients wherein they use a sequence of "medicines" and modify the next "prescription" based on the outcome of the previous administration.
The test protocols proposed so far randomly (and blindly) substitute each prescription with a placebo. This will make the analysis of the results hard to interpret (unless we are only interested in the final administration of the sequence).
To keep with manioberoi's description of homoeopathic practices, the randomization should be applied to a particular homoeopath-patient link instead ... so that all remedies provided to a particular (randomly and blindly chosen) patient are substituted. I think that this is what manioberoi is proposing above - I'll leave it to him to correct me if I have misinterpreted his meaning.

Yes, the protocol I envisage follow the third description. Thus, every prescription the practitioner makes will go through an independent distributor, from where either remedy or placebo is dispensed, according to which group the patient in question is in.

The only reasonable reservation I have yet met to this protocol is that some practitioners like to dispense remedies directly to the patient, having the patient take the remedy in the practitioner's presense.

This would require a complete set of randomized remedies, placebo, but since such a practice must already be limited to what inventory the practitioner can have in his practice, that should not be an insurmountable problem, either. What would be needed is that if the practitioner stores, say, 30 different remedies, a set of randomly numbered containers with these remedies must be fabricated. An equivalent set of randomly numbered containers with placebo should be added to the inventory. A computer program has the key to the patients, remedies and placebo. Thus, if the practitioner wants to prescribe Arnica 30C, he enters that into the computer program, and the program returns a number. The practitioner then finds that bottle and issues the medicine to the patient.
Of course the computer records the issuance.

In this way, neither the patient nor the practitioner will ever know if the remedy is real remedy or placebo.

Complicated, but not really difficult.

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

You can't write off an entire area of medicine on the basis of just 6 studies by a few authors especially when leading homeopathic bodies have published public refutations about this collated study.We don't. We write off, or at least dismiss, homeopathy on the following grounds:

1) It is an archaic theory, founded in a time when the knowledge of pathology, disease agents, pharmacology, and physics was very limited. Just imagine if somebody from the 19th century tried to tell modern engineers how to design an airplane.

2) None of the principles in homeopathy, like cures like, miasms, vital force, uldtradilution, have any support in our current knowledge about how the universe functions.

3) No sound research has been able to consistently show positive results for any part of homeoapthy.

4) There exist alternative explanations for the observed practical results of homepathic treatment (natural recovery, placebo, observer bias, reporting bias, concurrent treatment, delusion, direct fabrication, etc).

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

*snip*
Here are all 15 of "the 13 papers that Dr. Roy got published in NATURE", plus a letter for good measure:
*snip*:D

I cant help wondering if our good friend has trouble with research, or simply with counting.

... Or if he is just insincere.

Hans

[Mojo]

Manioberoi seems reluctant to buy into the protocols proposed so far because there is some kind of sequence of steps that homoeopathic practioners go through with the patients wherein they use a sequence of "medicines" and modify the next "prescription" based on the outcome of the previous administration.


I seem to remember this forming the basis of one of bwv11's objections to double-blind trials of individualised homoeopathy: that the blinding would inevitably break down because the homoeopath would be able to see the results of the previously administered remedies. :D

[MRC_Hans]

Infortunately we all have our scam artists, whether it is the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, India, China etc but there is a legal system which does catch and at times punish such scamsters. The enforcement standards vary and we in India are gradually improving the standards of enforcement - aka India is the only country where PepsiCo is being compelled to put a seal of quality assurance "One Quality Worldwide" across all its product labels.

Ehr, and you believe THAT? Then I can inform you that, for instance in China, PepsiCo is still using old-fashioned soda cans with the opener ring that comes off, which is dangerous, but cheaper. "One Quality Worldwide", my foot.

Good Manufacturing Practices have been legislated in India for manufacturing Homeopathic drugs.

GMP does not ensure efficacy.

Homeopathic education is standardised under the relevant legislation. Homeopathic clinical field units and research centres have been set up across the country.

Yeah, nice effort. Which requirements does the Indian government impose on homeopathy for documenting efficacy, and where is it published?


India takes quality in health very seriously - the Courts have stepped in very often on complaints of the public about poor standards in government health facilities - they are being upgraded and improved - re-usable needles are banned/ phased out.


I'm sure they are making a honest effort, but as this is common knowledge, I don't suppose I insult you too much by pointing out that the initial platform for healthcare in India has enourmous room for improvement. So much that useless, but also harmless medicines (like we claim homeopathic remedies are) will be an improvment in many areas.

... Just like Hahnemann's practices were in the early 19th century in Europe where part of mainstream medicine actually made more harm than good.

*Yada, yada*....

Apollo has also reacted to criticism by Indian politicians by expanding its services to India's millions of poor. It has set aside free beds for those who can't afford care, has set up a trust fund and is pioneering remote, satellite-linked telemedicine across India."

Which part of Apollo's services are homeopathic? We all know that for those who can pay, India can offer excellent conventional medical treatment.

Hans

[Michael C]

A while ago I asked a precise question, but didn't get a reply. Please, could Mr. Ullman/Gully (or anybody else who deems that they are qualified to answer), give me a precise reply:

A test using homeopathic proving:

- A homeopath chooses three homeopathic remedies that will produce different, easily-distinguishable symptoms. We'll call them substance A, B and C.

- A reputed homeopathic laboratory produces samples of the three remedies, plus a placebo sample.

- The homeopath is given a sample, and his task is to ascertain if the sample is substance A, B, C or a placebo. He may choose provers whom he already knows (himself included), so he should have a clear idea of how they react to the three different substances.

- How many provers would the homeopath need in order to find the answer?

[MRC_Hans]

I seem to remember this forming the basis of one of bwv11's objections to double-blind trials of individualised homoeopathy: that the blinding would inevitably break down because the homoeopath would be able to see the results of the previously administered remedies. :DWell, that was not exactly his objection (if I understood correctly the many words that Neil (aka bwv11) love to veil his replies in.

His objection is that the practitoner needs to observe an correlate the reaction of the patient to the remedy, and how can he do that if he doesn't know the remedy.

My reply to that was that the practitioner is to act as if all patients get verum, and the proof will be in the results.

Perhaps, as we have already attracted an unprecedented TWO perfectly literate homeopaths, we should wish for even more and hope that Neil (who is also quite literate) would collect enough courage to present his wiews here himself.

I don't post at Hpathy anymore (Neil knows why), but perhaps somebody else, or one of the homeopaths who are undoubtedly lurking here, could give him a hint?

Hans

[fls]

You can't write off an entire area of medicine on the basis of just 6 studies by a few authors especially when leading homeopathic bodies have published public refutations about this collated study.

I don't write off an entire area on the basis of these six studies. The possibility that homeopathic remedies have any effect is excluded by everything we currently know about physiology and pharmacology and claims of cure that don't hold up under properly controlled conditions, are what drive me to write off an entire area.

Linda

[fls]

Symptom suppression!!! Apparently you have no knowledge of homeopathy.

Homeopathy individualizes treatment based not only on symptoms - in addition to symptoms a homeopath needs to consider mentals, generals, pathology and sometimes genus epidemicus.

I wasn't speaking of the information you use to choose treatments, but rather how you decide whether a treatment worked.

Linda

[Mojo]

Well, that was not exactly his objection (if I understood correctly the many words that Neil (aka bwv11) love to veil his replies in.Ah. My recollection was a little off - I couldn't find the page where he said that.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Hey HC...
I apologize for the shouting. I haven't figured out how to do the quoting with a posting. I instead chose to differentiate my words from others by using capital letters.
Hahnemann was respected enough that he was voted as an honorary member of the NY medical society in 1832,...pointless historical digression...

So, one minute we have you accusing others of "intellectual dishonesty" then you manage to find time to take this fascinating but irrelevant historical tour.

Whereas, you have not found time to discuss Elia's papers having been so insistent that we take them seriously. I have taken them seriously and have paid good money to obtain a copy of the first of them. I have then asked a couple of specific questions to open the discussion of the content and one to allow you to demonstrate that you have indeed read the whole paper and have a copy to hand.

You have answered none.

Perhaps you need a reminder;

A. What bearing do you think it has on the issue of homeopathy?

B. What is your opinion of the statistical methods used?

C. What is the penultimate word on page 823?

You should be careful, in future, whom you accuse of intellectual dishonesty.

While I am on the subject of reminding the debts you owe, here are two of those other questions that you steadfastly refuse to answer;

I return to your clinical evidence base;

4. Can you tell us whether either of these machines works?

http://www.bio-resonance.com/elybra.htm

http://www.remedydevices.com/voice.htm

Bear in mind that the users of these machines rely on exactly the same anecdotal experience and fallacious post hoc reasoning that every other homeopath does. Are the homeopaths who use these machines right or wrong in thinking they work?

It's a very simple question and capable of a single-word answer.

9. I set a p-value for significance of 0.05 and run 100 trials. In no trial is the test substance distinguishable from the control. How many trials can I expect to show an apparent "effect" from my test substance?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

:) Now for my questions… :D
Let me explain what is said here so you understand the criticism:

“A report in May 1994 examined the homeopathic treatment of diarrhea in children who lived in Nicaragua [7]. On Day 3 of treatment the homeopathic group had one less unformed stool than the control group (3.1 Vs 2.1; p <.05).”

I'll get back to this further down...

“ However, critics [8] pointed out that not only were the sickest children excluded, but there were no significant differences on Days 1, 2, 4, or 5.”

This points to something called selection bias. etc. etc.

Now, on the subject of intellectual honesty, in the light of Sylvester's careful explanations will JamesGully cease to refer to these studies in support of his pet therapy? Or, will we see the usual stubborn refusal to listen to reason? (I'm not taking bets on this).

[MRC_Hans]

Symptom suppression!!! Apparently you have no knowledge of homeopathy.

Homeopathy individualizes treatment based not only on symptoms - in addition to symptoms a homeopath needs to consider mentals, generals, pathology and sometimes genus epidemicus.Nevertheless, homeopathy deals with no manifestations of disease, except symptoms. It also deals exclisively with the symptomatic expression of remedies.

So, while I understand that homeopaths don't regard it as symptom suppression, but as "True Cure [tm]", for an outsider, I'm afraid there is no discernible difference. To see homeopathy as anything but pitting symptoms against symptoms, you need to believe in its efficacy. Which most of us don't.

Hans

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Nevertheless, homeopathy deals with no manifestations of disease, except symptoms. It also deals exclisively with the symptomatic expression of remedies.

So, while I understand that homeopaths don't regard it as symptom suppression, but as "True Cure [tm]", for an outsider, I'm afraid there is no discernible difference. To see homeopathy as anything but pitting symptoms against symptoms, you need to believe in its efficacy. Which most of us don't.

Hans


Or to put it another way, manioberoi, this is another of those things that homeopaths baldly assert as true but without being able to corroborate. I'm afraid simply insisting that what you say is true but being unable to produce conclusive evidence or argument is not going to convince anyone here.

If I just insisted that you believe I had fairies at the bottom of my garden I hope you would ask me for some evidence.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

As a side-point, someone also needs to point out that some of us have read a lot of homeopathic case reports and the one thing they singularly fail to show is anything like a consistent pattern of curing patients. We see an awful lot of treating patients and unwrapping the layers of "dis-ease" and re-repertorising to match new remedies to the current symptom picture, but precious little that one might call a cure except when the condition was inevitably self-limiting.

I think the idea that there are all these "cured" patients going around is one of those big rhetorical lies about homeopathy that is tackled too weakly.

[MRC_Hans]

Hey HC...
I apologize for the shouting. I haven't figured out how to do the quoting with a posting. I instead chose to differentiate my words from others by using capital letters.

Mmmokay. I notice others have explained the quoting feature, so enough about that.

Hahnemann was respected enough that he was voted as an honorary member of the NY medical society in 1832,

If so then it is frankly rather disingenious of you to assert that Charles Darwin did not dare to support homeopathy openly in the same years. Do try to make your story straight.


though he was voted out in 1843 just one week after his death because the medical society said that homeopathy was too much of an ideological and "economic" threat.


Source?


Although many people who were uninformed about homeopathy make fun of Hahnemann's concept of miasms, this concept were some of the earliest sophisticated insights about genetic disease. Hahnemann determined that people with syphilis, gonorrhea, and TB didn't die immediately, but during their disease process they gave birth (or sperm), and this new human being's health was influenced by the diseases of the mother and father. Such child would not have syphilis, gonorrhea, or TB, but they would have specific symptoms that were associated with each of their "miasms."


Excuse me, but this is nonsense. The diseases you mention are infectuous diseases, and have nothing whatsoever to do with genetic diseases. Do you really not know about these things?

and modern medical historians confirm that Hahnemann “showed sound balance and good judgment” in his advocacy of proper diet, fresh air, and exercise as a method of treatment. His promotion of hygienic measures during epidemics won him praise as a public health advocate, and his kind rather than cruel and harsh treatment of the insane granted him a place in the history of psychiatry (Rothstein, 1972, 152).

And, have you realized that herein probably lies the explanation to his successes in treating epidemics?

Hahnemann noted that Cullen asserted that the reason that Peruvian bark was an effective drug for malaria was due to its bitter and astringent properties. Hahnemann thought this was a peculiar statement because he knew more bitter and astringent medicines, but they provided no benefit in the treatment of malaria. He then conducted an experiment upon himself where he took this herb twice a day until he developed symptoms of its toxicology, and here he discovered that it created a fever with chills as well as other symptoms that were similar to malaria. Hahnemann proposed that Peruvian bark (which contains quinine) may be effective for treating people with malaria because it has the capacity to cause similar symptoms.

If you are to write about this, and claim intellectual honesty, you must also explain how the symptoms Hahnemann experienced are not charanterisic for Cinnhoa bark at all. In fact his observation is one of the riddles in the history of homeopathy, because the feever and chills he experienced cannot be repeated by others. In fact, later historians have suggested that he either was allergic to to some substance in the bark, or he simply happend to have a flu.

Also, do write that we now know that the active substance, chinine, ceartainly does not produce malaria-like symptoms when given to healthy subjects.

In other words, if you consider writing about the history of Hahnemann and homeopathy, you owe it to your readers to explain how Hahnemann's initial "discovery" of homeopathy was in fact based on a mistake ;).

Hahnemann ultimately conducted upon himself experiments with 90 other substances, and his colleagues and friends also engaged in these experiments. He had found a consistent pattern from these experiments, that is, he found that various substances in overdose create their own unique syndrome of symptoms and that whatever syndrome a substance causes in toxic dose, it can and will elicit a healing response when given in specially prepared small doses to people who have similar symptoms of pathology.

No, that was not what Hahnemann discovered. He discovered, what is already known, that various substances provoke a toxic reaction, which has a repeatable pattern. That it can cure diseases with a similar pattern is, however, Hahnemann's theory. One for which there remains, after 200 years, no conclusive evidence.

*snip*
Despite Hahnemann’s significant contributions to medicine, pharmacy, chemistry, psychiatry, and public health, he remained a humble man. “I do not ask during my lifetime any recognition of the beneficent truth, which I, without any thought of myself, offer. What I have done, I did from higher motives for the world. Non inutilis vixi (I have not lived in vain).”
On the Hahnemann Monument in Washington, DC, are those Latin words. Indeed, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann did not live in vain.

Or, he was perhaps a bit hypocritical. If you read his basic work, the Organon of Medicine, it is far from humble. Indeed about half of the text is devoted to telling the reader how great he, Hahemann, is, and how stupid his detractors are.

But enough of all this theorizing and history massage: Are there any of the concrete point raised you would like to adress, or are you content to drone on with your evasions?

I notice that since the post where you were kind enough to call me a gentleman, you have consistently ignored whatever I have posted. I take it that the gentleman approach is not likely to get me anywhere with you, so I suppose I must consider a gloves off approach from now on. No problem, I have tried that before.

Hans

[krazyKemist]

Whereas, you have not found time to discuss Elia's papers having been so insistent that we take them seriously. I have taken them seriously and have paid good money to obtain a copy of the first of them. I have then asked a couple of specific questions to open the discussion of the content and one to allow you to demonstrate that you have indeed read the whole paper and have a copy to hand.

You have answered none.

[/b]

I doubt you will receive an answer to that. BTW, THIS paper relates the entire experiment:

V. Elia, L. Elia, P. Cacace, E. Napoli, M. Niccoli, F. Savarese. (2006) ‘Extremely diluted solutions’ as multi-variable systems. Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry 84:2, 317

The paper he cited does not contain the entire procedure.

One personnal question I would have is : how do we define "pure" water, or "pure" alcohol ? If water was distilled (even if it was distilled twice) in a glass apparatus, it does contain trace glass components (borates and silicates, and probably more of those than of the "diluted" substance). "Pure alcohol" is habitually only 95% pure. Anhydrous alcohol is only 98%, and cannot be used for medicines because it contains benzene.

Another would be : is the water used for homeopathic treatment up to the same standard of purity ? I somehow doubt it. Nature abhorres purity, for entropy reasons. So high purity does not come cheap.

the Kemist

[fls]

I think that it is touching that several of you miss me. It is ironic that some of you were worried that I was scared off. Heck, yesterday was Father's Day. I have a life (every heard of having one?).

That said...I'm leaving the country for a couple of weeks and will probably not do much internet stuff. That said...I am reiterating part of my old posting to this list (and adding to it) because all of these issues below remained unanswered by skeptics...

Sadly, I've grown tired of you, primarily due to your intellectual dishonesty. You claim that the homeopathic doses are too small to have any effect, and yet, you ignore the various basic science and clinical studies that I have referenced, only critiquing a small number of them, and even these critiques are usually inadequate.

Perhaps it is the company that I keep, but I find your dishonesty astonishing. To paraphrase Jon Stewart....don't you know that this stuff is recorded?

I'm not going to repeat the criticisms that I made, or refer you to those of others, which you have been unable to address. This is new.

I previously referenced 3 clinical trials in the treatment of children with diarrhea, including a meta-analysis of the 3 combined trials with a P-value=0.008. While one person on this list showed that 2 of the 3 studies had barely missed significance (P=0.06 and 0.07), intellectual dishonest again pervaded because s/he didn't acknowledge that combined statistically analysis (this is good science, especially when the clinical trial design was alike)...but the weasels come out and do what you can to look ONLY at data that serves your needs (and to hell with good science?).

I was simply correcting your error. You stated that all three trials showed significant results. And you have managed to make another error. The significance levels for the other two trials were p=0.06 and 0.23 (not 0.07).

And then (speaking of looking ONLY at data that serves your needs) I provided a link to another, much larger study that showed no effect from homeopathic therapy in childhood diarrhea, which you neglected to include.

Linda

[Chris Haynes]

An awful lot of shouting from someone who has yet to answer some simple questions, including mine.

I won't copy them all (again)... I'll just ask one simple one:

What is the success rate for syphilis with Hahnemann's homeopathic methods versus antibiotics? (knowing that one of the miasms that Hahnemann thought that existed was "syphilis").

That was the question...

Hey HC...
....snip...Hahnemann was respected enough that he was voted as an honorary member of the NY medical society in 1832, though he was voted out in 1843 just one week after his death because the medical society said that homeopathy was too much of an ideological and "economic" threat.
Although many people who were uninformed about homeopathy make fun of Hahnemann's concept of miasms, this concept were some of the earliest sophisticated insights about genetic disease. Hahnemann determined that people with syphilis, gonorrhea, and TB didn't die immediately, but during their disease process they gave birth (or sperm), and this new human being's health was influenced by the diseases of the mother and father. ... snip a bunch of stuff.

What you responded with was a fractured version of history, with some silly stuff about "genetic disease". Syphilis, gonorrhea and TB are not genetic diseases. Though tertiary syphilis will cause bone lesions, and it would seem children who get it at birth this would seem to be genetic in origin (but it is not).

Now try again, answer the question: What is the success rate for syphilis with Hahnemann's homeopathic methods versus antibiotics?

And with the term "rate" I want an actual number. For instance xx% of patients with syphilis had successful treatment using Hahnemann's homoepathy versus xx% of those who received antibiotics. Also, please cite your sources for the information. You have enough posts to use links, so I expect at least one link to be from here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/ .

[Deetee]

So Charles Darwin, who was not afraid to shock the world by asserting that humans and apes descended from a common ancestor, would have been afraid to admit that he did something as daring as using a homeopathic treatment?
Soory to derail momentarily, but is it not true that Darwin was so troubled by the implications of On the Origin of Species that he essentially shelved it for a few years, only being prompted into publication by the fear of being beaten to the tape by Wallace?

[Professor Yaffle]

Soory to derail momentarily, but is it not true that Darwin was so troubled by the implications of On the Origin of Species that he essentially shelved it for a few years, only being prompted into publication by the fear of being beaten to the tape by Wallace?

This explanation has been called into question recently:

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2007032703

[JamesGully]

Well...I actually leave tomorrow for 2 weeks. I had a little time yesterday and was able to simply cut and paste my biographical info about Hahnemann (skeptics need to know the intellectual giant that he was, whether you agree with him or not).

I can eke out a little time right now.

Syl...thanx for explaining how to do the quoting...a little bit of kindness always goes a long way.

I'm glad that some of you understand the dissolving power of bidistilled water and that my previous statements that this water has been shown to led to increased "silicate fragments" (aka silica chips) that fall off the glass walls and into the water. Perhaps these silica chips change the structure of the water and/or provide a means by which the medicinal substance that is diluted in the water imparts its information or fractal pattern into the chip (we do not know exactly what is happening...but perhaps Hahnemann and homeopaths have stumbled onto an important method of reducing a drug's toxicity but maintaining its therapeutic abilities, AS LONG AS the syndrome of symptoms of the substance's toxicity are SIMILAR to the syndrome of symptoms of the sick person.

What homeopaths have called the "law of similars" may be some type of resonance and/or hypersensitivity. Rather than trying to "fight" homeopathy, I hope that some of you with good working brains can help us figure out what is going on.

As for Elia's paper, his article goes from page 241-248. Mr Monkey's question about page 823 is unanswerable by me because it is not what I have of Elia's writings.

When you answer your own question on this issue, I also suggest that you answer the question: why was this study published in one of the most respected scientific journals in the US, especially in the light of its very controversial topic? And why did the statistical methods used by Elia cut mustards with their reviewers?

Finally, Rustum Roy has had 700 or so papers published in peer-review journals. As I went down their list, I saw 13 of them as articles published in NATURE. The fact that you found 15 such papers simply makes my case for Roy's hyper-respectability stronger. Thank you.

I have never said that these papers published in NATURE were on homeopathy. I simply said that Roy was a leading scientist, that he is not a "homeopathic researcher," and that his work should be taken very seriously. Wake up and smell the Coffea 30C.

[Mojo]

Finally, Rustum Roy has had 700 or so papers published in peer-review journals. As I went down their list, I saw 13 of them as articles published in NATURE. The fact that you found 15 such papers simply makes my case for Roy's hyper-respectability stronger. Thank you. The fact that 15 of his papers were published by Nature speaks to the quality of those 15 papers.

I have never said that these papers published in NATURE were on homeopathy. I simply said that Roy was a leading scientist, that he is not a "homeopathic researcher," and that his work should be taken very seriously.


You complained that people here had dismissed the papers Roy published in Nature as meaningless: Some of you even went off the deep-end by saying that the 13 papers that Dr. Roy got published in NATURE are meaningless.If the papers were not to do with homoeopathy, then as far as the subject matter of this thread is concerned they are meaningless.

Wake up and smell the Coffea 30C.


Can you provide any evidence that Coffea 30C has a detectable odour?

[Madalch]

I'm glad that some of you understand the dissolving power of bidistilled water and that my previous statements that this water has been shown to led to increased "silicate fragments" (aka silica chips) that fall off the glass walls and into the water. Perhaps these silica chips change the structure of the water and/or provide a means by which the medicinal substance that is diluted in the water imparts its information or fractal pattern into the chip.
No, they don't. If a microscopic chunk of glass is sitting in water, there will be a cluster of water molecules around the water, but it's not going to create any overall structure to the water, and anythign that used to be dissolved in the water is not going to affect the silicates.

Rather than trying to "fight" homeopathy, I hope that some of you with good working brains can help us figure out what is going on.
You first have to show that something -is- going on, other than placebo.

[JamesGully]

First...as a big appreciator of Jon Stewart, I do know that this is being "recorded," and my question to this list, do you know that because in the near future when homeopathy will have achieved great acceptance, we will look back at your responses as evidence of the fact that dinosaurs yell and scream the loudest before their fall. Timber.

A couple more notes about the "acute diarrhea" experiments. Why, oh, why do people still ignore the entire body of statistics from these experiments? The p value was in the substantial range...beyond significant! P=0.008. Take off your blinders.

As for why there was no significant difference at day 5 is that acute diarrhea resolves on its own in most cases...but THIS trial showed that children given homeopathic treatment (and ORT) got over it substantially faster than those just given ORT. End of story. Saying anything else is simply not supported for the data.

[krazyKemist]

I'm glad that some of you understand the dissolving power of bidistilled water and that my previous statements that this water has been shown to led to increased "silicate fragments" (aka silica chips) that fall off the glass walls and into the water. Perhaps these silica chips change the structure of the water and/or provide a means by which the medicinal substance that is diluted in the water imparts its information or fractal pattern into the chip (we do not know exactly what is happening...but perhaps Hahnemann and homeopaths have stumbled onto an important method of reducing a drug's toxicity but maintaining its therapeutic abilities, AS LONG AS the syndrome of symptoms of the substance's toxicity are SIMILAR to the syndrome of symptoms of the sick person.


hmmm... Wouldn't go THAT far. And ultrapure water, the 18 MOhm standard (pure water does not conduct electricity by the way), is NOT obtained by distillation, but by a filtration process. Distillation (even done twice) does not produce water of that purity. And dissolved substances do not maintain a cristalline structure is solution. That would rather be a suspension. The ability of a liquid to form a suspension is determined by viscosity not purity.

The problem is that chemistry as we know it does not allow for a liquid (or gas) to maintain a 'structure' on its own once the substance affecting it is gone, thanks to brownian movement (entropy). There will be a time of reorganisation, but that will be quite short (less than a second).

BTW, something that would mean that much for the understanding of chemistry (particularly of thermodynamics) should at least have been submitted to JACS (Journal of the american chemical society). Anyway, that's what I would have done, if I wanted to convince chemists.

the Kemist

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

WAs for Elia's paper, his article goes from page 241-248. Mr Monkey's question about page 823 is unanswerable by me because it is not what I have of Elia's writings.

That's a shame. We seem tobe referring to different papers. Sdly the one to which you referred from Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1999 is not available for online download from the British Library.

I will get that 1999 paper. There will be a short delay.

But, your refusal to answer the other simple questions, that we could easily have dealt with by now, is becoming both rude and tedious.

They include;

A. What bearing do you think it (Elia's paper) has on the issue of homeopathy?

4. Can you tell us whether either of these machines works?

http://www.bio-resonance.com/elybra.htm

http://www.remedydevices.com/voice.htm

Bear in mind that the users of these machines rely on exactly the same anecdotal experience and fallacious post hoc reasoning that every other homeopath does. Are the homeopaths who use these machines right or wrong in thinking they work?

It's a very simple question and capable of a single-word answer.

9. I set a p-value for significance of 0.05 and run 100 trials. In no trial is the test substance distinguishable from the control. How many trials can I expect to show an apparent "effect" from my test substance?

[manioberoi]

No-one seems to have addressed this one directly so I'll have a go ... I think that manioberoi was proposing a tweak to the proposed conceptual test protocols.

Manioberoi seems reluctant to buy into the protocols proposed so far because there is some kind of sequence of steps that homoeopathic practioners go through with the patients wherein they use a sequence of "medicines" and modify the next "prescription" based on the outcome of the previous administration.
The test protocols proposed so far randomly (and blindly) substitute each prescription with a placebo. This will make the analysis of the results hard to interpret (unless we are only interested in the final administration of the sequence).
To keep with manioberoi's description of homoeopathic practices, the randomization should be applied to a particular homoeopath-patient link instead ... so that all remedies provided to a particular (randomly and blindly chosen) patient are substituted. I think that this is what manioberoi is proposing above - I'll leave it to him to correct me if I have misinterpreted his meaning.

The direct answer to his follow up question is YES!!! (Sorry for shouting.) If such a simple test was conducted properly (large enough sample, proper blinding, no data mining, no meta-analysis with less well conducted studies, etc) then it would be the start of a beautiful relationship between homoeopathy and the real world.

If there is a significant difference between homoeopathy and placebo, and this can be consistently reproduced, then we have something very, very interesting to consider.

What is there to be afraid of in seeing the results of such simple studies? Why come up with blocking tactics and resort to obscure and poorly conducted work? I think I know why there is not a mountain of good evidence (note - not hear-say) for homoeopathic effectiveness in respected peer-reviewed literature ... do you have any ideas that do not involve a persecution complex???
Agree entirely. There are over 6000 homeopathic remedies (no good homeopath would restrict herself to 30 remedies - as proposed elsewhere by Hans to make his proposal for double blinding workable).

The homeopath is required to CURE the whole person - body and mind - keeping in view the pathology & c. At times conventional intervention is required to be advised.

So is the homeopath treating for, say, a kidney stone? Yes & No.

-Yes, because it is entirely possible ( but only as a fire fighting measure)

- No, because the homeopath is required to look beyond the kidney stone to the maintaining cause which can be many, (psychosomatic, hormonal imbalance, blood disorders, excess intake of protein leading to excess urea, oxalates, urinary tract infections and the like)

- further the homeopath is not to treat for the kidney stone alone

- the state of health of the person has to be brought as close to normal as is possible

- the homeopath selects first one remedy to achieve one of two alternate goals

- one, immediate treatment for an emergency (which may also be curative for the whole person i.e. cure) - suppression or cure but usually it turns out to be suppression - there is no way to know which it will be in advance.

-alternate, if there is no emergency (or after the emergency has subsided - till the next emergency, if any) the homeopath repertorises the CASE (visible)to find the one remedy that can cover the maximum spread of the CASE (visible) (person having diseases whether visible or hidden- not the disease); once this has been taken for a certain duration which is decided as it were on the fly by observing the progression of the case and hidden (CASE)becoming visible - the homeopath retakes the CASE (newly visible - moving the goal posts as it were in mid stream) and re-repertorises AND SO ON.

This can take months or years - the aim is to keep the person on an improving scale of health till the person decides that she is cured and the homeopath based on pathology is able to concur.

How could this be fitted to the concept of short and specific double blind trials (suited only for conventional medicine which treats only a narrow domain for one or two specifics ) as suggested by Hans is the conundrum before us.

[Madalch]

One personnal question I would have is : how do we define "pure" water, or "pure" alcohol ? If water was distilled (even if it was distilled twice) in a glass apparatus, it does contain trace glass components (borates and silicates, and probably more of those than of the "diluted" substance). "Pure alcohol" is habitually only 95% pure. Anhydrous alcohol is only 98%, and cannot be used for medicines because it contains benzene.

The 95% ethanol can be dried with magnesium during distillation, giving fairly pure stuff. It's won't be ultrapure (it will still have traces of glassware in it, etc.), but it's an improvement.

[manioberoi]

Ehr, and you believe THAT? Then I can inform you that, for instance in China, PepsiCo is still using old-fashioned soda cans with the opener ring that comes off, which is dangerous, but cheaper. "One Quality Worldwide", my foot.



GMP does not ensure efficacy.



Yeah, nice effort. Which requirements does the Indian government impose on homeopathy for documenting efficacy, and where is it published?



I'm sure they are making a honest effort, but as this is common knowledge, I don't suppose I insult you too much by pointing out that the initial platform for healthcare in India has enourmous room for improvement. So much that useless, but also harmless medicines (like we claim homeopathic remedies are) will be an improvment in many areas.

... Just like Hahnemann's practices were in the early 19th century in Europe where part of mainstream medicine actually made more harm than good.



Which part of Apollo's services are homeopathic? We all know that for those who can pay, India can offer excellent conventional medical treatment.

Hans
The Apollo Hospitals seem to have naturopathy, ayurveda - however there is a homeopath at their Apollo clinic and she can be contacted at:
"Consultant Homeopath
Indraprastha Apollo Cliniq
Building No.1 Nelson Mandela Marg,
Sector - B, LSC,Vasant Kunj,
New Delhi - 110070
Phone No: +91-011-26134810, 6134825, 6131218, 6124980
Fax no: +91-011-6134792
Email : indraprasthaapolloclinic@usa.net"

[manioberoi]

A while ago I asked a precise question, but didn't get a reply. Please, could Mr. Ullman/Gully (or anybody else who deems that they are qualified to answer), give me a precise reply:

A test using homeopathic proving:

- A homeopath chooses three homeopathic remedies that will produce different, easily-distinguishable symptoms. We'll call them substance A, B and C.

- A reputed homeopathic laboratory produces samples of the three remedies, plus a placebo sample.

- The homeopath is given a sample, and his task is to ascertain if the sample is substance A, B, C or a placebo. He may choose provers whom he already knows (himself included), so he should have a clear idea of how they react to the three different substances.

- How many provers would the homeopath need in order to find the answer?
Any competent homeopath would be able to tell you that you are asking for nothing less than the moon!

How on earth would we find three perfectly healthy persons to carry out the proving, and even if we found them how would we prove that they are in perfect health - and does science as it stands today really know how to define perfect health? We are still learning new facts about DNA - just the other day we learnt that the so called "junk DNA" is no longer junk.!!

Further out of the over 6000 remedies some proved, most others not even proved, the millions of symptoms ( large numbers common to many remedies) would preclude such an exercise being conducted by anyone but a "cyborg"!!!

[JJM]

{snip} How on earth would we find three perfectly healthy persons to carry out the proving {snip}How on earth were provings carried out in the first place, if they can't be replicated now?

[Michael C]

Any competent homeopath would be able to tell you that you are asking for nothing less than the moon!

How on earth would we find three perfectly healthy persons to carry out the proving, and even if we found them how would we prove that they are in perfect health - and does science as it stands today really know how to define perfect health? We are still learning new facts about DNA - just the other day we learnt that the so called "junk DNA" is no longer junk.!!

Further out of the over 6000 remedies some proved, most others not even proved, the millions of symptoms ( large numbers common to many remedies) would preclude such an exercise being conducted by anyone but a "cyborg"!!!

Well, how do homeopathic persons do their provings? How do they find the "perfectly healthy persons" apparently needed for homeopathic provings?

In fact, you don't seem to have understood my suggestion for a test, so I'll post it again, with added comments:

A homeopath chooses three homeopathic remedies that will produce different, easily-distinguishable symptoms. We'll call them substance A, B and C. Note that the homeopath himself is to choose the substances, and that there are only three substances. We are not asking the homeopath to distinguish between the 6000 remedies you talk about: he only has to distinguish three different substances.

- A reputed homeopathic laboratory produces samples of the three remedies, plus a placebo sample.

- The homeopath is given a sample, and his task is to ascertain if the sample is substance A, B, C or a placebo.

- He may choose provers whom he already knows (himself included), so he should have a clear idea of how they react to the three different substances. He may choose as many provers as he deems necessary.

- How many provers would the homeopath need in order to find the answer?

[manioberoi]

How on earth were provings carried out in the first place, if they can't be replicated now?
Initially (18th century) recorded cases of poisonings were also used for preparation of materia medicas (usage as de facto provings). Systematic provings were done on persons 'presumed' to be healthy - depending on the indivdual different symptoms appeared in the proving ( at different potencies) - all of these were recorded as reported by the provers (bias, errors and all).

Some symptoms were more frequent, some less, and are so recorded. Unique symptoms also come up and are so recorded.

Next stage is to use on a person (on simila principle - this has exceptions) - clinical results are reported and noted for future use.

If a particular remedy regularly gives good results for a particular pathology it may even be used on a pathological basis in addition to individualization - most of the trials carried out are on this (pathological) basis which is a flawed approach - perhaps the proper method has not been tried on account of ground level difficulties. For an example of the difficulties see:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/7/7

Whenever too many new symptoms come up a fresh proving may be carried out - this may bring out entirely new symptoms not foreseen earlier.

Alternatively new provings of old remedies when carried out invariably bring out new and fresh symptoms.

I think , by now you should be able to see the level of complexity of the ever evolving human body mind complex which naturally leads to this evolving set of symptoms ( new hidden ones constantly coming up) which are dynamic and unforeseeable.

[manioberoi]

Well, how do homeopathic persons do their provings? How do they find the "perfectly healthy persons" apparently needed for homeopathic provings?

In fact, you don't seem to have understood my suggestion for a test, so I'll post it again, with added comments:

A homeopath chooses three homeopathic remedies that will produce different, easily-distinguishable symptoms. We'll call them substance A, B and C. Note that the homeopath himself is to choose the substances, and that there are only three substances. We are not asking the homeopath to distinguish between the 6000 remedies you talk about: he only has to distinguish three different substances.

- A reputed homeopathic laboratory produces samples of the three remedies, plus a placebo sample.

- The homeopath is given a sample, and his task is to ascertain if the sample is substance A, B, C or a placebo.

- He may choose provers whom he already knows (himself included), so he should have a clear idea of how they react to the three different substances. He may choose as many provers as he deems necessary.

- How many provers would the homeopath need in order to find the answer?
The three remedies would have hidden symptoms (common or different) and known symptoms(common or different). The three provers would have visible and hidden disease, besides the fact that body mind complex is ever evolving and a dynamic state is not conducive to the kind of static test you propose.

Also see the reply to JJM.

Sarvadaman

[JJM]

{snip} Systematic provings were done on persons 'presumed' to be healthy - depending on the indivdual different symptoms appeared in the proving ( at different potencies) - all of these were recorded as reported by the provers (bias, errors and all). {snip}So, let's go ahead and do it! What is holding you back? Can't you find persons you can "presume" to be healthy?

The rest of what you wrote was indecipherable nonsense. I assume you think it releases you from actually doing any testing, even if you can find someone who is "presumed" to be healthy.

[SYLVESTER1592]

First...as a big appreciator of Jon Stewart, I do know that this is being "recorded," and my question to this list, do you know that because in the near future when homeopathy will have achieved great acceptance, we will look back at your responses as evidence of the fact that dinosaurs yell and scream the loudest before their fall. Timber.

A couple more notes about the "acute diarrhea" experiments. Why, oh, why do people still ignore the entire body of statistics from these experiments? The p value was in the substantial range...beyond significant! P=0.008. Take off your blinders.

As for why there was no significant difference at day 5 is that acute diarrhea resolves on its own in most cases...but THIS trial showed that children given homeopathic treatment (and ORT) got over it substantially faster than those just given ORT. End of story. Saying anything else is simply not supported for the data.

:D

I think this is what skepticism is, thinking critcally. When you look at all the comments and criticisms and also see that the author was not able to replicate the results... Well, you can only come to the conclusion that this is not evidence of homeopathy working. A p-value alone doesn't say everything. You have to look at how it has attained and what contributed to it. That's where there are still a lot of problems.

Doing research is not about satisfying the needs of conventional medicine, although many homeopaths seem to think so, but it's about the advancement of medical practice. That is why it is looked at with this kind of scrutiny. The patients rely on us to provide the best treatment available; that's the aim. We look for objective measurements to achieve an objective judgement and try to control as many influencing factors as possible to make a reliable distinction between treatments that work and those that don't. Why? Because both doctors and patients need to be sure that they get the best possible chance of succes. Looking backwards patients may say that something worked or that it hasn't. Homeopathy gets to choose their patients, they pick the ones that will have ailments that will be resolved by themselves in most cases and send the patients that have a serious disease to the conventional medical practitioners (in the best case scenario). The result is that conventional medicine will need to help all the patients that did not receive their real treatment in a timely fashion and sometimes patients don't get their real treatments at all, because the homeopath thinks he can treat serious diseases. The evidence for homeopathy is still anecdotal as far as I know. The studies published have serious flaws in them and are often contradicted later on. The contradiction or rectification is something proponents of homeopathy discard or selectively don't remember. As long as at one time it was said to work, it will stand as a testimony to homeopathy as far as they care, anything else doesn't matter. I think those are the real blindfolds and I don't think we are the ones wearing them.

When there would be a proven mechanism of the effects of homeopathic solutions it would be building on previous knowledge and still require thorough investigation. Any conventional drug would receive the same kind of criticism, maybe even more... Mainly because the quality of the research lets scientists do that. It also leads to a better acceptance of conventional medicine, because it hold up under scrutiny, because it can be reproduced, it is researched for effectiveness and toxicity in well-designed, well-executed, well-analyzed experiments. It offers something to build on...

So what do you think of my criticism of the article? I think it's fair to say it doesn't hold up. Remember that a badly designed, badly executed, badly analyzed experiment can always render a significant difference if you want it too, but it doesn't advance knowledge and doesn't contribute to the advancement of science. When the goal is to treat patients, I think we should maintain a high quality of research for a definite conclusion. And remain skeptical...

What if it was your child. You know a little more now... What would you do?

SYL :)

[Michael C]

manierobi: you still haven't read my test proposition. I'm not talking about three provers: I'm asking how many provers would be necessary in order to determine which of the three remedies was present in the sample.

I don't know what you mean by the test being static. The whole point of the test is that it only uses homeopathic methods, provings which would be carried out by the homeopath according to the rules of homeopathy. The homeopath would do provings with different persons, exactly as he might do a proving with a previously untested substance. He would carefully note all the symptoms of the prover, etc. etc.

And please remember that the three substances would have been chosen by the homeopath himself. He chooses three substances that produce easily distinguishable symptoms. If it is impossible to find three different homeopathic substances that produce symptoms that can be distinguished from each other, then the whole idea of carefully matching the substance to the state of the patient is revealed to be nonsense.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

That's a shame. We seem tobe referring to different papers. Sdly the one to which you referred from Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1999 is not available for online download from the British Library.

I will get that 1999 paper. There will be a short delay.

OK. Read it.

1. I'd like to see them repeat these sensitive tests blinded to the nature of the test materials.

2. As I have already said, this is more fishing about at random for mechanisms to explain a non-existent effect. If Elia's next publication reported a failure to find any interesting effect the homeopaths' immediate response would be, "Don't care. This is only lab science and nothing to do with homeopathy practised holistically in real patients". Well, I'm ahead of the game on that one: I don't care already. It's not relevant to the debate.

What would be relevant would be answers to these questions;

4. Can you tell us whether either of these machines works?

http://www.bio-resonance.com/elybra.htm

http://www.remedydevices.com/voice.htm

Bear in mind that the users of these machines rely on exactly the same anecdotal experience and fallacious post hoc reasoning that every other homeopath does. Are the homeopaths who use these machines right or wrong in thinking they work?

It's a very simple question and capable of a single-word answer.

9. I set a p-value for significance of 0.05 and run 100 trials. In no trial is the test substance distinguishable from the control. How many trials can I expect to show an apparent "effect" from my test substance?

[MRC_Hans]

Another would be : is the water used for homeopathic treatment up to the same standard of purity ? I somehow doubt it. Nature abhorres purity, for entropy reasons. So high purity does not come cheap.

the KemistI researched this earlier. Here is a reference:

http://www.aqua-chem.com/index.php?page=high_purity_water

As you can see, so-called water for injection, which is the water used to prepare injectable drugs, is the cleanest you can normally get.

Here we find that organic impurities are at a level of 0.5ppm
Thes reference does not mention it, but IIRR, inorganics are adound 0.2ppm
Finally, bacteria, that is live bacteria, are at 10/100ml.

You can calculate this in various ways, but the most charitable way I can get it is that this corresponds to a homeopathic potency of 3C. In other words, in any potency higher than 3C (6X), the impurities brought in by the water will exceed the amount of active substance.

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

Well...I actually leave tomorrow for 2 weeks. I had a little time yesterday and was able to simply cut and paste my biographical info about Hahnemann (skeptics need to know the intellectual giant that he was, whether you agree with him or not).

If you want us to regard Hahnemann as an intellectual giant, you need to address what results he achieved, instead of just worshipping him.

Syl...thanx for explaining how to do the quoting...a little bit of kindness always goes a long way.

Yes, that is right. Also asking questions goes a long way. Like asking "Hey, how do you make those quotes?" instead of going into all caps, which I refuse to believe someone as internet experienced as yourself does not know is bad ettiquette.

I'm glad that some of you understand the dissolving power of bidistilled water

Why? What has this to do with anything? What does the dissolving power mean if there is nothing to dissolve.


and that my previous statements that this water has been shown to led to increased "silicate fragments" (aka silica chips) that fall off the glass walls and into the water. Perhaps these silica chips change the structure of the water and/or provide a means by which the medicinal substance that is diluted in the water imparts its information or fractal pattern into the chip


Pure, unfounded speculation. Why should silica chips do that?

...Wait! Are you thinking that since computer memories are made on silicon chips, then silica chips may form memories in water?

:dl:


we do not know exactly what is happening...but perhaps Hahnemann and homeopaths have stumbled onto an important method of reducing a drug's toxicity but maintaining its therapeutic abilities, AS LONG AS the syndrome of symptoms of the substance's toxicity are SIMILAR to the syndrome of symptoms of the sick person.


Or maybe they are just plain wrong. The evidence suggests the latter.

What homeopaths have called the "law of similars" may be some type of resonance and/or hypersensitivity. Rather than trying to "fight" homeopathy, I hope that some of you with good working brains can help us figure out what is going on.

We have figured out what is going on. Homeopaths are clinging desparately to their old beliefs, because if they didn't, they'd have to find a new job.

Finally, Rustum Roy has had 700 or so papers published in peer-review journals. As I went down their list, I saw 13 of them as articles published in NATURE. The fact that you found 15 such papers simply makes my case for Roy's hyper-respectability stronger. Thank you.

I have never said that these papers published in NATURE were on homeopathy. I simply said that Roy was a leading scientist, that he is not a "homeopathic researcher," and that his work should be taken very seriously. Wake up and smell the Coffea 30C.

In other words, you admit to the "appeal to false authority" fallacy. Thank you. Since we have now established with glaring clarity that Roy is a specialist in an area with no apparant relvance to homeopathy, perhaps we can move to more interesting matters?

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

First...as a big appreciator of Jon Stewart, I do know that this is being "recorded," and my question to this list, do you know that because in the near future when homeopathy will have achieved great acceptance, we will look back at your responses as evidence of the fact that dinosaurs yell and scream the loudest before their fall. Timber.

*YAWN* Do you know how many homeopaths have been telling me how homeopathy was on the verge of a spectacular break-through, and for how long? Perhaps you should join ranks with the people who keep predicitng the imminent end of the world? There must surely be some synergy effects to reap.

But let me just pick a little tidbid from your rant above, which shows the level of your academic honesty (my emphasis): "the fact that dinosaurs yell and scream the loudest before their fall"

Ehr, JamesGully: Please state you definition of "fact".


A couple more notes about the "acute diarrhea" experiments. Why, oh, why do people still ignore the entire body of statistics from these experiments? The p value was in the substantial range...beyond significant! P=0.008. Take off your blinders.


Since various faults have been found with the protocol, a single study with a borderline significance cannot supply the extraordinary evidence required to consider homeopathy.

Hans

[kieran]

I've snipped out the bit where you constructed as many obstacles as you thought you needed to "get out of jail" ...

This can take months or years - the aim is to keep the person on an improving scale of health till the person decides that she is cured and the homeopath based on pathology is able to concur.

How could this be fitted to the concept of short and specific double blind trials (suited only for conventional medicine which treats only a narrow domain for one or two specifics ) as suggested by Hans is the conundrum before us.

I did ask (in my original message to you) why you have to "come up with blocking tactics" ... and you didn't disappoint by providing an instant illustration. ;)

Why is it that you just keep coming up with problems, and never suggest solutions. If there is a flaw in the test ideas we present, why don't you improve the procedure to remove the flaw, rather than just moan about it? Is it because you are actually scared of what you might find out if such a test was properly conducted? :covereyes If you take me up on this offer, remember that a test should be a simple as possible, and as complex as necesary. Please don't just add complexity in order to cloud the issue.

OK - here we go again. Having to iterate around tweaking a test procedure while the woo creates obstacles each time they get cornered ...

There is no reason that the double blind trials have to be "short". I think that Hans' perspective would be that it would be nice to get a definitive answer as to the efficacy of homoeopathy as soon as possible (in our own life-times would be nice!) but maybe you aren't really interested in that. Why can't we conduct the controlled double blind test along "suitably long" time-scales if that is your latest objection?

Just out of interest, in all those papers you were so fond of flooding the message board with in your early posts ... you know - the ones that you claim supported your belief that homoeopathy works - what was the length of those trials from start to finish? Did you consider them all "long enough" because you like the reported results? Are any results you don't like not "long enough"? Think about it ... this is just creating a world where you can choose results, rather than observe them ... why do you need to do that? :rolleyes:

Remember, once we get past your latest invented obstacle, and you move on to the next ... you are the one proving that they have no interest in finding out the truth about homoeopathy ...

If it works ... great ... what's wrong with proving it to everyones satisfaction so we can get on with using it more and more.
If it doesn't work, then either you have been duped or are a charlatan.

[Lothian]

I'm glad that some of you understand the dissolving power of bidistilled water and that my previous statements that this water has been shown to led to increased "silicate fragments" (aka silica chips) that fall off the glass walls and into the water. Perhaps these silica chips change the structure of the water and/or provide a means by which the medicinal substance that is diluted in the water imparts its information or fractal pattern into the chip (we do not know exactly what is happening...but perhaps Hahnemann and homeopaths have stumbled onto an important method of reducing a drug's toxicity but maintaining its therapeutic abilities, Interesting. You now claim that it is silicon chips resulting from double distilled water that memorises the original substance.

If this is the case how do you explain the results claimed by all those original and subsequent homeopaths who do/did not use double distilled water ?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I did ask (in my original message to you) why you have to "come up with blocking tactics" ... and you didn't disappoint by providing an instant illustration. ;)

Also, we should not forget that the real-world effects of homeopathy are allegedly so powerful that (ignoring the inherent post hoc fallacy) they are screamingly obvious to the practising homeopath. All we are suggesting is that we swap blanks for half the remedies then see if the alleged effects are still as screamingly obvious.

To say that it would take an infinitely long time or an impossibly complex protocol to objectively test homeopathy is the same as admitting that it is logically impossible for the homeopaths to have accumulated a reliable base of clinical evidence. But, without that historical base they are left with literally no evidence at all.

manioberoi, do you understand these points? The more you whinge about the difficulty of properly testing homeopathy, the more you degrade the implied quality of the evidence that you already rely on. If in your opinion (regardless of logical argument to the contrary) you still believe that homeoipathy cannot be tested then you have also removed from use, because it is revealed to be hopelessly unreliable, the entire historical clinical record of homeopathy.

You are caught by this and there is no escape.

Which do you want to admit, either homeopathy is scientifically testable or your entire clincal case record must be ignored? There is no third option. Which do you want to choose?

[MRC_Hans]

Agree entirely. There are over 6000 homeopathic remedies (no good homeopath would restrict herself to 30 remedies - as proposed elsewhere by Hans to make his proposal for double blinding workable).

The 30 was just a ball-park figure. And mind you, this was the number of remedies that the homeopath kept in his own inventory for immidiate use. For all the rest which can be requsitioned from a central dispensor, ther is no limit on numbers.

I made a survey of some 200 homeopathic case accounts, some time back. 90% of the prescriptions were covered by 20 remedies. Homeopaths may draw from the entire range of 6000+, but the vast majority of cases will be covered by a much smaller inventory.

The homeopath is required to CURE the whole person - body and mind - keeping in view the pathology & c. At times conventional intervention is required to be advised.


So is the homeopath treating for, say, a kidney stone? Yes & No.

-Yes, because it is entirely possible ( but only as a fire fighting measure)

- No, because the homeopath is required to look beyond the kidney stone to the maintaining cause which can be many, (psychosomatic, hormonal imbalance, blood disorders, excess intake of protein leading to excess urea, oxalates, urinary tract infections and the like) ....etc.


We know all this, but that doesn't matter for the trial. What a trial will measure is the result, not how the result is reached. Is the patient cured or not.

This can take months or years - the aim is to keep the person on an improving scale of health till the person decides that she is cured and the homeopath based on pathology is able to concur.

How could this be fitted to the concept of short and specific double blind trials (suited only for conventional medicine which treats only a narrow domain for one or two specifics ) as suggested by Hans is the conundrum before us.

Ahh, been here before (is this you, Neil?). Now, the requirement of unlimited time is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Given unlimited time, any disease will end.

However, more seriously, a trial must address a specific complaint. I am fully aware that the homeopathic definition of "disease" is different from the main-stream one, therefore I use the term complaint. Complaint is what compells the patient to seek medical aid.

Obviously, you cannot lump flu, kidney stones, and indigestion into the same trial, since that would would make statisical evaluation impossible, so the protocol must define some specific complaint, so that only patients with that complaint are included.

Hans

[Mojo]

Ahh, been here before (is this you, Neil?). Now, the requirement of unlimited time is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Given unlimited time, any disease will end.


One way or another...

[MRC_Hans]

The 95% ethanol can be dried with magnesium during distillation, giving fairly pure stuff. It's won't be ultrapure (it will still have traces of glassware in it, etc.), but it's an improvement.
I don't think you realize the scope of this problem. The purities needed to make even moderate potencies (above 4C) will pose a formidable challenge to even the best laboratories. I see this as yet another indication that homeopaths really have no idea what they are meddling with.

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

The Apollo Hospitals seem to have naturopathy, ayurveda - however there is a homeopath at their Apollo clinic and she can be contacted at:
"Consultant Homeopath
Indraprastha Apollo Cliniq
Building No.1 Nelson Mandela Marg,
Sector - B, LSC,Vasant Kunj,
New Delhi - 110070
Phone No: +91-011-26134810, 6134825, 6131218, 6124980
Fax no: +91-011-6134792
Email : <A href="mailto:indraprasthaapolloclinic@usa.net" ">indraprasthaapolloclinic@usa.net"[/quote]
In other words, the great involvement by Apollo you used to show how great the standard of healthcare in India is almost entirely for conventional medicine. It is largely irrelevant for homeopathy.

In fact, I can tell you it is probably entirely irrlevant, because companies like Apollo will simply chose the modailites they support based on which modalities they can obtain insurance coverage for.

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

Initially (18th century) recorded cases of poisonings were also used for preparation of materia medicas (usage as de facto provings). Systematic provings were done on persons 'presumed' to be healthy - depending on the indivdual different symptoms appeared in the proving ( at different potencies) - all of these were recorded as reported by the provers (bias, errors and all).

Some symptoms were more frequent, some less, and are so recorded. Unique symptoms also come up and are so recorded.

Next stage is to use on a person (on simila principle - this has exceptions) - clinical results are reported and noted for future use.

If a particular remedy regularly gives good results for a particular pathology it may even be used on a pathological basis in addition to individualization - most of the trials carried out are on this (pathological) basis which is a flawed approach - perhaps the proper method has not been tried on account of ground level difficulties. For an example of the difficulties see:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/7/7

Whenever too many new symptoms come up a fresh proving may be carried out - this may bring out entirely new symptoms not foreseen earlier.

Alternatively new provings of old remedies when carried out invariably bring out new and fresh symptoms.

I think , by now you should be able to see the level of complexity of the ever evolving human body mind complex which naturally leads to this evolving set of symptoms ( new hidden ones constantly coming up) which are dynamic and unforeseeable.

Or, to take the essence of your long explanation: Apart from a certain base in objective toxiology, Materia Media symptom listings are based on a totally arbitrary collection of symptoms. Thank you.

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

Which do you want to admit, either homeopathy is scientifically testable or your entire clincal case record must be ignored? There is no third option. Which do you want to choose?I have been there repeatedly, especialy with our friend bvw11, and I'm afraid there IS a third option: Kick up big clouds of dust.

Hans :rolleyes:

[Rolfe]

I'm glad that some of you understand the dissolving power of bidistilled water ....
Still on about double distilled water? Apparently you think this is important for whatever effect you think homoeopathic remedies have. So you shouldn't have any trouble pointing out to me the evidence that Samuel Hahnemann, the inventor/discoverer of homoeopathy, who carried out all the seminal experiments in the subject not to mention many of the original provings, the results of which are still used today, always made a point of using double distilled water.


A test using homeopathic proving:

- A homeopath chooses three homeopathic remedies that will produce different, easily-distinguishable symptoms. We'll call them substance A, B and C.

- A reputed homeopathic laboratory produces samples of the three remedies, plus a placebo sample.

- The homeopath is given a sample, and his task is to ascertain if the sample is substance A, B, C or a placebo. ....
We've argued this one around and about, and indeed, it seems that these striking proving effects, the effects that are so obvious that we ourselves have been urged by homoeopaths to take a remedy because it's certain that the unmistakeable symptoms would convince us that it's not just a sugar pill, are in fact so subtle and difficult to recognise that such a test is impossible.

Which, as BSM just pointed out, rather undermines the entire basis of homoeopathic practice.

However, I'd settle for an even easier test.

One remedy. Doesn't matter what so long as it's diluted above Avogadro's limit. Homoeopath gets to choose. Can the homoeopath tell whether what he's been given is the real remedy or the unpotentised carrier material, by observing whether or not it produces these striking proving symptoms? It's that simple.

Now there's an obvious drawback to this. The homoeopath has a 50/50 chance of guessing right. That's why the test needs to be done more than once. Getting it right once is not impressive. Getting it right 9 times out of 10 or even better 19 times out of 20 is very impressive indeed.

These symptoms, we're so often told, are so obvious. What's so hard about this?

One homoeopath backed out of such a test complaining that doing the test on herself would make her ill, and she wasn't prepared to risk her health by doing it 20 or even 10 times. (How this squares with homoeopathy being so safe, I'm not entirely sure.)

So, use other people! Volunteer provers are used all the time in homoeopathy, why not for such a test? If it's such a risk to the provers, then how can any provings be ethically justified at all?

Another way to do this is to use more than one homoeopath. Ask Yuri Nalyssus what happened when he tried to carry out such a test. The summary he gave me was that he canvassed for homoeopaths to take part in the study, sending out the protocol to many many individual homoeopaths and homoeopathic organisations. He had only six volunteers prepared to give it a go.

Each homoeopath was given either the remedy of their choice or some blank sugar pills, in a double-blind protocol overseen by a colleague of Yuri Nalyssus who is a homoeopath. Three correctly identified what they were given. The other three were wrong. Exactly what you'd expect if there was no difference and the participants were just guessing.

I think that the fact that so few of the many many homoeopaths canvassed were even prepared to take part in this study says a lot about the true confidence these people have in the reality of the "striking proving effects" they keep going on about. The results speak for themselves.

Unfortunately n=6 is too small to turn this into a publishable study. But what's wrong with the protocol? Almost every homoeopath I've met has been very clear that certain 30C remedies produce striking effects, striking enough to convince the sceptic if only those damn sceptics would actually give it a go. (I did and nothing happened. I know Hans had the same experience.)

Whichever way you slice it, homoeopaths claim that their remedies make a difference to the real world, and not a trivial difference either - a difference in people's health which is of sufficient magnitude to be clinically useful and to be worth paying for. If this is true, it should be possible to demonstrate that something is occurring. The more weaselling we encounter when trying to investigate this, frankly, the more I suspect that there is in fact no such effect.

Don't you think, James/Dana, that if we were to ignore all this evidence of duplicity, then we would in fact be putting on blinkers, rather than taking them off?

Rolfe.

[fls]

First...as a big appreciator of Jon Stewart, I do know that this is being "recorded," and my question to this list, do you know that because in the near future when homeopathy will have achieved great acceptance, we will look back at your responses as evidence of the fact that dinosaurs yell and scream the loudest before their fall. Timber.

I see this sort of reasoning all the time, and it misses the point. That some ideas, initially unappreciated, have eventually (through scientific pursuit) become generally accepted through the accumulation and presentation of sufficient evidence, does not mean that the initial skepticism was wrong. It turns out that there isn't a good way to tell one silly idea from another in advance.

A couple more notes about the "acute diarrhea" experiments. Why, oh, why do people still ignore the entire body of statistics from these experiments? The p value was in the substantial range...beyond significant! P=0.008. Take off your blinders.

You are demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding about what a "P=0.008" means. Consider reading this paper (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=11159626), referenced in this thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2625380#post2625380), as it is directly relevant to this issue. Also, this paper (http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124) expands on this idea with respect to evaluating the body of evidence for a particular field.

As for why there was no significant difference at day 5 is that acute diarrhea resolves on its own in most cases...but THIS trial showed that children given homeopathic treatment (and ORT) got over it substantially faster than those just given ORT. End of story. Saying anything else is simply not supported for the data.

The children in that particular group had a different outcome from those in the other group. However, one cannot conclude that the difference is due to receiving the homeopathic treatment, as there are more probable alternate explanations.

A clinical trial simply consists of selecting a sample of people, dividing that sample into two, measuring something after a period of time in all individuals, and then comparing the means of that measurement between the two groups. We have no expectation that the means will be exactly the same, just like we have no expectation that two individuals will have exactly the same height. We do expect however, that if we repeated the process over and over and over again, that the distribution of the differences between the means, in the absence of bias, would generally follow a Gaussian distribution. Your p=0.008 simply means that the difference found in these particular studies would happen 0.8 percent of the time, in the absence of bias. Because it doesn't proportionally happen very often, you are trying to conclude that there is some other reason for the difference. And not only that, you are trying to conclude that the use of a homeopathic treatment is the ONLY possible reason for the difference.

Let's see if the homeopathic treatment is the only possible reason. First of all, let's look at the assumption that because a difference that great doesn't proportionally happen very often that there must be some other reason for the difference. Given that this result has only been selected post hoc, every clinical trial that is performed is another opportunity, another point to plot on our distribution. There were 110 clinical trials in homeopathy (as of the 2005 metanalysis by Shang). The probability (due only to chance) that one or more of these trials would acheive a p=0.008 is 59 percent.

Now let's look at the assumption "in the absence of bias". If bias is present, then our p-value does not tell us anything about the strength of the association, only about the potential strength of the bias. So we need to ask whether or not bias is present and whether bias would be sufficient to account for the size of the difference. The effect size was small (estimated 0.37) (cut-offs for effect size - small 0.25, medium 0.50, large 0.75), so a small amount of bias could account for the difference. This can be admittedly hard to quantify. In this case, it is well-recognized that metanalyses introduce bias, and there are ways to roughly quantify/assess that bias when reporting on the results of the metanalyses. I could not find that information in the report, however. I should also note that I cannot tell how they came up with some of the numbers that they report. For example, the duration of diarrhea given in the abstract is different from the duration reported in the results (4.1 and 3.3, vs 3.8 and 3.1), and the effect size calculations I made using Cohen's d (most commonly used for metanalyses) are markedly different from the effect sizes they report. Also, two of the studies used in the metanalysis were performed by the same research group, so the usual consideration of unrecognized or unreported bias would not be independent. Overall, we know that there is some bias present in the results, so there must be a least a small (at least 10 percent?) possibility that there is enough bias to account for a small effect size.

Now let's look at the assumption that there is a homeopathic treatment effect. The difference in treatment between the two groups was in the preparation of the sugar pills. Even if we concede that the difference in preparation between the sugar pills is what led to the difference in diarrhea, does that provide evidence for homeopathy? No. All it says is that preparing sugar pills in one particular way can have an effect on diarrhea. But it does not establish that the reason for choosing that particular preparation was valid. I used my alfabetophy idea as an analogy. I propose that the ideal treatment for a particular condition is provided by a medication that starts with the same letter as the name of the condition. That a clinical trial shows that penicillin is effective in the treatment of pneumonia does not prove that alfabetopathy is a valid way to choose treatments for other conditions.

So your insistence that this trial supports homeopathy, end of story, is unjustifiable. Not only are there very plausible alternate explanations - a probability of 59 percent that it is due to chance or at least a 10 percent chance that it is due to bias - but even conceding that the treatment had an effect would not serve as proof of the "law of similars".

Linda

[Oualawouzou]

Whenever too many new symptoms come up a fresh proving may be carried out - this may bring out entirely new symptoms not foreseen earlier.

Alternatively new provings of old remedies when carried out invariably bring out new and fresh symptoms.

I think , by now you should be able to see the level of complexity of the ever evolving human body mind complex which naturally leads to this evolving set of symptoms ( new hidden ones constantly coming up) which are dynamic and unforeseeable.

*boggle* I hope you're not trying to build up people's confidence in homeopathy... Are you telling us, in essence, that a given remedy works, or rather worked, maybe it doesn't anymore, who knows, let's take it anyway? Where's the safety and the efficiency in this?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Kemist and I have been chatting via PM about the Elia papers.

Never mind the problem of this work being done by an apparently True Believer, I think there is also a clash of cultures that we see time and again between people who routinely work in the soft biological sciences and people whose expertise is in the phsyical sciences. We are used to working with mushy data and having to rely on statistical truths rather than simple black and white outcomes. I'm not sure it would occur to a physical scientist to blind and randomise a routine piece of bench chemistry.

It's noticeable that a lot of the pet scientists of the homs are physical scientists not biologists or medics (similar is clearly true of the ID/Creation brigade). I don't think it's a coincidence that we see a coterie of ageing physical scientists working outside their area of competence in a medical field where they have no basic feel for the appropriate metods of investigation. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Turning to the 1999 Elia paper in the NYAS annals.

Here are my specific questions for James/Dana.

1. Why is there "excess" heat produced when sham water is the source material for the titrations (Line 1 of Table 1)?

2. Does Dana see any problem with that being the only line of the work that is expressed with error measurements?

3. Were the tests run in a randomised and blinded manner to exclude systematic bias?

4. What is the last word on page 247? I'm not going to debate this with someone who has not read the whole paper.

I'll repeat these questions in due course if Dana reappears and ignores them.

[krazyKemist]

nanopharmacology works

:confused:

What the :confused: is "nanopharmacology" ? Drugs being efficient in nanomolar concentrations ? Funny, actually, that real medicinal chemistry begins to take a compound seriously when it has IC50's in the nanomolar range... God, I hate when people use the "nano" word in vain... It's like blaspheming against chemistry :D . I'm getting all religious here, help !:yikes:

the Kemist

[Rolfe]

I agree with you, KK. I remember once having this argument with one of Dana's fervent disciples.

In my work I routinely measure concentrations of substances in biological fluids in the nmol/l range. Most (OK, many, to avoid a fight) hormones are in circulation in that sort of concentration. It's routine. (Damn, I've just got a note in front of me to telephone a colleague to discuss some cortisol results - my scribbled memo-to-self says only 155/104/78, but in fact these are the cortisol concentrations of three different samples, units nmol/l.) When you start talking about free (that is non-protein-bound) hormone concentrations, you routinely get into the pmol/l range, which is three orders of magnitude more dilute - free thyroxine is measured in pmol/l.

These are perfectly ordinary biological concentrations of biologically active substances, and this has bugger-all to do with homoeopathy.

Whether or not the prefix "nano" is associated in the mind of the general public simply with "very small" (such as "nanobot"), no scientist in his or her right senses would employ the term that way. It's as bad as saying "to the general public, 'chronic', as a description of an illness, often just means 'very bad' - therefore I will use the word in that sense and to hell with what it actually means." You can't carry on a scientific conversation if you allow the use of "popular" meanings of words which have a precise scientific meaning.

If the word "nanopharmacology" means anything at all, it means the pharmacology of substances active at about 10^-9 moles/litre. Which has nothing at all to do with homoeopathic concentrations.

Rolfe.

[Pipirr]

I think there is also a clash of cultures that we see time and again between people who routinely work in the soft biological sciences and people whose expertise is in the phsyical sciences. We are used to working with mushy data and having to rely on statistical truths rather than simple black and white outcomes. I'm not sure it would occur to a physical scientist to blind and randomise a routine piece of bench chemistry.


Then there's the odd habit some chemists have of calling a blank sample in a run, a 'blind'. I always said, it's not really 'blind' if you know what it is.

[Rolfe]

I'm wondering why Dana keeps saying "take off the blinders" (I assume he means blinkers) when he has shown nothing that has impressed anyone, and yet at the same time he himself is constantly ignoring all the very serious objections to his viewpoint which are being constantly put in front of him.

I-am-not-a-psychologist, but it seems to me he's not a very clear thinker, but is very much invested in the world-view that homoeoapthy works. Therefore when something odd appears which looks as if it might support that world-view, he latches on to it enthusiastically and uncritically - hey look, this is wonderful, it must be true!!!

But at the same time he is stunningly unwilling to take off his own blinkers and address the points we feel to be fatal flaws in his thesis. He just keeps repeating, but look at this great paper - while ignoring both the reasoned criticisms which have been made of these papers, and the other points which keep being put to him.

Very poor intellect, I'm afraid, if we're getting personal.

Rolfe.

[krazyKemist]

It's noticeable that a lot of the pet scientists of the homs are physical scientists not biologists or medics (similar is clearly true of the ID/Creation brigade). I don't think it's a coincidence that we see a coterie of ageing physical scientists working outside their area of competence in a medical field where they have no basic feel for the appropriate metods of investigation. Correct me if I'm wrong.


Yeah, I had noticed that too. Being a medicinal chemist, I'm kind of halfway between cultures/methods myself (not a very confortable position, I can assure you;) ).

Also, physicists tend to hold people from other fields, particularly biologists, in comtempt. That comes from physics being at the most fundamental level of it all.

the Kemist

[manioberoi]

So, let's go ahead and do it! What is holding you back? Can't you find persons you can "presume" to be healthy?

The rest of what you wrote was indecipherable nonsense. I assume you think it releases you from actually doing any testing, even if you can find someone who is "presumed" to be healthy.
Precisely!!

This "indecipherable nonsense" is really quite simple to understand - if you do not you may seek clarification on the precise points you did not understand - line by line - and unless you do understand, it is difficult to comprehend the homeopathic versus conventional medicine trial conundrum.

A proving can not be replicated - because a proving is not cut and dried as a conventional medicine trial is.

I can see now why some would find it extremely hard to believe that homeopathy works.

They are looking for conventional medical answers from a homeopathic medicine - that is most of the time not a medicine as such (in terms of physical molecules) - it is a mere device (a black box) which signals the release of a mechanism (another black box) which leads to either:

-a cure,
-a suppression,
-an aggravation or
-no effect whatsoever;

and which of these will actually occur can not be foretold with any degree of certainty in advance.

The homeopath is required to soldier on with the next and the next and the next & c remedy - good homeopaths hit on the right remedy in 1 or 2 attempts, others may even require 9 to 10 attempts to hit on the right remedy - oh! and more than one right remedies would be required. Which of the diseases of the set of diseases repertorised will be cured first and which last can also not be foretold.

Nevertheless the overall health would improve and pathologies will fall off one by one over 3 to 6 months, at times longer.

Let me clarify that I am NOT a proponent of homeopathy per se - rather I am a proponent of ALL systems of healthcare that can justify the confidence of the public in their ability to cure.

A homeopathic proving can NOT be replicated - see my earlier posts. It would be impossible.

Let me once again clarify that I am NOT a proponent of homeopathy per se - rather I am a proponent of ALL systems of healthcare that can justify the confidence of the public in their ability to cure.

If I were to meet with a serious accident I would be foolish to seek homeopathic treatment (other than as a supplementary support) - conventional medicine is the way to go. But for cancer (except certain cancers where conventional medicine has exhibited very high percentage of cures - not 5 or 10 years of deathly survival but CURE) I would ordinarily seek out homeopathic cure (sorry, treatment) alongwith naturopathy, ayurveda & c - certainly NOT some of the chemotherapy treatments having poor cure rates); also depending on the specifics, some radiation therapy, gene therapy whenever it is approved.

First and foremost most people resort in the first instance to conventional medicine - very few to ALL other systems.

Homeopathy is the most sought after next only to systems recognised by conventional medicine - this when 99 percent of those seeking the homeopathic treatment have no idea WHATSOEVER how it works - some homeopaths have some ideas, but are not in a position to prove it. Neither do most of them attempt to explain how it works and mostly do not reveal the name of the remedy. Normally people turn to homeopathy only when they find no relief (or even worsening due to toxicity) with the conventional drugs.

Having said that I REPEAT that homeopathy works. Two "anecdotal" instances:

1. In 1980s a case of haemmorhoids(operated with recurrence) cured by a homeopath in Srinagar(J&K), never suffered from that problem again - the person is a heavy drinker and continues to enjoy his drinks - prefers not to use homeopathy since the homeopath advised him that drinking and smoking make the remedies ineffective. Apparently he believes the homeopath!!

2. In 1979 I was posted at Srinagar(J&K) and suffered from severe IBS( stomach complaints ever since 1968 on account of drinking dirty river water during a 3 day training exercise) - the consultant senior medical specialist of the Army Base Hospital sent me back to the unit with 10 different drugs to take saying that if these do not work he would be left with no option but to board me out of service on medical grounds. Not finding any relief I approached the local medical specialist - I had never even heard of homeopathy, but this specialist, asked me to meet him after working hours at his residence - he gave me the address of an old homeopath in Srinagar who would give me some SUGAR PILLS. Disbelieving this whole business, I went anyway, since I had nothing to lose. Since 1979, I was cured (in just 3 weeks) - have never since taken even an aspirin - and currently at age 58 participated in two 42 km marathons in the last two years.

There are many more such cases - they would also be discounted on grounds of "anecdotal" or for being published in some "obscure" journal of complementary, alternate & c medicine.

There certainly are homeopaths who do not believe that homeopathic remedies work and so cases of giving conventional drugs would obviously be found off and on. This in no way detracts from the efficacy of homeopathy in the right hands and for the right purposes.

Just for the record the WATER POTENCIES work much much better than the SUGAR PILLS, so if any serious trials are carried out this be kept in view.The selection of the more characteristic / pathological remedies would also help in getting over some of the problems of the "homeopathic versus conventional medicine trial conundrum" whenever modalities can be agreed upon - but only after "indecipherable nonsense" has been deciphered!!

[Oualawouzou]

-Provings can't be replicated;
-Results from trials from a given medicine changes over time and depending on the person doing the proving;
-Effects on patients are unpredictable.

Is all the above correct?

Then how is homeopathy different from ingesting random substances until "something" happens? And how do you ascribe the "something" to the homeopathic remedy and not any other cause?

I will shake a stuffed koala over your head when you are sick. Sometimes, you'll get better. Sometimes, you'll get worse. It's hard to tell, really. Koalas are impredictable. How is this different from homeopathic remedies?

ETA: whenever modalities can be agreed upon

Since all our propositions for a protocol have been turned down, how about you give us a brief example of a protocol you would consider acceptable? It doesn't have to be thorough, we can work together on ironing out the details, but give us something that you wouldn't consider flawed from the get-go. You speak of tests, but we have no idea what kind of test could be carried out given the way the discussion is headed.

[manioberoi]

-Provings can't be replicated;
-Results from trials from a given medicine changes over time and depending on the person doing the proving;
-Effects on patients are unpredictable.

Is all the above correct?

Then how is homeopathy different from ingesting random substances until "something" happens? And how do you ascribe the "something" to the homeopathic remedy and not any other cause?

I will shake a stuffed koala over your head when you are sick. Sometimes, you'll get better. Sometimes, you'll get worse. It's hard to tell, really. Koalas are impredictable. How is this different from homeopathic remedies?

ETA:

Since all our propositions for a protocol have been turned down, how about you give us a brief example of a protocol you would consider acceptable? It doesn't have to be thorough, we can work together on ironing out the details, but give us something that you wouldn't consider flawed from the get-go. You speak of tests, but we have no idea what kind of test could be carried out given the way the discussion is headed.
All of the above are correct.
It is different from random because there is at any point in time a finite set of symptoms associated with the one remedy that is prescribed at one time - the homeopath matches these with what he observes- if deviations occur he moves on to the next remedy - each persons treatment would run an individual course, barring genus epidemicus - where a set of remedies would be applied to a population in an epidemic.

[Ivor the Engineer]

-Provings can't be replicated;
-Results from trials from a given medicine changes over time and depending on the person doing the proving;
-Effects on patients are unpredictable.

Is all the above correct?

Then how is homeopathy different from ingesting random substances until "something" happens? And how do you ascribe the "something" to the homeopathic remedy and not any other cause?

I will shake a stuffed koala over your head when you are sick. Sometimes, you'll get better. Sometimes, you'll get worse. It's hard to tell, really. Koalas are impredictable. How is this different from homeopathic remedies?

ETA:

Since all our propositions for a protocol have been turned down, how about you give us a brief example of a protocol you would consider acceptable? It doesn't have to be thorough, we can work together on ironing out the details, but give us something that you wouldn't consider flawed from the get-go. You speak of tests, but we have no idea what kind of test could be carried out given the way the discussion is headed.

The funny (sad really) thing is that most of the world's population would buy into it if someone with enough social standing recommended it.

[Oualawouzou]

All of the above are correct.
It is different from random because there is at any point in time a finite set of symptoms associated with the one remedy that is prescribed at one time - the homeopath matches these with what he observes- if deviations occur he moves on to the next remedy - each persons treatment would run an individual course, barring genus epidemicus - where a set of remedies would be applied to a population in an epidemic.

But that's precisely the problem.

Assuming that homeopathy does work, what is there to match if a remedy's action cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy? How can you match one thing with a second ever-changing, perpetually transforming other thing?

And to the risk of repeating myself: Since all our propositions for a protocol have been turned down, how about you give us a brief example of a protocol you would consider acceptable? It doesn't have to be thorough, we can work together on ironing out the details, but give us something that you wouldn't consider flawed from the get-go. You speak of tests, but we have no idea what kind of test could be carried out given the way the discussion is headed.

[Michael C]

A homeopathic proving can NOT be replicated - see my earlier posts. It would be impossible.

Then why bother doing it in the first place?

[manioberoi]

I've snipped out the bit where you constructed as many obstacles as you thought you needed to "get out of jail" ...



I did ask (in my original message to you) why you have to "come up with blocking tactics" ... and you didn't disappoint by providing an instant illustration. ;)

Why is it that you just keep coming up with problems, and never suggest solutions. If there is a flaw in the test ideas we present, why don't you improve the procedure to remove the flaw, rather than just moan about it? Is it because you are actually scared of what you might find out if such a test was properly conducted? :covereyes If you take me up on this offer, remember that a test should be a simple as possible, and as complex as necesary. Please don't just add complexity in order to cloud the issue.

OK - here we go again. Having to iterate around tweaking a test procedure while the woo creates obstacles each time they get cornered ...

There is no reason that the double blind trials have to be "short". I think that Hans' perspective would be that it would be nice to get a definitive answer as to the efficacy of homoeopathy as soon as possible (in our own life-times would be nice!) but maybe you aren't really interested in that. Why can't we conduct the controlled double blind test along "suitably long" time-scales if that is your latest objection?

Just out of interest, in all those papers you were so fond of flooding the message board with in your early posts ... you know - the ones that you claim supported your belief that homoeopathy works - what was the length of those trials from start to finish? Did you consider them all "long enough" because you like the reported results? Are any results you don't like not "long enough"? Think about it ... this is just creating a world where you can choose results, rather than observe them ... why do you need to do that? :rolleyes:

Remember, once we get past your latest invented obstacle, and you move on to the next ... you are the one proving that they have no interest in finding out the truth about homoeopathy ...

If it works ... great ... what's wrong with proving it to everyones satisfaction so we can get on with using it more and more.
If it doesn't work, then either you have been duped or are a charlatan.

I have said elsewhere that the present protocols for conventional medicine are not suited for homeopathic trials - also some collaborative efforts are ongoing between CCRH and AIIMS in India wherein homeopaths are being educated on the methodology followed in conventional medicine - as far as I know they are attempting a direct copy (using the ICMR Guidelines designed for conventional medicine directly) - not a good idea in my opinion - but it is a start - if at first, as I expect, the trials throw up some problems, I am sure the two entities will sit together and graduate to find a direct methodology more suited for homeopathic trials (eg not accepting smokers, coffee drinkers, since these substances have high propensity to cancel out the homeopathic effect) and acceptable to the searching scientific mind, (maybe a 6 month homeopathic trial treatment (require to include dietary and exercise control) of 20 to 30 individuals with a common set of lifestyle diseases (eg diabetes with high BP) - where the aggregate percentage of cure results could be set at say 50 percent with at least 20 percent fully cured within 6 months, would count for more than some blind infatuation with placebos and double blinding - I do not see why conventional medicine would have a problem here because a physical test of most homeopathic remedies would show placebo anyway).

[manioberoi]

Then why bother doing it in the first place?
Because it provides valuable information of currently obtained symptoms for interpreting the effects of administration of the homeopathic remedy.

[Oualawouzou]

Because it provides valuable information of currently obtained symptoms for interpreting the effects of administration of the homeopathic remedy.

But you have said yourself that these symptoms obtained at the time of proving very well may not be the ones obtained at the time the remedy is given, and furthermore that the symptoms felt by the prover very well may have nothing to do with the effects the remedy will have on the patient (ETA: or would have on the patient should he use the remedy at the exact same time the prover is doing the proving)... So why bother doing provings in the first place, since the data (I use that term loosely) is worthless to determine any future outcome?

[manioberoi]

Then why bother doing it in the first place?
That was a very important question. It does require a more detailed explanation

A proving is conducted with a remedy on a set of provers. The symptoms revealed are a function of:

-the remedy
-the potency of the remedy
-the environment
-the prover

While the first two are generally functions that would cause repeat symptoms, it is entirely a different matter when it comes to the last two - they are variable and hence the variation in the symptoms.

Next objection was that this is too random a system to be workable.

Yes, but in aggregating the random systems we are actually building up what is called the remedy picture - a full picture would require every person on earth to be proved in all environments- when we prove 10 in environment 'A' - a partial picture is built up - then later we prove 20 in environment 'B' - a more comprehensive picture is built up - this gives rise to the oft heard "well proven remedy" - it means simply that large number of provings have been conducted on the remedy.

More provings mean less chaos and more order - not more chaos as some of you thought.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

rather I am a proponent of ALL systems of healthcare that can justify the confidence of the public in their ability to cure.


Score 10 Kumars to me. Thank you. None of you were quick enough. They were just asking to be taken.

[krazyKemist]

1. In 1980s a case of haemmorhoids(operated with recurrence) cured by a homeopath in Srinagar(J&K), never suffered from that problem again - the person is a heavy drinker and continues to enjoy his drinks - prefers not to use homeopathy since the homeopath advised him that drinking and smoking make the remedies ineffective. Apparently he believes the homeopath!!

2. In 1979 I was posted at Srinagar(J&K) and suffered from severe IBS( stomach complaints ever since 1968 on account of drinking dirty river water during a 3 day training exercise) - the consultant senior medical specialist of the Army Base Hospital sent me back to the unit with 10 different drugs to take saying that if these do not work he would be left with no option but to board me out of service on medical grounds. Not finding any relief I approached the local medical specialist - I had never even heard of homeopathy, but this specialist, asked me to meet him after working hours at his residence - he gave me the address of an old homeopath in Srinagar who would give me some SUGAR PILLS. Disbelieving this whole business, I went anyway, since I had nothing to lose. Since 1979, I was cured (in just 3 weeks) - have never since taken even an aspirin - and currently at age 58 participated in two 42 km marathons in the last two years.

There are many more such cases - they would also be discounted on grounds of "anecdotal" or for being published in some "obscure" journal of complementary, alternate & c medicine.



Ok. First off, these two problems are known to resorb by themselves. IBS (if it was IBS, which itself is a quite fuzzy diagnosis) in particular can be managed quite well through diet. It also could have been an infection (...dirty water...) fought off naturally by the immune system. Without any help from homeopathy. Conventional medecine does take into account the body's hability to heal itself, contrarly to what many alt med proponents claim.

Second, a finding of that magnitude, backed by quality data, not anecdote, will always find a place in a quality journal. If one assumes the contrary, then one enters the realm of conspiracy theories (the big bad pharmas are controlling the good papers). Some good medical journals publish case studies, so the problem is not unique to homeopathy. What is the difference ? How do you transform anecdotes into data ? Simple: follow-up. The biggest difference between alt med practitionners and doctors is that doctors have the habit of following up all their patients. When you have follow-up, documentation, of all your cases (not only those that work, no cherry picking), then you can compile statistics. Data.

How is that impossible for homoepathy ? Is a homeopath unable to follow-up his/her patients ? To document every case ? To compile statistics ?

the Kemist

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

manioberoi,

Thus far people have been very polite to you, but there comes a point where just repeating the same stupid things despite irrefutable arguments to the contrary just becomes ridiculous.

Now read and answer the damn question;

Which do you want to admit, either homeopathy is scientifically testable or your entire clincal case record must be ignored? There is no third option. Which do you want to choose?

[krazyKemist]

(eg not accepting smokers, coffee drinkers, since these substances have high propensity to cancel out the homeopathic effect) and acceptable to the searching scientific mind, (maybe a 6 month homeopathic trial treatment (require to include dietary and exercise control) of 20 to 30 individuals with a common set of lifestyle diseases (eg diabetes with high BP) - where the aggregate percentage of cure results could be set at say 50 percent with at least 20 percent fully cured within 6 months, would count for more than some blind infatuation with placebos and double blinding - I do not see why conventional medicine would have a problem here because a physical test of most homeopathic remedies would show placebo anyway).

Ok, as long as the placebo group does not accept smokers and coffee drinkers too. Both groups have to be homogenized. Meaning having similar composition. And, the "infatuation" conventional medicine has with double-blinding is due to the placebo effect itself, the way people have of getting cured simply because they believe something is curing them. So to prove the claim that homeopathy has any effect at all, that it is not the placebo effect alone acting, there must be a placebo group, double-blinded. This is not about convincing us that something is a placebo with a physical test, but rather that a homeopathic remedy is not a placebo !

the Kemist

[Mojo]

Just for the record the WATER POTENCIES work much much better than the SUGAR PILLS


An interesting assertion, bearing in mind that pretty much all the homoeopathic remedies I've ever seen on sale have been in the form of sugar pills, and none have been in the form of "water potencies". Do you have any evidence to support this assertion? How much better do the water potencies work?

[Mojo]

And, the "infatuation" conventional medicine has with double-blinding is due to the placebo effect itself, the way people have of getting cured simply because they believe something is curing them.


Or of reporting a cure or improvement because they believe something is curing them, or, of course, that nasty habit patients have of simply getting better without any intervention...