Sorry about that.

"Homeopathy" and "wellness" are words that make my eyebrow scrape the ceiling.

So I'm going to add to your rant (in a sort of reverse-homeopathic way).
What really annoys me about homeopathy is that most people using it have no idea how bizarre and implausible it really is. Even though almost all alternative medicine is complete hokum, at the most basic level it is at least plausible because you are giving some chemical which could conceivably exert some physiologic effect on the body. Homeopathy, on the other hand, is simply magic. It is exceedingly implausible that it could work, and all properly randomised, placebo controlled double-blind trials show that it has an effect indistinguishable from placebo.

Homeopathy is almost a litmus test for the scientific literacy of a community. A reasonably bright and educated 10-year old could immediately poke holes in its tissue-paper logic, and it is alarming that still exists, let alone be as popular as it is.

I could go on for hours, but believers will believe, regardless of the evidence. (And before someone accused science of being just as blinkered, take a look at a medical textbook from even just 20 years ago to see how much medical practices are constantly updated and changed as new evidence comes in and research is done.)

you will not be requiring tickets to this event next month in Manchester. I've had the pleasure to attend these in the past but only as a custodian of the venue.

http://www.mindbodyspirit.co.uk/northern/

Oh look, the mystic flautist Tim Wheater will be performing...again. Who? Surely any music fan would be familiar with Tim's work.

Tim Wheater has co-presented alongside some of the worlds finest authors, healers and authors: A veritable 'Who's Who' including Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Neale Donald Walsch, James Redfield, Timothy Leary, Eurythmics, Donovan, The Grateful Dead and Sir Simon Rattle.

Oh THAT Tim Wheater.

Probably not, no.

Looks dreadful, but the point is I don't have a problem with this nonsense if it restricts itself to making modest claims, such as following this or that advice will make you feel better. It's another thing entirely to claim that wearing crystals, or eating flower remedies, will make you better.

On the other hand, it all adds to the gaiety of nations. And if it upsets the religeous, as I'm sure it will, then all to the good.

Alternative medicine has either not been proved to work or has been proved NOT to work.

Do you know what they call alternative medicine that works??? MEDICINE.

As long as they don't try to enforce their beliefs on others. I have as little time for Richard Dawkins and his ilk as I do for religious zealots.

My view of homeopathy is the same; if some people believe it works for them then that's fine as long as they don't try and tell me what to think. The corollary to this is, of course, that people are allowed to believe it doesn't work so long as they don't take an "I'm right, they're wrong" attitude.

My understanding is that some people believe homeopathy works for them; that's fine - the placebo effect is very powerful.

I'd be VERY interested to see if anyone comes on this thread to try and defend it

The only argument I have with your post is that it is lazy. The whole anti-homepathy thing has been done to death by millions of mini-Goldacres all over the net.

or do I really not understand

but I do have a problem with people selling stuff that has no evidential basis for claiming benefits that many of these remedies claim. If you are claiming a product has a benefit, back it up with correctly researched data, not opinion.

Now if they were giving it away, I'd have less of a problem.

if you want it to.

We're back on the subject of faith again, and one of the properties of faith is that once a non-scientific belief is adopted, very few people renounce it - indeed they tend to adapt subsequent events to reinforce it.

So by all means shove people a handful of mystical bollocks, and if they swallow it, chances are it will do them good. They might, for example, obsess less about minor physical niggles, convinced the pills have had an effect. At the very least this will keep the queues down the doctor's surgery.

People believe in all kinds of weird stuff; crystals, angel feathers, lay lines, magic carpenters; in each case, it's not the stuff itself that comforts them, it's the believing. So let them believe.

... at a homeopathic hospital for my eczema on the NHS. At that age my hands were like stumps; holding a pencil hurt and during one memorable exam, when I had 5 essays to write in a day, there was actual blood all over the paper. This was really nasty stuff.

The trip didn't clear it up. Frankly I'm stuck with it for the rest of my life. But I could flex my fingers within a fortnight on ongoing treatment, which at that time was a major leap forward. Now I am aware that there is such a thing as a placebo effect and it's most likely that that is what happened. But what bothers me is why didn't any of the actual medicine succeed in producing even a placebo effect earlier on? I had been treated in so many different ways that I had no more faith, if that's the correct word, in homeopathy, than I did in any of my numerous other treatments. But something did happen and I can't account for that.

Intellectually I fully accept that homeopathy is baloney. But the eczema which blighted my entire childhood didn't start to come under control until that trip.

I tell my kids there are good hippies and bad hippies.

Bad hippies reduce pretty quickly to irrational health and green fascists who use bad arguments to try and defend their pompous claims to making the world better. They tend to like dreary music, appalling food, and patronise developing nations.

Then there are good hippies. These are do-it-yourself hedonist libertarians often pretty pro-science and technology who make the world better one step at a time, leading by example. They are indifferent to politics except to reduce it's control on life. They innovate, indulge (in every sense), and don't think poverty and suffering is a spiritual virtue.

Hawkwind - good: San Francisco strummers - bad.

I used to take illicit sips of my parents homeopathic remedies when I was a kid, and top up the levels with water. They never noticed.

My favourite Placebo effect - Running Up That Hill

How about them chiropractors eh?

(gets coat - runs and hides under bridge)

Oh well.

...it's possible to look to Viz's Top Tips for guidance:

HOMEOPATHS. Save money on petrol by filling up at the water pump. Your car will remember the petrol from your previous fill.

I'm a medic, I practice Evidence Based Medicine, this means I try to keep my medical knowledge at the forefront by constantly reading and assessing information presented in published medical papers. Homeopathy is a slightly sore point for me, there is very little published evidence that holds up to a critical review in favour of many of the homeopathic treatments which exist, and yet I have patients who swear by it. The problem comes in that there is little evidence surrounding homeopathy full stop.
In my opinion this means that the bigger problem is that these remedies may actually work! I use multiple drugs in my patients which were derived from a study of certain compounds which exist within the natural world - take for example a simple aspirin - the active compound was first found to functionally exist within Willow. Therefore I can conceivably believe, that it is possible some functional elements may exist in homeopathic remedies... and this worries me. Every time I prescribe my patient a drug I use a drug which is licensed - this means it has under gone extensive testing to determine not only efficacy but every other impact it may have on the human body either in pure state or metabolised - we know toxic limits and have a therapeutic index at which we know the drug is safely efficacious. Therefore, if homeopathy does turn out to be 'bollocks' I have no problem with it, infact I may actually support it's expense if it has psychological benefits for my patients, if however, homeopathy really works, then I have concern that my patients may be taking active agents with a lack of sufficient knowledge and evidence as to what else they do in the body. As I said before, more evidence definitely needed before I'm happy with homeopathy.

I'm not in any way suggesting homeopaths are putting people at risk, many homeopaths and doctors practice safe homeopathy on as much evidence as currently exists. I just mean that I think perhaps, just as each new drug is researched, tested and licenced before it enters the market, the scientist in me would like to see the same regulations apply to homeopathic remedies and the people distributing them.

Facts are black, ignorance is white. Most of "all human life is there" is grey, this being where most of us, including Drs and homeopaths, live and work. Much as I desire facts, I also relish my/our collective ignorance in things that shouldn't happen but do. And those that should that don't. I don't mind that the map of mecicine has taken me to many places where I am still completely lost. I can live with not knowing everything.
Clear?

That is all.

Ok. Let's leave aside the debate of whether homeopathy 'really works' and focus instead on the fantastic and irrational claims made by its proponents concerning its mode of action - ie, how they claim it works.

Homeopathic medicines are manufactured by 'potentising' a liquid herb or mineral concentrate by a process of dilution. One part of the liquid is diluted with nine parts of pure water, and then mixed well by rhythmic movements. These are supposed to be essential to the process, although how this works or why this is important has not demonstrated.

After one dilution, the potency of the remedy is called D1. This process can be repeated and so after two dilutions the remedy is now called D2, and so on. Most preparations are in the range of D1 to D50 (the highest potency I've heard of is D1500). Therefore, the greater the dilution, the less the active ingrediant.

Not only this, but the efficay of these potions is said to increase with further dilution - 'the law of infinitesimals' - meaning that the exact same substance is more powerful at D50 than at D10! And before you all chorus 'what a load of bollocks', consider this: homeopathists claim that the water molecules have properties that allow them to 'remember' which substances they have encountered in the past. How this 'memory' is enhanced with further dilution is something the homeopathists won't, or can't, tell us. This is what I meant when I originally said that anyone who can demonstrate how this works, contrary to all the known laws of science, would get a Nobel Prize, no question. No-one has.

And not only that. Let's look a little deeper at this whole process of dilution/potentising. This is an extraordinary claim and it therefore requires extraordinary proof. The mathematics and chemistry involved is at GCSE level or lower, so any scientifically literate or numerate person should be able to make the same calculations and arrive at the same results, more or less.

How much water is needed to make, say, a D40 solution that contains an active ingrediant? The answer is astonishing. The required volume of water exceeds the "volume" of our entire solar system. Not convinced? Work it out! And there's more. Only an infinitesimal amount of the original herb concentrate actually comes to use. The rest goes down the plug hole, for good or bad. Well, down the plug hole it may end up anywhere in due time; in your bathroom tap, in your cup of tea, for example, only in which case it will then be much more diluted, and hence even more powerful.

But I digress. The important point I was originally attempting to make is that homeopathic medicaments are claimed to work in a fashion that makes their effects virtually impossible to test, or, more scientifically speaking, it is very difficult (if not impossible, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt) to isolate any variables that may be impacting on the process.

For example, the underlying principle of homeopathic medicines is that they activate the body's own immune system by exposing it to infinitesimally small quantities of some active substance or(and here comes the Magic Bit) to the memory of it. The substance is believed to induce symptoms similar to those of the disease itself, or as they would have it, treating like-with-like. Of course, this would explain why the patient will continue to feel worse for a while before they get better. Which is useful.

What the homeopaths cannot tell you is how the the immune system more easily detects and interprets the information-carrying water molecules more easily than the disease itself. And of course, this does not take into account any other subtances, curative or otherwise, that the water may have been exposed to. Plus, since it is the immune system that is doing all the work, the recovery / healing time is usually rather long which means that there is no way one can exclude the possibility of spontaneous remission, and therefore double-blind tests become impossible to carry out.

Is the memory hypothesis even testable at all? What if water molecules actually have physical or even (shudder) spiritual properties that allow them to remember and pass on information? Sounds nice, especially if you throw in a few half-understood scientific red herrings like Quantum Physics, or Parallel Universes. But, another scientific implausibility arises. Most homeopathic remedies come in the form of sugar pills. Sugar pills are dry. The memory therefore must somehow have been transferred from the water to the sugar before the evaporation occured.

Eh? So other molecules can also carry memories!? This means that irrespective of the sugar's purity, it is very likely that the sugar molecules themselves carried information, somehow intelligible to the body, before the saturation with the homeopathic solution took place.

And what about the air we breathe, the food we eat, the gum we chew, etc? What memories do they possess? And what happens if one ingests an otherwise toxic substance that carries a memory of a potent healing agent - do the opposite effects cancel one another?

I could go on. But, enough, already. It's nothing personal. I just don't like seeing vulnerable people being led up the garden path and being ripped off.

...is this thread telling me that there AREN'T fairies at the bottom of the garden?

I had catarrh for many years - I saw a conventional specialist, who prescribed a nasal spray, which I used for a while, but it made no difference. I consulted a friend who is a qualified homeopath (she's done the most rigorous examinations advocated by the discipline) and she prescribed mercury. Within two days my nose was running, non-stop, and completely unexpectedly - and stayed clear for about 3 years afterwards. When it began to block again, I consulted her, and she prescribed something else - it didn't work at all.

I know this is only anecdotal, but it worked for me - once.
1) Conventional medicine treats symptoms rather than the underlying cause - shouldn't it be trying to treat the cause, as homeopathy does?
2) Why does homeopathy work on animals (apparently), who should be immune to the placebo effect?

I know it makes no sense at all: why should your body recognise that the salt remaining in the homeopathic pills is different from the salt in your food? So I don't have an opinion, but I give it the benefit of the doubt - so many 'old wives' tales' seem to work.

If you have any interest in this debate, read this. It is complicated but very,very important if you want to get a couple of fingers in the cliff-face of evidencial analysis.

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/03/should-cochrane-call-for-more-re...

(Can't remember who):-

Did you hear about the homeopathic patient that died of an overdose?

He stopped taking his medicine.

On the one hand, it is always entertaining to point and laugh at the wilfully ignorant (not the stupid, who can't help it). On the other hand, some of these people are probably making decisions that have an effect on our lives. And no doubt bringing the same robust, evidence-based approach to bear. Yikes.

Well, it did for me. Eczema on hands for years, conventional meds only made it go away for a bit, then it came back (plus thinning of the skin - thanks!). Homoeopathy cured it, haven't had it for 20 years now.

Just because we can't measure the substance in the remedy, it doesn't mean it's not there...

Don't forget, we used to think the Earth was the centre of the universe (shortly after we thought it was flat..!)

Well, it did for me. Eczema on hands for years, conventional meds only made it go away for a bit, then it came back (plus thinning of the skin - thanks!). Homoeopathy cured it, haven't had it for 20 years now.

Just because we can't measure the substance in the remedy, it doesn't mean it's not there...

Don't forget, we used to think the Earth was the centre of the universe (shortly after we thought it was flat..!)

Just because we can't measure the substance in the remedy, it doesn't mean it's not there...

I think you'll find it does

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-11475061

(if only that was the score)

Homeopathy from about 1.14 (though it's all worth watching).

This dropped into my Instapaper account a few weeks ago, and it blew me away. This woman was a big shot in the aura business, and very slowly realised everything she thought was true was wrong.

It made me realise that if there is a point in being a rationalist it is in showing other people that this is *really* how the world works. Understanding this woman is a powerful way in to others points of view.

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bridging_the_chasm_between_two_cultures/

One of the quangos being abolished is the Advisory Board on the Registration of Homeopathic Products.

The fact that this was established in the first place tells you everything you need to know about the last government.

I just read this article about some of the myths and arguments surrounding homeopathy. One of the most sensible pieces I've read on the subject.