Personally, I would much rather use a homeopathic or naturopathic doctor than go see an MD. Who are you to say that homeopathic pills misrepresent themselves? Because corporate America told you that? The corporate America that spends billions every year on pumping the market full of overpriced "medicine" that "helps" you and me? I say to each his own. Be smart. Make informed decisions. If you try something and it doesn’t work, try something else. And that works both ways. I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm right, per say, I'm just saying have some perspective.

Homeopathic is bullshit. It's fine for daily pain (in that it is unlikely to hurt you further), but for serious illnesses you need a doctor.

Please don't confuse naturopathy and homeopathy. Naturapathic medicine can legitimately help people. Again, it would be a crime to suggest to some with diabetes, HIV, cancer etc. to forgo conventional treatment an only use naturapathic medicine but it does certainly have a place in the large gamut of medical treatment

Homeopathy. does not help people. Homeopathy is a money grabbing scheme started and perpetuated by misinformed or dishonest people. Suggesting that someone should use snake oil instead of real proven medicine is not only quackery but is immoral.

"It's fine for daily pain"

As is tap water. The difference is that people aren't trying to make a buck by selling you tap water. And that is the *only* difference.

Please, let's differentiate two things:

Corporate america: Homeopathic drugs are a biiig business. Take a dump, put it in pills, call it cold relief: PROFIT!

Homeopathic vs Medicine: Medicine has gone through the scientific process. It has gone through double-blind tests to prove that it does what it does. Homeopathic drugs take a room full of people, say "this will cure their cold" and after half of them don't have a cold in a week, call it a success (granted, if they DIDN'T take the homeopathic drugs, they'd still have over 50% of the people cured, because the cold just ran its course).

Homeopathic drugs are not approved by the national FDA that certifies when drugs have been fully supported using the scientific method... meaning I can do just like I typed: Shit on the floor, put it in pills, sell it as a cold remedy, and reap in the profits.

lol @ xkcd..

"it isn't just lying, it's an example you'd make up for a child to show them why lying is wrong."

Such apt commentary doth Randall give us

@fk - S-u-r-e... Medicine is sooooooo safe. That's why there are recalls of various "safe" medications every year because some ass of a corporation pushed it to market and forced the FDA into apporving it without complete long term study of the potential side effects. Uh huh. Sorry, but "medicine" can be more dangerous than naturopathy.

Draug, Naturopathy does not equal homeopathy.

And just because there are flaws with the pharmaceutical industry (and there are many, many flaws) it does not justify how heinously dishonest homeopathy is.

Alas this is a multi-faceted problem.

@"Homeopathy. does not help people. "

actually there are scientific studies which show that people perform better when seeing a homeopathic practitioner.

In england and wales the NHS funds homeopathy, presumably on the basis of these studies.

The evidence seems to indicate that the treatment given by homeopathers get their results largely due to mind-body effects, which can be more powerful than drugs. (and more effective in some cases) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlFaIxTv1_w&feature=BFa&list=PLD7B0DBD8C28BDEA2&lf=edu - this video doesn't mention Homeopathy much, but it's really interesting...

The point being, Doctors have taken a sterile approach to treating ailments which neglects the person and making them feel better, which can improve the body's ability to heal itself. When you are worried that you are sick and need to visit a doctor this has a direct impact on your body and your biochemistry, something which modern medicine has largely ignored in favour of technical/chemical interventions.

Lastly some things which i've taken which are sold by homeopaths do work (but are not themselves dissolved thousands upon thousands of times) arnica cream, for example, is something which i have seem labeled as a Homeopathic product, but which is actually a neurotoxin which causes capillaries to open, increasing blood flow and thus helping healing (so reducing the discolouration of a surface bruise)

It actually works, but is labelled as homeopathy (at least where i've seen it)

@Draug, yeah, i've seen some examples of pharma companies doing drug trials against previous (but now out of patent) treatments, and rigging the trial by increasing the dosage of the older drug to make it look like it has worse side-effects. Thus resulting in a possibly worse drug, which happens to be under patent and therefore is profitable, coming onto the market.

All the more reason to remove the profit motive from the people paid to develop our drugs... :)

Given that most vitamin supplements do little more than make your pee orange, (or otherwise be filtered out of system, perhaps in sweat) and some homeopathic remedies actually do work, i think there needs to be better education (either of the general public or of someone dealing with public health - and i suggest not doctors because the tendency to develop a superiority complex leads to treating patients like shit and worse results... they need to take the patch adams approach perhaps) And a whole new looks at 'natural' alternatives... with the myth that 'natural equals good' being squashed at the same time...

So, because the review process for medicine has loopholes and safety checks might kick in late, it's better to go with stuff that doesn't undergo anything of that sort at all. S-u-r-e.

@Ulytau, yes, sometimes it is better to prescribe a placebo.

The fact is placebo's have been shown to have a greater effect when you prescribe double the number of pills.

I'm not sure if similar effects have been shown with homeopathic remedies, where they claim more dilute equals stronger... but in effect you can tell someone, "oh, i'll prescribe you the 1 million dilutions for that, not the normal 30 thousand"

You can also get anti-placebo effects, when you prescribe a placebo but tell the patient that there are some side-effects, and they feel these negative effects from what really does almost nothing.

Common practice in medicine can include telling patients about all the possible harmful side-effects of a drug, which can infact induce them. So what is the best practice?

I think orath brings up a good point.

A lot of people hate visiting doctors and a lot of doctors don't do much to comfort or calm their patients. This stress can have a very negative affect on the body, especially when it's already weak from some aliment. While I believe the physiological benefits of most homeopathy is balderdash, I think there is a definite psychological benefit to be had.

Homeopathy as in a doctor who practices trying to make your body heal naturally vs loading you with medicine
is not the same as
homeopathy that is the drugs you get like "Salmon Sperm, shown to increase the testosterone levels of men and make you more muscular without steroids!!!"

Or "FK's magical tonic! It'll heal what ails ya!"

Actually, I just bottle my piss, but people swear by it!

I'm not a defender of big pharma in general, but I will say that a lot of the recalls are from either something wholly unexpected with a small segment of the population that wasn't in the trials or from long term side effects that aren't noticeable in the clinical period. Very rarely is it the case that a smoking gun indicates the company knew about it all along, with the Merck COX-2 case being the obvious one. But all it takes is one big press case to convince everyone that the actions that happened in it are typical.

@FK - you do know that urine is great for alleviating sea urchin stings, right? And meat tenderizer works great on jellyfish stings.

Orathaic, placebo is no homeopathy nor naturopathy. Placebo is an instrument of standard medicine for which clinical tests showed no measurable effect on human body in itself. The psychosomatic effect is induced by an interaction between doctor's soft skills and patient's mind. If the only area where homeopaths outshine doctors is soft skills and therefore their usage of placebo treatment (if we assume that whatever diluted fortknox's piss homeopaths use doesn't actually have any side-effects) nets better results, it's a very weak defense for that practise. Kind words and human approach can be utilized by doctors and nurses as well.

ps: i hate people who post about XKCD on a tuesday, because i only let myself read webcomics on the weekend and thus i have to wait at least 4 days to figure out what they're on about... (i know it's very sad)

also: http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science.html

Only on weekends?

You need to live a little, man!

@Ulytau, all homeopathy which shows medical benefits can be assumed to be the placebo effect in action.

"Kind words and human approach can be utilized by doctors and nurses as well."

Yes, and it is a sad state of affairs when doctors are outperformed by homepathers due to their poor appreciation of these soft skills and over emphasis on pharma=chemical effect while ignoring the ability to enhance the immune system using psychosomatic effects.

The evidence for any homeopathic remedy actually having an effect is weak (at best). Certainly, the meta-analyses (analysises??) I'm familiar with show no effect beyond placebo.

The fact it's even partly funded on the NHS in the UK is a scandal.

While 'conventional' (i.e proven to work) medicine is not without it's flaws (partial reporting, findings that were not part of the original aim, dodgy comparisons), at least new treatments have to have demonstrated efficacy to some degree. All treatments should have to pass the same benchmarks. Outside of the existing data, the fact that the homeopathy industry doesn't submit their treatments to proper double-blinded testing is telling. After all, if it works, proof would be up there with Newton, Darwin, Einstein, watson/Crick in the pantheon of scientific greats. Until then, homeopaths are, as far as I can tell, making money by selling people something that not only doesn't work, cannot possibly work my any mechanism that chimes with our current understanding of science. That's immoral at the best, and should be illegal - if you want to make claims of efficacy (in any industry) you should have the data to back it up. (L'Oreal - I'm coming after your shampoo bollocks as well ;) )

Everyone should read 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre - a marvellous attack on all poor science (including Big Pharma)

"...The difference is that people aren't trying to make a buck by selling you tap water...."

HA ha ha!! give me a break! Please walk through a grocery store and tell me how many brands of expensive water you can buy....water that came out of a tap in a bottling plant, by the way, as opposed to being filled by bathing beuaties and fearies at a hidden magical spring.

Couple that with the nonsensical push by ...by who?????....that you need *at least* 8 glasses of water per day...and your tap water is bad... (When any reasonabl eperson knows you need water when you are *thirsty*, as opposed to some forced, government-suggested volume.

By the same token, Doctor's push mediciations, NOT healthy lifestyles. It's a racket. I think people need to go to doctors, but looking at alternative methods to stay healthy is also *highly* suggested.

@krellin - I agree that looking for alternatives makes sense, but pick ones that work (exercise, diet) rather tahn those that don't (homeopathy, acupuncture etc)

I recommend vitamin D3 and vitamin C. Most people who come down with the flu nd cold have a deficiency of D3 and C helps build the immune system. Plus D3 helps the body process calcium to fight osteopyrosis and osteoarthritis.

Draug - you should be able to get all the vits you need through a balanced diet

'as far as I can tell, making money by selling people something that not only doesn't work, cannot possibly work my any mechanism that chimes with our current understanding of science.'

As far as i can tell, they are making money not by something which doesn't work, but by selling people peace of mind, which does infact work.

I believe the placebo effect has been demonstrated in many scientific studies.


Notably, cosmetics in the EU (and i presume the US aswell) are not required to undergo clinical trials, and as such can't claim to have anything other than a cosmetic effect. (thus anti-wrinkle cream, if it worked, would need to have a clinical trial)

@Krellin, and 'at least' 8 glasses of water, actually, i believe the World Health Organisation (WHO, as you said) recommend 2 litres of water per day, (it is 8 litres if you include water used for sanitation) but if you read the recommendation it states that you get most of this 2 litres from your food. (i guess that depends on your diet)

And of course, it seems to go without saying that the actual amount of water will also depend on how much water you lose to sweat, which depends heavily on your climate.

@Draug, i don't think there is any definitive studies which show that you can do anything to cure the common cold. though prevention may help... i'd imagine actually knowing that you have a V D3/C deficiency would be of more useful piece of information than knowing that you come down with a cold of flu...

I stand corrected, Yonni. I was just not excluding the possibility that there is the occasional remedy that actually does some bit of good.

@Pete - I agree, but my diet isn't always so balanced... And one needs to alter their diet as they age. For instance, more milk for women over 45 is a good thing (my wife drinks tons), but as a diabetic, I can tell you milk can make it hard to control the blood sugar, so a supplement helps to reduce the added sugar intake.