[Closed] Beloved relatives posting pish about homopathy on FB.

""TheSwissgovernment hasa longand widely-respected history of neutrality, and therefore, reportsfromthisgovernment oncontroversial subjectsneed to be takenmore seriously than other reports""
This opening sort of gave the game away. Might as well have put here comes some rubbish please turn off any critical analysis.

Yeah http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathic-medicine-_b_1258607.html

I've spent the last hour or so checking out that report (admittedly not the original as I don't care quite enough to learn German). Are you aware of the many criticisms levelled at both the report and homeopaths' innacurate use of it?

Not that this necessarily negates all of what the report says, just that at the very least you should be careful of suggesting it shows homeopathy works better than placebo.

I don't like to get into tit for tat link posting but here are a few you might find interesting:

http://www.smw.ch/content/smw-2012-13594/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-swiss-report-on-homeopathy/
http://www.zenosblog.com/2012/05/that-neutral-swiss-homeopathy-report/

Thank you 6079smithw for prompting me to refine my understanding of this issue.

I'd be a bit circumspect about trying it since I learned this evening that one of the founding fathers of homeopathy was recently tragically killed. Apparently he died of an underdose.

I'll get my coat.

Fopster, an unbelievable truth. 😆 Wish my joke (above) had been as good.

flap_jack - Member

How do you test this ? How do you make a placebo for a placebo ?

You add more of the main ingredients, to make it no longer homeopathic.

Thank you 6079smithw for prompting me to refine my understanding of this issue.

If nothing else 6079smithw's posts do remind me to be more careful about believing things without checking them out for myself first.

It's accidental though I think

Because all the stuff I've recently checked out for myself that turned out to be complete bollocks, have been things that he's posted

Anyone who wants to test their internal bullshit meter needs to read this http://www.brainspotting.pro/page/what-brainspotting apparently written by its founder David Grand PhD,i.e. Doctor of Philosophy not medicine.

In the spirit of homeopathy (and STW) I've only read the original post and then been careful not to read all of it therefore having only a very diluted understanding of what has been said and thus am now in the perfect position to offer a full opinion.

OP look at it like this - the more she relies on homeopathy the sooner she'll be dead and leaving you something nice in her will.

There is a Terry Pratchett quote about water that has passed through so many kidneys and is therefore extremely pure that seems fitting.

Anyone who wants to test their internal bullshit meter needs to read this

“Brainspotting is based on the profound attunement of the therapist with the patient, finding a somatic cue and extinguishing it by down-regulating the amygdala. It isn’t just PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) activation that is facilitated, it is homeostasis.” -- Robert Scaer, MD, “The Trauma Spectrum”

Here be woo woo.

As I previously said all doctors must study fairy dust sugar pills to quailfy.

This looks a bit noodley:

I love the Daily Mash take on Homeopathy

Available on Amazon

[url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/Daily-Mash-Homeopathy-Shirt-Large/dp/B008EKJRWK ]In all sizes[/url]

Hey, I get why you're all sceptical about homeopathy. Your education, the news, the mainstream science reports and articles... I get it.

I just wish you had the same level of scepticism towards the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical corporations who, guess what, would rather you take their pills than try something natural that thay can't profit from. Prescription drugs kill more people than illegal drugs and road traffic accidents.
Therefore you should be happy your relative isn't popping toxic pills.

Anyway, back to homeopathy. It works. Since science is highly politcised, which of course it shouldn't be, no you're not gonna see a mass admission about this from the mainstream. Criminals try hard to not incriminate themselves you know.

Those saying there's no evidence of it working... well there is of course, otherwise why would it still be in existence?
And it's not placebo because it works on animals.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/15/homeopathy-works-scientific-evidence

You are Kaesae and I claim my £5.

Live and let live.
Why get so frothed about it?
[img] [/img]

If someone had given the Dude a homeopathic white Russian I bet he'd be pretty pissed off

Hey, I get why you're all sceptical about homeopathy. Your education, the news, the mainstream science reports and articles... I get it

No mate, just the evidence of a couple of hundred years of the application of scientific method which has brought us from dying like flies as kids or in our 30s and 40's and getting around the world staring at the back end of a horse to the comfortable 21st century lifestyles and enhanced lifespans we enjoy now.

Those saying there's no evidence of it working... well there is of course, otherwise why would it still be in existence?

Anyway make sure you ask for [s]water[/s] the special medicine next time your ill. It will reduce the burden on the NHS.

I get it.

You asserted this on the aliens / crop circles thread. You were wrong then as well.

I just wish you had the same level of scepticism towards the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical corporations

Oh, we do. However, critically, the efficacy (or not) of Big Pharma is wholly independent from that of homeopathy. You can't prove something is good by holding up something that you believe is bad and arbitrarily comparing the two. A nailgun to the hand is better than one to the head, does that make the former suddenly desirable?

Prescription drugs kill more people than illegal drugs and road traffic accidents.

Evidence of that statement if you will, please. Ideally cross-referenced with statistics of how many people are saved by those same drugs.

Anyway, back to homeopathy. It works.

Evidence of that statement also, please. Because, you know, it really doesn't beyond placebo. (Note, a journalist's anecdotes are opinion, not evidence.)

I strongly recommend you read Ben Goldacre's books. The first, "Bad Science," will help you understand the scientific method and how testing these things is quite tricky (but important) to do well. His second is "Bad Pharma" which is an exposé on the pharmaceutical industry, you'd love it.

You are Kaesae and I claim my £5.

I'm pretty sure he isn't.

not 100% cougar?

If I remember correctly one of the key points was more to do with how long the average alternative consult last, up to an hour in some cases where somebody takes the time to listen to you, make you feel special etc. the positive mental support can make people feel much better and when dealing with a lot of modern minor medical complaints (viral infections etc. that are not treatable by antibiotics just time) you can leave feeling good and take some thing that magically cures what time would cure.

RE the guardian link:

The facts, it seems, are being ignored.

Or in this case, skewed.

By the end of 2009, 142 randomised control trials (the gold standard in medical research) comparing homeopathy with placebo or conventional treatment had been published in peer-reviewed journals

A staggeringly low amount of trials over 59 years.

74 were able to draw firm conclusions: 63 were positive for homeopathy and 11 were negative. Five major systematic reviews have also been carried out to analyse the balance of evidence from RCTs of homeopathy – four were positive (Kleijnen, J, et al; Linde, K, et al; Linde, K, et al; Cucherat, M, et al) and one was negative (Shang, A et al). It's usual to get mixed results when you look at a wide range of research results on one subject, and if these results were from trials measuring the efficacy of "normal" conventional drugs, ratios of 63:11 and 4:1 in favour of a treatment working would be considered pretty persuasive.

What about the other 68 studies? 'Statistically non-conclusive' - so 68 studies found there was no difference between placebos or usual/no treatment (not split out unfortunately)?

Also the report she linked to recommends:

New and independently conducted RCTs are essential to confirm or refute the currently available
research evidence in homeopathy for specific conditions. There is a need to enhance the quantity and
the quality of research on the effectiveness of individualised homeopathy, particularly in chronic
conditions, as well as on efficacy of specific homeopathic medicines compared with placebo. Future
trials must be statistically powered to ensure conclusions may be made about clinically relevant
effects.

Nice try though.

> You are Kaesae and I claim my £5.

I'm pretty sure he isn't.

I've spoken to my contact at Section 5 and he gave me a couple of surveillance stills.
6079smithw looks nothing like kaesae:

What do you give a homeopath for Christmas?

An empty box with the memory of the chocolates it once contained.

Anyhoo, let me reach over and find that Cochrane Review proving the efficacy of Homeopathy.......nope not here....nope not there either......must have been eaten by that unicorn.

Drug companies could easily make money from homeopathy if they wanted to. I can go to Boots and buy it, so someone already is making money.

There are loads of drugs being made and sold that are outside of copyright/patent. The only things any of our family has been prescribed since we've been together are amoxycillin, cocodamol and iron supplements, with other suggestions being paracetamol and ibuprofen. Pretty sure the GP wasn't getting pressure from big pharma to prescribe that stuff.

So the whole 'homeopathy is suppressed because drug companies won't make money' is bollocks.

Homeopathy is "drug" companies making money just the "drug " companies in question make and sell homeopathic products. Given the mark up on what is essentially water specialty treated by shaking it their proffits are huge hence the money and effort homeopaths put in to suing and gagging those who point out the lack of any actual. Evidence base for their claims.

you cycnics clearly one lot are evil sellers of drugs with no benefit to mankind and the others are evil sellers of drugs with no benefit to mankind
I know which lot I would choose to use were I ill though the morality of both lots is questionable

http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/a-kind-of-magic/

Like this line from it in particular:

With alternative therapists, when you point out a problem with the evidence, people don’t engage with you about it, or read and reference your work. They get into a huff. They refuse to answer calls or email queries. They wave their hands and mutter sciencey words such as “quantum” and “nano”. They accuse you of being a paid plant from some big pharma conspiracy. They threaten to sue you. They shout, “What about thalidomide, science boy?”, they cry, they call you names, they hold lectures at their trade fairs about how you are a dangerous doctor, they contact and harass your employer, they try to dig up dirt from your personal life, or they actually threaten you with violence (this has all happened to me, and I’m compiling a great collection of stories for a nice documentary, so do keep it coming).

Seems we're about halfway there at the moment, so I'll get the biscuits.

molgrips - Member

Drug companies could easily make money from homeopathy if they wanted to. I can go to Boots and buy it, so someone already is making money.

They do, in fact. But yeah, you can't fight paranoid claims about big pharma this way. Obviously they could make more money selling homeopathy than real medicine- it costs essentially nothing to produce, and you can sell it for more since by definition your main customer base is gullible. So just follow the money

What control is there on homeopathic drugs? If you're being sold a C30 dilution, what's to stop them conning you with an under strength C29 dilution?

A C30 Dilution, as advocated by Hahnemann for most purposes:

on average, this would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient.

Anyway, back to homeopathy. It works.

So I'm really not sure which of those two quotes to believe 😉
.

Of course there is [url= http://www.i-sis.org.uk/electromagneticSignalsFromHIV.php ]science[/url] behind it. As an aside, the evil pharmaceutical empires have extended the life expectancy of a newly diagnosed HIV patient by a mere trifle (40 years).

As an aside, the evil pharmaceutical empires have extended the life expectancy of a newly diagnosed HIV patient by a mere trifle (40 years).

Yeah but they are going to charge you money for those drugs so they can reinvest that money in finding new drugs. Words cannot express my anger at this.....

Of course there is science behind it. As an aside, the evil pharmaceutical empires have extended the life expectancy of a newly diagnosed HIV patient by a mere trifle (40 years).

That will be marvellous news for the millions affected in Africa. Oh...

Considering it costs ~£3bn or so to get a single drug (more for Biologics) through from discovery to approval, exactly why do you think big pharma charge for their drugs.
You do realise that if Pharma didn't do the research and find a lot of these drugs then no one would (or they would eventually).
Governments couldn't afford to speculate to the extent as pharma have to.
For every 1 compound approved, you get up to 3 through to clinical trials only to be rejected.
Guess what..... that costs money. Unlike little vials of diluted pseudo compound.
Feel free to keep taking water, however by the principles of homeopathy you are definately drinking piss at all times.

Who are you talking to?

GrahamS - Member
I've spoken to my contact at Section 5 and he gave me a couple of surveillance stills.
6079smithw looks nothing like kaesae

If you are asking me, i am currently talking to the air as it contains the essence of my fiancee who went to bed half an hour ago. I fear it may not be diluted enough yet so I may shut up for a while

6079smithw - Member
GrahamS - Member
I've spoken to my contact at Section 5 and he gave me a couple of surveillance stills.
6079smithw looks nothing like kaesae
Cyberbullying is a crime.
Who moderates this forum? I would like a word.

You might also want to pop a wanted ad out for a sense of humour...

Cyberbullying is a crime.

Only if you're American.

Who moderates this forum? I would like a word.

I can't possibly imagine.

There's a "report post" link under every comment which will bring it to the attention of the volunteer moderation team. I initially ignored Graham's post as I assumed it was a random image off the Internet posted for comedy value; if it's not then I'm happy to delete it for the sake of an easy life. This will happen faster if you report it and detail your objection.

On reflection,

I've edited the post.

Ok thanks Cougar

Back to the non-personal critiquing of responses to the thread topic.

Homeopathy shouldn't work because diluting things loads means there's virtually nothing left, and the idea of something being more effective the more diluted it gets sounds mental. And it reminds me of one of Pratchett's funny descriptions of Rincewind being outnumbered in a Discworld novel - something like "homeopathic warfare".

See - I do get it.

But there are people other than me out there who say it works and also there are people far more qualified than I am who will say it works beyond placebo effect.

Now, let's say you can suspend your belief and temporarily go along with the idea that homeopathy works and works beyond the placebo effect.
For it to work it would have to involve some kind of principle or process hitherto unknown to the scientific community at large and/or at odds with what we know so far.

We can agree with that right?

If it could be demonstrated that water has memory, that would mean the basis for homeopathy not working would have to be re-thought at least, shirley
http://themindunleashed.org/2013/07/new-research-supports-theory-that-water.html

But there are people other than me out there who say it works and also there are people far more qualified than I am who will say it works beyond placebo effect.

Homeopathy shouldn't work because diluting things loads means there's virtually nothing left, and the idea of something being more effective the more diluted it gets sounds mental.

Not to me. The none homeopathic drugs I give are diluted some as much 1:10,000 they work as well and not because an evil corporation tells me they do either.

I've had homeopathic fans who have said they don't want anything for the pain as they've had the diluted water, they've sat there in agony. Once I've offered them a guarantee that I can take that away they soon give up and accept the pharmaceutical drug, I wonder if they then give up all together once they've tried the pain relief.

If it could be demonstrated that water has memory, that would mean the basis for homeopathy not working would have to be re-thought at least, shirley

If water has a memory surely given it's central role in life on earth the water cycle and the age of the planet. Then all water molecules in existence will already have bumped into all active homeopathic compounds so tap water will in effect be a homeopathic cure all and we should not waste our time and money on the commercial version.

He shoots. He scores.

If water picks up the imprint of whatever it is in contact with then as soon as it touches your body it picks up the memory of you. Hey presto, homeopathic auto-immunedisease.

And as water is just 2 hydroxyl groups back to back, the same as is found in alcohols, it could explain why alcohol makes you lose your memory. The watery bit steals it.

6079smithw - Member
But there are people other than me out there who say it works and also there are people far more qualified than I am who will say it works beyond placebo effect.

Like the woman in that guardian link you posted who selectively quoted a report to make it look like that was the conclusion?

Didn't Hitler get started by not allowing anybody to hold views different to his own.

Ramsey wins!

[img] http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTLkugy9PSxXsNimG5xPPF4Jng_Eii9TZmULPbMhYjOWuT2Hzrgto_A3Sio [/img]

A completely natural Godwin.

Just beautiful.

And as water is just 2 hydroxyl groups back to back, the same as is found in alcohols, it could explain why alcohol makes you lose your memory. The watery bit steals it.

*applauds*

It's getting pretty rare these days to see one in the wild rather than in captivity. You're quite right though, it's a beautiful sight and well worth the wait.

I think they should shut the internet down for the day, there's nothing left to be done.

Besides, I thought Hitler got started by losing a testicle and it being displayed in a museum over here and him being really peeved about that and then going off his head a bit and declaring war on us and then shooting himself on a golf course in the sand bunker.

Or something.

Cyberbullying is a crime.

I'm sorry if that image made you feel bullied 6079smithw - that was not my intention. Like some others, I thought you might be kaesae returning under a different name, as you have similar views and posting styles.

A quick google suggested that you clearly weren't him, so I posted that "surveillance image" of you simply as a jokey way to refute it.

No offence or bullying was intended. I'm sorry if you felt it was. 😳

Back to the non-personal critiquing of responses to the thread topic.

Okay. Unless a lot of details are missing then even to a non-scientist such as myself this "experimental evidence of water-memory" which you posted earlier has some fairly enormous holes in the experimental technique:

So the drop "structure" looked different amongst the group, but was similar for each experimenter. Okay.

Did each experimenter use one or multiple droppers? One or multiple water sources? One or multiple sample plates? Did they make all experimenters drop from exactly the same height? Did they try sharing sample plates, water or droppers?

there are people other than me out there who say it works

There are plenty of people who say all manner of things. This does not make any of them any more correct.

and also there are people far more qualified than I am who will say it works beyond placebo effect.

Define "qualified." There are plenty of people with a vested interest in saying it works, saying it works. Be that the ones making money, the ones who want to save face after wasting money on it, and the ones like yourself who seem to just desperately want to believe in something. It's not a great shock to expect that a "qualified" homeopath is going to tell you how great homeopathy is.

Now, let's say you can suspend your belief and temporarily go along with the idea that homeopathy works and works beyond the placebo effect.
For it to work it would have to involve some kind of principle or process hitherto unknown to the scientific community at large and/or at odds with what we know so far.

You've got the cart before the horse here. You're right that for it to work beyond placebo it would have to be some mechanism that we've not isolated yet, but [i]how [/i]it works is a secondary concern to [i]if [/i]it works. The claimed mechanism is not the showstopper from a scientific perspective (it just makes it extremely unlikely); the problem is that irrespective of how it might or might not work, it doesn't. Homeopathy does not stand up to double-blind trials beyond placebo. It's that simple.

Whether water has a memory, whether it's the work of Jesus, whether it's innate alien technology or whether it's hitherto undiscovered nanobots, none of this matters, because, fundamentally, it does not work. So investigating how it works is an exercise in futility.

--

If water has a memory surely given it's central role in life on earth the water cycle and the age of the planet. Then all water molecules in existence will already have bumped into all active homeopathic compounds so tap water will in effect be a homeopathic cure all and we should not waste our time and money on the commercial version.

Ah, but, you've not shaken it in a special way.

For it to work it would have to involve some kind of principle or process hitherto unknown to the scientific community at large and/or at odds with what we know so far.

We can agree with that right?

Yes. Well actually, hell no. You can't make something true by saying "It's not true, but lets say it's true and that it's actually unverifiable or proven to be not true because we don't know enough of that pesky science stuff to find out that it's true". Your assertion holds true for pretty any belief held which is unverifiable and is a cheap get-out clause for people who don't want to acknowledge reality.

If I said fairies and ogres and trolls ( 😆 ) were real but science hadn't discovered them yet, I'd be rightly cast as a mentalist.

So what you're saying is that it's true that scientists haven't proven that fairies don't exist? In a thousand years of scientific inquiry, not one of them has succeeded in proving that fairies are made up? I think that speaks for itself...

this thread is still going?

pass the biscuits, I've got a fresh mug of tea

I've got a fresh mug of tea

So what you're saying is that it's true that scientists haven't proven that fairies don't exist?

No. I'm saying that despite science saying they DON'T exist, my belief that they do means that there's just something at work that science doesn't understand therefore it's normal they haven't found fairies yet. Actually, given the thread, lets spell that as faeries.

Science doesn't say they don't exist. Science says that we've never seen any evidence that they exist or anything tangible that actually suggests that they might exist. If something tangible came along (like a video of fairies that could be shown not to have been faked) then science would start coming up with theories about how that could be and then try and prove or disprove those theories.

Homeopathy has never been shown to work beyond placebo so there is nothing to try and prove and it is reasonable to say that it doesn't work.

On a serious note here...
I just had a glass of water, which tasted suspiciously like Cameron Diaz's urine.
Interestingly, there's likely to be more of Cameron Diaz's urine in a glass of tap water, than there is to be any 'active' substance in a single dosing of 100c homoeopathic 'medicine'.

Not sure if I feel sick. or aroused.

DrP

(thinking about it, there's likely to be an equal mix of Ms Diaz's urine as there is of Binner's urine, so it's definitely sick i feel...)

[i]tasted suspiciously like Cameron Diaz's urine.[/i]

not a comparison I'd feel qualified to make, tbh.

did you run out of test sticks when testing her wee for high sugar levels?

I just had a glass of water, which tasted suspiciously like Cameron Diaz's urine.

How do you know....?

How do you know what I know....?!

DrP

[i]How do you know what I know....?![/i]

There's a clue in your forum name, after the 'Dr' bit... 😉

If I said fairies and ogres and trolls ( ) were real but science hadn't discovered them yet, I'd be rightly cast as a mentalist.

Oh there's Definitely trolls.

You don't want tea. You want a mug of water that remembers tea.

She makes tea that would make 100c Homeopathic dilution look "super concentrated"

I remember having a biscuit.

Sadly, that's not satisfying enough, I shall have to find an undiluted biscuit to increase my biscuit concentration levels.

Surely tea is only tea if it meets [url= http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=8250 ]ISO3103:1980[/url]?

There are very simple double-blind tests that can be done to see whether homeopathy works. They have been. It doesn't.

[quote=miketually ]There are very simple double-blind tests that can be done to see whether homeopathy works. They have been. It doesn't.

Oh hush. There you go with your science and facts and stuff. I heard from a bloke in the pub that his mate's aunt thought it was pretty good so that's all the scientific proof I need to start to rubbish conventional medicine and start visiting snake-oil salesmen

you've not shaken it in a special way.

Sorry for the hijack, but I've just taken a load of homeopathic medicine by mistake. Should I induce vomiting and call an ambulance?

You should drink lots of water to dilute it. Oh, hang on...