5 ms·

I posted another comment but will follow up here because you are getting downvoted, unfairly I think. As you say modern medicine embraces like cures like for m

I posted another comment but will follow up here because you are getting downvoted, unfairly I think. As you say modern medicine embraces like cures like for multiple conditions I can think of off hand, including, as you mention immunotherapy for allergies. Others I believe include anti-venom and flu vaccination. Also, the article itself is clear: many are diluted to be rendered useless and in general aren't based on science. Well there is a clear gap and what I consider an acknowledgement some of these therapies are based on science and do contain the active ingredient. In my mind that makes them not far off from vitamins, many of which if you buy off the shelf and break open will be filled with flour and other fillers. Still that is not to say the science behind vitamin supplements isn't real and there aren't some reputable companies making quality products. Now I am not encouraging deception in the marketplace, or giving peanuts to kids with peanut allergies. Though that is part of real science and modern medicine using like cures like.

Alex3917 10y ago
Eh I have no problem getting downvoted. I think it's unfortunate that HN is filled with folks who get their medical information from celebrity YouTube videos and then get super triggered by anyone who actually reads books, but at least I try to make the information available for anyone who wants it.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  "Books" can be just as inaccurate as celebrity YouTube videos. Being printed on dead trees doesn't guarantee accuracy or even that it's coherent. Anyone can publish any nonsense they want.
- Oletros 10y ago
  > Also realize that the latest scientific research on food allergies involves homeopathic-like mithridatism, so even though the idea of a like-cures-like high dilutionist treatment isn't anywhere near a universal panacea, it does at least appear to work in certain limited cases. After reading this comment it seems that the books you read are very suspicious.
  - Alex3917 10y ago
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-controversial-treatment-for-peanut-allergies-1455565119 http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-controversial-treatment-for-pe...
    - Oletros 10y ago
      Paywall? WSJ? I didn't knew it was an scientific publication were peer reviewed papers were sent. And the only thing that can be read had nothing to do with homeopathy.
tankenmate 10y ago
I have read a number of comments here on like cures like with respect to vaccines. Vaccines are categorically NOT like cures like; vaccines work because a "sacrificial lamb" organism (bacteria, lab animal, or other) is infected, and then the macrophages (mostly white blood cells) then digest these bacteria or viruses that have infected the host and leave behind anti-gens. The immune system reacts to these anti-gens; and that's what the vaccine is, in layman's terms chopped up bacteria or virus that is chemically bonded to a protein (Major Histocompatability Complex (MHC) class II molecule) that activates a learning process in the immune system (adaptive immune response). So it is not a like cures like process; it is a processed hybrid molecule that induces an immune response. Another organism has been through an infection to learn how to combat it so you don't have to. Vaccines prevent an infection from taking hold with biologically modified proteins, it doesn't cure an infection. [EDIT] fixed typo and thinko
- will_brown 10y ago
  So perhaps it is less accurate to say vaccinations are like cures like and more significant processing of like cures like. So then maybe anti-venom also falls more in line with vaccinations in the sense of the processing of the original like involved. Others have also presented arguments why immunotherapy for allergies isn't really like cures like. However, nothing as comprehensive as your post to suggest any significant processing on the vaccination level as much as a simple reduction to the chemical allergen to reduce and/or prevent allergies to said chemical.
  - tankenmate 10y ago
    Allergen immunotherapy (slowly increased exposure to allergens) is sometimes suggested for environmental allergies (such as insect bites or asthma) but not generally accepted for allergies such as food allergies. The reason for this is that there is scientific evidence that the benefits outweigh the risks. What's more is that it isn't just administered in blindly increasing amounts; the histamine reaction in the body is carefully measured and doses of the allergen in carefully calibrated to match. But this is just one small part of medicine. Almost no other medical treatments have such evidence which is why homeopathy is labelled as having no evidence to support it and that is being generous as plenty of people have gone looking for evidence to support it but there is no credible evidence to be found after 100 years of trying.
blincoln 10y ago
"like cures like" is a dangerous oversimplification. Vaccines and immunotherapy work by giving the body small amounts of the actual thing that is harmful (usually dead, in the case of vaccines). It's easy to see why this is a reasonable approach - it's giving the body "sparring practice" against the disease or substance. Antivenom works similarly, except that the antibodies are grown in another animal, probably because by the time someone is bitten, there isn't time for their bodies to learn how to produce it themselves. Homeopathy is based around finding substances which cause similar symptoms. They have no relation to the actual cause of the condition that they're supposed to treat. Is the "cure" for Ebola any random chemical that happens to cause humans to bleed out of every orifice? Is the "cure" for Alzheimer's any random chemical that causes people to lose their memory? How many conditions cause headaches, or nausea, or lack of energy? Are we supposed to believe that anything which can cause those symptoms is a universal cure for all of those conditions? If so, why bother with snake oil at all? Just make sure that one is exposed to a variety of cold/flu viruses, and they should (according to the "like symptoms" "theory") cancel each other out. The whole concept didn't make sense in the 19th century, and it certainly doesn't today.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  > The whole concept didn't make sense in the 19th century, and it certainly doesn't today. The reason it doesn't make sense is because you're mischaracterizing it. Most homeopaths didn't believe that every substance that caused similar symptoms would be a cure, but rather they believed that these substances would be a fertile ground to look for treatments. It's basically like how today we consider drugs that cure diseases in rats as being promising to study further in humans. It was homeopaths who introduced the idea of clinical trials to mainstream medicine, and if they believed that like cured like in every instance this obviously wouldn't have happened.
  - nathan_f77 10y ago
    > but rather they believed that these substances would be a fertile ground to look for treatments That's still based on a pretty bad misunderstanding of how the body works. The action of a virus or bacteria is usually pretty undetectable. If you had no immune system, you wouldn't even get a cough or a runny nose. A runny nose, a cough, vomiting, and diarrhea are the body's response mechanisms. They aren't caused by any one disease in particular, they are the body's way of trying to flush out the infection. If you look for the cure in something that also makes your body angry and tries to flush it out, well you're not going to get very far. You're just going to make the problem much worse, and weaken your immune system further. So the whole idea of homeopathy is flawed from the very beginning. This is completely different to testing cures in rats before human trials. I don't even really see the connection, to be honest.
empath75 10y ago
They are not embracing like cures like. That's just folk wisdom, which has nothing to do with the actual mechanism of actions for immunotherapy, or vaccines, or anti-venom. The way vaccines cause immunity is by stimulating the production of antibodies. What is the proposed mechanism of action for homeopathic teething gel?

Alex3917 10y ago

Eh I have no problem getting downvoted. I think it's unfortunate that HN is filled with folks who get their medical information from celebrity YouTube videos and then get super triggered by anyone who actually reads books, but at least I try to make the information available for anyone who wants it.

nommm-nommm 10y ago
"Books" can be just as inaccurate as celebrity YouTube videos. Being printed on dead trees doesn't guarantee accuracy or even that it's coherent. Anyone can publish any nonsense they want.
Oletros 10y ago
> Also realize that the latest scientific research on food allergies involves homeopathic-like mithridatism, so even though the idea of a like-cures-like high dilutionist treatment isn't anywhere near a universal panacea, it does at least appear to work in certain limited cases. After reading this comment it seems that the books you read are very suspicious.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-controversial-treatment-for-peanut-allergies-1455565119 http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-controversial-treatment-for-pe...
  - Oletros 10y ago
    Paywall? WSJ? I didn't knew it was an scientific publication were peer reviewed papers were sent. And the only thing that can be read had nothing to do with homeopathy.

tankenmate 10y ago

I have read a number of comments here on like cures like with respect to vaccines. Vaccines are categorically NOT like cures like; vaccines work because a "sacrificial lamb" organism (bacteria, lab animal, or other) is infected, and then the macrophages (mostly white blood cells) then digest these bacteria or viruses that have infected the host and leave behind anti-gens. The immune system reacts to these anti-gens; and that's what the vaccine is, in layman's terms chopped up bacteria or virus that is chemically bonded to a protein (Major Histocompatability Complex (MHC) class II molecule) that activates a learning process in the immune system (adaptive immune response). So it is not a like cures like process; it is a processed hybrid molecule that induces an immune response. Another organism has been through an infection to learn how to combat it so you don't have to. Vaccines prevent an infection from taking hold with biologically modified proteins, it doesn't cure an infection. [EDIT] fixed typo and thinko

will_brown 10y ago
So perhaps it is less accurate to say vaccinations are like cures like and more significant processing of like cures like. So then maybe anti-venom also falls more in line with vaccinations in the sense of the processing of the original like involved. Others have also presented arguments why immunotherapy for allergies isn't really like cures like. However, nothing as comprehensive as your post to suggest any significant processing on the vaccination level as much as a simple reduction to the chemical allergen to reduce and/or prevent allergies to said chemical.
- tankenmate 10y ago
  Allergen immunotherapy (slowly increased exposure to allergens) is sometimes suggested for environmental allergies (such as insect bites or asthma) but not generally accepted for allergies such as food allergies. The reason for this is that there is scientific evidence that the benefits outweigh the risks. What's more is that it isn't just administered in blindly increasing amounts; the histamine reaction in the body is carefully measured and doses of the allergen in carefully calibrated to match. But this is just one small part of medicine. Almost no other medical treatments have such evidence which is why homeopathy is labelled as having no evidence to support it and that is being generous as plenty of people have gone looking for evidence to support it but there is no credible evidence to be found after 100 years of trying.

blincoln 10y ago

"like cures like" is a dangerous oversimplification. Vaccines and immunotherapy work by giving the body small amounts of the actual thing that is harmful (usually dead, in the case of vaccines). It's easy to see why this is a reasonable approach - it's giving the body "sparring practice" against the disease or substance. Antivenom works similarly, except that the antibodies are grown in another animal, probably because by the time someone is bitten, there isn't time for their bodies to learn how to produce it themselves. Homeopathy is based around finding substances which cause similar symptoms. They have no relation to the actual cause of the condition that they're supposed to treat. Is the "cure" for Ebola any random chemical that happens to cause humans to bleed out of every orifice? Is the "cure" for Alzheimer's any random chemical that causes people to lose their memory? How many conditions cause headaches, or nausea, or lack of energy? Are we supposed to believe that anything which can cause those symptoms is a universal cure for all of those conditions? If so, why bother with snake oil at all? Just make sure that one is exposed to a variety of cold/flu viruses, and they should (according to the "like symptoms" "theory") cancel each other out. The whole concept didn't make sense in the 19th century, and it certainly doesn't today.

Alex3917 10y ago
> The whole concept didn't make sense in the 19th century, and it certainly doesn't today. The reason it doesn't make sense is because you're mischaracterizing it. Most homeopaths didn't believe that every substance that caused similar symptoms would be a cure, but rather they believed that these substances would be a fertile ground to look for treatments. It's basically like how today we consider drugs that cure diseases in rats as being promising to study further in humans. It was homeopaths who introduced the idea of clinical trials to mainstream medicine, and if they believed that like cured like in every instance this obviously wouldn't have happened.
- nathan_f77 10y ago
  > but rather they believed that these substances would be a fertile ground to look for treatments That's still based on a pretty bad misunderstanding of how the body works. The action of a virus or bacteria is usually pretty undetectable. If you had no immune system, you wouldn't even get a cough or a runny nose. A runny nose, a cough, vomiting, and diarrhea are the body's response mechanisms. They aren't caused by any one disease in particular, they are the body's way of trying to flush out the infection. If you look for the cure in something that also makes your body angry and tries to flush it out, well you're not going to get very far. You're just going to make the problem much worse, and weaken your immune system further. So the whole idea of homeopathy is flawed from the very beginning. This is completely different to testing cures in rats before human trials. I don't even really see the connection, to be honest.

empath75 10y ago

They are not embracing like cures like. That's just folk wisdom, which has nothing to do with the actual mechanism of actions for immunotherapy, or vaccines, or anti-venom. The way vaccines cause immunity is by stimulating the production of antibodies. What is the proposed mechanism of action for homeopathic teething gel?