6 ms·

Homeopathy Awareness Week

22 points by zkz 17y ago

TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
And here I was thinking that there was some grain of truth in homeopathy. If I recall correctly, the link was here, a few months ago, about "13 things that Dont Make Sense". A scientist who was the scourge of homeopathy, had to admit that there was _something_. Then there's water remembering when it freezes. Occasionally, distilled water will not freeze until a bit lower than 0c. It'll be around -2 to -4c before it freezes. Now, if we add a small amount of water, that is also distilled, but shown to freeze at 0c, all the water will freeze no lower than 0c. You must boil the water rigorously before it can retain the possibility of freezing below 0c. Who knows how it happens. Quantum memory, perhaps? But there is something.
- TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
  Aside the self-response and copy-pasta, here is the snippet of text and in where I got this from. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-that-do-not-make-sense.html?full=true http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things... _______________________ MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum. In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out. So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy. You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    No one has replicated her results. Fourth paragraph from top of the section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#Subsequent_research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#Subsequent_researc...
    - TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
      Hmm. Weird. I do remember that the WBC/histamine test and water test were different, but I thought the WBC test was shown to have some kind of an effect. And then, 20/20 goes and debunks the water memory. Now, how trustworthy is 20/20? And it gets deeper and deeper with one side saying nay and other saying yea.
grandalf 17y ago
homeopathy is as much bunk as the placebo effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo Why would anyone choose to ingest powerful pharmaceuticals if they could experience significant improvements simply by believing that homeopathy works? Even when you take advil for a headache, some/all of the effect may just be the placebo effect. note: placebos are used by many modern doctors who write prescriptions for a drug called "Obecalp" routinely to harness the placebo effect: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/health/27plac.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/health/27plac.html The human mind/body healing process is too complex to dismiss placebos offhand.
- timcederman 17y ago
  By giving them a voice, you encourage stuff like this: http://www.smh.com.au/national/parents-guilty-of-manslaughter-over-daughters-eczema-death-20090605-bxvx.html http://www.smh.com.au/national/parents-guilty-of-manslaughte...
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Sorry I don't buy the idea that free speech/expression is bad. Many people are quite foolish, and they are this way in spite of much information that would prevent ridiculous things like the link you posted.
- philwelch 17y ago
  "Why would anyone choose to ingest powerful pharmaceuticals if they could experience significant improvements simply by believing that homeopathy works?" Because if you want to perpetuate a widespread belief that homeopathy works, you have to require an equally widespead ignorance of how real chemistry works. Then, to have a modern civilization at all, you have to also have an elite that does understand how real chemistry works. I'm sure you can understand how much of a problem this is going to become.
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Well, the placebo effect is also due to real chemistry ... just not chemistry that anyone understands enough to start designing actual patentable pharmaceuticals to harness it (yet). I would counter that just as many people naively take advil when they get a headache. I think many doctors would say that OTC NSAID abuse is probably at least as big a problem as people not getting rid of their ailments b/c they took homeopathic remedies. Most people don't have a clue what is really happening when they flip on a light switch in their home ... so by your argument they should avoid electricity, appliances, etc.
jah 17y ago
Oh the irony. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31388177/ns/health-cold_and_flu/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31388177/ns/health-cold_and_flu/
GiraffeNecktie 17y ago
I have had family members suffering badly for years under traditional (and various kinds of alternative) care who suddenly improved dramatically (and so far permanently) with homeopathy. I don't know why that is. It could be explained by the natural tendency for the body to return to equilibrium, it could be that they just found a placebo they could believe in, but the bottom line is that they are now fully healthy, the treatment had no side effects and it was relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, the harm from traditional medicine was extraordinary.
- CalmQuiet 17y ago
  Although I've never experienced any definite benefits from the occasional homeopathic remedy whose drops a friend has urged on me, I know several "hard-headed" (meat-eating, non-"granolas", rationalists) who swear by the homeopathic treatment for poison ivy/oak. It may just be placebo mind/body effects, but if anything so innocuous can reduce symptoms for something so slow-to-resolve and aggravating, I'm up for "getting foolish". As long as it's basically distilled water "with a healing vibration," is way cheaper than trip to doc, and cannot have side effects (see the zicam recall), what's not to like? --just my 2¢
  - alexfarran 17y ago
    Well one side effect is that magic water displaces real medicine where it really matters. Such as: The recent case of the child who died of eczema, The recommendation of many homeopaths to avoid anti-malaria drugs, And the campaign against anti-retroviral drugs in South Africa.
- biohacker42 17y ago
  That's an incredible personal account.
richieb 17y ago
I have case of homeopathic beer. It's $5 per bottle.. write me.... ;)
- jjames 17y ago
  The theory surrounding homeopathy would suggest that would only be useful for curing extreme and persistent drunkenness.

22 points by zkz 17y ago

And here I was thinking that there was some grain of truth in homeopathy. If I recall correctly, the link was here, a few months ago, about "13 things that Dont Make Sense". A scientist who was the scourge of homeopathy, had to admit that there was _something_. Then there's water remembering when it freezes. Occasionally, distilled water will not freeze until a bit lower than 0c. It'll be around -2 to -4c before it freezes. Now, if we add a small amount of water, that is also distilled, but shown to freeze at 0c, all the water will freeze no lower than 0c. You must boil the water rigorously before it can retain the possibility of freezing below 0c. Who knows how it happens. Quantum memory, perhaps? But there is something.

TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
Aside the self-response and copy-pasta, here is the snippet of text and in where I got this from. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-that-do-not-make-sense.html?full=true http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things... _______________________ MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum. In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out. So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy. You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.
- scott_s 17y ago
  No one has replicated her results. Fourth paragraph from top of the section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#Subsequent_research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#Subsequent_researc...
  - TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
    Hmm. Weird. I do remember that the WBC/histamine test and water test were different, but I thought the WBC test was shown to have some kind of an effect. And then, 20/20 goes and debunks the water memory. Now, how trustworthy is 20/20? And it gets deeper and deeper with one side saying nay and other saying yea.

grandalf 17y ago

homeopathy is as much bunk as the placebo effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo Why would anyone choose to ingest powerful pharmaceuticals if they could experience significant improvements simply by believing that homeopathy works? Even when you take advil for a headache, some/all of the effect may just be the placebo effect. note: placebos are used by many modern doctors who write prescriptions for a drug called "Obecalp" routinely to harness the placebo effect: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/health/27plac.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/health/27plac.html The human mind/body healing process is too complex to dismiss placebos offhand.

timcederman 17y ago
By giving them a voice, you encourage stuff like this: http://www.smh.com.au/national/parents-guilty-of-manslaughter-over-daughters-eczema-death-20090605-bxvx.html http://www.smh.com.au/national/parents-guilty-of-manslaughte...
- grandalf 17y ago
  Sorry I don't buy the idea that free speech/expression is bad. Many people are quite foolish, and they are this way in spite of much information that would prevent ridiculous things like the link you posted.
philwelch 17y ago
"Why would anyone choose to ingest powerful pharmaceuticals if they could experience significant improvements simply by believing that homeopathy works?" Because if you want to perpetuate a widespread belief that homeopathy works, you have to require an equally widespead ignorance of how real chemistry works. Then, to have a modern civilization at all, you have to also have an elite that does understand how real chemistry works. I'm sure you can understand how much of a problem this is going to become.
- grandalf 17y ago
  Well, the placebo effect is also due to real chemistry ... just not chemistry that anyone understands enough to start designing actual patentable pharmaceuticals to harness it (yet). I would counter that just as many people naively take advil when they get a headache. I think many doctors would say that OTC NSAID abuse is probably at least as big a problem as people not getting rid of their ailments b/c they took homeopathic remedies. Most people don't have a clue what is really happening when they flip on a light switch in their home ... so by your argument they should avoid electricity, appliances, etc.

jah 17y ago

Oh the irony. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31388177/ns/health-cold_and_flu/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31388177/ns/health-cold_and_flu/

GiraffeNecktie 17y ago

I have had family members suffering badly for years under traditional (and various kinds of alternative) care who suddenly improved dramatically (and so far permanently) with homeopathy. I don't know why that is. It could be explained by the natural tendency for the body to return to equilibrium, it could be that they just found a placebo they could believe in, but the bottom line is that they are now fully healthy, the treatment had no side effects and it was relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, the harm from traditional medicine was extraordinary.

CalmQuiet 17y ago
Although I've never experienced any definite benefits from the occasional homeopathic remedy whose drops a friend has urged on me, I know several "hard-headed" (meat-eating, non-"granolas", rationalists) who swear by the homeopathic treatment for poison ivy/oak. It may just be placebo mind/body effects, but if anything so innocuous can reduce symptoms for something so slow-to-resolve and aggravating, I'm up for "getting foolish". As long as it's basically distilled water "with a healing vibration," is way cheaper than trip to doc, and cannot have side effects (see the zicam recall), what's not to like? --just my 2¢
- alexfarran 17y ago
  Well one side effect is that magic water displaces real medicine where it really matters. Such as: The recent case of the child who died of eczema, The recommendation of many homeopaths to avoid anti-malaria drugs, And the campaign against anti-retroviral drugs in South Africa.
biohacker42 17y ago
That's an incredible personal account.

richieb 17y ago

I have case of homeopathic beer. It's $5 per bottle.. write me.... ;)

jjames 17y ago
The theory surrounding homeopathy would suggest that would only be useful for curing extreme and persistent drunkenness.