Homeopathy - Legitimate Medicine or Placebo?

No, there are plenty of poisonous plants that people keep in their gardens because they look pretty.

 

Such as oleander (it's everywhere).

Also, plants they keep for food can be quite dangerous too: e.g. tomato leaves and rhubarb leaves.

 

The important thing to note here is that such things can be tested. Checking whether a certain medicament (natural or not) actually works isn't simple due to the many varying unknown influences on every individual and different patient that participates in a study. If everything is done carefully, however, it's possible to show whether a remedy has the desired effect or not (with a relatively small chance of being wrong - especially when compared to anecdotal evidence).

In my humble opinion, that's what medicine is all about. Honest and careful trial and error.

 

Does anyone know?

 

The theory underlying homeopathy is very strange. Most importantly, it isn't compatible with the concept of atoms, which is very essential in modern physics and chemistry. I let somebody else talk on my behalf though.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WyzM_TsIXc"]‪James Randi Speaks Homeopathy Week 2010‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

 

I know why some people think Homeopathy doesn't work, but that wasn't my question. Can someone address my question?

 

Oops. I should have read your question more carefully, Suede.

About $3 billion are spent on homeopathic medicaments world-wide per year. That sounds like a lot to me, but I have no idea how this compares to other snake oil industries. On the other hand, it's a small number when compared to Big Pharma (the top twenty have a total revenue of $500 billion according to wikipedia).

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-71558786.html

 

Since it's trying to fall under medicine that means it tries to fall under science and that means there is no theory to explain it working, just good science to explain why it's total bull(*)(*)(*)(*).

 

A Placebo is medicine, if it works.

 

Homeopathy has been around for over 200 years and that graph in that Spiegel link shows Homeopathy's popularity in Germany soaring since the early 90's, which is consistent with Homeopathy's rising popularity in the U.S. and other countries.

Why does Homeopathy's popularity defy all logic that it "doesn't" work?

 

A lot of people are stupid.

 

Let's say a car dealer tells you this:

"The new Homeopather is a great car. It has never been tested rigorously and we offer no warranty. We also won't let you go on a free test drive. Every other car manufacturer claims that it only rolls downhill, but nevertheless, there are many people who believe that it works. I promise you that it's a really nice car."

Would anyone buy that car? Probably only very few. When it comes to medicine, however, people tend to think differently. Especially when conventional medicine has no answer, it's very understandable that some patients get desperate. All of a sudden, such a deal looks much more attractive. After all, it brings some new hope.

 

Why would you prefer to fill your body with drugs with strange names and all manner of chemicals when you can try something natural?

 

Because the drugs work.

 

And so do some natural remedies.

 

Through selection bias or anecdotal evidence.

Homeopathy though does not work, at all.

 

You can't prove it, if it works for some people, then who are you to say those people are wrong?

I can't take Panadol. It doesn't work for me. It has no effect at all. So therefore that drug doesn't work.
Most pain reliving drugs have no effect on me. I have to take the super strong ones to get less than an hour of pain relief.

So why would I say that drugs work when clearly, they don't?

 

Please tell me what magical properties water has so that water can cure everything. That's the homeopathy claim.

And studies are better than you just claiming that something works or doesn't.

 

I prefer to have my medicine tested. Of course, I will choose the medicine that works best and has no or few side effects. If that happens to be a natural remedy, great, I'm in.

Let's say somebody says, "I took that medicine and I got better."

What can we learn from this? Unfortunately, next to nothing. The reason that this person got better is still completely unknown. The medicine could have had a positive effect, but we can't know that, because there are countless other possible causes for that person getting better. After all, that person also said, "I drank some water and I got better. I went on a walk and I got better. I took a shower and I got better."

We need a better test to find out more. Fortunately, it's possible to get more reliable results.

 

This statement is an insult to doctors of medicine. Physicians who have stayed true to their hypocratic oath want to heal their patients PERIOD! What do you mean "drugged up?" If I have a patient that gets admitted through my ER with cellulitis or pneumonia, the only thing I am going to "drug him up" with is some IV antibiotics. More complicated diseases, such as a management of crohns disease, usually (not always) demand a more complicated therapy (i.e. more drugs). To make a blanket statement that physicians like to keep patients "drugged up" because we get some kind of financial reward could not be further from the truth. Statements like yours demonstrate that you have ZERO understanding of modern healthcare.

Anyone with a medical license goes through AT LEAST 4 years of medical school followed by 3 years of residency (and that's just for general medicine, family medicine, or pediatrics specialties). During those 7 years of post-college education, you learn not just the basics, but you also review the studies/literature behind modern treatment methodologies. Do you really think doctors give out medicines at random just for the hell of it? There is a highly structured method to the madness, and just because you have too much of a chip on your shoulder to even strive to comprehend the very basics of how modern medicine works, it does not give you the right to make such ill-informed statements as "Doctors simply want to keep us drugged up". Purely absurd.

 

Placebo (for the most part). For instance, multiple studies have shown that for many uses of acupuncture, patients have a statistically identical result whether the patient undergoes real acupuncture by a trained specialist or "sham acupuncture" (i.e. putting needles in at any random point in the body). However, the placebo effect is a real one and should not be ignored. Some people do indeed swear by non-traditional forms of medicine, such as acupuncture. However, in regards to true medicine (i.e. procedures and treatment methodologies proven to be effective over a placebo by randomized-controlled studies), accupuncture and homeopathic treatments should not even be considered in the same category.

I said "for the most part" above because every once in a long while you will have a decently conducted study showing a statistically significant effect of some homeopathic remedy. For instance, a few years back I vaguely recall reading one study that showed a stastically favorable result for the use of Saw Palmetto in the treatment of benign prostate hyperplasia (however, follow up studies showed no significant effect in patients' symptoms).

Thus, as a whole, homeopathic remedies may yield a placebo effect, but they are certainly no substitute for real medicine therapies. If such remedies truly worked equally well (or superior) to traditional medicine treatments, then someone out there would have conducted a study showing such effect. Until then, those who dismiss modern medicine and instead embrace homeopathic treatments are just kidding (and possibly harming) themselves.

 

I realized about 15 minutes after I went to re-read my post that I obviously misspelled Hippocratic oath as "hypocratic" oath, so there is no need for anyone else to point out my very careless mistake.

 

If that's the case, logic would dictate that there would be a LOT of medicine "quackery" that are hundreds of years old and yet, are still gaining in popularity. Please list those.

 

New hope? Homeopathy has been around for over 200 YEARS!!!

If it was snake oil that brought new hope, it would fade fast once enough time passed where simple word-of-mouth suggest it doesn't work.

The length Homeopathy has been around and coupled with its continued rise in popularity defies all logic that it "doesn't" work.

Do you know how many doctors would have to be in on the "scam"?!!

 

Why do natural forms of medicine, like Homeopathy, seem to always "invoke the placebo effect" more than pharmaceuticals?