Rigorous studies of homeopathy are a bit like gold dust; they are so rare that we see perhaps only one or two per year. It is therefore good news that very recently one such trial has been published.
This randomized, placebo-controlled study tested the efficacy of a complex homeopathic medicine, Cocculine, for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) in non-metastatic breast cancer patients treated by standard chemotherapy regimens.
Chemotherapy-naive patients with non-metastatic breast cancer scheduled to receive 6 cycles of chemotherapy were randomized to receive standard anti-emetic treatment plus either the complex homeopathic remedy or the matching placebo. The primary endpoint was nausea score measured after the 1st chemotherapy course.
In total, 431 patients were randomized: 214 to Cocculine (C) and 217 to placebo (P). Patient characteristics were well-balanced between the 2 arms. Overall, compliance to study treatments was excellent and similar between the 2 arms. A total of 205 patients (50.9%; 103 patients in the placebo and 102 in the homeopathy arms) had nausea scores > 6 indicative of no impact of nausea on quality of life during the 1st chemotherapy course. There was no difference between the 2 arms when primary endpoint analysis was performed by chemotherapy stratum; or in the subgroup of patients with susceptibility to nausea and vomiting before inclusion. In addition, nausea, vomiting and global emesis scores were not statistically different at any time between the two study arms.
The authors’ conclusions could not be clearer: “This double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomised Phase III study showed that adding a complex homeopathic medicine (Cocculine) to standard anti-emetic prophylaxis does not improve the control of CINV in early breast cancer patients.”
COCCULINE is manufactured by Boiron and contains Cocculus indicus 4CH, Strychnos nux vomica 4CH, Nicotiana tabacum 4CH, Petroleum rectificatum 4CH aa 0,375 mg. Boiron informs us that “this homeopathic preparation is indicated in sickness during travelling (kinetosis). Preventive dosage is 2 tablets 3 times a day one day before departure and on the day of journey. Treatment dosage is 2 tablets every hour. The interval is prolonged in dependence on improvement. Dosage in children is the same as in adults. The tablets are left to dissolve in mouth or in a small amount of water.”
Homeopaths might argue that this trail did not follow the rules of classical homeopathy where treatments need to be individualised. This may be true but, in this case, they should campaign for all OTC homeopathy to be banned. As they do not do that, I suggest they live with yet another rigorous clinical trial demonstrating that homeopathic remedies are pure placebos.
50 Responses to A new and refreshingly rigorous trial of homeopathy
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Oh dear, another disappointing result for Boiron. At this rate they might have to pull out of the US market and focus on regions less likely to actually test their claims. And it looks like they just gained another high profile critic: https://jimmywales.quora.com/Homeopathy-Oscillococcinum-in-particular
I have sent Jimmy the contact details for Simon and you…
And they should also argue for the exclusion of the “two studies with low risk of bias [which] demonstrated benefit” from this review.
So does this mean that homeopathy should be elevated/recategorised to the status of a religion?
i have repeatedly suggested to create THE CHURCH OF HAHNEMANN- Prince Charles could be its figure head.
I have never understood why they do not do this. It is how Scientology get away with the bullshit claims they make for their e-meters, after all. It would save them having to pretend that there is science behind it, and would grant legal protections to their holy books.
Having heavily criticised Boiron for funding lots of low grade trials so it was surprising to see that they partially funded this one. May they continue along this avenue of Evidence Based Medicine.
I would also like to point out that homeopathy not only sells non-individualised preparations but are quite happy to quote trials with non-individualisation whenever it is favourable for them.
Evidence based medicine: evidence of what? Mainly that it is better than the placebo group.
This long standing paradigm is being shifted as the placebo effects are trialled in their own right in the lab because it is becoming apparent that we can utilise these conscious or unconscious responses in medicine for a myriad of different medical conditions as far afield as neurobiology, immune system, endocrine system, cardiovascular system, motor system, etc.
The new trials for the placebo effect are designed differently in order to understand it from a neurological perspective:
According to Fabrizio Benedetti, MD, PhD, who trained both as a physician and a clinical neurobiologist and is also one of the world’s leading researchers on the neurobiology of placebos and the author of “Placebo Effects: Understanding the Mechanisms n Health and Disease”.
According to Fabrizio, it is no longer feasible to study the placebo effect through the usual clinical trials because of spontaneous remissions, regression to the mean and experimentalists’ and patients’ biases. The real placebo response is a psychobiological phenomenon. The clinical trials are not a good way to study the placebo effects – because that is not their goal.
Fabrizio also adds, “First and foremost what you have to do is to study a placebo response in a laboratory setting, not in the clinical trial setting… It is very important to stress that the clinical trial and usually the drug companies are interested in the possible difference between the new drug, the new therapy and the placebo; but they are not interested to understand why there is an improvement in the placebo group….”
“..If you want to study the mechanism, not so much the active treatment group, but the placebo group, you have to move from the clinical trial setting to the laboratory setting… For example, if you want to perform a brain imaging study, of if you want to perform a neuropharmacological study, just to describe the biochemical pathways which are involved in the placebo effect, you have to study the patient; or otherwise study a healthy subjects in the lab… This is very, very important.”
“The balanced placebo design is very expensive, because you need four groups of patients, not only two… The first group of patients receives placebo but told it is the active drug. The second group receives placebo, and is told it is actually the placebo; so is told the truth. The third group receives the active treatment, and it is told it is a placebo. And the fourth group receives the active treatment, but it is told it is the active treatment. The difference can be as large as 50% of the metabolic response of the brain.”
“The balanced placebo design has very much been used in medical conditions in which the psychological component is large.”
“Very often there is misunderstanding and misconception about what a placebo effect is. The average physician believes it is something happening at the level of the cortex; for example, at the level of subjective perception like pain. This was actually the main criticism until several years ago; and the main criticism was that the experimental model was pain. And you know that pain is a subjective experience, so it is subjective to bias, it is subject to a lot of psychological influences.
But right after the pain, Parkinson’s Disease – not only Parkinson’s disease, but the immune system, the endocrine system, the cardiovascular system as well has been used as a model. And we have learned in the past few years that what we have seen for pain is also true for Parkinson’s disease, the immune system, the endocrine system, and so forth.
So there has been a shift in the intellectual approach to the placebo effect by many physicians, because what we learned is that pain and subjective symptoms are not a special case; we see the same effect for the motor systems like Parkinsons disease or release of immune mediators as far as the immune system is concerned, etc.”
For example, in Parkinsons, using PET, they found that there was a %200 increase in dopamine in the striatum which corresponded to a full dose of amphetamine. And this release of dopamine had a dramatic effect on the activity of neurons in the basal ganglia with a dramatic decrease of activity in the neurons in the subthalamic nucleus and a dramatic increase of activity in the motor thalamus which reflected in an increase in the motor cortex and the subsequent improvement in motor symptoms, which are typical of Parkinson’s disease.
Exciting and enlightening times ahead as we use the placebo response to explore our brains and its effects on our bodies and vice versa and how the old traditions from shamans to the witch doctor to religious rituals tapped into this without knowing the science of it.
The case for the placebo medicine is just beginning…
good luck with placebo medicine! i hope you stay healthy and do not need any medicine.
just a few brief but important points:
placebo-effects are never long lasting
their effect-size is rarely large
placebos do not affect structural damage
we do not need placebos to generate placebo-effects; administering an effective therapy with compassion yields a placebo-effect PLUS a specific therapeutic effect – therefore giving placebos to patients can hardly be good medicine
Is this an admission that homeopathy is pure placebo? If so, well done for taking a step along the road to reality, where homeopathy is indefensible bullshit.
First and foremost, the placebo response is not a replacement for evidence based medicine; we have come to far to bring back the shamans or even religion for most people these days for that matter, but the research into it is helping the clinicians understand how our brain works.
The placebo effects seem to involve more than polite bedside manners working at a subconcsious level as in the immune system involving a conditioning placebo protocol as Benedetti has explored:
“For example, many people, including my group are trying to use this conditioning mechanism to the advantage of the patient. Just imagine a conditioning procedure: for example, in cancer pain, what you want to do is to enchance the analgesic effect, but you also want to aadminister small doses of morphine, for example – narcotics in general.
So, what you can do using a conditioning placebo protocol, you can give morphine, for example, for three, four, five days in a row, and then you replace morphine with a placebo, for example one or even a couple of days. Then you reinforce, again with morphine – with the real pharmacological agent – and then you replace again the pharmacological agent with placebo. With this placebo conditioning procedure, in the long run you can reduce the intake of toxic drug, like morphine.”
“For example, in 2001, we ran an experiment like this in routine clinical practice in postoperative pain, and we were able to reduce “upenorphine” by little more than 30%-33%-34%. You can use this conditioning mechanism in routine clinical practice, but it’s not easy to say right now whether or not there will be a real therapeutic paradigm, a real therapeutic protocol using placebos in routine clinical practice.”
(Pollo A, Amanzio M, Arslanian A, CasadioC, Maggi G and Benedetti F (2001) Response expectancies in placebo analgesia and their clinical relevance. Pain, 93, 77-84)
Ethics and acceptance aside, we can hardly ignore the scientific evidence for the placebo response given the new technologies like PET and sensitive electrodes which can be planted in the brain to record from single neurons before, during and right after placebo administration and balanced placebo designed trials.
i agree, placebo phenomena need to be researched and understood; perhaps this will lead to better medicine but it cannot replace EBM.
ABSOLUTELY! And who in their right minds would want to!
i think this is where you are wrong: this post is on homeopathy; many homeopaths argue that placebo is real, and therefore it does not matter that their remedies are placebos. SIMPLE!
Well, we are making new discoveries all the time like the subatomic particles neutrinos; electrically neutral, weakly interacting elementary subatomic particles with half-integer spin in many flavours that can go right through matter; maybe one day we might discover that homeopathy works at a similar quantum chemical level.
Or it might work as a conditioning placebo protocol response.
What seems to be REAL is that as seen from a recent poll in the Guardian, people who use it are passionate about it and swear that they benefit from it and voted in large numbers to keep it.
The science side of things will probably filter in time…
So Prof…you practised homeopathy for 30 years. What was your clinical impression? >At a guess….what percentage of your patients benefited? What were the common side effects?
The reason that these particles are only just now being detected is that, as you say, they barely interact with matter. They pass straight through without doing anything so, while they are a bit like homoeopathic remedies, they are no help to homoeopathy.
Chemistry works on the quantum level – it’s all about how the electrons associated with atoms behave. Invoking a “quantum chemical level” will not get you around chemistry.
“They pass straight through without doing anything so, while they are a bit like homoeopathic remedies…”
Actually, the received wisdom about neutrinos’ signature unwillingness to react has been challenged by two scientists, Jere Jenkins and Ephraim Fischbach from Purdue University in Indiana.
Jenkins and Fischbach have noticed that the decay rate of the radioactive isotope manganese-54 has fluctuated in 2006 before a solar flare came crashing into Earth’s protective magnetic field. It now seems that the sun might affect other types of decay too.
The researchers have reported in Astroparticle Physics, the decay rate of chlorine-36 increases as Earth approaches the sun. Even though the difference is tiny between the aphelion and perihelion, it is discernible and persistent. As yet unpublished data for manganese-54 suggests the isotope follows a similar pattern. If confirmed, this could form a basis of a system for forecasting dangerous cosmic storms that play havoc with our planet increasingly reliant on electronic gubbins especially in the Arctic where a hail of such particles can have a nefarious effect on people’s and machines’ health.
Dr Jenkins and Dr Fischbach think we may be able to have an advance-warning system with the help of neutrinos; they suggest that the large number of neutrinos that seem not to be interacting because the effects are to small to see in stable matter.
However, in an unstable radioactive sample, they might come to light , because decay rates are known to be extremely sensitive t othe energy released in the process; if solar neutrinos transferred a mere millionth of their energy to a decaying nucleus, it might have a big effect on the rate which it breaks up.
The correlation between radioactive decay rates and neutrino flux has been observed in a number of samples in different labs and looks so promising that the University has already applied for a patent on a decay-based neutrino detector technology.
Why are they using a medicine for travel sickness to treat chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting? The mechanism behind nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy is completely different from the mechanism behind nausea and vomiting from travel sickness. Perhaps the researchers didn’t have a good understanding of the indications of the homeopathic remedies involved in this trial. In fact a much better documented treatment for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting is the homeopathic remedy “Cadmium sulphuricum”. In addition, the dosages in this formulation aren’t appropriate for the situation. In clinical use, the most typical dosage for treatment of CINV is a 200c potency.
This research does prove that Coculine is not effective for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, however it does not prove that it is not effective for travel sickness, the indication stated on the bottle.
would you have made the same argument, if the result of the trial had been positive?
the homeopathic remedy contains nux vomica – every homeopath will tell you that this is the correct remedy for nausea and vomitting regardless of the cause.
Homoeopathy is concerned with symptoms, not mechanisms. The appropriate remedy will be determined by the symptoms, not the cause of the symptoms.
Anybody with least acquaintance with homeopathy and its principles knows that COCCULINE marketed by a boiron is a pseudo-homeopathic product. There is no such a drug in an any homeopathic pharmacopea or or materia medica. This STUDY proves nothing
When asking for ‘evidences’, ‘proofs’ and ‘clinical trials’ for homeopathy, scientific community should recognize the difference between conventional medicines and ‘high dilution therapeutics’- the difference between ‘drug molecules’ and ‘molecular imprints’.
They should remember that METHODS used for proving the actions of molecular forms of drugs could not be applied to ‘molecular imprints’ forms of drugs.
METHODS used for ‘disease-based’ medicines could not be applied to ‘individual-based’ medicines.
Conventional METHODS of ‘drug vs disease’ based clinical studies could not be applied in ‘proving’ homeopathic drug actions, which involves ‘individual-based’ prescriptions selected on the basis of ‘totality of symptoms’ expressed by the particular INDIVIDUAL patient.
SCIENTISTS AND HOMEOPATHS SHOULD JOINTLY DEVISE APPROPRIATE ‘METHODS’ FOR PROVING HOMEOPATHIC DRUG ACTIONS, CONSIDERING THE PECULIARITIES OF HOMEOPATHY.
Chandran K C said:
Why?
Why not?
Why not?
Why not?
Why have homeopaths not already done this? They’re the ones making the claims and selling their wares to the public.
I agree. Homeopathic Community should strongly demand for ban of this kinds of PSEUDO-HOMEOPATHIC ‘products’ marketed as homeopathy
Chandran K C: Why are they pseudo homeopathic products?
Skeptics and critics always hope to corner homeopaths by raising the question ‘where is your reports of scientific clinical trials that prove homeopathy actually works’? According to them, ‘trial reports’ means reports of ‘controlled, double blinded trials’ conducted to ‘verify’ effectiveness of drugs similar to those they do for allopathic drugs. By ‘trials’, they mean giving a particular drug to a group of persons with a particular disease, with enough ‘controls’ kept on placebo, and study the effects produced by the drug. That is the way drugs of modern medicine are ‘verified’, and this protocol is considered to be inevitable part of studying drugs by ‘scientific method’. They expect homeopaths will find it difficult to cope with this demand.
In my opinion, homeopaths need not shy away. They have to take up this challenge, and prove homeopathy really works. Of course, it should be proved by well designed ‘trials’ conducted within the frame work of what is known as ‘scientific methods’, under the supervision of scientists and impartial observers.
“A ‘blind’ or ‘blinded’ experiment is a scientific experiment where some of the people involved are prevented from knowing certain information that might lead to conscious or subconscious bias on their part, thus invalidating the results. When evaluating the effectiveness of a medical drug, both the patients and the doctors who administer the drug may be kept in the dark about the dosage being applied in each case – to forestall any chance of a placebo effect, observer bias, or conscious deception. Blinding can be imposed on researchers, technicians, subjects, funders, or any combination of them. The opposite of a blind trial is an open trial. Blind experiments are an important tool of the scientific method, in many fields of research.
The subjects involved in the study do not know which study treatment they receive. If the study is double-blind, the researchers also do not know which treatment is being given to any given subject. This ‘blinding’ is to prevent biases, since if a physician knew which patient was getting the study treatment and which patient was getting the placebo, he/she might be tempted to give the (presumably helpful) study drug to a patient who could more easily benefit from it. In addition, a physician might give extra care to only the patients who receive the placebos to compensate for their ineffectiveness. A form of double-blind study called a “double-dummy” design allows additional insurance against bias or placebo effect. In this kind of study, all patients are given both placebo and active doses in alternating periods of time during the study. The use of a placebo in trials allows the researchers to isolate the effect of the study treatment from the placebo effect”
Fundamental difference between homeopathy and modern medicine is that ‘modern medicine’ uses ‘drug molecules’ as therapeutic agents, where as homeopathy uses ‘molecular imprints’ of drug molecules. This is a very important difference, indeed.
Allopathy designs their drug trials for studying the effects of a particular ‘drug’ substance on a particular ‘disease’, by administering it in a large group of individuals affected by the disease. It is a ‘drug/disease’ based approach. To avoid biases and subjectivity influencing the outcome from any corner, techniques of ‘blinding’ and ‘placebo’ are also utilized. They take utmost care to make such trials perfect and unbiased.
We have to examine how ‘blinded and controlled trials’ could to be adapted for designing protocols to verify homeopathy, taking into account the peculiarities of this therapeutic method, same time without ignoring the fundamental theme of ‘scientific method’
‘Drug/Disease’ approach cannot be applied to ‘verify’ homeopathy, which is based on ‘similimum/patient’ approach. You can never expect ‘individual-based’ homeopathic drugs to be proved using the protocols of testing drugs of ‘disease-based’ modern medicine. Asking to ‘prove’ homeopathic drugs using protocols of allopathic drugs is like trying to measure ‘length’ using units of ‘mass’.
Allopathic methods of ‘drug trials’ are applicable to ‘molecular forms’ of drugs only. But potentized homeopathic drugs, different from allopathic drugs, contain only molecular imprints, which can act only up on pathogenic molecules having specific configurational affinity. That means, they act only if indicated by similarity of symptoms. You cannot ignore this peculiarity in matters of active principles as well as mechanism of drug actions while designing ‘drug trials’ for homeopathy. In homeopathy, you cannot ‘verify’ action of a particular drug- you have to ‘verify’ action of ‘indicated drugs’ up on indicated individual patients, since different people with same disease may need different drugs.
I shall propose a protocol for conducting trials about homeopathy, adaptable to the peculiarities of this therapeutic system, and not conflicting the essence of scientific method. Trials should be conducted by genuine scientists, under the strict observation of an impartial panel of observers. Researchers should identify and select a fixed number of patients suffering from different acute and chronic diseases, and recruited as volunteers submitting themselves for the study. All physiological parameters should be measured, diagnostic tests should be conducted, and separate personal records prepared. A copy each of these individual case records should be duly signed by researchers, observers as well as the homeopath expected to treat the patients, and kept under joint safe custody of everyone involved, well sealed.
Homeopath should allowed to segregate 50 percent of volunteers as ‘controls’, and their details should be kept under joint custody well sealed. It should be ensured nobody except the homeopath knows who are the controls and who are not.
Homeopath should conduct detailed case taking of all volunteers, and select similimum for each patients. Controls also should be subjected to detailed case taking, so as not to cause any doubts to anybody. Names of drugs selected for each patient should be recorded by the homeopath, and false numbers should be assigned to each drug bottle. Bottles of rectified sprit should be kept separately for each ‘control’, and false number assigned to them also, in a random way so that they could not be identified by anybody. Records of rectified spirit, drug names, potencies and their false numbers also should be sealed and kept in joint custody.
Patients as well as controls should be given doses of drugs or rectified spirit from the numbered bottles. Nobody, except homeopath should know what are the exact contents of each bottle. Administration of drugs could be monitored by everybody involved. Homeopath should do follow up of all cases without giving any chances to guess who are the controls and who are real.
A team of impartial observers, not related with research team, should monitor the volunteers in regular ways, keep records of physiological parameters, and do clinical tests and keep their records.
Homeopath should be allowed to change drugs for any patient, if he thinks it is necessary. In that case also, he should use false numbering of drug bottles.
After a reasonable period, with the consent of homeopath, research team can stop trial in any volunteer, and open his secured records jointly and conduct verification and evaluation of results.
I think, the protocol of ‘verification’ described above satisfies the basic requirements of ‘blinded’ experiments of scientific method, as well as the special consideration homeopathy demands as an ‘individual-based’ therapeutic method.
many years ago, we published a trial design that incorporated all the needs for testing individulaized homeopathic treatment: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8617415. no need to re-invent the wheel!
No, the homoeopath should also not know which are the controls, otherwise the homoeopath could introduce bias to the results, even if only by inadvertantly giving the patients clues as to which group they were in during the consultation. You need a properly double-blinded design to avoid this.
I am also not convinced that allowing the homoeopath to “segregate 50 percent of volunteers as ‘controls’” would result in adequate randomisation.
Allowing the homoeopath to help choose the end points for individual patients would also have the potential to introduce bias. The end point should be determined in advance.
No, it doesn’t, because it is not properly blinded. Even in experiments using rats, incomplete blinding can affect the results: see, for example, the discrepancies reported between the single-blind and double-blind phases of this study.
In fact, all you need to do is to let the homoeopath go through their usual consultation process with all the patients, and have a third party randomly assign the patients to groups who will be given either the remedy prescribed by the homoeopath or a placebo. Trials of this sort have been carried out. The only systematic review of them so far published found that when the best quality trials were considered, there was no significant effect of homoeopathy. Carrying out further poor quality trials (which is what your single-blind protocol amounts to) will not add anything to this result.
I messed up the formatting a bit there: the sentence starting “After a reasonable period, with the consent of homeopath…” is supposed to be a quotation from Chandran K C.
Fixed it!
Thanks!
Following Hahnemanns doctrine not only OTC homeopatic remedies should be banned but also books which tell people which sugar balls can “treat” which diseases. Like, if you have headache take bullshit maximus d200 3x a day. Its always funny to tell this to people who believe to this, that this idea comes from the real medicine.
ER: i did not practice homeopathy for 30 years – where do you get your fantastic notions from?
Prof wrote: ‘ER: i did not practice homeopathy for 30 years – where do you get your fantastic notions from?’…….to be quite honest I cannot remember where I got this info from. If I am wrong will apologise……. AGAIN!!!
Ok….so Prof ….how long did you practise homeopathy for? Or did you only teach homeopathy? As a matter of interest I am still not clear about your career in Physical Medicine. I know you were head of department at Uni Hannover and Vienna but not sure about your clinical involvement in both homeopathy and Physical Medicine. Wikipedia only really mentions your past achievements in the academic setting.
i can tell you where you got it from: your lively imagination! even with all the lies that have been written about me, i never encountered that claim. i also never taught homeopathy to anyone.
please abstain from wrtiting things that are incorrect.
Calling a doctor and a scientist a homeopath has to be the ultimate insult.
OK I agree but please set the record straight.
“not sure about your clinical involvement in both homeopathy and Physical Medicine.”
Why does it matter?
and why should i provide such details to you? because you are looking for another reason to challenge me on the basis of misunderstood, half-understood, or not undersood facts?
Eugen
Why? Can’t you argue with any specific facts Prof Ernst has given?
In response to Mojo’s above reference to ‘homeopathics’ found better than placebo for cancer treaments (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19370613), the products found to be better than placebo were not homeopathic, but contained undiluted herb ingredietns. The abstract states:
“This review found preliminary data in support of the efficacy of topical calendula for prophylaxis of acute dermatitis during radiotherapy and Traumeel S mouthwash in the treatment of chemotherapy-induced stomatitis. These trials need replicating. There is no convincing evidence for the efficacy of homeopathic medicines for other adverse effects of cancer treatments. Further research is required.”
Here are the ingredients of Traumeel S: http://www.heel.ca/Heel-ca-Traumeel.html?ActiveID=10007121
Ointment: 100 g contains: medicinal ingredients: Calendula officinalis Ø 0.45 g; Hamamelis virginiana Ø 0.45 g; Echinacea Ø 0.15 g; Echinacea purpurea Ø 0.15 g; Chamomilla Ø 0.15 g; Bellis perennis Ø 0.1 g; Millefolium Ø 0.09 g; Aconitum napellus D1 0.05 g; Belladonna D1 0.05 g; Arnica montana D3 1.5 g; Symphytum officinale D4 0.1 g; Hypericum perforatum D6 0.09 g; Mercurius solubilis Hahnemanni D6 0.04 g; Hepar sulfuris calcareum D6 0.025 g. Non-medicinal ingredients: cetostearyl alcohol, heavy mineral oil, white petrolatum, purified water, ethanol. Ø: mother tincture.
Note that the slashed 0 is the mother tincture, meaning this contains active levels of calendula, witch hazel (hamamelis), echninacea, chamomile, bellis (a daisy), and yarrow (millefolium). This is a bait-and-switch “homeopathic” product!
It’s safe to assume that the topical calendula is the same. There are some that are 1x, meaning they still have the actual herb’s chemical components in it.
With this info, that review goes more to support the notion that high-dilution homeopathy doesn’t work better than placebo, but some herbal medicines are plausible based on chemical effects. Witch hazel is even an approved OTC preparation!
absolutely correct!
in addition, the article is written by people who have a very strong bias towards homeopathy and even tried to conceal this fact.
The remedies used were indicated for nausea from travel sickness. The remedies chosen for nausea from chemotherapy are completely different, due to the different causation, severity and characteristics of each kind of sickness with nausea. This trial
would be the equivalent of testing the effectiveness of antibiotics on viral diseases.
From a Homeopath’s perspective this test was either wilfully dismissive of the indications from Homeopathy for these remedies or just a total hamfisted approach, neither scenario adds any insight to the issue. The trial clearly was never advised by a qualified or competent homeopath.
so you think BOIRON do not employ competent homeopaths!?
reminds me of a trial we did; we asked several experienced homeopaths for the optimal remedy; we took their advice; when the results turned out to be negative, other homeopaths claimed ONLY AN IDIOT WOULD HAVE CHOSEN THIS!
as predicted in my post, one cannot win with science ahainst fanatics.
Is there any correlation to the fact that when homoeopaths across the globe undertake rigorous testing of their medicines they meet with much success, yet when non homoeopathic scientists test homoeopathy they generally find it to be no better than placebo? Is this because one wants to find proof that it works and that the other one doensn’t ? Shouldn’t the millions of happy recipients of homoeopathy around the world have the final say? What is more scientific then paying for something, using it, and finding it works for you? These people keep using it!
What care I how fair she be, as long as she be fair to me!
Question: How much does the effects of chemotherpay play on the therapeutic action of a homoeopathic remedy?
patients get better because of the lengthy, empathetic consultation not because of the homeopathic remedy. this is not only the simplest explanation of the apparent contradiciton, it is also supported by experimental evidence: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21076131
to answer your specific question: there is no such “therapeutic action” of a homeopathic remedy