MD, PhD, MAE, FMedSci, FRSB, FRCP, FRCPEd.

Monthly Archives: October 2014

If you think that homeopathy is risk-free, you should read what this US homeopath proclaims on his website. I have copied several sections from his lengthy article (everything that is in normal print is his writing; mine is in bold). The author first gives a general introduction into homeopathy and why he believes in it; then he continues:

…Now, on the surface, you might think that since there is some common ground between homeopathy and vaccinations, that homeopathic doctors would be, all-in, when it comes to vaccines. The fact is, most homeopaths today are against vaccinations. The main reason for that is not because of the underlying principle, but because the process have been perverted by eugenics. Today, the real purpose of vaccinations is to cause sterilization and early death. Bill Gates spends billions of dollars on global vaccination, admittedly, to reduce the population. All kinds of heavy metals like aluminum, mercury and other poisons and pathogens are put into vaccinations. People, especially children, are given many more times the amount of vaccinations today than they were decades gone by, when it can be argued, vaccinations were effective and were needed.Even cancer viruses have, on record, been put into vaccinations. There is no actual vaccine for cancer. The only reason to put cancer viruses in the mix is to create more cases of cancer. In this day and age, one of the most dangerous things you can do for your health is to get vaccinated…

With homeopathy, you never have to worry about heavy metals, cancer viruses or other poisons being mixed in with the natural ingredients. Even though some of the underlying foundations of homeopathy and vaccinations are similar, there are a number of differences. With vaccinations, the actual disease that they are allegedly trying to build up immunity to is in the injection. In homeopathy, that is not the case, except in rare exception, and due to the dilution process, there is never any risk. Another difference is that homeopathic remedies are taken orally, rather than injected…

Homeopathic remedies have no side effects. That’s a great thing. On the other hand, every drug comes with lots of side effects. And then, you can get in a vicious cycle where you keep taking (or being prescribed) more and more drugs to deal with more and more side effects. In time, this often leads to emergency “live saving” surgery. When they are successful and the patient doesn’t die on the operating table, everyone praises modern medicine for saving those millions of lives, all the while ignoring that the reason those millions of surgeries were needed in the first place, was due to those allegedly wonderful and so-called scientifically proven drugs. Plus, many times, these surgeries aren’t truly needed. If the patient would simply quit taking the drugs, the body could, often, heal itself from life threatening conditions…

Homeopathy is much more well known in Europe and various other nations than it is known in the United States. There is a huge medical conspiracy against the use of homeopathy and other medical modalities that threaten the financial dominance of the current medical industry. The conspiracy extends world-wide, but it is strongest in the USA…This conspiracy is being perpetrated on a conscious level, for going on 200 years. Then, on the heels of that, there is a massive amount of ignorance from ironically, highly educated people, who have been influenced by the conspirators. (Most of these people you might not be able to classify as conspirators, because they believe what they are saying.) Doctors who have never even tried a homeopathic remedy on themselves, or their patients, often say that there is no evidence that homeopathy works. When you point to the innumerable raving fans of homeopathy around the world, each of whom have testimonies of homeopathic remedies working extremely well, the detractors simply call those, anecdotal evidence, not worthy of consideration. When you point out some of the clinical case histories of undeniable healings that have come to patients of homeopathic doctors, the opponents of homeopathy chalk it all up to the placebo effect. They say they want scientific proof and that none exists, but the truth is, numerous studies have shown very positive results, and have outperformed drugs and/or placebo. There are more than 150 placebo controlled clinical studies, most of which have shown positive results, either compared with a placebo or compared with a conventional drug. Moreover, they did so with zero side effects, (unlike drugs, which often have that little side effect known as, death.) And yet, the detractors always have a Rolodex of never ending excuses, why those studies, “don’t count.” They range from, the studies are too small; they are conducted by people who believe in homeopathy – (I’m serious!); the doctors aren’t well known enough; there must have been some breakdown of the scientific procedure that has yet to come out, etc. These people are unable to deal with the conundrum, that homeopathic remedies become more potent, with dilution, instead of less potent, like you would assume. From there, they assume that it can’t work, and no matter how much healing is done with homeopathic remedies, it’s nothing more than mind of matter, (placebo effect.) …The evidence is overwhelming to anyone with an open mind that homeopathy is for real. Does everyone magically become well? Will you not have to die? You know the answers to that, and nobody is suggesting it.

What is undeniable is that the pharmaceutical industry peddles toxic drugs that do more harm than good, by far. Big pharma corporations get caught faking studies, bribing doctors and all kinds of dirty, illegal activity, for which they are fined billions of dollars. To call them purveyors of science is laughable. There are drugs like Vioxx, that have killed anywhere from tens of thousands to more than a million people (depending on whether you go by Merck and the FDA statistics, or outside investigators), which, shockingly, aren’t even pulled from the market by the government. The company finally quits peddling them once the lawsuits make it unprofitable…

I’ve finally come to the conclusion that these people aren’t interested in finding the truth. They only want to protect their status quo, and well as their paradigms of how the world works. They don’t have room for experiential evidence. When these type of people write research papers smearing homeopathy, they are being intellectually dishonest. They consciously obfuscate facts and mold findings to seem to conform to their beliefs – let the evidence be damned…

These medical mafia type of people, don’t even care about logic. They stopped making sense a long, long time ago. When you are done reading these two articles, if you have a modicum of an open mind, you will at the very least, not be able to deny that there really is a very genuine conspiracy against homeopathy…

Such utter nonsense speaks, I think, for itself. Therefore perhaps just this as my comment. 

I have said and written it often: the homeopathic remedy might be harmless, however, many homeopaths are clearly not.

In a way, I should be thankful to the author of this truly amazing article enforcing my point.

 

An international team of researchers wanted to determine the efficacy of laser and needle acupuncture for chronic knee pain. They conducted a Zelen-design clinical trial (randomization occurred before informed consent), in Victoria, Australia (February 2010-December 2012). Community volunteers (282 patients aged ≥50 years with chronic knee pain) were treated by family physician acupuncturists.

The treatments consisted of A) no acupuncture (control group, n = 71), B) needle (n = 70), C) laser (n = 71), and D) sham laser (n = 70) acupuncture. Treatments were delivered for 12 weeks. Participants and acupuncturists were blinded to laser and sham laser acupuncture. Control participants were unaware of the trial.

Primary outcomes were average knee pain (numeric rating scale, 0 [no pain] to 10 [worst pain possible]; minimal clinically important difference [MCID], 1.8 units) and physical function (Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index, 0 [no difficulty] to 68 [extreme difficulty]; MCID, 6 units) at 12 weeks. Secondary outcomes included other pain and function measures, quality of life, global change, and 1-year follow-up. Analyses were by intention-to-treat using multiple imputation for missing outcome data.

At 12 weeks and 1 year, 26 (9%) and 50 (18%) participants were lost to follow-up, respectively. Analyses showed neither needle nor laser acupuncture significantly improved pain (mean difference; -0.4 units; 95% CI, -1.2 to 0.4, and -0.1; 95% CI, -0.9 to 0.7, respectively) or function (-1.7; 95% CI, -6.1 to 2.6, and 0.5; 95% CI, -3.4 to 4.4, respectively) compared with sham at 12 weeks. Compared with control, needle and laser acupuncture resulted in modest improvements in pain (-1.1; 95% CI, -1.8 to -0.4, and -0.8; 95% CI, -1.5 to -0.1, respectively) at 12 weeks, but not at 1 year. Needle acupuncture resulted in modest improvement in function compared with control at 12 weeks (-3.9; 95% CI, -7.7 to -0.2) but was not significantly different from sham (-1.7; 95% CI, -6.1 to 2.6) and was not maintained at 1 year. There were no differences for most secondary outcomes and no serious adverse events.

The authors drew the following conclusions: In patients older than 50 years with moderate or severe chronic knee pain, neither laser nor needle acupuncture conferred benefit over sham for pain or function. Our findings do not support acupuncture for these patients.

This is one of the methodologically best acupuncture studies that I have seen so far.

  • its protocol has been published when the trial started thus allowing maximum transparency
  • it is adequately powered
  • it has a very clever study-design
  • it minimizes bias in all sorts of ways
  • it tests acupuncture for a condition that it is widely used for
  • it even manages to blind acupuncturists by using one treatment arm with laser acupuncture

The results show quite clearly that acupuncture does have mild effects on pain and function that entirely rely on a placebo response.

Will acupuncturists learn from this study and henceforward stop treating knee-patients? Somehow I doubt it! The much more likely scenario is that they will claim the trial was, for this or that reason, not valid. Acupuncture, like most of alternative medicine, seems unable to revise its dogma.

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