Yes, this is exactly the claim I found on this website entitled ‘ALL NATURAL IDEAS. WAYS TO LIVE A HEALTHY LIFE NATURALLY. Here we learn that “All Natural Ideas is a site is designed to provide simple ideas on how you can live a more natural and healthy life. Lisa is the mastermind behind All Natural Ideas. She is a full-time engineer who has become passionate about sharing information on how to live a healthier life by following a natural based diet low in carbohydrates.”
But Lisa does not just do ‘low carb’, she recently also ventured into the realm of immunisation – but, as conventional immunisations are not ‘natural’, it had to be ‘homeopathic immunisations. This is what she writes:
Homeopathic immunizations… is increasing in popularity. Parents like the idea of protecting their child from disease without potentially toxic vaccine ingredients…
Critics contend that no conclusive double-blind, randomized controlled trials have proven, in general, homeopathy’s efficacy, as well as homeopathic immunizations. But proponents of homeoprophylaxis contend that conventional vaccines are also lacking in critical scientific studies that prove the long-term safety of pharmaceutical-grade vaccines.
Dr. Isaac Golden is a homeopath and earned the first ever PhD in homeopathic research from a mainstream Australian University. Golden has been a pioneer in the field of homeopathic prophylaxis since 1984. His research website, offers historical evidence, epidemic studies, and his own 20-year study of over 2,000 children whose parents used his prophylaxis program, the latter of which, Golden concluded, proved over 92% effective at preventing disease…
Homeopathy is a holistic form of medicine. Rather than a conventional doctor spending little time with a patient analyzing symptoms, homeopathy is considered effective when administered by a classically-trained homeopath, who will meet with the patient for well over an hour, getting the whole picture of the patient (hence ‘holistic’) , i.e. diet, stress levels, and many other factors.
About 200 years ago, Hahnemann developed an immunization based on his ‘like treats like’ principle, for scarlet fever. Homeoprophylaxis, the homeopathic vaccine alternative, prevents disease through nosodes.
END OF QUOTE
Yes, homeopaths tend to promote a whole lot of untruths to advise their patients against immunisations and instead recommend homeopathic immunisations or ‘homeo-prophylaxis’. This normally entails the oral administration of homeopathic remedies, called nosodes. Nosodes were added to the homeopathic Materia Medica only in the 1830s and are not in agreement with Hahnemann’s like cures like theory. Nosodes are potentised remedies based on pathogenic material like bodily fluids or pus. In 2015, the Canadian Paediatric Society issued the following caution: ‘There is scant evidence in the medical literature for either the efficacy or safety of nosodes, which have not been well studied for the prevention of any infectious disease in humans.’
There is no good evidence that any form of homeoprophylaxis is effective. After conventional immunisations, patients develop immunity against the infection in question which can be monitored by measuring the immune response to the intervention. No such evidence exists for homeopathic immunisations. More importantly, there is also no clinical data to show that homeoprophylaxis might work.
Despite this lack of evidence, some homeopaths – particularly those without medical training – continue to recommend this form of quackery. The promotion of this approach constitutes a serious risk for public health: once rates for conventional immunisations fall below a certain threshold, the population would lose its herd immunity, subsequently even those individuals who were immunised are at risk of acquiring the infection.
I am afraid, there can be only one conclusion: Homeoprophylaxis is dangerous charlatanry.
34 Responses to “Homeoprophylaxis, the homeopathic vaccine alternative, prevents disease through nosodes.”
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As with so many (all?) homeopathic claims, Lisa’s is full of logical fallacies and inaccuracies. I’ll deal with just one, to set the record straight:
Lisa says: “About 200 years ago, Hahnemann developed an immunization based on his ‘like treats like’ principle, for scarlet fever. Homeoprophylaxis, the homeopathic vaccine alternative, prevents disease through nosodes”
One of the first books Hahnemann wrote was on secrets which would prevent and cure an epidemic of scarlet fever which was killing hundreds of children in Germany. With the purchase of his book and its secret, came “a little powder free of charge which contains enough to render several thousand people immune from scarlet fever.” It did no such thing, but as it contained minute amounts of belladonna, Hahnemann had a run in with the medical authorities.
Hahnemann next claimed to have discovered a ‘new salt’ which he sold at £7 per kilogram. Chemists then identified this was in fact salt of boric acid worth forty pence a kilo (today’s prices). They were not amused, but Hahnemann proclaimed “I am incapable of wilfully deceiving. I may however, like other men, be unintentionally mistaken.”
Too right. What a shame Lisa did not know of this before she put her website together. Or perhaps she did and intends defrauding patients. How can we tell?
So even Hahnemann discarded the individualisation that homeopaths prize so greatly when money was to be made.
This business with nosodes is stupid even by homeopathic standards. I suspect they were invented by someone who wasn’t smart enough to realize it is the exact opposite of homeopathy, and no one else was sharp enough to realize either. 150 years later and they still haven’t figured it out.
Of course this is based on the wibbbling of “Dr”. Isaac Golden, whose testimony was such a powerful factor in the Homeopathy Plus! case in Australia (see http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/homeopathy-plus-director-fran-sheffield-banned-from-promoting-vaccines-20151013-gk8ic7.html).
Thanks to Golden, Fran Sheffield and Homeopathy Plus! were banned from advertising nosodes…
This today on the BBC website, seems Australia is fertile ground for quacks.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35975011
I’m not a proponent of homeoprophylaxis. In fact, all three of my children have been fully vaccinated according to our pediatricians recommendations. Many in the natural health community have been looking to vaccine alternatives so I offered to do research. There are known toxins in regular vaccines and alternative scheduling is one option as is using homeopathic immunizations. I am not convinced that the small amount of pathogen in the nosodes are enough. That is why my own children have been vaccinated.
@Lisa
Thank you for a sensible decision. Your children may grow up to thank you, too.
“There are known toxins in regular vaccines” And a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It’s not the “toxin” that matters: it’s the dose. There are safe levels for every known poison; do you imagine that the folk who develop vaccines would knowingly include poisons at levels even approaching danger?
Do you realize that coffee is sometimes decaffeinated with dichloromethane (methylene chloride), and it is also used in a number of other food products and pharmaceuticals. Methylene chloride is paint stripper. Read a list of the known toxic effects of paint stripper. You wouldn’t want to swallow that, would you? Yet you probably do; within safe limits.
The ‘Natural Health Community’ you mention has its heart in the right place but not its head. ‘Natural’ is not necessarily good: think of gluten, phalloidin, poison ivy. To die of infectious disease is ‘natural’: to prevent death from infectious disease by vaccination is unnatural. Congratulations on your ability to use your head and do the unnatural thing for your children.
Coffee isn’t injected directly into your bloodstream and through the blood brain barrier like the neurotoxin in vaccines. Your comment is irrelevant.
@Mike
Goodness me, you really don’t have a clue! Most vaccines are injected into the muscles, not the veins. That way they get into the lymphatics and are taken up by dendritic cells where they stimulate an ideal immune response. And IV injections don’t push stuff past the blood-brain barrier any more than components of the food you eat that are absorbed into the bloodstream make them pass the blood-brain barrier. And I presume by ‘neurotoxins’ you’re talking about thimerosal, which has been taken out of most vaccines even though it has never been shown to do any harm in the trivial amounts vaccines used to contain.
Apart from the stinking pile of total horseshit in your comment, you do the anti-vax movement a favour by revealing its base in flagrant ignorance and denial of reality.
Aluminum is another neurotoxin which has trrrible consequences on health. Can you state the amount of aluminum given in a child vaccine compared to one given To an adult? Bc there’s no way a baby and adult should be given the same amount and that not have horrible effects on that tiny body.
I think you are mistaken on several accounts.
@sherin
Fine question. “Bc there’s no way a baby and adult should be given the same amount and that not have horrible effects on that tiny body.” Great point: I doubt that the manufacturers of vaccines have ever thought of that. [warning: that was sarcasm.]
Just for background; babies are born with aluminum already present in their bodies, probably from their mother’s bloodstream. Aluminum is the most common metal in the earth’s crust and we’re exposed to it all the time. It’s there in drinking water and most foods, and its salts are components of various food additives and medicines such as antacids. And of course we ingest it from foods cooked in aluminum saucepans.
According to the FDA, “It has been estimated that the daily aluminum intake for man from all dietary sources can range from 10 to 100 mg per day…these amounts are less than those needed to produce toxic responses in experimental animals.” Compare those numbers — 10 to 100 mg per day with the amounts of aluminum in vaccines.
From UK data the aluminum content of vaccines is less than 1 mg per dose, as foillows:
6-in-1 vaccine: Infanrix Hexa (0.82 milligrams)
PCV (pneumococcal conjugate vaccine): Prevenar 13 (0.125 milligrams)
MenB vaccine: Bexsero (0.5 milligrams)
Pre-school Booster vaccines: Repevax (0.33 milligrams), Infanrix IPV (0.5 milligrams) and Boostrix-IPV (0.5 milligrams)
HPV vaccine: Gardasil (0.225 milligrams)
Teenage Booster vaccine: Revaxis (0.35 milligrams)
HepB vaccine: HBVaxPro (0.25 to 0.5 milligrams, depending on which version of HBVaxPro is given)
The jury is still out on whether aluminum exposure is a risk factor for neurological disease. Against all this information, your comment that “Aluminum is another neurotoxin which has trrrible consequences on health” is just a little bit over the top.
BTW, I’m no particular expert on vaccines, but I found all the above data in 15 minutes of judicious googling. I know the anti-vaxx websites that seem to have been scaring you tell a different story, but now you have the facts at your fingertips, I invite you to reconsider the reality.
@Lisa The manufacturers of homeopathic preparations of infectious materials contend that they need not bother with quality control to test for safety because there is nothing in their preparations. That’s not just too little, that is absolutely nothing at all.
The preservatives and adjuvants present in vaccines are in quantities far too small to be toxic and most are in amounts far smaller than found in the environment.
Homeopathic immunisation does not exist, there is no such thing.
Advising parents to forego vaccination is to advise them to be irresponsible towards their children.
I’ve recently seen several claims that the Cuban government uses homeopathic nosodes to manage its leptospirosis epidemics. There is a report in “Homeopathy” about an intervention in 2007-2008, which I have seen criticised in several places, such as https://apgaylard.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/much-ado-about-nothing/
Does anyone know whether homeopathic nosodes have been used by the Cuban government to manage leptospirosis since then?
As far as I can determine (when I investigated this a couple of years ago), it’s not been used again. There was talk by Isaac Golden of further trials of “Dengue, Hep A, pneumococcal disease, leptospirosis, influenza and an infection causing conjunctivitis”, but I’ve not seen anything published.
There was this: A Reevaluation of the Effectiveness of Homoeoprophylaxis Against Leptospirosis in Cuba in 2007 and 2008 but it doesn’t add anything to their flawed trial.
Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain uses homeopathic remedies.
Roland Gilmore said:
Just two questions for you:
1. How do you know?
2. What do you believe that means, if true?
Except when she or her husband are facing REAL medical conditions. Then they use the best real doctors, medicine and hospitals available in Great Britain.
Maybe she’ll pop a sugar pill for the sniffles.
Let’s get this one straightened out: there is no such thing as homeoprophylaxis.
Greg said
Is the National Center for Homeopathy wrong, then?
No
@Greg
Well, you said there was no such thing, yet this large trade body says there is (and there are many, many more like them) and now you’re saying they’re not wrong… Can you clarify?
@Alan
This topic is too complex to discuss on this (sceptics) website.
Edzard has mentioned that homeopathy is diverse:
http://edzardernst.com/2016/12/when-sceptics-or-skeptics-criticise-homeopathy-they-are-often-wrong/
“This topic is too complex to discuss on this (sceptics) website.”
come on, give it a try!
Being complex doesn’t mean it can’t be discussed easily and here’s as good a place as any to do so.
However, we all know homeopaths are not known for their consistency of ideas and they contradict themselves frequently: homeopathy is a delusion and I suppose it’s inevitable some will add other delusions on top of it.
Thank you Alan: you proved the point:
‘we all know homeopaths are not known for their consistency of ideas and they contradict themselves frequently: homeopathy is a delusion and I suppose it’s inevitable some will add other delusions on top of it.’
And you supposed I was going to discuss this topic with you?
The only reason for contributing to this site is not to share information that takes years to learn, it only to occasionally point out when the topics lead the sublime to the ridiculous.
@Greg
LOL!
I proved no point of yours: you have not yet provided any backing for your assertion about homeoprophylaxis yet I have provided evidence it is one of the many contradictory beliefs held by a number of homeopaths.
As a nurse I deplore the pseudoscience behind homeopathic immunizations. Those who peddle these immunizations are out to make a buck but never see the real harm that it is causing the public, especially I infants and children. Vaccines are safe,we now have a measles and mumps outbreak because if lack of proper immunizations.
thank you; I agree whole-heartedly
“Vaccines are safe”
Well, usually.
“A vaccine, like any medicine, could cause a serious reaction. But the risk of a vaccine causing serious harm, or death, is extremely small.”
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm
As far as I know the outbreaks are in the arias with high vaccination rates. Close to 100%
@Liz
Then you know nothing. Read this (paragraph headed “WHO response” ) or this (paragraph headed “Spread of measles”) or this (paragraph headed “Why have we seen an increase in measles cases?”) or this. Stop risking the lives of innocent people with your anti-vaccination ignorance!
@Frank Odds
“Stop risking the lives of innocent people with your anti-vaccination ignorance!”
Frank, the average anti/safe-vaxer has studied and researched the subject of vaccines safety infinitely more than the average parents that blindly accepts doctors vaccine recommendations.
@RG