Samuel Hahnemann published a lot, but his main ideas about homeopathy are summarised in his ‘Organon‘ which has thus become ‘the bible’ for all homeopaths. They regularly refer to this book, yet I sometimes get the impression that many of them have even read it.
I did! Most recently, I re-studied it when writing my own book ‘HOMEOPATHY, THE UNDILUTED FACTS‘. And I have to say, it is rather boring, full of contradictions and obsolete nonsense.
To mark Samuel’s birthday – he was born on 10 April 1755 in Meissen – I take the liberty of quoting directly from Dudgeon’s translation of the 1st edition of the Organon:
- In no way whatever can [a] disease itself be recognized.
- This eternal, universal law of nature [the like cures like assumption]…
- …only one disease can exist in the body at any one time…
- …if an acute infection attacks an organism already suffering from a similar acute disease, then the stronger infection uproots the weaker entirely and removes it homoeopathically.
- …diseases are only destroyed by similar diseases.
- …it is certain that a suitably selected homoeopathic remedy gently destroys and removes disease…
- …aggravation during the first hours… is, in fact, a very good prognostic sign…
- …even the smallest dose of a homoeopathic remedy always causes a small homoeopathic aggravation…
- …we should always choose the very smallest doses…
- …hardly any dose of the homoeopathically selected remedy can be so small as not to be stronger than the natural disease…
- If dilution is also employed… an excessive effect is easily produced.
- …a single drop of a tincture to a pound of water and shaking vigorously… will produce more effect than a single dose of eight drops of the tincture.
- …this action must be called spirit-like.
For homeopaths, these quotes (should) depict some of the central assumptions of homeopathy. For non-homeopaths, they are just gibberish that makes no sense whatsoever. Time has moved on, and most of us have moved with it. Yet homeopaths still live by (and from) the errors of 200 years ago.
Hahnemann died on 2 July 1843 in Paris. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but perhaps we should, in future, rather celebrate this date? It could be a celebration of the progress we made since (and because) we have recognised Hahnemann’s errors.
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So.
He’s dead now, you say.
That came as a bit of a shock.
More so to him, I expect
I have also read it. Last time was a few years ago. If I recall, the first 100 pages or so are essentially a rant against medicine. I think it is generally unfair to judge someone with the benefit of hindsight, but even honestly attempting to avoid that, the whole book seems essentially full of nonsense to me. I got the impression of a raving lunatic, not anyone I would even remotely like to meet, except perhaps as a study subject in an asylum. A textbook example of a quack.
It shows that homeopathy is really a religion. There is the insubstantial spiritual entity which they call the `vital force’ (may it be with them!), its prophet Hahnemann, and its holy book which can never be questioned. Like all holy books, it is self-contradictory and nonsensical.
I reckon we should celebrate this date – by drinking a toast of homeopathic whisky. That’s sure to make everyone more drunk!
Homeopathic whisky is a remedy and will only make us more sober. According to Big Sam’s ideas, we’ll all need to drink a toast with a drop or two of homeopathic water which will remedy our sobriety.
just water C30
I’m sure that our vital force will easily make the distinction between the homeopathic water and the water used as a diluent in that preparation ^_^
Do not speak lightly of water-diluted water Bart.
Such a remedy has already been developed by a smart team of homeopaths and undergone thorough provings, with great success.
This remedy is readily available in bespoke forms and potencies at Helios’ homeopharmacy.
The remedy name is Aqua Nova – new water.
Understandably, the audience will want to know what
water-diluted waterpotentised water may be useful for.I looked it up and found that it is good for reviving the victims of drowning – of course. That makes perfect sense, does it not?!
As proof positive of its applicability, the Norwegian helicopter ambulance service has on board homeopaths just for drowning emergencies and other catastrophes. I am sure Mr. Dana Ullman will be very glad to learn of this. I am sure Dana will write an article on this in Huffington Post now that he knows of it. I hope he will acknowledge me as a source. But I am afraid on the other hand, that it will only confuse Greg even more 🙁
Here is a promotional video for this admirable air-service. The text is in Norwegian of course, but I will explain:
They have three
alternativeintegrative experts aboard each acute service helicopter:1. An emergency homeopath who deals with victims of fire, avalanche and drowning Using aqua nova of course. The other emergencies require carbo vegetabilis for the burns and for avalanches, a mixture of Lux Venus stella erranti and Lux Aurora Borealis (I guess it has something to do with the cold starry nights up there ?) both available at Helios’.
2. An astrologist who can triage the trauma victims accurately according to their Zodiac sign.
3. A trauma-reflexologist is of course on board every helicopter, who is trained to expediently remedy injured organs at the site by pressing on the corresponding area under the sole of their feet – after removing their shoes of course.
In very large catastrophes they can call in emergency aromatherapists. These are seen arriving by dinghy in the video.
It is interesting to note that the resuscitation of drowning is also possible by needling the Ren-1 acupoint to a depth of about one inch (This point is located just in front of the anal orifice, midway between it and the vagina or scrotum depending on the sex of the victim. This will however not work in Norway as the Norwegians consistently wear very thick and cumbersome clothing and it is also pitch dark up there most of the year. So it is much easier to just drop a pillule of potentised water under the victims tongue and watch him open his eyes, smiling contentedly, instead of trying to find their anus and other intimate parts and manipulate the needle in the freezing cold.
Disclaimer: This comment was written in a state of absolute sobriety.
Impressive, Björn. They really have it convered, don’t they. The combination of an emergency homeoquack with an emergency aromatherapist and a catastrophy astrologer seems like a powerful team indeed, and with the help of an ibex, they must be unbeatable.
Marvellous. Truly marvellous.
From Real Secrets of Alternative Medicine page 152:
“Hahnemann was a caring doctor who devised his own idiosyncratic system of medicine as an alternative to the poor quality of orthodox medicine of his time. Biographers suggest he was a pedantic, rude and exacting young upstart, and very unpopular with patients and colleagues alike: ‘Hardly a day passed without some complaint against him. As a doctor he was intolerant in his attitude to both colleagues and patients.’ ”
Hanemann tried, but got immersed in the occult swirling through Europe at the time. He joined a Freemasons’ Lodge when such gentlemen debated esoteric subjects such as alchemy (they not do so today as far as I know). He used the Freemasons’ motto ‘Aude Sapere’ (Dare to be Wise), in the frontispiece of his Organon . But he simply never moved on.
That is no excuse for today’s practitioners to persist in their attempts to fool the gullible.
Some might have a sincere faith – but many might be quacks and frauds. How are we to judge?
I wonder if it is even relevant: whether a patient is harmed by sincere faith or by quackery or fraud, isn’t the essence that the patient is harmed by something that has no demonstrated benefits?
Samuel Hahnemann, MD: The Only Monument in Washington, DC Honoring a Physician
In America’s capital city, Washington, DC, the only monument honoring a physician is one to the founder of homeopathic medicine, Samuel Hahnemann, MD (1755–1843). This monument was dedicated in 1900 by President William McKinley.
Although trained as a medical doctor, Hahnemann was a learned chemist and author of the leading German textbook for apothecaries (pharmacists) of the day. He was conversant in at least nine languages and even supported himself in his mid-twenties teaching languages at the famed University of Leipzig.
Learning languages enabled Hahnemann to become familiar with the latest developments in medicine and science. He further expanded his knowledge and his growing prestige by translating twenty-two textbooks, primarily medical and chemistry textbooks (several of which were multi-volume works). Over a twenty-nine-year period, Hahnemann translated some 9,460 pages.
Prior to his discovery of homeopathy, Hahnemann’s respect as a physician brought German royalty to seek his medical care, and modern medical historians confirm that Hahnemann showed sound balance and good judgment in his advocacy of proper diet, fresh air, and exercise as a method of treatment. His promotion of hygienic measures during epidemics won him praise as a public health advocate, and his kind, rather than cruel and harsh, treatment of the insane granted him a place in the history of psychiatry (Rothstein, 1972, 152).
It is not surprising to know that Hahnemann was a Freemason as early as 1777; he was later granted the title of Obermeister, or Grand Master (Jurj, 2007). In this esoteric fraternal organization and secret society, men shared certain moral and metaphysical ideals.
Hahnemann stopped practicing conventional medicine of his day because he felt that he was doing more harm than good. Instead, he made a living for his family of eleven children as a translator. During the translation of a book by William Cullen, the leading physiologist of that time, Hahnemann noted that Cullen asserted that Peruvian bark was an effective drug for malaria because of its bitter and astringent properties. Hahnemann thought this a peculiar statement because he knew other bitter and astringent medicines that provided no benefit in the treatment of malaria. He then conducted an experiment upon himself, taking this herb twice a day until he developed symptoms of its toxicology, and here he discovered that it created a fever with chills as well as other symptoms that mimicked malaria. Hahnemann proposed that Peruvian bark (which contains quinine) may be effective for treating people with malaria because it has the capacity to cause similar symptoms.
Hahnemann ultimately conducted upon himself experiments with ninety other substances, and his colleagues and friends also engaged in these experiments. He found a consistent pattern from these experiments: that various substances in overdose create their own unique syndrome of symptoms and whatever syndrome a substance causes in toxic dose, it can and will elicit a healing response when given in specially prepared small doses to people who have similar symptoms of pathology.
Hahnemann observed that sick people were hypersensitive to the medicine that causes similar symptoms as they were experiencing. Because of this, Hahnemann began using smaller and smaller doses. Being a chemist, he experimented with various ways to make these doses both safe and effective. Over the next forty years, he experimented with diluting the medicines 1:10, 1:100, or 1:50,000, with vigorous shaking between dilutions, and he consistently found that exceedingly small doses of medicines had powerful therapeutic effects when prescribed according to his principle of similars.
Being an incredibly avid experimenter, Hahnemann did not come easily or quickly to his conclusions about the exceptionally small doses he and his colleagues found effective. In fact, he first wrote about homeopathy in 1796, and for the next thirty years (!) he primarily used doses that are today considered low potencies. Further, in 1829, a homeopathic physician wrote him about his successes in using potencies that were diluted 1:10 more than 200 times, and Hahnemann expressed skepticism for such actions until he himself found that these higher potencies were surprisingly effective (Bradford, 1895, 455–456).
Ultimately, Hahnemann authored three major books on homeopathy, including six editions of his seminal work Organon of the Medical Art, continually updating and refining this science and art.
Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, MD (1762–1836), Germany’s most well-known and respected physician of his day, was as famous as Goethe and Schiller in the early nineteenth century. As the editor of the leading medical journal in Germany, Journal of Practical Medicine, Hufeland published some of Hahnemann’s writings and held him in extremely high regard: “I have discovered in him an amplitude of knowledge, clearness of mind, and a spirit of tolerance, which last is the more worthy of notice in him.” Hahnemann was described as “one of our most distinguished, intelligent and original physicians” (Everest, 1842, 186).
Even though Robert Koch first discovered the cholera bacteria in 1883, as early as 1831 Hahnemann ascribed the cause of the cholera epidemics raging at that time to “an enormously increased brood of those excessively minute, invisible, living creatures so inimical to human life, of which the contagious matter of the cholera most probably consists” (Hahnemann, 1831).
Nicholas Von Hoffman, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote: “Although this German physician never visited the U.S., for 70 years or more his ideas tore up and divided American medicine. No other single individual caused the settled and comfortable structures of this profession the trouble Hahnemann did, and even now many of the questions he raised have not been answered” (Von Hoffman, 1971).
Many of homeopathy’s most severe critics have actually had kind words for Samuel Hahnemann. Morris Fishbein, executive director of the American Medical Association, wrote: “The influence of Hahnemann was, on the whole, certainly for the good. He emphasized the individualization of the patient in the handling of disease … and he demonstrated the value of testing the actual virtues of a drug by trial” (Fishbein, 1925, 37).
Of additional interest is the fact that Hahnemann was granted honorary membership into the Medical Society of the County of New York in 1832. However, a few years later, the society rescinded his membership when they determined that homeopathy’s growth represented an “ideological and financial threat” (Kaufman, p. 32)
Despite Hahnemann’s significant contributions to medicine, pharmacy, chemistry, psychiatry, and public health, he remained a humble man. “I do not ask during my lifetime any recognition of the beneficent truth, which I, without any thought of myself, offer. What I have done, I did from higher motives for the world. Non inutilis vixi (I have not lived in vain)” (Neng, 1930).
On the Hahnemann monument in Washington, DC, are those Latin words. Indeed, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann did not live in vain.
References:
Bradford, T. L. The Life and Letters of Samuel Hahnemann. Philadelphia: Boericke and Tafel, 1895.
Everest, Rev. T. R. A Popular View of Homeopathy. New York: William Radde, 1842.
Fishbein, M. Medical Follies. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925.
Hahnemann, S. Cause and Prevention of the Asiatic Cholera, from Archiv. F. hom. Heilk, XI, 1831. (Also published in Hahnemann, Lesser Writings. New York: William Radde, 1852, p. 758.
Jurj, G. Quiet At Koethen, Simillimum, Winter/Spring 2007, 20:27–42.
Kaufman, M. Homeopathy in America: The Rise and Fall of a Medical Heresy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1971.
Neng, H. Homoeopathy in Germany during the Last Ten Years, Homoeopathic Recorder, January 1930, 45, 1.
Rothstein, W. American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
Von Hoffman, N. The Father of Homeopathy, Washington Post, July 21, 1971.
Finally, at the end of the day, a worthy tribute to Dr Samuel Hahnemann.
Thank you Mr. Dana Ullman.
Great hagiography, and as is required for a self-respecting hagiography, it is predictably selective. I encourage everyone to actually read the Organon and his other delusional writings to find out how accurate this piece of propaganda is. Maybe someone will even find the time to read not only the homeopathic nonsense, but also the nonsense Hahnemann wrote about other things, coffee comes to mind.
I don’t have the Organon, but I do have some modern text books on homeopathy. I have to read them sitting down or I fall over laughing.
You should get one. I have the sixth edition (the Künzli translation) – published after his death – and it does make hilarious reading.
There are available online: http://organonofmedicine.com
It is so typical for Ernst to twist Hahnemann’s messages. It seems that Ernst would be a fine commentator at Fox News (masters of spin).
Hahnemann was consistently way ahead of his day and age…
Hahnemann identified the existence of infectious bacteria 67 years before the discovery of Robert Koch.
In his last essay, Hahnemann wrote more about the infection of cholera: “The most stinky infections took place and made astounding progress whenever in the stuffy spaces of ships, filled with musty aqueous vapours, the cholera miasms found an element favourable to its own multiplication and throve to an enormously increased swarm of those infinitely small invisible living organisms that are so murderously hostile to human life and which most probably form the infectious matter of cholera.”
he did not identify bacteria, he speculated about the nature of infections.
So is Star Trek. That’s why it’s called Science Fiction.
So, both miasm and small living organisms. Hahnemann suffered from irreversible cognitive dissonance. Whatever he speculated as the cause of disease never put miasms to rest. He had to call everything a miasm along with whichever rational explanation might emerge.
Oh, and a single quotation does not mean he identified the existence of bacteria. Let alone various homeopaths reject the germ theory of disease anyway.
That’s about as credible as the claim that the ancient Greeks discovered the atom which, of course, they didn’t.
That’s about as credible as any of the many claims by D [H] U.
[DHU = Dana Homeopathic Ullmann = Deutsche Homoeopathische Union (largest German Manufacturer of Homeopathics)]
That comes as no surprise. After all, they are using the same refined and sophisticated method known as creative dreaming, quite possibly enhanced by marijuana, heroin and other holistic natural products while pumping coffee with whisky through their anuses.
It is pretty much safe to say that Hahnemann is almost totally excused for his grandiose delusions due to the shortcomings of the era, although it is also almost safe to say that he did exaggerate a bit in his heated hopes of having found something there.
The homeopathic nonsense of Hahnemann is, of course, inexorably evident, but he really didn’t know better. When one doesn’t know whether something exists or not, they may hope, quite fervently even, make-believe also. But when it is well-known that there are no benefits, the result may even be dangerous.
Take, for exampe this proposition:
Imagine going to anyone for help, a homeopath, as the source here suggests, with evident symptoms of starvation, and getting Natrum Muriaticum 200 (“no-salt” in homeospeak). Takes delusion to the next level… i.e. if it says so in the Materia (
Magica)Medica (despite this (hocus)opus having been completely invalidated based on the best knowledge of reality), then it must be true.Hahnemann has created a cult of blind followers, which have full potential to cause harm, as is evident in the mentality demonstrated by the cited comment. It may be sad, but this is potentially his most relevant, significant and long-lasting achievement and he should be explicitly recognized for that achievement in all relevant biographic excerpts, lest they are totally incomplete.
James
“………..and getting Natrum Muriaticum 200 (“no-salt” in homeospeak).”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18657771
“This paper reports impedance data and high voltage plasma photographic plates of high dilutions of sodium chloride in water submitted to the homeopathic dilution and succession up to 30cH. Extremely low concentrations of the original salt, even beyond Avogadro number, clearly differ from ‘pure’ water and; the action of sodium chloride on the electrical properties of water is inverted at high dilution.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15287434
“Successive dilution and succussion can permanently alter the physico-chemical properties of the aqueous solvent. But we also detected changes in physio-chemical parameters with time. This has not previously been reported. The modification of the solvent could provide an important support to the validity of homeopathic medicine, that employs ‘medicines without molecules’. The nature of the phenomena here described remains still unexplained, nevertheless some significant experimental results were obtained.”
I was with the family doctor when the father walked in with his son on his arm. About 3 years old, he looked more like a baby monkey (bony thin, shriveled face, neck and arms) than a human child. The lower limbs were thin but not as bad as his upper body. Father confirmed his 3 other children were in good health. The doctor prescribed Nat Mur 200 once every week. (That is how I know about this feature of Nat Mur.) The father was a neighborhood farmer. I met him about a month later on the farm where he came with his children in tow. I could only guess that the youngest one was the child I saw in the clinic. The father confirmed my guess. He was completely human child now. (That is why I remember this.)
http://www.homeoint.org/books/boericmm/n/nat-m.htm
Emaciation most notable in neck.
Impossible. Multiple facepalms… This is a widely farfetched anecdote, Iqbal. You ascribe to homeopathy just about everything. Fellow Iqbal, natrum muriaticum might just as well have been a clap of the hands, the blink of an eye, or a slice of toasted bread there. It made no change. Food and time did. Do you love homeopathy so much that you ascribe everything to it immediately? Iqbal be careful, seriously. Marasmus is a serious condition. Natrum muriaticum 200C is nothing and does nothing for Marasmus. Don’t provide such dangerous suggestions to anyone. As for the family doctor…I cannot imagine how deluded one has to be to prescribe Natrum Muriaticum 200C for Marasmus.
🙁 You are a danger fellow Iqbal, you will harm someone some day, if you haven’t already, that is… The family doctor is more of a danger, though… I really hope this insanity comes to an end sometime in the future.
Dana Ullman said:
Oops! Wrong again – another Ullman fail.
Source
Alan, here are words that YOU have never said, nor has any other leading skeptic of homeopathy, all of which further verify your unscientific attitudes and aptitudes.
“I stand corrected.” And I have no problem saying that…nor does it diminish much of the stature of Samuel Hahnemann, MD (or the statue!).
Good for you, Dana. Are you looking for a gold star for your admission?
Hopefully you won’t repeat that bit of nonsense again. And correct your book when it’s re-printed. If ever.
As ever, I’m sure we can rely on you to point out any specific instance of a skeptic getting something wrong. Backed by argument and sound evidence, of course. I look forward to it.
Irrelevant.
Alan
“The larger-than-life, bronze statue honors the Philadelphia physician, medical educator and the signer of the Declaration of Independence.”
“The impressive memorial that stands to the east of the Scott Circle, near the cross section of Massachusetts and Rhode Island Avenues, honors Samuel C. F. Hahnemann (1755-1843), a German physician and the founder of homeopathic school of medicine. Authorized by Congress in January 1900 and unveiled the following June, the monument was the gift of the American Institute of Homeopathy.”
“The campaign to build a memorial to Benjamin Rush in Washington, D.C. was initiated by Albert L. Gihon, Medical Director, USN, and funded by contributions from the American Medical Association membership. The statue was unveiled in June 1904….”
The reason for the statue of Benjamin Rush could be:
1. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Independence.
2. Allopaths needed a statue to compete with Hahenmann.
The information on Medicine as seen by Benjamin Rush does not seem too great.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Rush
“He firmly believed in such practices as bloodletting patients. as well as purges using calomel and other toxic substances.” Rush also wrote the first case report on dengue fever. Perhaps his greatest contributions to physical medicine were his establishment of a public dispensary for low income patients, and public works associated with draining and rerouting Dock Creek.”
Benjamin Rush once claimed to have bloodlet enough blood to be able to float a man-of-war ship!
So yes, Washington, DC has TWO monuments to physician: one to Samuel Hahnemann, MD, and one to a dangerous quack!
And you know what that means, don’t you?
Two monuments to dangerous quacks.
Irrelevant.
ROFL!
Mojo
“Two monuments to dangerous quacks.”
So Rush WAS a quack. His statue does not reflect a doctor. On Hahnemann the jury is still debating.
Mr Dana was correct. Only one monument in America to a DOCTOR.
It would be interesting to see what Hahnemann would have made of modern medicine.
Given the enormous weight of evidence against homeopathy and the progress made in scientific methodology I suspect he’d find the concept of homeopathy laughable.
Hahnemann was a son of his time. He carried several misconceptions despite he tried to do things well (and he did some of them well, probably most of them except the one he is more remembered for). It’s very normal for his time to see that people gets better when they are given less poison as medicine.
If he had live nowadays, with our knowledge, probably he would discard homeopathy as the stupid thing it is in a few seconds.
I wouldn’t be so sure. People discarded homeopathy in his day already, for good reasons (take a look here, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy_and_Its_Kindred_Delusions).
He did not. So, either he was a quack, or not too bright. Perhaps even both.
I doubt, too, whether he would discard homeopathy today. At least today, he wouldn’t have had such an impact on poor gullible people. No need to patronize someone whose achievements lead to medical harm and healthcare incompetence for over two centuries. We respect the man, but he was probably a bit of both, indeed.
Based on his overall contributions to medicine, maybe he did not live in vain. But an inexistent “beneficent truth” is not justified by higher motives for the world. Let alone his “truth” is all but beneficent. His greatest luck was that he did not live to see how insurmountably mistaken he was. Although his writings indicate irreversible belief perseverance, so this would probably not stop him.
Well, you forgot to write that he exploited the contemporary scientific deficits and lack of accurate experimentation methodologies to spread a harmful fantasy he tricked himself into believing in. Beyond that, a nice tribute overall. Make sure to prescribe more water, in his memory!
“Despite Hahnemann’s significant contributions to medicine, pharmacy, chemistry, psychiatry, and public health, he remained a humble man. “I do not ask during my lifetime any recognition of the beneficent truth, which I, without any thought of myself, offer. What I have done, I did from higher motives for the world. Non inutilis vixi (I have not lived in vain)” (Neng, 1930).”
yes and no; this is from my book HOMEOPATHY, THE UNDILUTED FACTS:
Several authors have commented on Hahnemann’s remarkable personality. The pro-homeopathic psychiatrist Jonathan Davidson offers the following diagnoses:
There are reasons to suspect that Hahnemann had either a variant of bipolar disorder or at least a personality characterised by unusual levels of grandiosity, paranoia, abrasiveness, confrontational behaviour, and interpersonal sensitivity, flavoured with mood swings and a175 degree of misrepresentation, even dishonesty. The homeopath William Wesselhoeft, who had studied under Hahnemann described his master as […] an extreme fundamentalist in his beliefs in his own doctrines. He was as extravagant in his speculative claims as our evangelists, as vindictive as a politician the day before election, and as inconsistent as most human beings who persuade themselves that, because they know a lot about one thing, their opinions on other matters are invaluable and final.
Most biographers have pointed out that there is evidence of instability in Hahnemann’s family: his son Friedrich seemed to have gone insane before he eventually disappeared without trace in America. Two of Hahnemann’s daughters developed ‘morbid anxiety’, and two other daughters were murdered under strange circum stances.
If Hahnemann would have been right by even an infinitesimally small degree when he dreamt up his dilutions and ‘universal law’, we’d all be dead, or at least in a permanent state of violent illness.
As has been explained ad infinitum: Every single drop of water has been in contact with the deadliest substances known to man, or has been involved in diluting those deadly substances out of existence, to the same degree as homeopathic dilutions. Which means that we should all suffer the effects of lead, mercury, radium, botulin toxin and thousands of other harmful substances that are found in nature, where most of our drinking water also originates.
And no, the shaking ritual doesn’t make the difference; that’s just one of the escape hatches to ‘explain’ why homeopathic preparations invariably do nothing when under proper scientific scrutiny.
Still, I guess Hahnemann does deserve credit in one respect: he was right in his conclusion that regular medicine of his day often did more harm than good.
And, through his homeopathy, he showed very clearly that doing nothing is often the best ‘treatment’.
So here is my salute to Samuel Hahnemann: Thanks for Nothing!
RichardR
“Rip Van Winkle”: sorry to wake you up. Hahnemann started a revolution in medicine some 200 years ago, that you all have been trying to close down in the name of science for past 200 years with zero success. He has been dead for long but your science, as it develops more sophisticated tools for evaluation, is confirming his observations.
Time for you to drink some real strong coffee and start reading and understanding:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15287434
“The modification of the solvent could provide an important support to the validity of homeopathic medicine, that employs ‘medicines without molecules’. The nature of the phenomena here described remains still unexplained, nevertheless some significant experimental results were obtained.”
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0b69JqzK_44aWJqSFlmVnhQNHI4WlBseW50YkhRU3J3X3Iw/edit
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19657201
A clear difference between the reported short-term reactions of healthy subjects towards Aconitum napellus C30 and towards placebo was shown. The crossover design with intra-individual comparisons proved to be adequate to recognize the study preparations and for the statistical analysis of a small population sample.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0b69JqzK_44UXNaYktPWHRVdkk/edit
Nux vomica and Calendula have significant effect on gene expression 2010.pd
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0b69JqzK_44YmU1MDZkYzktZjRkYS00ZjllLWI0NTctNzA0ZWEyNzMyYWNm/edit?pli=1
ultra dilute solutions have biological properties 2008.
Remaining awake is more important to you from your scientific medical perspective: every other day there is an important circular on adverse effect addition for different medications, audit results changing process by 180 degrees and if a patient is better educated than you, get ready for a new damages suit and additional insurance for next year.
Yup, and there’s quite a bit of similarly impressive evidence that the earth is flat and that we’re ruled by lizard-aliens.
It is ironic that Ernst is upset with Iqbal Krishna and has threatened to ban him from this site for being “offensive,” and yet, you have people like RichardR who lowers the quality of the dialog with his repetitions stupidity about lizard aliens.
If Iqbal is banned, so go I.
And this is the way that skeptics work….they block evidence that they foil their worldview so that they can pretend to be guardians of sciency things.
it is the cumulative evidence!
the TOTALITY OF THE EVIDENCE!
in Iqbal’s case it amount to a lot
[contrary to homeopathy]
RichardR
“Yup, and there’s quite a bit of similarly impressive evidence that the earth is flat and that we’re ruled by lizard-aliens.”
That is one good example of thought process of persons involved in the scientific medical industry. The way you all are conducting medical practices is very similar to the flat earth syndrome. Antibiotic resistance started how many years ago? The reason is known. What changed? Repeat for Malaria? This is the REAL definition of flat earth. And with the adverse effects adding up into chronic conditions and cancers (Read Dr Blaser and researchers on Microbes) we will be ruled by humans turned into lizards: not aliens.
Most, if not ALL of above research is done by persons that your science designates as “physicists and chemists”, the same persons that are employed in pharmaceutical companies creating drugs for you.
It explains some of the mess that you all have created. People creating crude drugs are available by hundreds into pharmaceutical companies, researching and developing drugs that are sold by the company’s salesmen through people like you who call themselves doctors. At the end, poor patients pay for it and have to bear consequences. Nothing new.
Doctors’ strike in Israel may be good for health
https://www.bmj.com/content/320/7249/1561.1
Ten years later:
Doctors’ strikes and mortality: a review.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18849101
Fourteen years later:
Startling Benefit of Cardiology Meetings
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/startling-benefit-cardiology-meetings
What changed? The earth remains flat as ever.
@Dana Ullman
The likelihood of us being governed by lizard aliens is in the same league as the likelihood of a fully absent active substance having any effect on organisms. But OK, it’s off-topic here, so I’ll refrain from using that one again.
@Iqbal Krishna
As Prof. Dr. Ernst already points out, you ignore the absolutely overwhelming evidence that says that homeopathy has no effect beyond placebo.
Even if the research you point out would be less than horrible from a scientific point of view, it is still only to be expected that one in every few dozen or so trials of homeopathy finds a positive effect by chance alone. This is already a more than adequate explanation for the few hundred or so positive homeopathy trials.
When looking for independently replicated homeopathy trials, however, the number of positives very quickly plummets to near-zero.
Admittedly, even real scientists are plagued by the replication problem (Richard Harris’ book Rigor Mortis is a recommended read in this respect), but the majority of commonly prescribed medicines have been proven effective not just once, but many times over again. There is no homeopathic preparation that has repeatedly shown to be effective for any condition whatsoever(*), other than in the (heavily biased) eyes of ignorant quacks.
*: Except perhaps for the conditions of hyperpecuniousness and hypocredulity.
RichardR
“As Prof. Dr. Ernst already points out, you ignore the absolutely overwhelming evidence that says that homeopathy has no effect beyond placebo.”
This information is for period before you took your nap. We all know Edzard’s motivation and ideology for coming up with such reports. He was the Chair of Complementary medicine, with responsibility to run it into the ground. He tried for 20 years and failed. Edzard has had no training in homeopathy to write about it, and I like to refer Dr Robert Hahn’s Meta Analysis, where he specifically names Edzard and points out reasons and areas where Edzard has purposely twisted data for generating ” absolutely overwhelming evidence”.
Loyalties apart, it is worth spending time upon. https://www.karger.com/article/fulltext/355916
“We all know Edzard’s motivation and ideology for coming up with such reports. He was the Chair of Complementary medicine, with responsibility to run it into the ground. ”
Nice but untrue!
see for instance just 2 of many publications:
Complementary and alternative medicine: what the NHS should be funding?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2249806/
Homoeopathy and I
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19832813
but you have shown often that you are unable to differentiate between critical analysis and negative motivation. sad, really.
RichardR
“When looking for independently replicated homeopathy trials, however, the number of positives very quickly plummets to near-zero.”
Forget NEAR. Read the real time 3 cases. As per allopathic system, is there even a remote possibility of resolving these. For patients this outcome is many times more important than papers generated by the likes of Edzard. When such patients recount their experiences with relatives, friends and neighbors, the outcome is a thousand times more potent than the science and meta analysis Edzard writes about. This is the main reason that has homeopathy going for past 200 years. There has been not one year, during this period, when there was not a person like Edzard trying to wave science in the face of patients, most of whom died using the science based medicine. Read what an iconic doctor: David Eddy has to say about the medical world: you all have been doing more harm than good in the name of scientific medicine: every audit has clearly demonstrated this.
fit.thequint.com/health-news/if-homeopathy-is-hogwash-why-are-millions-still-buying-it-2
RichardR
“Admittedly, even real scientists are plagued by the replication problem (Richard Harris’ book Rigor Mortis is a recommended read in this respect), but the majority of commonly prescribed medicines have been proven effective not just once, but many times over again.”
Replication has 2 contexts. The later version is about inability to replicate as most trials end up proving earlier trials wrong. The earlier version is more important: what was being done in the name of replication for past 70 years? What was Edzard peddling in the name of scientific medicine? Snake oil?
My favorite of majority drug is Paracetamol. You know of some better, commonly prescribed “medicine”? How many children are killed world wide with this commonly used drug? And as a doctor are you aware of what does it cure?
The next in line are “opiates”. You know something about the cure they effect and the dosage to be prescribed to avoid addiction? Please send me a link.
Or Antibiotics? Can you explain the antibiotic resistance theory and what is the right dose to avoid resistance and for what period? Send me a link.
“There is no homeopathic preparation that has repeatedly shown to be effective for any condition whatsoever(*), other than in the (heavily biased) eyes of ignorant quacks.”
This is expected coming from a person 100% ignorant of homeopathic knowledge. Homeopathic doctor does not look at the name of disease to be cured: he looks at the patient’s condition. He does not treat Malaria he treats the patient’s condition.
Treating Malaria, TB and such conditions has been the bane of allopathic medical thought. Trying to eradicate diseases – which disease other than small pox did the humans manage to eradicate? (Would be interesting for you to check link between small pox eradication and start of HIV-AIDS epidemic.) Now each disease and its highly virulent strain is circulating for which there is NO treatment. And for all such complete failures, poor patients are at the receiving end: mostly carrying back a chronic diseases or simply dropping dead, after having paid for it.
Edzard refuses to understand the conclusion of Dr Blaser’s research: it flies in his face. May be you would: the question is: what can you do. Nothing. The nap is a better option.
@Iqbal Krishna
Ah, yes, the same old weasel words to hide the fact that homeopaths merely sell feelgood treatments, that don’t actually do anything for people’s health.
I’ve spoken to quite a number of people we fell into this trap, some of which took more than a year to realize that they were paying a lot of money for essentially a homeopath’s listening ear and positive attention, with the expensive sugar crumbs and shaken water being just part of the ritual. Or, as Natalie Grams refers to it, “psychotherapy light”.
And oh, what you say about homeopaths ‘taking the whole person into account’ instead of merely their condition: this is simply untrue. I found that homeopaths are even more prone than real doctors to administer the same ‘remedy’ for the same ailments. (And not just because all ‘remedies’ are in reality 100% identical sugar crumbs or plain water.) Real doctors actually look at a lot of circumstantial factors to determine what may be wrong with someone and what the best treatment is, including things such as stress, (un)healthy habits, living conditions etcetera.
And even then: I recall that there’s also been research into the ‘individualized treatments’ as touted by homeopaths, with the usual outcome: there’s just a placebo effect, nothing more. All homeopaths are essentially con artists, whether they realize it or not.
So I’ll stick to my salute to Samuel Hahnemann: “Thanks for Nothing!”
With these words, Iqbal eloquently demonstrates he knows nothing at all about antibiotics and mechanisms of resistance to them.
RichardR
“I’ve spoken to quite a number of people we fell into this trap, some of which took more than a year to realize that they were paying a lot of money for essentially a homeopath’s listening ear and positive attention, with the expensive sugar crumbs and shaken water being just part of the ritual.”
You realize you have no clue about Paracetamol, Opiates or Antibiotic that you use every day on helpless patients. You cannot answer simple questions about substances that you use on a daily basis. Is this what your science is all about? You are aware of the evidence basis of prescription for drugs that you have been using for past 50 years? You are killing and maiming patients in the name of scientific medicine.
But, you need not worry, there are hundreds of thousands of dummies like you around the world doing exactly the same.
And for your information: no doctor in the medical world has a valid answer to these simple questions. How do you explain such science especially when there is a life at the other end? The fact is, you all don’t give a damn and Science based medicine is only about making money. Patients be dammed. There are hundreds of papers I can present, all written by doctors/scientists from the medical world lamenting this situation.
In the same breath, you talk about homeopathy, a subject you have zero clue about. If you are no good at the subject you practice on daily basis, how would you ever learn medicine in the right way? It is these patients, that you make severely ill, by using drugs that you have no clue about, that end up at homeopaths-seldom the other way around- and once they get well, they make recommendation to their relatives, neighbors and colleagues creating new patients and destroying Edzard’s promotional efforts.
And you don’t have to listen to Edzard about the “listening ear” to believe it. A good homeopath needs at best 10/12 minutes to reach a conclusion about the remedies to be prescribed. While the patient recounts the problem, the doctor mentally lists out the possible remedies. Then doctor cross questions the patient on symptoms for the process of eliminating remedies from the list until 2/3 or at maximum 4 are left. For a patient who comes for a repeat visit, the time taken is even shorter.
I am aware of doctors who consult over 40 cases in 8 hour of work.
“….. homeopaths ‘taking the whole person into account’ instead of merely their condition: this is simply untrue. I found that homeopaths are even more prone than real doctors to administer the same ‘remedy’ for the same ailments. “
You have no knowledge of your work and you claim to have information on homeopath’s working. Don’t waste time. Show me one condition that has one homeopathic remedy listed against it. Or stop talking about it.
This linear thought process is specific to the allopathic system. Notice fever, reduce it. Forget about the reason. Repeat for blood pressure or cholesterol, or …….Even for chronic diseases, provide an inhaler for asthma, daily pill for diabetes. Run a series of tests, and for anything found out of range: give a pill. Does not matter if the pills interact and create new medical conditions.
Russ Altman: What happens when you mix medications
You all should be ashamed of your selves for your lack of medical knowledge.
“(And not just because all ‘remedies’ are in reality 100% identical sugar crumbs or plain water.)”
Wake up. Have a cup of coffee and read slowly.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965229915300388
Comparison of homeopathic globules prepared from high and ultra-high dilutions of various starting materials by ultraviolet light spectroscopy
“Real doctors actually look at a lot of circumstantial factors to determine what may be wrong with someone and what the best treatment is, including things such as stress, (un)healthy habits, living conditions”
You are not serious. Do you know how to define a real doctor? And if the doctor were to ask these questions: what would he do about it? This gets him no money. What about results of the numerous tests that are prescribed? All for the dust bin!
Your Doctor Likely Orders More Tests Than You Actually Need: times
Overkill : An avalanche of unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially. What can we do about it? : The New Yorker
“ I recall that there’s also been research into the ‘individualized treatments’ as touted by homeopaths, with the usual outcome: there’s just a placebo effect, nothing more.”
This research was carried out by Edzard? Based upon outcome? If I could get a doctor who always cured his patients: you know the name that I will have for this person: Jesus Christ 2 and send every one about to die to him. You agree?
“ All homeopaths are essentially con artists, whether they realize it or not.”
I am positive that at the time of writing this sentence you were sitting in front of a mirror. Based upon information provided about you above, you have any doubt?
“So I’ll stick to my salute to Samuel Hahnemann: “Thanks for Nothing!”
Revise it to: Thanks. I understood nothing. The failure lies with you.
I agree: the failure lies with you, Iqbal.
Frank Odds
“With these words, Iqbal eloquently demonstrates he knows nothing at all about antibiotics and mechanisms of resistance to them.”
I am impressed. Let us test your REAL knowledge: these drugs are in use on daily basis.
Try answering the questions that Richard the doctor avoids answering:
1. “My favorite of majority drug is Paracetamol. You know of some better, commonly prescribed “medicine”? How many children are killed world wide with this commonly used drug? And as a doctor are you aware of what does it cure?
2. The next in line are “opiates”. You know something about the cure they effect and the dosage to be prescribed to avoid addiction? Please send me a link.
3. Or Antibiotics? Can you explain the antibiotic resistance theory and what is the right dose to avoid resistance and for what period? Send me a link.
The resistance theory for antibiotics is built around over prescribing antibiotics. Let us see what you know about the guidelines as to how the right dose and period for which it is to be taken is decided by doctors.
In India, the problem is supposed to originate from under usage of antibiotics by patients and over prescription by doctors. So the right dose is important.
Given the steady rise of life expectancy in countries that make use of scientific medicine, you would have to agree that doctors are exquisitely bad at killing and maiming. It is almost as if they are trying to do the opposite and are quite good at it on top of that.
Bart B. Van Bockstaele
“Given the steady rise of life expectancy in countries that make use of scientific medicine, you would have to agree that doctors are exquisitely bad at killing and maiming.”
Living longer is a proof of good medicine? You don’t have to take my words for it. Read a researcher:
“Yet recently, just within the past few decades, amid all of these medical advances, something has gone terribly wrong. In many different ways we appear to be getting sicker. You can see the headlines every day. We are suffering from a mysterious array of what I call “modern plagues”: obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma, hay fever, food allergies, esophageal reflux and cancer, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, autism, eczema. In all likelihood you or someone in your family or someone you know is afflicted. Unlike most lethal plagues of the past that struck relatively fast and hard, these are chronic conditions that diminish and degrade their victims’ quality of life for decades.”
http://martinblaser.com/excerpt.html
“It is almost as if they are trying to do the opposite and are quite good at it on top of that.”
The doctors really don’t know what they do. Read at you leisure. This has been stated here many times. And these papers come from scientific(!) doctors and researchers.
1. IT’S the most common painkiller – but paracetamol is now poisoning 8000 Australians a year and here’s how it’s happening.
2. America’s opioid crisis: how prescription drugs sparked a national trauma
3. Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States
4. Doctors’ strikes and mortality: A review
5. Startling Benefit of Cardiology Meetings
“High-risk patients with certain acute heart conditions are more likely to survive than other similar patients if they are admitted to the hospital during national cardiology meetings, when many cardiologists are away from their regular practices.”
I can put here 50 more papers confirming these effects. But this sample should be good enough for you to update knowledge. And remember, no doctor would ever kill a patient knowingly.
Martin Blaser is great if you like alarmist fantasy, not so great if you are interested in what is true. Just one example of the collection of idiocies, and half-truths in his excerpt:
If Martin Blaser demonstrates anything, it is that not all doctors are interested in what is true and we don’t need him to know that. Quacks like Dr. Oz and Deepak Chopra are doing very good jobs of that already.
@Iqbal Krishna
Yes, I am. Roughly 50% of registered pharmaceuticals have benefits that have been proven beyond any doubt. Another 25% or so could use some more research, as there is doubt about efficacy and/or side effects. And approximately 25% again is probably not really effective. (Figures are based on research by, among others, John Ioannidis, Cochrane, and even Peter Gøtschze.)
Yes, fully a quarter of all registered medicines seem ineffective, which is Bad. But here’s the good news: this problem is increasingly acknowledged, and quite a few initiatives are under way to remedy this situation, i.e. by new research and weeding out treatments (not just medicines) that do nothing, or cause more harm than good.
Then there’s homeopathy. When judged by the same measure as pharmaceuticals, the outcome is, erm, ‘slightly’ worse: 100% is ineffective. And no, there are NO initiatives under way to do anything about this. Quite the contrary, actually: all the time, new, equally useless ‘remedies’ are added to the smoke-and-mirrors show that is homeopathy.
Yes, you are absolutely right that homeopathic sugar crumbs and shaken water as a rule don’t cause side effects, and ultimately injury and death(*), that real medicines regularly do cause. The reason for this, of course, is that homeopathic sugar crumbs and shaken water don’t do anything at all, period. Homeopathy is a ritualized way of doing nothing at all, while fooling people into believing that they receive a treatment of sorts.
And yes, this was actually quite a good idea in a time that regular medicine was often more harmful than beneficial; and it still is the best approach in quite a lot of cases today, as the majority of smaller ailments resolve naturally. Hence my salute to Hahnemann. Thanks to him, we now know that not intervening but merely keeping the patient entertained produces good results in a lot of cases.
But unfortunately, homeopathy failed to keep up with or even acknowledge the huge scientific progress that has been made from ~1850 onwards. Homeopaths never outgrew their original delusions, and still claim that regular medicine does more harm than good, as you so eloquently attest to yourself:
Well, yes, people sometimes do get hurt and even die as a result of medical interventions. Even today, a morning newspaper article I read quoted research findings that 3.1% of all deaths in hospitals are due to avoidable medical errors. And yes, in the Netherlands alone approximately 1100 people die every year as a result of medication errors — although most errors by far are caused by (often old, forgetful) patients themselves, not so much by caregivers or pharmaceuticals per se.
But just a small tour around the elderly shows us that vastly more people stay alive in more comfort as a result of modern medication. Or to put it bluntly: if we were to follow your ‘insights’, and replaced all ‘allopathic drugs’ with homeopathic sugar crumbs and shaken water, the result would be a huge wave of mortality among our elderly, and a lot more suffering for those with chronic conditions. Yes, for instance NSAIDs may be harmful, but just ask patients with rheumatoid arthritis if they would prefer to live in constant, agonizing pain instead (and no, please don’t insult our intelligence to claim that RA can be treated effectively with homeopathy).
In other words: our ever increasing life expectancy and general health are fully due to scientific medical progress, NOT homeopathy. The latter merely shows us that placebos can make people feel better, but they can’t make them better.
*: Then again, tell this to the friend of my parents, who kept consulting his homeopath with increasingly alarming symptoms of fatigue and dizzy spells. The homeopath just kept babbling about ‘negative energy’ and sold the man all sorts of sugar crumbs to ‘expel the negative energy from the body’. When symptoms worsened, the man was told that this was to be expected, and that he should first reach the ‘lowest point’ before ‘slowly climbing back to health’. No need to consult an ‘allopathic’ doctor, as that would only make things worse.
Well, he reached the ‘lowest point’ all right: six feet under. We’re still waiting for the ‘climbing back’ part though.
Unfortunately, the listed cause of death was not ‘Terminal quackery’ as it should have been, but ‘Congestive heart failure,’ which in turn was caused by a leaking valve — something that could have been fixed relatively easily, had the man consulted a real doctor instead of a clueless quack.
“Well, he reached the ‘lowest point’ all right: 6 feet under. We’re still waiting for the ‘climbing back’ part though.”
RichardR, your eloquence is impressive. I’ll remember this for all time.
Modern drugs have been “proven” effective 50% of the time? Well, not according to the BMJ or from the head of HEALTHWATCH of the UK. Both assert that the number is between 11% and 15%:
https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/01/how-much-orthodox-medicine-ebm
you do know Dana that you are interpreting this BMJ data wrong?
of course you do!
edzardernst.com/2017/05/is-conventional-medicine-based-on-good-evidence/
not if you show me his direct quotes on this!
[but I think you are telling porkies again, Dana; naughty, naughty!]
The BMJ has now TAKEN DOWN their evidence that there is no little evidence that conventional medicine works!
This evidence has become just too embarrassing to Big Pharma. They would prefer that people NOT know that there is so little good evidence. Is anyone really surprised?
what a silly statement!
my link shows you the evidence the BMJ published; you comment on it; when challenged you respond: “The BMJ has now TAKEN DOWN their evidence…”
PRICELESS! IT DOESN’T GET BETTER THAN THIS
Ed…Go to the LINK that YOU provide at your article…you will be surprised (as I was). There’s no pie-chart there anymore.
Damn, stop the arrogance and LOOK!
THIS IS GETTING EVEN BETTER
Dan… I do not doubt that; that’s why I provided you with a copy of the chart. surely it was you who started commenting on it. so now comment on the proper interpretation of it.
[can you ever compose a comment without an insulting word? you should try it; it IS possible, you know]
Bart B. Van Bockstaele
“Martin Blaser is great if you like alarmist fantasy, not so great if you are interested in what is true. Just one example of the collection of idiocies, and half-truths in his excerpt:”
Celiac disease is a serious autoimmune disorder that can occur in genetically predisposed people where the ingestion of gluten leads to damage in the small intestine. It is estimated to affect 1 in 100 people worldwide. Two and one-half million Americans are undiagnosed and are at risk for long-term health complications.
https://celiac.org/celiac-disease/understanding-celiac-disease-2/what-is-celiac-disease/
1% effectively means: 80 million people world wide. At what numbers does it stops becoming an idiocies? And this number is NOT by Dr Blaser.
Edzard
“edzardernst.com/2017/05/is-conventional-medicine-based-on-good-evidence/”
You show effectiveness at 11%. Everything else is in the realm of Likely, trade off, unlikely, likely to be harmful and unknown effectiveness.
How does it add up to greater than 11% effective and what is the basis of increased number, if any?
Back to playing with figures? Proving Dr R Hahn correct again.
just try to understand the issue and don’t waffle nonsense
RichardR
“……….. of registered pharmaceuticals have benefits that have been proven beyond any doubt. Another 25% or so could use some more research, as there is doubt about efficacy and/or side effects. And approximately 25% again is probably not really effective. (Figures are based on research by, among others, John Ioannidis, Cochrane, and even Peter Gøtschze.)”
Don’t go around in circles avoiding answer to specific question. I asked some simple questions that you do every day. Prescribe Paracetamol, opiates and antibiotics.
1.How many children are killed world wide with this commonly used Paracetamol drug? And as a doctor are you aware of what does it cure?
2. The next in line are “opiates”. You know something about the cure they effect and the dosage to be prescribed to avoid addiction? Please send me a link.
3. Or Antibiotics? What is the right dose to avoid resistance and for what period? Send me a link.
The resistance theory for antibiotics is built around over prescribing antibiotics. Let us see what you know about the guidelines as to how the right dose and period for which it is to be taken is decided by doctors.
Please don’t tell me that you have been doing this for past umpteen years adding to the mess of the medical world as the decision for dosage and duration have been not described and left to doctor’s whims with no evidence as what is good or bad. That is real science.
In India, the problem is supposed to originate from under usage of antibiotics by patients and over prescription by doctors. So the right dose is important.
We talk about homeopathy when you are able to demonstrate your ability to think like a doctor: out to save patients.
@Dana Ullman:
Even if this were correct (which I believe isn’t), regular medicine still vastly outperforms homeopathy, which has 0% proven effectiveness for any of its ‘remedies’, or for any condition.
This information is correct. That by Mr Blaser is not. Can you spot the difference? To make it easy on you, the mistake is not a minor one and has nothing to do with numbers.
That is the real point, isn’t it? While we all like to dream about 100% effective and 100% safe medicinal products and procedures, we also realise we live in the real world, and welcome any demonstrable improvement. We do our best to make use of treatments that are most effective, or least ineffective. Homeopaths don’t seem to agree with that.
I find it quite interesting to note that some of the most successful interventions are among those most vehemently opposed by homeopaths. One would almost dare to think that ‘death to all’ is a homeopaths’ wet dream.
Isn’t it the same in religion, where defenders of the faith are not happy imposing all types of unpleasant rules on themselves but insist on imposing them on those with differing views as well?
Whereas we talk about medicine when there is demonstrated ability to act like a doctor: saving patients.
Who is to know what homeopaths think, and is it even relevant, since the general effect of their ministrations is indistinguishible from placebo effects?
@Iqbal Krishna
Let’s see, what do we have here … ah, yes: loaded questions, circular reasoning (on your behalf, not mine), argumentum ad nauseam, and trying to send me on a wild goose chase with some odd questions. The answers to which, of course, will only be met with a demand for more irrelevant details, sending me further into the woods. And being a fervent nature lover, I’d almost oblige… so let’s spot that goose of yours!
You started out by claiming that homeopathy is far less harmful than real medicine, and yes, I fully admit that this is true. But I also addressed the essential point that you so conveniently omit all the time, which is that real medicine has been proven beneficial — and far more beneficial than harmful. Homeopathy is only beneficial in that it sometimes makes people feel good. This is the gist of it.
And now you once again ask about hazards of real medicines. To which I once again answer that, yes, real medicines have real effects, including harmful effects. And as I mentioned earlier, for at least half of all registered medicines, the beneficial effects outweigh possible harmful effects(*).
But OK, let’s try answering your questions anyway:
Based on the literature, I’d say one or two dozen or so per year. Acetaminophen is rather less acutely toxic for children than for adults. I’d estimate that far more more children die annually as a result of being treated with homeopathy (i.e. medical neglect).
[I am not a doctor] It does not cure anything, nor is it supposed to. It suppresses pain. Is that somehow bad?
Just as paracetamol, opioid substances don’t cure anything, they suppress pain and anxiety — rather more strongly than paracetamol, which bears with it the risk of addiction.
This is a meaningless question. Opioids are prescribed in a high enough dose to suppress severe pain and discomfort, but should as a rule not be prescribed chronically. But in some categories of patients (often terminally ill), it is the only effective way to ease their suffering.
Once again a question for which there is no single, good answer. Antibiotics should be prescribed as little as possible. In some countries, doctors are well aware of the uses, limitations and hazards of prescribing antibiotics, and have a rather conservative prescription policy. In other countries, alas, antibiotics are prescribed liberally, even in the case of viral infections, and when asked why, those doctors defend their actions by claiming that they prevent secondary bacterial infection this way (for which there is no good evidence).
I find your questions a bit strange though. The medicines you mention are absolutely effective, and apart from the opioid crisis in the US, offer large benefits with only small to moderate drawbacks.
In comparison, homeopathy is utterly laughable. Homeopathy can’t relieve pain any better than a placebo, and homeopathy most certainly can’t cure actual infections.
*: It is actually not completely straightforward to quantify the beneficial and harmful effects of medicines. There are several metrics for effectiveness alone, and real-life harmful effects are even less well-defined, as they also depend on legislation and cultural circumstances (e.g. how easy it is to obtain or prolong a subscription for opioids).
Bart B. Van Bockstaele
“Martin Blaser is great if you like alarmist fantasy, not so great if you are interested in what is true.
Is that what you believe? Most qualified doctors are of exact opposite opinion.”
Richard Deckelbaum: Director, Institute of Human Nutrition, Columbia University
Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH, Commissioner of Health, New York
Abraham Verghese MD, author of Cutting for Stone
Arthur Agatston, author of The South Beach Diet
David M. Oshinsky, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Polio: An American Story
Harrier Hall: Blaser’s book is well-written, explains the science clearly for the average reader, and includes fascinating stories and facts. This is exciting stuff! I wish I could be alive 100 years from now to see how research into the microbiome will change (?) the practice of medicine.
“That by Mr Blaser is not. Can you spot the difference? To make it easy on you, the mistake is not a minor one and has nothing to do with numbers.”
Dr Blaser is 100% correct. The use of antibiotics and science based medical practices has created diseases that have made population genetically predisposed to chronic diseases: celiac, asthma, diabetes…… The pharma companies are laughing their way to the bank by providing daily fix, leaving patients with: “ chronic conditions that diminish and degrade their victims’ quality of life for decades.”
It is not the present patients, the present medical system is making generations chronically sick. Good for you all.
-We found a fourfold increase in the incidence of CD in the United Kingdom over 22 years, with large regional variations in prevalence.
Will the world be any different?
So what’s the relevance to homeopathy?
You mean that? I give you one more chance to spot the error. It is such a short sentence, and I already told you the error I am talking about is not in the numbers. Surely, it can’t be beyond the capabilities of the great Iqbal to see what is wrong here?
In case you hadn’t noticed: I am not Harrier Hall, whoever he/she is, not even Harriet Hall, in case you made a typo. I am younger, substantially fatter, of the other sex and have and have had a rather different life.
I certainly agree there is a potential for a lot of exciting new science and changes. Only intellectually deficient brains would dare to claim otherwise (homeopaths perhaps?).
That said, the phrase I quoted is wrong, the error I noticed is not in the numbers, is not a typo and of a rather fundamental nature. Can the Amazing Iqbal spot it?
Bart B. Van Bockstaele
” I am not Harrier Hall, whoever he/she is, not even Harriet Hall, in case you made a typo.”
Avoid writing such messages.
Edzard will kick you out of his site with no explanations offered.
can you try to make some sense, please?
Given that you are still here, that seems rather unlikely, and if I understand Professor Ernst even a little bit, he will warn me first.
Now, what about answering the question I have asked about Mr Blaser’s claim? It is not a ‘trick question’. His claim is genuinely wrong. Surely, it can’t be beyond your abilities to find out why?
Bart B. Van Bockstaele
“Given that you are still here, that seems rather unlikely, and if I understand Professor Ernst even a little bit, he will warn me first.”
I am doubtful if you understand logic. He requires people like Dana, me etc who write against him so that he gets traffic. If it is people like you, available by dozens, who will read? Like ordering plain omelette for breakfast, lunch and dinner followed by the same order for the next one year.
Harriet Hall and some others are his alter ego with regular massaging of each other’s ego.
The Ethics of CAM: More Harm than Good?
Don’t drink your bath water – Epsom salts, liver damage, and naturopaths (check Edzard’s writings and dates), there are many stupid subjects treated together.
“Now, what about answering the question I have asked about Mr Blaser’s claim? It is not a ‘trick question’. His claim is genuinely wrong. Surely, it can’t be beyond your abilities to find out why?”
I am not in the process of playing games.
Nice pice of reasoning. That’s surely why homeopaths are so eager to expell people like me. They don’t want traffic, right?
A perfect homeopathic reply. I am so deeply sorry for you.
By your SAME convoluted logic, the atomic bomb must have been a placebo because there are atoms all around us. Yeah, THAT dumb.
Show us where various toxin substances undergo something similar to the potentization process in glass bottles.
Damn, it seems that logic goes out of the window when skeptics try to fabricate baloney in their efforts to misconstrue reality and homeopathy!
“Show us where various toxin substances undergo something similar to the potentization process in glass bottles.”
It has been demonstrated. Repeatedly. Nothing happens to the toxic substances, as you rightly say. Exactly the same way that nothing happens in the “potentization” process. You and your friends wish it to be otherwise but science contradicts you, demonstrated by the totality of the evidence. Flap and flail all you wish, Dana. We’ve told you repeatedly what evidence will change our minds about homeopathy. You are unable to provide it. We’ve asked you what would change yours. You seem unable to tell us.
Geocentrists. Flat-Earthers. Creationists. Homeopaths. All cast in the same mould.
What is being misconstrued here? Forget the reaching for a science-y-seeming mechanism. How do you know it works?
Irrelevant.
In Maryborough in Australia there’s a statue of Mary Poppins. She was keen on a spoonful of sugar as well. There are no other statues of flying nannies in Maryborough. Or anywhere else, for that matter. By Dana’s logic, this presumably gives extra-powerful validation to the existence of flying nannies. And of the power of sugar.
By homeopaths, it is slightly different, though. A spoonful of sugar helps
themedicine go down.Hahnemann’s discovery that cholera is an air-borne infection ranks alongside Roy’s identification of the oscillating bacterium that causes influenza.
Hahnemann was not just a physician, but also the author of a leading textbook used by apothecaries (pharmacists) of his day. His method of making homeopathic medicines (“potentization”) was a clever, even brilliant, way to make “nanodoses” of the original medicinal agent. Such nanodoses are more able to penetrate cell membranes and blood-brain barriers than larger doses due to the defenses of cells and the brain.
Although skeptics originally asserted that there is “nothing” in homeopathic medicines, THAT cannot be asserted anymore, except by those who prefer to lie or misinform (or simply show their own ignorance), as now verified by that LANGMUIR study as well as by a half-dozen other studies that have now verified the persistence of nanodoses created by “potentization.”
The entire emerging field of nanopharmacology and nanomedicine are already HUGE…and homeopathy was the original nanomedicine…
“Such nanodoses are more able to penetrate cell membranes and blood-brain barriers than larger doses due to the defenses of cells and the brain.”
Ahh, I see – this is how a nano-particle of Berlin Wall works! Makes sense!!
YOUR ‘NANO-BOLLOCKS’ EXPLAIN VIRTUALLY NOTHING
I thought that photons were programmed with information? And somehow, these photons are slowed to zero speed and trapped in the quantum doo-dah of the nano things? And then some unspecified thing causes the photons to emerge which then convey the information to DNA? Which then does something unspecified to cure “dis-ease”?
And it all happens in such a way that it fools scientists into thinking that nothing is going on.
Except, of course, that you have to make abstraction of the slight inconvenience that homeoquackery dilutes particles out of existence and that even having a single molecule of the potentised product in the end product is less likely than winning the lottery. The difference between non-existing particles and small particles however tiny – is not negligible.
How can the sub-microscopic be HUGE?
Dana, a factor for membrane penetration is the size of the molecule. Smaller molecules penetrate more easily. `Nanodose’ does not mean a smaller molecule, it means fewer molecules. Providing fewer molecules will reduce penetration not increase it, because the concentration gradient will be lower. Are you claiming that potentisation makes the molecules smaller? Of course, there are other factors, such as membrane channels, receptors, lipid affinities etc. I would love to see research that shows an effect of potentisation on these factors.
To be fair, that was (part of) my superficial reading of what he wrote, not necessarily what he meant. Regardless of what he meant, it is indeed wrong. It is a hilarious idea though. It makes me think of the ‘incredible shrinking sodium atom’ or something like that. It would certainly not be incompatible with any other daft ideas of homeofans and homeoquacks.
For purposes that have nothing to do with homeopathy, I am currently reading Campbell’s biology book (4th edition). He provides a good introduction to atoms and molecules meant for biology students, but I think that even a homeopath should be able to grasp most of it. I recommend it.
The point of course is that Dana spouts sciency-sounding words without bothering to understand what they mean. Hence what he actually means is impossible to fathom.
What he means is indeed often just as hard to guess as any other oracle or deity. It reminds me of the hilarious exchange Richard Dawkins had with Neil Spencer where Dawkins noted that Spencer was in a position in which it was impossible to lose and Spencer replied that this is indeed what he hoped, not realising that a position in which it is impossible to lose is also a position in which it is impossible to win.
but surely homeopaths can split molecules – they are often excellent at doing it with hair.
Like Mr. Jourdain qui faisait de la prose sans le savoir!
Which LANGMUIR study would that be? Please provide a reference.
Dana, you’re missing an opportunity. Since homeopathic dilution goes well beyond the nano level, why don’t you suggest that homeopathy is, in fact, yoctopharmacology (10^-24)? Visualizing nanoparticle impurities in dilutions has nothing on what might be found when the relevant technology becomes available to see smaller.
Mr. Ullman,
without a cellular RECEPTOR, a signalling molecule (call it “nanodose” or whatever you like) does NOTHING, even if it may have entered the cell.
However, no such thing as a “Berlin Wall RECEPTOR” (or any other of the obscure homeopathic substances) has ever been identified.
Could you please explain how you think that the obscure homeopathic “nanodose” substances can lead to a CELL RESPONSE? I have asked you before and you answered that the homeopathic remedies do not work work “in every instance” and that “resonance” would be the key factor.
However, even if the homeopathic substances would induce “resonance” of some sort, there still would have to be “resonance RECEPTORS” (or “resonance “partners”?) in the cells, but they simply do not exists. Could you please explain THE MECHANISM how a human cell can detect that e.g. a Berlin Wall remedy “nanodose” has entered the cell?
Where is the “resonance receptor” on the C NOTE on a piano with other C notes? OR…do you think that musical resonance is only a “placebo”?
good question, Dana –
considering your limited means
Edzard
“For non-homeopaths, they are just gibberish that makes no sense whatsoever.”
This is your thought process and I am sure not all doctors think like this. You would other wise have difficulty in explaining the trained scientific doctors who turn to use or practice homeopathy.
Talking about science in medicine I read a message on Glaucoma:
“….high pressure in the eye-ball, a condition that can lead to glaucoma and blindness.
“….. the treatment followed was pressure-lowering medications used on millions of people. The studies actually suggested that the treatment was harmful, causing more cases of blindness, not fewer.”
The approach made perfect scientific sense. The problem checked and co-related to varying parameter and bringing parameter under control.
What went wrong that hundred of thousands were blinded by scientific medical approach” instead of being cured?
If you can understand the paradox, maybe you will start under standing a little of what has been stated by Hahnemann.
You forget the dozens that were saved, of course. But then, again, you always do.
Dana, assuming you’ve seen Edzard’s childish response to your comment. He presented an excellent example of being hoist by one’s own petard.
Edzard on Wednesday 11 April 2018 at 22:25
“good question, Dana –
considering your limited means”
Edzard Ernst Saturday 22 December 2012 “….in my experience, the fact that, whenever the defenders of the indefensible ran out of rational arguments, personal attacks are rarely far. Personal or ad hominem attacks are fallacious arguments directly directed at a named individual which serve as substitutes for that individual’s arguments. In football terminology, they play the player instead of the ball.”
Don’t yer just love it how Sandra Courtney affects this air of intellectual maturity and moral superiority? It’s almost as though she believes nobody here is familiar with her record of despicable online activity! Which, of course, doesn’t necessarily make her wrong. However…
Dana,
‘Edzard’ is a robot. Can’t answer questions, and programmed to the hilt with ad.hominems
Dana, if you ignore the robots and human clowns on this site, you can use the site to put forward the true view about homeopathy and natural medicine.
This site has been going for years and has a fairly good readership based on comments that come in from humans across the planet.
The main thing Dana, is to stop looking silly by being drawn into ‘sticky doll’ confrontations, and this is something that you have fallen into over the years. Hence your name: Mr DUllman.
Greg
I had a look at your recent comments; for my taste, you are using far too much insults and rudeness.
this is to inform you that, in my view, this has now reached a point where I will no longer tolerate it.
so, if you want to continue posting comments on this blog, please moderate your language.
any further insult will get you expelled.
Dana,
You are digging yourself into a hole by promoting the nano theory of homeopathic dilutions.
Maybe you don’t care though, it is possible that the business aspect of homeopathy may be uppermost for you rather than the scientific truth aspect. If writing books and making money from gullible people is your motive, you will probably sell this nonsense to a lot of people.
If you do believe that a nano explanation for the action of homeopathic remedies is possible then get the evidence for it FIRST.
‘Dano’, how would nano doses of arsenic penetrating cells possibly contribute to curing illnesses rather than deeply poisoning people with arsenic?
Greg
“You are digging yourself into a hole by promoting the nano theory of homeopathic dilutions.”
Dana is correct.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20970092
Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nano particulate perspective.
Greg,
I wonder what your background is.
are you a physician, homeopath, other clinician, scientist?
please tell us; honestly, I want to know.
Again, you do not answer my question, you just post a different question, thus avoiding any concrete answer.
Although I am not a specialist on the ear, I know that it indeed contains special cells called “Hair Cells” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_cell). These hair cells accept and transmit the acoustic signals, which come from the piano (“C-note”). So that should be the receptor for your example.
So now it´s your turn, please answer what the receptor of e.g. the Berlin Wall remedy would be.
Thank you in advance.
A question that reveals how much you do not know while comparing apples to oranges. Mr. Ullman, sounds are mechanical waves with a frequency. Our ears contain specialized cells with small mechanotransductive (fascinating words, huh?) hairs, which vibrate according to frequency and create a chemical signal (they cause movement of charged ions) that is then converted to an electrical signal (charge movement is current flow). This travels to the brain and is interpreted as the C note. The D note has a different frequency, so the signals are different. It’s about frequency, not resonance Mr. Ullman.
Yes, we have mechanisms to receive such signals. We don’t have mechanisms to receive gold or silicate. Homeopathy is not nanomedicine, it’s not nano… It’s way beyond that level.
Next totally irrelevant question please?
Wow…your effort to sound “sciency” is so impressive….but meaningless.
If 2 C notes are in a room without anyone’s ears do they have an effect on each other? Of course!
Nature is BUILT around resonance…and I personally wonder if chaos theory supports the notion that a frequency can have a dramatic effect at a long distance because it finds another SAME or SIMILAR frequency.
There IS something powerful from this “principle of sames and similars”…and oh…what is that primary principle of homeopathy? Hmmmmm.
Ironically, skeptics of homeopathy are well represented by people like James who seem to believe that if a tree falls in a forest, it doesn’t create a sound unless there are human ears nearby. #DaftToTheMax!
There is no irony to the fact that you folks love to sound sciency…but your arrogance AND ignorance create an unscientific atttitude. Well, ok, there is a LOT of irony here.
so you make the sounds of science and we merely sound ‘sciency’?
All very entertaining Dana, but what about an answer to our points about `nanodoses’?
“Nature is BUILT around resonance”
Is it? Not something I was taught. Any publications to support this? I suspect that Dana has been reading a little too much Nassim Harramein whose Resonance Science Foundation comes up with stuff like this https://resonance.is/chiral-water-super-structure-forms-around-dna/ which homeoquacks will get their knickers in a twist over.
Unfortunately, though, Harramein appears to be another Brave Maverick who is viewed with disdain by other physicists and mathematicians who properly know their stuff.
https://www.quora.com/What-do-physicists-on-Quora-think-about-Nassim-Harramein-and-The-Resonance-Project-meaning-is-his-information-reliable-and-are-his-descriptions-of-reality-viable
So it goes.
Dana,
Your answer to piano string resonance comes from wave physics 101. When a hammer strikes a piano string, all the other strings resonate to some extent. Those tuned to the harmonic series of the fundamental (sounded) string resonate more strongly than the rest, so the sound wave transmitted to the ear contains a combination of the fundamental note plus (mainly) the harmonic series of the fundamental in resonance.
There are no resonance ‘receptors’ in the piano. The effect is similar to sopranos shattering crystal glasses with high notes.
Now, what the heck has this to do with ‘nanodoses’ affecting mammalian cells?! Nanoresonance? No… hang on, I’ve got it… it’s quantum nanoresonance. That’s the explanation of the effects of homeopathy in medicine. And a perfect explanation why those effects can’t be detected in any well designed clinical study.
Still no concrete answer, Mr. Ullman. And I struggle to understand what “2 C notes” in one room or the noise that a falling tree makes have to do with the cellular receptors for homeopathic remedies that I was asking you about.
Let me rephrase:
You claim that the “nanodose” homeopathic remedy, if applied under the correct circumstances, has an effect on the HUMAN BODY (consisting of many millions of individual cells).
In your previous answers, you seem to focus on the “signal” side of the question, i.e. the (unproven) “resonance” that the remedy is supposed to produce.
However, my question still is, how the cells, that are the TARGETs of the remedy (e.g. to be detroyed in case of cancer cells) detect this “resonance”.
Thank you.
My effort to respond to your question with science is meaningless indeed, you never talk science. You talk religion, with scientific words…
Beyond your response to me, I would really like to know more about your funny analogy about sounds being there without the need for an ear to hear them. Are you meaning that your homeopathic effects don’t need a patient to mediate? Do you examine imaginary patients? Perhaps the effects of homeopathic remedies exist without the need of someone being there to receive the effects?
What did you mean by your analogy Mr. Ullman? That imagining the effects means they are there?
Sounds in a forest certainly are there but, what exactly do you know about them when you are not there yourself to analyze them? We know sounds exist in our absence because we first found out that they exist in our presence Mr. Ullman. Now, the effects of homeopathy don’t exist in our presence. Are you trying to say that they only exist in our absence? And if we “look” they simply vanish? That sounds more like religion…
As Leonard Mlodinow said to Deepak Chopra: “I know what those words mean”.
Irrelevant.
Ah, Dana Ullman, you feigningly decry the lack of understanding of homeopathy on the part of those who don’t buy it. Yet you apparently don’t understand that which you espouse. Must be difficult.
I was wondering why DUllman wasn’t providing any references to this important study, until I found this sad piece:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23083226
Even *if* the claims in this abstract are correct, it doesn’t begin to provide any reasons to believe homeopathy has any verifiable truth to it, and not having any reasons to believe something is a pretty good reason not to believe it.
I seem to remember that he provided the link before … and every time people point out to him that this study is nothing to write home about. perhaps this is why he now tries to argue without the link?
That sounds pretty plausible.
In case nothing else works, skeptics prefer to just make-up shit.
I don’t reference the LANGMUIR study because anyone with HALF a wit of knowledge about homeopathy knows about it…but sadly, there are simply too many skeptics with less than half a wit. Being TWO tacos short of a combination plate. And they revel in their ignorance. Sadly typical!
Well, I didn’t know about it, and having read the abstract, I find it is not even remotely interesting. Why would I be interested in an obscure and far-fetched explanation for a phenomenon that hasn’t been shown to exist?
Surely, if homeopathy is so fantastic, it can’t be that hard to demonstrate it? Homeopathy is over 200 years old now, why are there no credible studies that show how good it is?
You are not doing yourself any favours by rambling on and insulting people instead of conducting serious trials. It’s almost as if you already know homeopathy is nonsense. Trial-by-insult is not particularly credible, even *if* you are right.
Show us the evidence. Address our concerns. In that case, even if you are shown to be wrong, you stand a good chance of earning some respect instead of the – thoroughly merited – disdain and ridicule you are getting now.
Actually, you insult yourslef by asking for research…and then, not reading it…and then, complain when I call you on not reading and pretending to not know about it. Really!?
You make all of this way too easy!
Reading is a means, not a goal. You seem to be able to read, what about taking the next step and learning to understand what you read? It would at least enable you to formulate meaningful answers.
Case in point:
I did not say I didn’t read ‘that LANGMUIR paper’. I said I read the abstract and found it did not provide me with any reasons to believe homeopathy has any verifiable truth to it.
I also did not pretend I didn’t know it. I honestly said I didn’t know it. So I was admitting my ignorance, and I have no problems doing that. But you seem to have problems accepting that. That is pretty sad if you ask me.
Or DUllman is thinking of Chikramane’s latest opus: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28844286 The abstract makes no sense but fulltext is behind a paywall so I haven’t been able to see the full performance 🙂
I especially like this:
It seems like a typical magic trick: misdirection. Who cares about explanations of an effect that hasn’t been shown to exist in the first place?
” Who cares about explanations of an effect that hasn’t been shown to exist in the first place?”
Hear hear!!!
They don’t set out to find the truth. They set out to compose something to respond to sceptics… They don’t even care about the truth.
Just like any other religion.
It is CLASSIC that a skeptic of homeopathy complains that an article is “behind a pay wall”…it is almost as though they have never heard of a LIBRARY before!
Yes, we homeopaths prefer to keep our studies behind pay walls to stop people from reading them…said with much irony. Skeptics look for any and all reasons to stay ignorance or not read good research.
Here’s a link to the leading medical journal in Brazil, which just published an entire issue devoted to homeopathy:
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-42302018000200093&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
Wake up and smell the potentized coffee!
“Revista de Homeopatia”, the leading medical journal in Brazil, really?
************************
Content of the English edition
http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/issue/view/42/showToc
“Editorial: To those who demand scientific evidence for homeopathy” (https://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/405).
“Homeopathy: a brief description of this medical specialty” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/406).
“Medical education in non-conventional therapeutics in the world (homeopathy and acupuncture)” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/407).
“Scientific basis of the homeopathic healing principle in modern pharmacology” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/408).
“The soundness of homeopathic fundamental research” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/409).
“Effects of homeopathic high dilutions on in vitro models: literature review” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/410).
“Effects of homeopathic high dilutions on plants: literature review” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/411).
“Clinical research in homeopathy: systematic reviews and randomized clinical trials” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/412).
“Potentized estrogen in homeopathic treatment of endometriosis-associated pelvic pain: A 24-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/414).
“Randomized, double-blind trial on the efficacy of homeopathic treatment in children with recurrent tonsillitis” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/413).
“Do homeopathic medicines cause drug-dependent adverse effects or aggravations?” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/416).
“Do homeopathic medicines induce symptoms in apparently healthy volunteers? The Brazilian contribution to the debate on homeopathic pathogenetic trials” (http://aph.org.br/revista/index.php/aph/article/view/417).
Here’s the PROPER link to the journal of the Brazil’s medical association:
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-42302018000200093&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
Ah! Brazilian coffee. That is exactly what I am enjoying right now, after waking to a wonderful Saturday morning. And I believe it is rather potent, a double shot cappuccino.
And what do I find if not another masterpiece from the Master Protector of Homeopathy (MPH)
The Great Dana has smartly humiliated his humble adversaries and demonstrated his prowess in searching for scientific evidence. He has smartly procured a link to the journal of a Brazilian fraternity of magic water enthusiasts. In said publication they of course inform, encourage and commend each other at length on their potent magic. The publication our great Dana so proudly calls “a leading medical journal” leads to an issue listing well known homeopathic scriptures the Brazilian water shakers believe to collectively provide conclusive proof of the magic of shaken water.
Most of these items are already properly analysed and disqualified, but that does not distract the Great Dana.
Just to humour our great friend and endless source of homeopathic silliness, I can proudly present a publication produced by similarly enthusiastic Brasilian fraternity who collects (in their mind solid) proof that we are all wrong in believing the earth to be a globe. I am confident the earth remains a globe, notwithstanding my discovery of the existence of Brazilian believers in the validity of the opposing hypothesis.
I won this round, my discovery is sillier than Dana’s! 😀
I was however unsuccessful in finding an accessible library that subscribes to “Homeopathy”. I guess the demand in my part of the world does not justify the expense. It is however not difficult to download any paper by illegal means. You simply have to know how… and have the interest 😉
Perhaps I will find the time and will to procure this latest from Chikramane, to supplement my collection of homeopathic curiosities. Until then, as I did in my previous comment, I honestly declare that I have not read the full text of Chikramane’s latest product – yet.
I guess the Great Dana always reads the full text of every paper he cites, or does he…?
Now on to enjoying this beautiful rainy day.
This is the previous link provided by DUllman and used by me:
They both link to the same place, as they should, since they are identical.
one day, he might even discover that there is PROPER medicine!?
Perhaps the day he discovers he has a real disease.
It’s an editorial article in a journal. Not the article says very much. It links to a publication by homeopaths. The journal has NOT “just published an entire issue devoted to homeopathy”.
Here is the article https://online.flippingbook.com/view/839353/6/
It’s very clear that homeopaths on social media have uncritically passed on Ullman’s assertion.
‘honest error’ no doubt!
Ignorance is not bliss. I’ve referenced that study hundreds of times…and skeptics still pretend to be ignorant of it. Oh well.
No it is not.
It seems that your clairvoyance could use some refining.
Bart B. Van Bockstaele
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/279711806_Evidence_in_support_of_gene_regulatory_hypothesis_Gene_expression_profiling_manifests_homeopathy_effect_as_more_than_placebo
https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/433485
This is dangerous crap, I’m afraid, Bart. Do take a look.
I have and it is, James. You are right. I will be fascinated by tests that are attempting to find out how homeopathy works, once it has been shown that it works. As long as that hasn’t happened, I am not interested, and after 200 years, the prospects for that aren’t promising.
Pseudoscientific nonsense. Irrelevant.
Edzard, if that is the case then YOU should have been auto expelled a long time ago.
If you block me from this site, that will be funny.
But, you are so much fun ‘Edzard’, so I hope you don’t do it.
Well, it seems your fate is in your own hands, isn’t it? You have been given a choice: insulting people or not insulting them. Isn’t that what homeopaths usually say they are advocating: choice?
To make things even better: your choice is an informed one since you have been warned while homeopaths usually only offer uninformed choices.
Have fun, and use some substantial arguments, not religious ones. It seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Edzard…I see your pattern here. You eliminate anyone who expresses any degree of positive considerations for homeopathy by claiming that they are too offensive, while consistently ignoring those people who are extremely antagonistic to homeopathy, even when they are consistently offensive.
Putin would be proud of you. You don’t poison people, but you do make them “go away”!
as I said: priceless!
In case anyone is confused, the comment at 07:40 is Edzard Ernst’s comment.
‘I had a look at your recent comments…’
Greg
Being polite on this blog is one way street.
All those singing the Edzard tune are polite in spite of any slur they use against you. If you put up contrary views,
“………for my taste, you are using far too much insults and rudeness.”
Edzard can feel insulted? I am surprised.
My thought: he can do so at his own peril. Let us see how many can eat the same tasteless broth, day-in day-out, that he serves here.
Iqbal, what I told Greg today goes for you too: one more insult and you are banned.
Wow…Edzard! Are you REALLY insulted by Iqbal in THIS statement? Really!?
Thin skin comes with a deep insecurity…thanx for verifying this, especially when Iqbal provides references that disembowel skeptics with basic science studies and with his own experiences. Anecdotal evidence is also a part of good science…just ask any surgeon or patient of a surgeon.
you can keep you ‘Readers Digest’ psychology to yourself.
it is wrong!
anecdotes are not evidence.
If anecdotes are not evidence, do you therefore assert that surgeons are QUACKS because of the paucity of double-blind and placebo controlled trials for 99% of surgical procedures?
Curious minds want to know…
you are priceless!
surgery is based on plenty of trial evidence; a quick Medline search for ‘surgery, clinical trial’ results in 269858 hits.
Yeah…but what if there were lots of “trials” but no placebo controlled trials of homeopathy? We ALL know what you would say! You are so predictable.
Now, show us randomized double-blind and placebo controlled trials.
And when you say that it isn’t ethical to conduct a placebo controlled trial of surgery, I would simply say that this is not my problem. Until you/they conduct real placebo-controlled trials, surgery is quackery (using YOUR logic, not mine!).
is your’Yeah’ another admission of an error?
Oh Dana. Are you digging out your foolish “But Surgery!” argument again? This has been destroyed every time you try to make it. Your memory is very short. Do you want me to detail yet again exactly why you are spectacularly wrong?
don’t tell me:
Dana has as much memory as water?
Damn right! We all know what one would say when it’s true.
When you ask someone how much 5+5 does, we all know what they’ll say… Truth is quite predictable when you know it Mr Ullman. What is not predictable, on the other hand, is homeopathic explanations for the various claims, they seem to change the goalposts all the time. Water memory, nanoparticles, resonance…pick your fantasy…
To paraphrase Lawrence Kraus about William Lane Craig: if he thinks he can get away with it, he will lie.
Edzard
Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Except that he didn’t say that. He said you are using far too much insults and rudeness. That is not quite the same, is it?
People around the world don’t share your fantasies as much as you would like to believe, thankfully, fellow Iqbal. The fact that you mislead people around you new to the stuff, that you raise your kids to your standards, and that you prefer to only believe people with opinions that support your fantasies (which are not based on knowledge on the subject of medicine), only makes you live in a real-world echo chamber. It doesn’t make homeopathy any less surreal as a concept, nor does it make any less of an indigestible broth to the world. There is a good reason that homeopathy is out of modern medicine, and that’s not because anyone is hiding the truth. It’s juat not part of the truth.
Your Gallileo gambits are completely irrelevant when you are wrong. Staying wrong forever is not guaranteed to make you right some time in the distant future. “Right” isn’t about keeping your stance for as long as possible or going down with the ship. It’s about doubting your knowledge constantly. Have you ever done that?
I’d argue that he *lowers* his children to his standards. But then, maybe not. Not all swindlers want their children to follow in their footsteps.
An excellent wordplay indeed! Sadly, true as well!
From me and others there have been polite, reasoned and evidence based challenges to Dana’s claims about `nanodoses’. We await a similarly reasoned response.
No one here has mentioned the definitive test which would make everyone take homeopathy seriously.
Get two or more remedies (blanks count).
Select one at random.
Give it to the homeopath supporter.
They tell us which one it is.
Score doesn’t have to be 100%; that is corrected by just doing more trials. But attainable score must be agreed upon in advance by the testee.
The testee can use any technique they want: dowsing, proving, giving to a sick person.
Goals have to be set up in advance–testing doesn’t stop when the tester is ahead, and success below the agreed upon threshold is failure.
Proper controls are used to make the test double blind.
Each trial can use different remedies (individual prescriptions) if necessary.
This seems so straightforward but everyone has a reason that they can’t do it.
a long time ago, I had such a protocol and wanted to do the study with the world’s leading homeopaths; alas it failed because too few volunteered to participate.
I wonder why.
I may be wrong, but I think James Randi has tried it, and the homeopaths failed. Miserably.
See http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2007/12/simple-challenge-to-homeopaths.html
Thank you. I have seen this a very long time ago, but my question is whether the experiment has ever been done. I seem to remember James Randi managed to do it, but I’m not sure, it may be a false memory.
Randi’s experiment fizzled out after some discussions. If my memory serves me well, the homeopaths including Vithoulkas had recruited me to their side to beef up their credentials and methodology.
I am playing YouTube videos where he is talking right now, because I vaguely remember he talked about it. I hope I’ll find it.
Skeptics cannot seem to get their facts straight! Here’s some STRONG evidence for the “junk science” in which James Randi participated:
https://homeopathic.com/john-stossel-and-2020s-program-on-homeopathy-junk-science-creates-junk-journalism/
https://homeopathic.com/e-mail-from-professor-ennis-on-the-specific-differences-in-her-study-and-the-studies-by-abc-news-2020-and-the-bbc/
https://homeopathic.com/two-e-mails-to-the-bbcs-producer-detailing-the-serious-errors-of-fact-in-their-program/
It is odd that skeptics support junk science when it verifies their worldview.
That first link is to a piece heavily featuring one D. Ullman esq. Who refers heavily to “junk science”.
Quoting yourself, Dana? Nice.
And are you still clattering on about basophil degranulation? Ennis’ nonsense has long since and repeatedly been demolished.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16036166
You need to contact the JREF and volunteer to recreate the experiment with the correct chemicals. If you think they moved the goalposts, then you can take care of it by offering to help set the goalposts.
Christine Rose
“No one here has mentioned the definitive test which would make everyone take homeopathy seriously.”
http://huoli.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/unknownremedies.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23872840
Interesting, but this is not the test I mentioned. If they wish to take the test, then they can use this technique to identify the remedies.
OK, I need to get this straight. We have been bombarded with references to esoteric in vitro studies into the mechanism of homeopathy. Ultradilute solutions seem to have very wide effects, irrespective of the research model used. This suggests multiple modes of action. Yet Hahneman’s word is apparently law. He claimed that disease was caused by `miasms’, and that health depended on the vital force. He knew nothing of genes, epigenetics, or basophils. Who is right? Hahnemann, or the modern researchers? My reading of homeopaths’ websites indicates that virtually all believe in vitalism, miasms, and all the rest of Hahnemann’s inventions. Are they wrong?
BTW we still await Dana’s response to our challenges re `nanodoses’. Third time of asking.
Damn, if you’re gonna to critique homeopathy, do it accurately…or at least with reasonable accuracy.
I guess you don’t know that “miasms” are an early and yet sophisticated link between genetics and modern-day health.
And you should know that the “vital force” is Hahnemann’s reference to a person’s immune and defense system.
Damn, you folks aren’t even good at being skeptics.
Dana, how can you possibly know what was in Hahnemann’s head when he invented these ideas? You are making this up just as he did.
Is it really necessary to form every response as an insult? Oh, and for the 4th time of asking, what about a response to our `nanodoses’ challenge?
…and now we get Dana trying to retrofit Hahnemann’s 18th century waffle to more recent information. It’s no more convincing here than it is when Nostradamus fans try it.
What an extraordinary piece of post-hoc rationalisation. Although there is nothing rational about it.
Some homeopaths do clearly believe in the actual existence of “miasms” and the “vital force” – rather than just being crude proto-scientific metaphors. There has always been a very strong element of esotericism in homeopathy. J T Kent is probably the best example and is still considered very important, especially among Indian homeopaths. In the Anglophone world, unless you believe Vithoulkas’ claims (a man of many dubious claims it has to be said) the growth of homeopathy is very strongly linked to the growth of the New Age movement.
(The popularity of homeopathy in German speaking countries likely is more associated with it being völkisch – in the broader sense of the term – not the purely racist, nationalist sense. This is likely true for phytotherapy etc. France? A mystery.)
I read an interesting article by Jan Scholten recently. He made the point that homeopathy’s reliance on the works of the “Great Masters” might make homeopathy appear to outsiders as something static. Something that has essentially not progressed since Hahnemann’s time. The same point can be made about the use of bizarre proto-scientific terms (as well as the retaining of the re-invention of the meaning of certain words “side effects” don’t exist but what are “aggravations”?) Many homeopaths struggle to reconcile vitalism and scientific understanding of biology and medicine – it is clear from the language used. If vitalism is rejected, homeopathy is merely the claim that inert sugar pills, prepared according to bizarre ritual instructions, have biological action.
The intellectual contortions of some homeopaths and their supporters in their attempts at a “scientific” explanation of homeopathy are truly amazing to behold. And at the same time, there are others who clearly are germ-theory denialists and some of those enthusiasts for pleomorphism. Many other forms of CAM and their practitioners have no problem with identifing their practice as essentially vitalistic (although it seems almost compulsory to sell dietary supplements as well these days).
Is vitalism bad for business? Beyond a certain market – almost certainly so. Marketing of homeopathic medicines stresses the “natural” nature of the products and often talks about there being “no side effects”. Marketing of practitioner services often makes no mention of the “vital force”, again stressing the natural and lack of side effects.
As for miasms involving genetics? The concept of genetics simply didn’t exist in Hanhemann’s time. There were ideas about heredity. The Doctrine of Preformation and the Doctrine of Epigenesis arose in antiquity. But Hahnemann was long dead when Gregor Mendel performed his experiments. That certain diseases run in families was well understood – there is nothing unique in Hanhemann’s observation of this. That certain diseases are often associated with other later diseases – again something that was well understood. Miasms were not purely seen as inherited – they could be acquired. Hahnemann knew that some diseases were transmitted via the air, some through blood, some by physical contact (more generous interpretations suggest Hahnemann thought microorganisms could be involved) but then he thought miasms were “immaterial” and “dynamic”. They could be transmitted without contact. A mystical abstraction acting on the abstraction of the “vital force”. But Hahnemann said of disease –
“…they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital principle) that animates the human body.”
The suggestion that the “vital force” is a metaphor for the immune and regulatory systems of the human body is universal in homeopathy. However, homeopathic ideas about the “vital force” do not confine themselves to immune/regulatory function. It is seen as synonymous with ideas of “spirit” or “soul”. Often something is said about the mind-body link.
How do these immaterial things act on material things? That is the fundamental question. Why continue in the use of aphoristic metaphors if they are obsolete?
Dana, I guess you don’t know that “miasms” are what their history is and how Hahnemann understood the term. This is from my book HOMEOPATHY, THE UNDILUTED FACTS [you should read it!]:
Miasm is a somewhat nebulous concept of disease that Hahnemann adopted from conventional medicine of his time, modified and made it into a key principle of homeopathy. It describes the acquired or inherited effects of three diseases: the ‘itch’ (psora), gonorrhoea (sycosis), and syphilis. Of the three, psora was considered by Hahnemann to the most important by far.
Hahnemann did not create the idea of miasm and his concepts were speculative and are now long obsolete.
I particularly enjoyed reading this justification of Hahnemann’s miasmatic theory. Especially where he is decribed as the Master.
https://dialecticalohmeopathy.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/how-hahnemann-arrived-at-theory-of-miasms-and-chronic-diseases-an-analysis-of-masters-thought-process/
Alternatively, he just made it up to explain away his failures. No “genus epidemicus”? Simillimum didn’t work? It must be those pesky miasms! Of course, it couldn’t be due to either failure on the part of the Master or even, shock-horror, homeopathy not having any effect beyond placebo. To be fair, there are homeopaths who think miasms are nonsense that Hahnemann made up.
Your interpretation of Hahnemann’s reference to ‘vital force’ is revealing. Save it for your marks.
I definitely didn’t invent this test. Not sure if Randi ever got anyone to try it or not. There are plenty of sincere homeopaths who might want to do it.
Randi definitely talks about it, but I haven’t found what I think I remember so far. Prof. Ernst says that he tried to organize it but that it didn’t work out. So far, that seems the most plausible scenario.
Gonorrhea, scabies, and syphilis are not genetic.
To hazard a guess, I’d say Hahnemann singled out those three because he had proof that they could not be treated with homeopathy. Hanhemann would have had limited ability to make differential diagnoses, and would have been able to delude himself by attaching too much weight to his ‘treatment” of self-limiting diseases.
exactly, NOT GENETIC!
this is why Dana’s suggestion/assumption/speculation is sooooooooooooo far out.
Hahnemann was so much more sophisticated than your uninfomred and ill-informed mis-interpretations of his work.
Hahnemann’s understanding of miaisms is that these diseases influence our genes and thereby create certain syndromes (disease patterns).
But I’m sure that you’ll find a way to misunderstand this…and misinterpret it.
Oh, I clearly have misunderstood. So Hahnemann discovered genes also? Fancy that! If his “understanding of miasms is that these diseases influence our genes” then he must have known about genes surely?
And for the fifth time of asking, what about those nanodoses?
‘Psora is that most ancient, most universal, most destructive, and yet most misapprehended chronic miasmatic disease which for many thousands of years has disfigured and tortured mankind… and become the mother of all the thousands of incredibly various chronic diseases…’ [Hahnemann, Chronic Diseases, p9]
‘Psora is the evolution of the state of man’s will, the ultimates of sin.’ [Lesser Writings, p.654]
‘This outgrowth, which has come upon man from living a life of evil willing, is Psora.’ [ibid, p.654]
‘Thinking, willing and doing are the 3 things in life from which finally proceed the chronic miasms.’ [ibid, p.654]
‘…had Psora never been established as a miasm upon the human race… susceptibility to acute diseases would have been impossible… it is the foundation of all sickness.’ [Lectures, p.126]
‘Psora…is a state of susceptibility to disease from willing evils.’ [ibid, p.135]
‘The human race today walking the face of the earth, is but little better than a moral leper. Such is the state of the human mind at the present day. To put it another way everyone is Psoric.’ [ibid, p.135]
‘Psora…would not exist in a perfectly healthy race.’ [ibid, p.133]
‘The internal state of man is prior to that which surrounds him; therefore, the environment is not the cause…’ [ibid, p.136]
‘The Itch is looked upon as a disgraceful affair; so is everything that has a similar correspondence; because the Itch in itself has a correspondence with adultery…’ [ibid, p.137]
‘How long can this thing go on before the human race is swept from the earth with the results of the suppression of Psora?’ [ibid, pp.137-8]
‘Psora is the beginning of all physical sickness… is the underlying cause and is the primitive or primary disorder of the human race.’ [ibid, p.126]
‘…for it goes to the very primitive wrong of the human race, the very first sickness of the human race that is the spiritual sickness…which in turn laid the foundation for other diseases. [ibid, p.126]
You’re assuming we will think like you?!
Oh, come on. Dana Ullmann is to medicine what Ken Ham is to evolutionary biology. He’s not capable of rational thought.
The Great Dana is not foreign to eliminating adversaries. It took me only a few mentions of incomfortable facts to be blocked on Twitter by the Master Promoter of Homeopathy. 🙂
Dana and the Fingers In The Ears school of debate. As we know.
Lenny: the dentist that refuses to debate Sandra Courtney?
Greg,
I wonder what your background is.
are you a physician, homeopath, other clinician, scientist?
please tell us; honestly, I want to know.
Homeopath
This is a first. Greg answered a question. I seriously doubt he is right. He will have to prove it!
What a strange comment to make. I have debated with Sandra and shown her position to be incorrect. That both Sandra and you refuse to accept the scientific consensus is your problem, not mine.
Homeopathic reality check:” I said it so it must be true”.
For example:
If a homeopath (someone who thinks he is a homeopath) says Lenny is an idiot, then magically Lenny is an idiot. (He is not, but that is another story :D)
Homeopathy is a game of make-believe. Just like children playing make-believe, homeopaths say “homeopathy works for me” or “Shipwreck 200C cures sea-sickness” and just because they say so, they earnestly think they have substantiated their idea.
Children are smarter, they realise when they are making things up and pretending.
Yeah…and some children (and some adults) are arrogant and asshole and both. The irony here is that your arrogance has made you blind to who and what ou are…
Ernst may slap my wrist for being offensive…but one doesn’t have to use words like “asshole” to be offensive like this assohole Bjorn. I’ll stop when this guy grows up.
Well, it did not take long for Dana to confirm my words.
In other words, you don’t have any arguments that stand up against reality. What about just saying so and keeping a modicum of respectability instead?
The tolerance of homeopaths seems to be of a unidirectional nature. They enthusiastically support being tolerated on evidence-based sites, but tolerate no evidence-based comments on their own pages, with just as much fervour. We have a homeopath here in Toronto, Bryce Wylde. It only a took a message or two from me to be blocked, a number of years ago, also on Twitter.
I have no problem with uncomfortable facts. I have a problem with bullshit and horseshit.
in this case, you should stop producing it
I realise that homeopaths are not known to be the best educated people on the planet, but surely, you can sound a bit more civilised than this? Please try, nobody will hold it against you if you slip up in the beginning, and most of us will appreciate the effort tremendously.
as they also use excrementum canium as a remedy, they might be a bit more liberal with this sort of thing
And it’s all documented in the hPUS, I see the point …
Biodynamic agriculture and its mystic elixirs.
Many homeopaths are very keen on Bowel Nosodes. There does seem to be a certain obsession with excrement amongst some. A Freudian psychoanalyst might enjoy writing about them.