Dr Alice Hodkinson is a GP in Cambridge, England. She says of herself that she is interested in supporting people to make informed choices about their own health, reduce the burden of illness and lighten the load of medication on patients and the country’s National Health Service. She is studying medical ethics and law at King’s College London.
Even though we live in the same town, I don’t know Dr Hodkinson personally and never met her. My only contact with her is the one depicted here: on Twitter I had posted my recent article entitled ‘A new, comprehensive review: HOMEOPATHY = PLACEBO THERAPY‘. This prompted the following exchange:
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Alice @HodkinsonAlice
At the very least homeopathy and placebos don’t cause harm that medicines do.
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Edzard Ernst @EdzardErnst
have you heard of something called ‘risk/benefit balance’?
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Alice @HodkinsonAlice
Which is precisely where homeopathy wins over toxins I prescribe as medication.
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Edzard Ernst @EdzardErnst
oh really? I do worry about the students you teach
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Alice @HodkinsonAlice
I worry about the over-use of toxins that harm. Lots of ppl get much better when meds are stopped. They come back from the dead and live much happier. Lots of evidence for this.
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Edzard Ernst @EdzardErnst
” Lots of ppl get much better when meds are stopped.” surely this is a sign that they never needed them; in other words, it is the mistake of the GP who did the prescription
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Alice @HodkinsonAlice
It’s a sign meds’ aren’t reviewed and they do harm. Water doesn’t harm, unless in excess. Promoting water as a cure might be harmful, yet there are sooooo many conditions where medicine has no answers, and for these, homeopathy comes up trumps.
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Edzard Ernst @EdzardErnst
I am sooooooo pleased you are not my GP!
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Alice @HodkinsonAlice
I’m bored. Go poison yourself on prescribed medication!
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END OF EXCHANGE
I don’t know why this shocks me more than any of the often much more disagreeable disputes I have with other proponents of homeopathy on Twitter or on this blog. Perhaps it is because it occurred with a person who is a doctor like myself, or because it happened with a complete stranger, or because it was with someone who is, for all I know, an entirely reasonable clinician in other medical matters, or because Dr Hodkinson is studying medical ethics? I really don’t know.
Or perhaps nobody have ever told me to poison myself?
95 Responses to A remarkable exchange with a general practitioner who seems to like homeopathy
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About 400 homeopaths are registered with the GMC, i.e. are doctors.
Given this doctor intends her patients make “informed choices”, I wonder if she informs them that most medical professionals regard homeopathic remedies as nothing more than prettily labelled placebos?
I wonder if she will pass her course in ethics, or consider the ethics of her own practice.
so do I!
She is now our go and a dreadfully aggressive woman who tells parents breakfast can be skipped, no need for water and giving kids fruit is excessive sugar and irresponsible! She is the most horrible woman I believe I’ve ever met. Would nitvtrustvgetvhisyikevnsturscedobin an emergency.
I wonder what toxins she prescribes (I’ve asked, but have had no reply yet). And also if she knows what a toxin is, and if she actually meant “poisons”.
so do I!
As I suspected, she doesn’t.
https://twitter.com/HodkinsonAlice/status/1169915405336489984
“NSAIDs, PPIs, Bblockers, Ablockers, aspirin, clopidogrel, adrenaline, CaCBs, ACEi, steroids, antibiotics… “
I’ve also had some twitter exchanges with Dr Alice Hodkinson although none were as extreme as this. Comments like “toxins I prescribe as medication” and “Promoting water as a cure might be harmful, yet there are sooooo many conditions where medicine has no answers, and for these, homeopathy comes up trumps.” are truly shocking from any doctor and even worse from one who is studying medical ethics. How can promoting water (which doesn’t cure anything) as a cure possibly be ethical?!
I am not familiar with the medical system in England.
Is there a medical board that could be informed that there is a GP practising in Cambridge who promotes administering water as a cure for unanswered medical issues and admits to prescribing toxins to her patients?
I am also not a psychiatrist, but something seems odd, since she apparently is not aware that regular medicines are vigorously tested, thinks that colleagues who disagree with her should poison themselves, has an extremely short attention span and … may believe in the existence of happy zombies (?!)… could this be a case for an official complaint?
in the UK, docs are regulated by the GMC;
to make an official complaint about her is not my style.
All registrants of the GMC are obliged to report any other registrant whom they believe may not be fit to prectice.
I know; I am no longer registered.
We have questioned her stability to be a gp as her conduct to patients is hostile and advice misleading.. She had been reported so PLEASE support a complaint too as she is not fit to practice IMO.
I did and they dismissed it. Dr Hodkinson is a truly toxic woman herself from our experiences with her, and has many patients unhappy with her generally aggressive demeanour and won’t see her again. She scares patients.
Surprising how many people have internalised a hatred of science that is so bigoted and ill-informed that if it were to be expressed against an ethnicity it would be called racism. So a scientific doctor can be told to go poison himself. It reminds me more than a little of antisemitism — ignorant and visceral rage, same conspiracy thinking, same belief that a particular group is inherently malevolent and responsible for all suffering and everything would get better if they’d just go away.
Dear Ezard
We can all go round in endless circles arguing whether the Earth is Flat, but eventually someone has to venture out in a boat to the horizon to determine the fact. A cursory reading of Hahnemann encourages every student of homoeopathy to gain their own experience empirically. We all know you and your friends on this blog are standing on the shore proclaiming the Earth to be flat, but when are you going to pedal out,to bravely cite actual cases you have treated with homoeopathy as evidence of your position? What the audience reading this wants to know is what experience and knowledge any of you actually have of the subject you spend so much time criticising?
Dear Tony
I don’t think highly of people who
1) are too daft to spell my name correctly,
2) imply I have no experience in homeopathy,
3) pretend that I make a secret of it, while, in fact, I published this multiple times (i.e. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scientist-Wonderland-Searching-Finding-Trouble/dp/1845407776),
4) accuse others of being flat earther, while evidently being one themselves,
5) do all this without declaring their massive conflict of interest.
Best regards
Edzard
And I don’t think too highly of people who
1) Say that they were a “homeopath” but never were certified by any such certifying agency
2) Publish research on homeopathy that shows efficacy but then conveniently ignore this positive result: Ernst, E, Saradeth, T, and Resch, KL, Complementary Treatment of Varicose Veins – A Randomised, Place¬bo-controlled, Double-blind Trial. Phlebology. September 1990;5,157-163. https://doi.org/10.1177/026835559000500303
3) Show immense intellectual sloppiness by lumping together low potency and high potency homeopathy and are antagonistic to both
4) Create a cottage industry by being antagonistic to homeopathy and then declare that only homeopaths have a conflict of interest
5) Ignore the serious scientific and ethical lapses in the Shang review, the Australian report (NHMRC), and the British House of Common report.
6) Conflate minor spelling errors as anything worthwhile to highlight FIRST.
too stupid to merit a comment – sorry Dana
Please tell us Dana, how low potency and high potency homeopathic remedies differ? How would you describe their purely material differences and how would one be able to tell them apart?
Dana Ullman said:
Please do tell…
Oh really!? You are really that uninformed or just pretending to be ignorant…or both?
Here’s some info that you’ll benefit from knowing about that Australian report:
https://www.hri-research.org/resources/homeopathy-the-debate/the-australian-report-on-homeopathy/
Here’s some info about the Shang/Lancet review:
https://www.hri-research.org/resources/homeopathy-the-debate/the-lancet-paper-by-shang-et-al/
And here’s some info about the Science & Technology Report:
https://www.hri-research.org/resources/homeopathy-the-debate/uk-select-committee-report/
Your brain will likely explode if you choose to read these critiques, though I know you won’t though will pretend that you will…or will simply say that this is “old news.”
GIGO…garbage in, garbage out…that is a simple summary of these three questionable ethical and scientific reviews. Slam dunk…admit that these studies are garbage.
And yet, Dana, this inconvenient truth remains: There is no such thing as an independently replicated robustly conducted double-blinded randomised control trial that demonstrates that homeopathy is distinguishable from placebo for any condition.
very true!
Ah yes, the ironically (self-)named Homeopathy Research Institute.
The HRI (https://www.hri-research.org/resources/homeopathy-the-debate/essentialevidence/clinical-trials-overview/#) touts five out of six meta-analyses as being positive. Let’s look at the conclusions of those five so-called “positive” meta-analyses:
Kleijnen et al. 1991: ‘… not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias’
Linde et al. 1997: ‘…we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition.’
Linde et al. 1999: ‘We conclude that in the study set investigated, there was clear evidence that studies with better methodological quality tended to yield less positive results.’
Cucherat et al. 2000: ‘… the strength of this evidence is low because of the low methodological quality of the trials. Studies of high methodological quality were more likely to be negative than the lower quality studies…’
Mathie et al. 2014: ‘The low or unclear overall quality of the evidence prompts caution in interpreting the findings.’
NB: these are the ones of which the HRI stated: “five were positive”. I wonder how negative something had to be for the HRI not to pretend it was positive.
Dana
The scientific world has studied the three pages you have linked to carefully and decided that they’ve been doing meta-analyses and systemic reviews wrong. All previous scientific research has been discarded. Homeopathy has been shown to be effective and is now part of patient care in all hospitals. Nobel prizes have been handed out to famous homeopathic researchers and pioneers. A grateful world cheers the rise of such holistic healing.
Oh. Hasn’t happened, has it?
Must be because evil Big Pharma agents are suppressing the truth and the doctors in their pay are clearly complicit..
Or is it that you’ve linked to three pages of typical pathetic, laughable and inconsequential homeopathic handwaving, pearl-clutching, special pleading and cherry-picking demonstrating once again their utter ignorance of the scientific method?
Which one do you think, Dana?
Flat-Earth medicine, Dana. Flat-Earth medicine. Run along, now. Or do want to wibble about Langmuir, nanofloaties and imaginary nanomedicine again?
Awww… bless…
I bet you can’t see why those pages do not substantiate your claims. Even a cursory read of the HRI’s website shows they are not a reliable source of information on homeopathy, science or evidence.
But let’s just take one example for illustrative purposes. It may not be instructive to you for obvious reasons, but may be for others.
Where did they do that? Please provide a link to Hansard or a Government report.
@Lenny
Odd that Ullman didn’t mention Mathie…
Eh, Dana… You listed three out of four pages in HRI’s series about “the homeopathy debate” but you omitted one, the HRI’s pontification of “The Swiss HTA report on homeopathy”. Or did you skip it because information from Swiss health authorities reveal that HRI knowingly lie about its origin and it has been demonstrated to be a case of scientific misconduct?
How does this reflect on the credibility of HRI, do you think?
And could you please answer my little question about the physical properties of homeopathic remedies above?
Hey Alan…you want me to mention Mathie…ok…here’s a quote from his 2014 meta-analysis:
“Five systematic reviews have examined the RCT research literature on homeopathy as a whole, including the broad spectrum of medical conditions that have been researched and by all forms of homeopathy: four of these ‘global’ systematic reviews reached the conclusion that, with important caveats, the homeopathic intervention probably differs from placebo.”
Mathie RT, Lloyd SM, Legg LA, Clausen J, Moss S, Davidson JR, Ford I. Randomised placebo-controlled trials of individualised homeopathic treatment: systematic review and meta-analysis. Syst Rev 2014; 3:142. http://www.systematicreviewsjournal.com/content/3/1/142
And the ONE review that had a negative result was REVERSED in this analysis in this LEADING journal on clinical methodology research:
Lüdtke R, Rutten ALB. The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analyzed trials. J Clin Epidemiol. October 2008. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.06/015.
Thanx for reminding me to post this. Slam dunk again.
That piece is just two homeopathy fans doing a bit of special pleading, Dana.
What you seem to think of as a slam dunk is just you falling on your arse again. Pathetic. Just pathetic.
You are amusing, Dana.
Now about the DoH response to the HoC report you mentioned…
yes, our very own clown is in top form!
Tony
A slight problem with your equivalences.
Homeopathy is humanity’s second most popular system of medicine in the same way that flat Earthism is humanity’s second most popular system regarding how the Earth is arranged.
Sadly the bigger problem in your lack of understanding of homoeopathy. If you had any real experience we could discuss it but, as with the Flat Earth Society, you are content to stand on the shore and claim the horizon is the edge of world because you lack any experience to the contrary. Like Ernst you seem to think that criticizing something of which you have no personal knowledge or experience is some form of science. Well sadly its not.
Yet again I ask ANY of you on this blog to present a single case you treated with homoeopathy, laying out your case analysis, rationale for the choice of remedy and patient response. Rather than go into diversionary tactics just quote ONE if ANY of you can. No excuses, just present one or else continue with the badinage.
your comment are getting more and more detached from reality
Its fundamental that you present a case to support the evidence that you actually understand and can demonstrate proof of the principles of homoeopathy. Everyone reading this is writing for you to produce this evidence. Ducking the opportunity simply demonstrates your ignorance of the subject despite all the bluster and claims that it doesn’t work. So its time to put up or shut up.
“So its time to put up or shut up.”
that must be directed to your good self!
my last homeopathic patients were about 40 years ago;
BUT MORE CRUCIALLY: who says one needs to show cases in order to assess the value of a therapy?
try to convince NICE of that ludicrous notion.
it’s a moronic argument!
Tony
This laughable canard gets dragged out all the time by homeopaths.
The response is always the same. I conclude that magic carpets don’t fly but according to your logic my conclusions are invalid because I’m not a pilot who has several hours flying magic carpets in my logbook.
Great, so now we’re finally getting to your actual experience. Please share some of your cases treated 40 years ago so that we can appreciate how you came to the conclusions that you have been broadcasting since you took up the role of Professor of CAM at Exeter? It would be educational to discuss even one case.
Thousands of homoeopathic doctors worldwide are keen to understand what your experience is and how it led you on this present course.
Thanks
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scientist-Wonderland-Searching-Finding-Trouble/dp/1845407776
Lenny
I’m really not interested in badinage, only in discussing this subject with serious players who can offer real experience as opposed to pejorative opinion.
Its fundamental to anyone reading your post that, in order to establish a magic carpet cannot fly you first have to buy one and learn how to fly it to discover whether it does or doesn’t work, or if whether you’re just a poor pilot. You wouldn’t respect anyone who declaims something cannot work without a personal examination of the facts TOGETHER with their actual personal experience. Or perhaps you might according to your posts.
If you are a practitioner then post a case you have treated with homoeopathy. Let’s see your actual experience because this is science. If you are not able to do this then we can discount your comments as ignorance and you can join Alan as another puppet of your great master, taunting from the sidelines
Edzard you are missing the point. I’m not interested in buying your book, only for you to publish a case you’ve treated on this blog of yours so that everyone can discuss it on an equal footing.
… but you don’t have a point, my dear!
anyway, while you are here: would you like to confirm that your trial had no ethics approval and therefore violated the law and research ethics?
alternatively, please show us the document [which incidentally does not go back nearly as far as the stuff you are asking me to produce].
and btw: I know you don’t want to buy my book, but it might finally explain to you what experience I do have.
No, Mr Pinkus, it is you that misses (evades?) the point: a treatment anecdote from Edzard will teach us precisely nothing about the efficacy or otherwise of your favoured species of pseudomedicine. What we need is properly conducted, independently replicated clinical trials. Good grief, man, your lot has had over 200 years touting this stuff: if your magic potions actually do what you claim, surely you must have something by now?!?!?
I came to this blog to see if anyone in the discussion had any serious intention to discuss the subject of homoeopathy. In order to do this there are certain prerequisites for a sensible debate and one of these is actual knowledge and experience of the subject matter under discussion. To this end I asked if anyone has case they treated in order to discuss the merits and demerits of the experience. No one offered one. I repeated the request and the silence changed to attacks on me even asking.
Any scientist worthy of the challenge, and certainly someone who proudly styles himself as a Professor of CAM with experience and knowledge, would be only too glad to share this with others. Sadly though I have met with rebuke and insult but no evidence to support the opposition to homoeopathy saving some incoherent rant about the needlessness of empirical experience. The cornerstone of Hahnemann’s work on homoeopathy and the one thing he advocated to other doctors. “Don’t take my word for it, prove it to yourself”
When you find the need to attack me to defend your incessant argument that homoeopathy is implausible I really cannot take you seriously.
Here we have a blog hosted by a chap who claims to be an expert on the subject but now claims he hasn’t practiced it for over 40 years. Won’t say what he did when he practised, what he learned and when asked to give at least once case he treated, refuses and creates some diversion to cover his ignorance of the question. Now that’s what I call a charlatan.
I understand you have made a living out of this but it must be a miserable existence old chap
“I came to this blog to see if anyone in the discussion had any serious intention to discuss the subject of homoeopathy.”
I do, I do, I do! I do want to discuss homeopathy – seriously!
Can we start by discussing your study [https://edzardernst.com/2019/08/should-the-royal-warrants-of-ainsworths-homeopathic-pharmacy-be-withdrawn/] without ethics approval, please?
“Here we have a blog hosted by a chap who claims to be an expert on the subject but now claims he hasn’t practiced it for over 40 years.”
please learn to read properly: I never said that; I said it was about 40 years ago.
meanwhile, I ran the most productive research unit related to homeopathy [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30712722]
and please do me a favour: don’t call me a charlatan, you are only making yourself ridiculous!
it’s also a little misleading to claim that you ‘came to this blog’. the truth is that I reported about your defamatory and false accusations years ago:
https://edzardernst.com/2015/04/ainsworth-homeopathic-pharmacy-defamation-or-libel/
and more recently, you came to my attention because you defamed me again.
https://edzardernst.com/2019/08/should-the-royal-warrants-of-ainsworths-homeopathic-pharmacy-be-withdrawn/
it seems to me that this is all you are good at.
Tony
What illustrative verbiage you reveal…. I love it
“Here we have a blog hosted by a chap who claims to be an expert on the subject but now claims he hasn’t practiced it for over 40 years. Won’t say what he did when he practiced, what he learned and when asked to give at least once case he treated, refuses and creates some diversion to cover his ignorance of the question. Now that’s what I call a charlatan.
I understand you have made a living out of this but it must be a miserable existence old chap”
I couldn’t let it go without another reference, especially the last sentence, keep them coming.
Tony Pinkus said:
If only there was something relevant to understand…
But to return to a previous comment you made:
Some ancient Greeks (eg Parmenides, Empedocles, Pythagoras) knew perfectly well the earth was round, not flat – with Eratosthenes calculating its radius to a good degree of accuracy They did not need to sail around it and have ‘personal experience’ of its roundness: science and maths confirmed it. In the same way, we know that what is claimed for homeopathy is nonsense, both from our knowledge of science and also from empirical evidence. Unless you have some evidence we don’t yet know about, that is – evidence that you can provide independent substantiation for, of course, not unverified and unverifiable assertions.
Alan, its clear you are simply a puppet so I don’t expect you to put up a case you have treated. Lets just leave it at that shall we
Tony
Please try to keep it civil and not throw nasty accusations about being a ‘puppet’ around – or do you want to try to substantiate it?
It’s abundantly clear you have no clue as to why your daft idea about personal experience is so silly and pointless. That is unfortunate but I’m sure it will have been explained to you on many, many occasions before.
perhaps he wants to distract from the fact that his income depends on the salary of a homeopathic pharmacy; if one wanted to define the term ‘Puppet’ in this context, one could hardly find a better definition.
I believe the first test showing homeopathy to be worthless took place in 1840, right? Since then no one has been able to demonstrate that shaking water breaks well established laws of nature. Many have tried to torture truth and science with risible results not publishable outside the parish.
The band of resident trolls can be amusing at times with their references to Hahnemann’s hallucinatory scriptures and borrowed tropes of quantum- this and nano- that, etc. Some of them are even fun to heckle, for a while, but their obsessive perseverance does not change the fact that shaken water is nothing more than ordinary water.
It is really frightening to observe the narcissistic pompousness of persons with academic titles that ought to indicate reliable adherence to established knowledge, mucking around in make-believe Hogwarts style, marketing toy-medicine to defraud the sick and suffering.
Even a bit earlier, in the Nuremberg salt test of 1835. And this trial demonstrates as no other the utter silliness of homeopathy: we all have some 200 grams of sodium chloride in our bodies – so even if, for the sake of the argument, some sort of ethereal ‘imprint’ of salt remains in this homeopathic dilution, how can that have any influence, what with the huge amounts of salt already present? It makes no sense whatsoever!
Oh, wait, I know: it’s the universal answer to any questions that are critical of homeopathy:
“You don’t understand homeopathy!”
@ Tony Pinkus:
If you refer to people who have “real experience “and “actually understand and can demonstrate proof of the principles of homoeopathy”, it is quite obvious that you mean “homeopaths”.
Well, I can understand why you would appreciate it if only homeopaths would investigate the claims of homeopathy. Earning your income with homeopathy, you have a clear conflict of interest.
But please think this through. Do you really think that it would be objective if:
-only Christians would investigate if Jesus rose from the dead;
-only Muslims would investigate if a Buraq carried Muhammad up in the heavens and back;
-only voodoo priest would investigate if voodoo techniques work;
-only self-identified alien abductees would investigate if aliens visit the earth;
-only white nationalists would investigate if racial prejudices were true or not;
-etc.
Evidence-based science works quite the other way around.
We invite EVERYBODY to scrutinize our work and EVERYBODY should feel free to investigate our claims. Importantly, as soon as objective experimental results/reproducible evidence is presented that contradicts accepted scientific knowledge, then guess what:
the scientific community WILL ACCEPT having been wrong and we will follow where the new evidence leads us. This shift of perspective may take some time, but it will happen. This is how we make progress, not by blindly sticking to our former beliefs.
So let me ask: what do you consider the better approach to gain knowledge, the restricted one that you promoted, or the open, scientific one?
Mr Pinkus, you wrote:
How astonishingly silly!
Would you contest that the LD50 for ingested tetrodotoxin is <550 μg/kg until you'd tested it yourself?
If you were unfortunate enough to be bitten by a rabid animal, would you rely solely on the homeopathic "remedies" or "nosodes" (Lyssin?) that some of your fellow touts for pseudomedicine pretend are effective, or would you seek treatment with rabies immune globulin and rabies vaccine as a matter of urgency?
The simple point here is that personal experience is unnecessary for an informed opinion; I don't need to take diamorphine to know that it is addictive; similarly, I don't have to compromise my integrity and "treat" someone with homeopathy to know that it is ineffectual.
and a toxicologist who has not poisoned him/herself is incompetent!
@Tony Pinkus.
You said:
You seem to be implying, that in order to be eligible to take part in discussing homeopathy you have to be a member of the congregation of believers who have read and followed the teachings of profet Hahnemann and tried his teachings. This is about as logical as claiming that I should not offer my opinion on the efficacy of rainmaking rituals unless I have studied the folklore behind such proceedings and danced the rain-dance in dry weather. I maintain that the mechanism of action of shaken water is the same as that of shaking the hips to produce a rainshower. Tribes that practice rain-making rituals attribute success to the proceedings every time it rained after the ritual and failure to the wrath of the gods, or whatever. Homeopaths in the same manner, attribute every apparent success to the proceedings and potions but excuse the non-results with something else such as the patient drinking coffee, handling the globules with bare fingers or whatever. Homeopathy is equivalent and comparable to rain making rituals. Please tell us why, if you think I am mistaken.
That, Björn, is the analogy I have been searching for! Excellent work, sir.
She seems more “anti-medication” than “pro-homeopathy.” The most positive spin I read on homeopathy is that it prevents people from taking medication, not that it does anything positive.
That said, thankfully this isn’t my doctor.
An MD and GP with an MA in medical ethics and law who tells her patients (intentional?) untruths about taking an inert substance, that contains only a fictional quality, will have a beneficial health effect named “Placebo” – a term that by definition means the substance cannot exert any effect and has been shown to have no clinically significant value.
(Did I miss something)
In my mind neither good medical practice nor ethical conduct.
Did someone already coin the term “The Placebo Fallacy”? I think that could be a term to adequately describe the cognitive trap she has fallen into.
Well as everyone interprets the Hippocratic oath, “first do no harm”. Its seems to be honored in the breach by conventional medicine. Here is a doctor that stands up for that principle. Good going.
https://edzardernst.com/2018/06/first-do-no-harm-what-does-it-mean-how-does-it-apply-to-alternative-medicine/
https://edzardernst.com/2018/06/doctor-homeopaths-violate-fundamental-rules-of-ethics-when-practising-homeopathy/
The words first do no harm or in latin primum non nocere, do not mean “First do nothing”. Homeopathy is equivalent to doing nothing. Every doctor knows that doing nothing often leads to harm. Only an idiot would not understand that.
Don’t you have something useful to do Roger? Maybe join a Bridge club? You are making a fool of yourself here.
Bjorn…Are you against the entire field of nanomedicine? Cool…and I also appreciate your efforts to bring backthe rotary phone and typewriter. You’re on the side of the future, for sure. Haven’t you figured out that the homeopathic potentization process is simply a method to create nanodoses.
Here’s one group of researchers who used nanodoses to treat varicose veins, including Eddie Ernst:
Ernst, E, Saradeth, T, and Resch, KL, Complementary Treatment of Varicose Veins – A Randomised, Place¬bo-controlled, Double-blind Trial. Phlebology (1990)5,157-163.
https://edzardernst.com/2015/07/professor-ernsts-very-own-positive-trial-of-homeopathy-oh-dear-have-i-been-found-out/
Dana
Again. I’ll write it in big letters so you can understand it.
HOMEOPATHY IS NOT NANOMEDICINE
This has been shown to you so many times.
It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t matter how fervently you wish it. And every time you do say it, it further demonstrates your idiocy.
I am not quite sure, but I think I notice a distinct pattern here. Our friend seems to appear mainly on Friday and Saturday evenings and on such occasions put on a veritable display of delusional grandeur, disregarding totally simple facts and previous lessons. One cannot but wonder if poorely potentised ethanolum is involved? This latest response, like many weekend evening performances of his, resembles strongly the narcissistic ramblings commonly evoked by advanced insobriety.
Hmm. You could have a point there, Björn. Although given the level of lunacy on display, I always assumed that powerful hallucinogens were involved.
Lenny…you figured me out! My last post was on Saturday at 18:19…or 6:19pm on a Saturday night!
And your hyper-rational mind makes seemingly obviously connections. Good for you!
Except…I’m in California, making it 11:19am. Whoooops.
But I expect this insane baloney from you and your ilk. The good news is that you’re proven here to be scientifically daft.
Dana, calculating 18 – 7 is not what really counts as science [outside homeopathy].
Being plastered before noon is a sure sign of serious problems :/
Eddie! California and London are NEVER 7 hours apart, except perhaps in your world. It is either 8 or 9 hours depending on whether America is under “Daylight Savings Time.”
But you’re way too much like our President Trump. Are you now going to double-down on your bad math like the fuzzy math you and your ilk do with homeopathic dilutions?
I didn’t mention either London nor California.
try a comment without an insult; it might do you good
So strange, this persistent “Trump name-calling”.
But ok, this is my (completely impartial) assessment:
_________________________Trump_____Ullman_______Ernst
Enjoys insults______________Yes…………..Yes……………..No
Foaming mouth syndrome ___Yes…………..Yes……………..No
Huge ego_________________Yes…………..Yes……………..No
Renowned scientist_________No…………….No……………..Yes
Sense of humour___________No…………….No……………..Yes
Sane_____________________No…………….No……………..Yes
Nice hairstyle______________No……………..No…………….Yes
Critical thinker_____________No……………..No……………..Yes
Thinker___________________No…………….No……………..Yes
So, Mr. Ullman, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones…
😉
@Dana
Have you checked if the local junior college has open classes for adults who wish to freshen up on basic math and basic inorganic chemistry? You might learn enough not to stop feeling a buzz in your head and seing nothing but fuzzy figures when we explain how dilution works and why homeoremedies are not nano- or quantum- something.
“homeopathic potentization process is simply a method to create nanodoses”
Now please explain how the effect of homeopathic nanodoses increases with greater dilution.
Niall
@ Niall
Cmon, be a little creative! Certainly, this is simply a “quantum physics property” of the “nanodoses”!
Unfortunately, only true, “certified” believers in homeopathy can understand these intricacies properly. The fact that no test are available is just bad luck for everybody else.
😉
Lenny,
Excuse me. Did I miss something? Who made you God or truth? Who the f… cares what you say at all?
Homeopathy is nanomedicine…and this includes the doses that Eddie used in his varicose veins study AND it includes homeopathic high potencies. What it doesn’t include are the non-particle homeopathic medicines? There’s something else going on there that Luc Montagnier’s work may help explain.
as it happens Dana, I care.
I even care that you misrepresent my study.
and I also care that your primitivity does not soil this blog – so I erased the swear word you used.
Dana
Homeopathy is not nanomedicine.
This is not my opinion. This is objective scientific fact, backed by evidence. It has been explained to you many times. That you are so halfwitted you believe your opinions override this is your problem, not one of science’s. Flail and handwave all you like. Your inconsequential yammerings remain just that.
(And, yes, I realise that other homeopaths share your delusions. Imbeciles indulging each others’ imaginings)
Who cares what I say?
You appear to..
Dana, you pretended:
No, it isn’t. The substance in nanomedicine is assayable; in homeopathy it isn’t (unless there has been one of those embarrassing manufacturing cock ups).
😀 Citing Mr. Montagnier’s laughable, self-published experiments again, Dana. Are you unable to learn anything?
I remember EE saying that he doesn’t want to take shaken water (Homeopathy) as it, at times, causes Homeopathic aggravation. Now how can shaken water cause aggravation ?
where and when did I say that?
perhaps you have dreamt it.
“Say that they were a “homeopath” but never were certified by any such certifying agency”
Oh dear. With the exception of Ontario, in common law jurisdictions “homeopath” is not a protected title and anyone can call themselves a homeopath. As far as I am aware there is no “certifying agency” in any of these jurisdictions that has any official recognition. Anyone could set one up tomorrow and it would carry the same weight as ACHENA etc.
There is a lot of deceit that goes on with homeopaths stating that they are “Board-Certified” or “licensed practitioners” when these terms have very specific regulatory meanings.
I know somone you got a certificate for his dead cat.
Next up, dead cats start running homeopathic “colleges” and “certifying agencies”. I’m familiar with some run by some very odd characters.
This mollusc has several certificates:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnpqCvpW8AEO3MN?format=jpg&name=large
You folks ALL know about the straw man argument…and you are all referring to certificates VERSUS certification. The CCH after my name requires several examinations of conventional medical knowledge and about homeopathic knowledge as well as the presentation of five cases of patients with a 2-year follow-up.
Please show us the evidence of a cat doing this.
The arguments you folks here have are so infantile, and what is so remarkable is that you all know how innane they are and yet you don’t call each other out. This site is FULL of people like the American President TRUMP who lies and deceives and then double-down and insists upon his truth (which is based on lies).
It is so cute to watch you wiggle.
Awww… bless. Dana’s trying to teach us about argumentation.
But while you’re here, maybe you could answer the question I posed previously?
You omitted certifiability, Dana 🙂
Well, more fool you! It took the mollusc less than an hour to get full certification from the world’s largest (by annual turnover) manufacturer of magic potions. And Sammy’s qualifications mean just as much as yours in the non-fantasy world (i.e. diddly squat).
Am I being ridiculous? Well, yes, of course I am. But no more so than you and the other touts for homeopathy that infest these comments, and who appear determined beyond the call of duty to eschew rational discourse.
You mean like the one who wrote: “the Department of Health dismissed the [House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee] report.“?
Are you at last beginning to see why nobody with sufficient neurons to form a synapse can take you seriously?
The CCH after my name requires several examinations of conventional medical knowledge and about homeopathic knowledge as well as the presentation of five cases of patients with a 2-year follow-up.
Like my certification in rain-dancing, Dana. I had several examinations of conventional meteorological knowledge and about rain-dancing knowledge as well as a presentation of five cases of precipitoproductive rain-dance with re-establishment of normal rain patterns over two years.
The difference between certificates and certification? It depends on who you ask and your jurisdiction. The Council for Homeopathic Certification (CHC) is accredited by the Institute for Credentialing Excellence (ICE). ICE explain their definition of the difference here https://www.credentialingexcellence.org/page/certificate-vs-certification
But you too can become a Mommy Certified Homeopath https://taniadilmani.com/mommyhomeopathy/ and make six figures!!!