Informed consent in healthcare, including homeopathy, requires clear communication of specific topics to ensure patients understand the treatment and can make autonomous decisions. Based on ethical standards and guidelines, the following topics must be included:
- Nature of the Treatment: A clear explanation of what homeopathy entails, including its principles (e.g., “like cures like,” use of remedies bar of active molecules) and mode of action as well as how it differs from conventional medicine.
- Proposed Benefits: Any potential benefits of the treatment, including the acknowledgment that homeopathy’s efficacy is not supported by robust scientific evidence beyond placebo effects.
- Risks and Side Effects: Any known or potential risks, including the possibility that homeopathy may delay or replace more effective treatments for serious conditions.
- Alternatives: Information about other treatment options, including conventional medical approaches, their benefits, and risks, to allow comparison.
- Expected Outcomes: A realistic discussion of what the patient can expect, including the likelihood of success based on available evidence or lack thereof.
- Voluntary Participation: Assurance that the patient’s decision to proceed is voluntary, with the right to refuse or withdraw from treatment at any time without consequences.
- Confidentiality: Explanation of how the patient’s personal and health information will be handled, including any limits to confidentiality.
- Costs and Duration: Details about the cost of treatment, session frequency, and expected duration of care.
- Practitioner Qualifications: Information about the homeopath’s training, certification, or regulatory status to establish trust and transparency.
- Questions and Clarifications: An opportunity for the patient to ask questions and receive clear, understandable answers.
It seems clear to me that lay homeopaths are unable to provide this information in full. For instance, they are not trained or educated to offer the information about other treatment options, including conventional medical approaches, their benefits, and risks, to allow comparison.
But what about doctor homeopaths? They have studied medicine and should know all these things! I am nevertheless certain that they cannot provide all of the above. Can they, for instance, explain what the mode of action of homeopathy is?
No, they can’t!
Why?
Because nobody knows!
Yes, there are theories, I know of 4 of them:
- Vital force: Hahnemann postulated that his remedies work via stimulating a ‘vital force’. Since then, we have long abandoned the nonsense of ‘vitalism’.
- Water memory: This theory suggested that water can retain a “memory” of substances it has come into contact with, even after they’re no longer present. However, this idea is not supported by physics or chemistry.
- Nanoparticles: Some researchers propose that nanoparticles of the original substance might remain in the remedy, even after extreme dilution. However, this theory is entirely speculative.
- Biofield therapy: Some proponents suggest that homeopathy interacts with a biofield or energy field surrounding living organisms. This concept is even more speculative.
Whichever we turn and twist this story, the result is hard to deny:
homeopaths cannot possibly obtain informed consent from their patients.
And guess what – without informed consent,
homeopathy is unethical!
22 Responses to Why homeopaths cannot possibly obtain informed consent from their patients
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Five theories, perhaps, if one throws Hormesis into the mix…..
yes
I throw another hypothesis into the room: The quantum effect.
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/umstrittenes-heilverfahren-homoeopathie-missbrauchte-studien-1.1267699
Wilkinson, Michael HF. Towards a Quantum Mechanical Interpretation of Homeopathy. Annals of Improbable Research. 1999.
https://core.ac.uk/reader/232457720
I am not in anyway, supporting the dangerous nonsense of homeopathy, but I have a question about mode of action. I agree there is no plausible mechanism for homeopathy. Most of the proposed mechanisms (if it doesn’t work it can’t have a mechanism!) would require turning over so much of established science that it’s beyond implausible.
If my understanding is correct, there was no known mechanism of action for aspirin, for many years. Is this true? What there was, was a large body of good convincing evidence of efficacy, unlike homeopathy. I think you have addressed this in other comment about the importance of the totality of evidence.
Your concluding specific example, of mechanism of action, might be open to this spurious “aspirin analogy”. In the case of homeopathy the fails are at every level, every test of the theory. The totality of evidence is against homeopathy having any shred of credibility.
good point; I’m not sure I know the answer.
Dr Ben Goldacre (author of Bad Science) makes the point that it is still not known exactly HOW general anaesthesia works, but there is no shred of doubt THAT it works.
It was very clear for a century that aspirin had definite, measurable and replicatable effects, even though it wasn’t known exactly HOW the effects were produced, i.e. what was the mechanism of action. It was clear that there WAS action.
It is pointless dabating HOW homeopathy might work, when there is no credible shred of evidence THAT it works…..
Sonoluminescence is another reproducible effect where the exact mechanism behind it remains unknown: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence
@Pete Attkins
There are lots of other phenomena and effects without an explanatory mechanism.
Funny thing is of course that homeopathy is the exact opposite: there are no effects, and we know exactly why that is.
That’s fascinating!
@Dullspark
Traditionally, most pharmacological treatments were observed to work long before the mechanism of action was understood – and yes, that also goes for aspirin. Only in the past 50 years have we begun to unravel the often complex biochemical mechanisms by which substances can have an effect. And only since biochemistry really took off have we found ways to design pharmaceuticals starting out with known and proven(!) biochemical pathways instead of with a substance that ‘does something’.
However with regard to homeopathy, the situation is very clear:
1. First off, any discussions about mechanisms of action of homeopathy are just pointless speculation as long as no ‘action’ is observed in the first place.
2. ALL pharmacological treatments that have an effect involve measurable amounts of an active substance. No measurable quantity of an active substance = no effects(*), period. There is not a single example where a substance that is no longer present can have any effects whatsoever.
3. In line with the preceding points, not a single homeopathic preparation 12C+ was ever created that exhibits clear, consistent and independently repeatable effects in any experiment. So one could stop the whole discussion right here already.
4. The proposed ‘mechanisms’ themselves are not just unproven, but fatally flawed in most aspects:
– Proposed mechanisms or phenomena have never been scientifically proven to exist (vitalism, water memory, biofield).
– If water memory exists, we should see consistent effects of this everywhere, also outside of homeopathy – after all, diluting + shaking happens all the time in nature. We don’t.
– Same with nanoparticles: nanoparticles are created in nature all the time. They don’t appear to have any special effects apart from normal pharmacology – so a high enough dose (depending on the substance) can have an effect; lower doses (< nanograms) don't have measurable effects. In general, the particle size ('nano') does not appear to be very important at all.
– The detected presence of nanoparticles of the original substance in a 12C+ preparation strongly suggest either a botched production process, a botched chemical analysis, or an overly sensitive analysis – many simpler chemical compounds are found virtually everywhere in parts per billion amounts. E.g. when testing an arbitrary water sample, chances are that a few ppb of arsenic trioxide ('arsenicum album') can be found – and when the sample is dried for electron microscopy, this As2O3 will crystallize into (yup) nanoparticles. Yet homeopaths never address these concerns, and simply jump from 'we observed an effect' to 'HomeopathicNanoparticlesDidIt'. Which of course is the hallmark of pseudoscience.
*: Except of course placebo effects. There are always placebo effects. Which of course adequately explains why homeopaths keep fooling themselves and their customers that their treatments do have specific effects.
Some context…
The maximum level of arsenic allowed in apple juice and bottled water is:
• 10 parts per billion;
• 10 μg per litre;
• 10 ng per ml.
which is equivalent to 8X and 4C dilutions.
A 70 kg human body contains circa 6×10²² arsenic atoms.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body
They have a treatment for that 🙂
https://bmccomplementmedtherapies.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6882-3-7
https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2003/10/22/Homeopathy-could-cure-third-world-arsenic-poisioning/ (gets it wrong, no surprise, says it was a study of rats in the 1st para, but it was mice. Maybe they used a homeopathic quantity of Rat?)
“It is quite amazing that such microdoses of a potentised homeopathic drug which is produced by the dilution and succession of the toxic substance itself were capable of bringing about such spectacular enzymatic alterations in mice treated with a toxic dose of arsenic oxide. This is more fascinating because the dilution at which the drug appeared to be effective was so high that the chances of even a single original molecule being in them was theoretically almost impossible.”
“Microdoses” I think that they mean no doses? More than “quite amazing” I think. More like unbelievable I suspect.
@Dullspark
That study is a good example of a phishing trip, by throwing in no less than 11(!!) groups of mice:
‘treatment’:
1. As-treated
2. As-treated + As2O3 30C
3. As-treated + As2O3 200C
‘positive controls’:
4. As-treated + 30C alcohol
5. As-treated + 200C in alcohol
6. 30C alcohol
7. 200C in alcohol
8. As2O3 30C
9. As2O3 200C
‘negative control’
10. Distilled water injected
11. Untreated
And, if I understand the methods correctly, there were 6 measurement time points, each involving 5 mice for each of the groups – or 5 x 11 x 6 = 330 mice in total. (Corrections welcome if I interpreted and/or calculated the setup wrong.)
Only frauds and complete idiots expect this insane amount of groups with just 5 mice per group per measurement to produce any credible results.
The study to which you linked was item 31 of Edzard’s article
Homeopathy research from India is far from trustworthy, and today I can show you why.
2021‑01‑30
QUOTE
…
31. Ameliorating effect of microdoses of a potentized homeopathic drug, Arsenicum Album, on arsenic-induced toxicity in mice (The results lend further support to our earlier views that microdoses of potentized Arsenicum Album are capable of combating arsenic intoxication in mice, and thus are strong candidates for possible use in human subjects in arsenic contaminated areas under medical supervision.)
So, 31 of 31 yield positive results and conclusions – 100%!
A 70Kg human body would not contain anywhere near to 6×10²² Arsenic atoms.
6×10²² atoms of Arsenic weigh 7.5g
In a human body of 70Kg that is 100ppm of Arsenic.
A human body of 70kg contains 0.007g of Arsenic that is 5 x 10^19 atoms not 6×10²² atoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body
An order of 3 out is exactly the same error I once made when calculating a homeopathic amount once and Pete was quite insulting regarding my mathematical abilities.
Never mind Pete anyone can make a mistake and that even applies to you. You are not always right.
At least this proves that you may well be human after all.
Gotcha hook, line and sinker. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Maybe you have 6×10²² Araenic atoms in your body Pete and are suffering from Arsenic poisoning.
If so there are i believe EBM treatments that can help.
I would not advise Arsenicum 30c in this instance due to informed consent.
Please see your GP.
Important things to consider for an aspirin analogy would be:
• the effect size of the substance under test;
• the repeatability of the results.
Just in case you are interested:
This much-used “Aspirin analogy” is actually a false analogy. In the case of Aspirin there was no doubt that the drug contained active ingredients. What was unclear was how the ingredients interacted with the human body to provide an effect, or, possibly, whitch one of the ingredients that was active. Homeopathic remedies (beyond C12/D24) however, is a different thing alltogether. It can be established beyond reasonable doubt that they do not contain active ingredients – thus the analogy is false.
Many people confuse analogy with contrast:
“Contrast is a rhetorical device through which writers identify differences between two subjects, places, persons, things, or ideas. Simply, it is a type of opposition between two objects, highlighted to emphasize their differences.”
https://literarydevices.net/contrast/
I have never seen anything about informed consent on any of the huge homeopathy social media groups. It seems that homeopathees are not bothered about informed consent when seeing a homeopath.