Alternate health methods: Is homeopathic medicine a fraud?

[lenny]

http://www.sindark.com/2007/11/24/homeopathy-is-fraud/

"Time after time, properly conducted scientific studies have proved that homeopathic remedies work no better than simple placebos. So why do so many sensible people swear by them? And why do homeopaths believe they are victims of a smear campaign? Ben Goldacre follows a trail of fudged statistics, bogus surveys and widespread self-deception."


"...A recent German study demonstrated that acupuncture, even fake acupuncture, worked better than conventional care to relieve chronic back pain."

 

[InnocentBoy]

Simply put if you think all types of cancer should have the same type of treatment then you deserve what you get. There is a HUGE incentive for big pharma to run the create problem/offer solution game. If alternative medicine truely didn't work, do you think the big companies in the states would work so hard to ban or make things harder to get? There is not one "pill" out there that fixes anything all western medicine does is mask symptoms.

 

[violetblake]

I'm hardly a conspiracy theorist, however I do not trust pharmaceutical companies one bit. I believe there is a cure for cancer, among any number of diseases, but if the pharmaceutical companies can't profit from it, they stifle it in any way they can. And they pretty much run everything, so it's not hard for them to do. I can't even verbalize how much that sickens me, that money is more important to those "people" and they're willing to let people die for it. They're murderers in my book, plain and simple.

I think nature has a lot more to offer us than we give it credit for. We're a society that's so used to popping pills, that if you even begin to consider any other method of medicine you're labeled a nut. It's that attitude that supports these monsters at the pharmaceutical companies. Certainly some modern medicine makes sense, but people need to thoroughly research what they're putting into their bodies and who stands to gain from it.

 

[Ned Flanders]

Homeopathy is well known to be baloney. There really isn't alternative medicine- just medicine that works.

 

[jesuschrist]

Medicine today is still very much a developing science. It is discovering new things all the time about how the body works. Medicine has few concrete scientific answers with regard to how the brain and emotions affect the body, though it does recognize there is some kind of profound effect - but only a few decades ago, you might have been mocked if you suggested that comedy promotes better health, today you would be taken more seriously by the medical community. Medicine only understands 5% of the brain function, the rest of the 95% is a big mystery. Another area medicine is in the dark about, but is beginning to recognize, is the concept of wellness. You were considered a freak and an idiot if you used that word 20 years ago. Lastly, another area medicine is finally on the dawn of even recognizing is the concept of vital energy. This "unknown force" has something to do with sentient life and consciousness.

The practice of medicine is equipped only with mechanistic tools and so understands the body as a machine full of pulleys (ie: muscles, joints and tendons), fluids, electrodes, wiring (ie: nervous system), etc. When medicine provides "proof" that something works, or "proves" that something has no effect on the body, it does so using laboratory techniques based on a mechanical understanding of the body. A typical laboratory method is to use isolation of variables and placebos under controlled situations holding x and y variables constant, etc., but this is a mechanistic methodology and doesn't encompass the complexity of multivariate body function. Except for the most arrogant doctors, of which there are plenty, many are beginning to see that to understand the body you must understand it as life, not as a machine.

So is homeopathy, accupunture, etc., all a fraud? No, they are earnest attempts at understanding the body and applying that understanding with a set of practices based on their theory. They themselves are not a means for ripping people off, and the same can be said that doctors also rip people off by profiting from giving advice that in turn profits their practice.

 

[LittleAsianGuy]

I've been taking homeopathic medicine for years and i heard it's great for prevention. But if u have something serious people take traditional medicine. There's alot of snake oil type homeopathic out there though.

 

[vancity_cowboy]

i know a dude who was diagnosed with hepatitis (sorry i never knew which one). his doctor talked a lot about quality of life... blah blah blah... sent him to a liver specialist who talked a lot about quality of life... blah blah blah... but they all said his liver was shot and he had about two years to live. he refused to die though and tried lots of different healing forms, but eventually he found a homeopath who made sense to him, and he followed the homeopath's every suggestion - changed his diet, changed his habits, changed his life. he continued to get his liver function tested by normal medical procedures though just to make sure he wasn't fooling himself

last month he celebrated his 10th year since he was diagnosed, and he showed me his last liver function tests... THEY WERE COMPLETELY NORMAL IN EVERY WAY!

homeopathy cured his hepatitis and in the process his liver was also cured. it's like all things in life - there are lots of flakes claiming to do a job but that's all they are is flakes. then there are some truly talented individuals who really do know what they are doing, and they can work miracles

hell, even sp's are like that!

 

[LittleAsianGuy]

Wonder if this person would have survived even without homeopathy? I hear of these stories all the time in different religions. Where nothing can save them but their god,jesus,budda,mohammed etc. Some people are just survivors of things.

homeopathy cured his hepatitis and in the process his liver was also cured.

 

[Tugela]

I'm hardly a conspiracy theorist, however I do not trust pharmaceutical companies one bit. I believe there is a cure for cancer, among any number of diseases, but if the pharmaceutical companies can't profit from it, they stifle it in any way they can. And they pretty much run everything, so it's not hard for them to do. I can't even verbalize how much that sickens me, that money is more important to those "people" and they're willing to let people die for it. They're murderers in my book, plain and simple.

I think nature has a lot more to offer us than we give it credit for. We're a society that's so used to popping pills, that if you even begin to consider any other method of medicine you're labeled a nut. It's that attitude that supports these monsters at the pharmaceutical companies. Certainly some modern medicine makes sense, but people need to thoroughly research what they're putting into their bodies and who stands to gain from it.

The problem with treating cancer is that it is not one disease, every case is that persons own personal disease and varies depending on what mutations they have and what type of cell is affected (and combinations thereof). So, a drug that helps one indivual with, say, breast cancer, might have no effect on someone else who has the "same" disease.

There is no one drug that that is a cure all because the disease itself is so diverse. Ideally (and there are people working on this) you would run a genetic profile on the patient to determine which genes are defective and then tailor the drug treatment based on what is known to be effective against the particular combination of defects they have. The problem is not that the pharmaceutical companies can't or won't do that. Instead, the problem is with the way drug approval and use is regulated. The regulatory system is set up to approve agents for broad groups of cancer types, and not for tailored treatments (you can't run a clincial trial on one person). As a result, all new drugs are targeted against the generic disease and consequently will only help a subset of the patients with that generic disease. The rest wont get much if any benefit from the treatment. And you have no way of knowing if you will or wont recieve a benefit from the treatment (at least with the way things are done now)

The drug approval process takes 10-15 years and costs many hundreds of millions of dollars. The result is that very often the only diseases that get significant research time are those that are generic enough and common enough that a sufficiently large patient population exists for the pharmaceutical companies to find enough patients for clinical trials (harder than you would think) and enough patients to generate the revenue levels required to make the investment worthwhile.

This problem is NOT the fault of the pharmaceutical companies, it is the fault of the government who makes the rules that the pharmaceutical companies have to comply with.

 

[Tugela]

i know a dude who was diagnosed with hepatitis (sorry i never knew which one). his doctor talked a lot about quality of life... blah blah blah... sent him to a liver specialist who talked a lot about quality of life... blah blah blah... but they all said his liver was shot and he had about two years to live. he refused to die though and tried lots of different healing forms, but eventually he found a homeopath who made sense to him, and he followed the homeopath's every suggestion - changed his diet, changed his habits, changed his life. he continued to get his liver function tested by normal medical procedures though just to make sure he wasn't fooling himself

last month he celebrated his 10th year since he was diagnosed, and he showed me his last liver function tests... THEY WERE COMPLETELY NORMAL IN EVERY WAY!

homeopathy cured his hepatitis and in the process his liver was also cured. it's like all things in life - there are lots of flakes claiming to do a job but that's all they are is flakes. then there are some truly talented individuals who really do know what they are doing, and they can work miracles

hell, even sp's are like that!

It did nothing of the sort. Generally when someone has a chronic incurable disease that suddenly dissappears it is because that persons immune system has finally kicked in and taken care of the problem itself. It happens occasionally. There are no miracles.

Homeopathic "treatment" is not based on any sort of scientific objective study and instead depends on the "belief" of someone, either the patient or the practioner. That is not to say that something can't work, even a blind man will occasional hit a bulls eye. So, herbal treatments might sometimes work if they get lucky and the herb happens to contain some chemical that actually does something. But more usually they don't and essentially rely on magic and the belief there in.

The prognosis for a cancer patient (for example) who has a positive attitutude to "fight" (you can't - saying that you can is really a big con) the disease is exactly the same as those who have resigned themself to their fate. The only difference is the quality of the life they have left and how they choose to spend it.

 

[InnocentBoy]

If you think the big pharma companies dont want the "gov" to regulate out their competition you are bat shit crazy. As you admit cancer has so many different mutations then why do they all undergo the same broad spectrum chemo treatment that kills just as many good cells as bad? Why do they use chemo when it's been proven people who undergo it are MANY more times likely to get another cancer later on in life? There are different cures for cancer but good luck finding one that isn't regulated out of existance in the usa.

The problem with treating cancer is that it is not one disease, every case is that persons own personal disease and varies depending on what mutations they have and what type of cell is affected (and combinations thereof). So, a drug that helps one indivual with, say, breast cancer, might have no effect on someone else who has the "same" disease.

There is no one drug that that is a cure all because the disease itself is so diverse. Ideally (and there are people working on this) you would run a genetic profile on the patient to determine which genes are defective and then tailor the drug treatment based on what is known to be effective against the particular combination of defects they have. The problem is not that the pharmaceutical companies can't or won't do that. Instead, the problem is with the way drug approval and use is regulated. The regulatory system is set up to approve agents for broad groups of cancer types, and not for tailored treatments (you can't run a clincial trial on one person). As a result, all new drugs are targeted against the generic disease and consequently will only help a subset of the patients with that generic disease. The rest wont get much if any benefit from the treatment. And you have no way of knowing if you will or wont recieve a benefit from the treatment (at least with the way things are done now)

The drug approval process takes 10-15 years and costs many hundreds of millions of dollars. The result is that very often the only diseases that get significant research time are those that are generic enough and common enough that a sufficiently large patient population exists for the pharmaceutical companies to find enough patients for clinical trials (harder than you would think) and enough patients to generate the revenue levels required to make the investment worthwhile.

This problem is NOT the fault of the pharmaceutical companies, it is the fault of the government who makes the rules that the pharmaceutical companies have to comply with.

 

[westcoast555]

http://www.sindark.com/2007/11/24/homeopathy-is-fraud/

"Time after time, properly conducted scientific studies have proved that homeopathic remedies work no better than simple placebos. So why do so many sensible people swear by them? And why do homeopaths believe they are victims of a smear campaign? Ben Goldacre follows a trail of fudged statistics, bogus surveys and widespread self-deception."


"...A recent German study demonstrated that acupuncture, even fake acupuncture, worked better than conventional care to relieve chronic back pain."

It's very basic. Either a treatment or drug has proper controlled double blind clinical trials supporting its effectiveness or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it's probably horseshit.

People talk shit all the time. Theories are a dime a dozen. You have to do test trials in a controlled setting and then replicate them.

Anything else is bullshit.

 

[Cobra GT]

I have been using homeopathic medicine for years and it does work most of the time. Try using Boiron name brand. It can be found at Shoppers and Save On Foods. Or go to Finlandia Pharmacy on Broadway to learn more about homepathic medicine. They have pharmacist there that will tell you whats good for you.

 

[CJ Tylers]

It did nothing of the sort. Generally when someone has a chronic incurable disease that suddenly dissappears it is because that persons immune system has finally kicked in and taken care of the problem itself. It happens occasionally. There are no miracles.

Homeopathic "treatment" is not based on any sort of scientific objective study and instead depends on the "belief" of someone, either the patient or the practioner. That is not to say that something can't work, even a blind man will occasional hit a bulls eye. So, herbal treatments might sometimes work if they get lucky and the herb happens to contain some chemical that actually does something. But more usually they don't and essentially rely on magic and the belief there in.

The prognosis for a cancer patient (for example) who has a positive attitutude to "fight" (you can't - saying that you can is really a big con) the disease is exactly the same as those who have resigned themself to their fate. The only difference is the quality of the life they have left and how they choose to spend it.

Hey, just something to think about.... Homeopathy tends to shoot for getting your body to deal with the disease properly, less using a drug/pill to deal with the disease...kill the source of the disease and the symptoms disappear. Western medicine usues drugs/pills etc to directly treat the disease symptoms, then use another pill for killing the souce, then another pill for... well, you get the picture.

While it's easy to point the finger at big pharm (really easy & sometimes very true), it's more to do with philosphy. Western medicine is targetted, whereas homeopathy is all encompasing in its goal. (ie, kind of like pumping out your sump in order for your drain to work properly, which removes the sewage backup in your basement...etc).

As in traditional medicine, some alternative medicine will work...others will fail... and the only thing that is 100% certain is that the patient will be out of pocket for his efforts.

 

[vancity_cowboy]

there are two types of 'medical' problems - let's call them for arguement's sake: 'traumatic' and 'systemic'

traumatic is when you get fucked up in a car accident or suffer a gunshot wound or break your leg skiing or are born with a hole in your heart etc. there is nobody on the face of the earth that can cure traumatic problems like western medicine practitioners, lets call them the surgeons. surgeons as a general rule use the services of the big pharmaceuticals to control pain and other physical body reactions, lets call the pharmas the apothecaries

where the surgeons and the apothecaries DON'T do so well is with systemic illness - that's the kind of stuff that the immune system is supposed to look after, but due to lifestyles, exposure to toxins, overuse of antibiotics, etc. the immune system can't handle its job. in reality the only person that can cure themselves of systemic problems is the patient themselves. but sometimes they need help - a coach, an advisor, a leader, an example, A HEALER... healers come in all shapes and sizes and disciplines: naturopaths, phrenologists, traditional oriental medicine practitioners (including accupuncture and accupressure), native north american medicine men, reflexologists, midwives, chiropractors, herbalists, water sellers (as peaceguy refers to them), witches and warlocks, etc. - and yes, SOME surgeons and apothecaries. but remember, it HAS to be the patient that cures themselves - see alinburnaby's story about cancer earlier - it's just that the patient has to believe in the advice of their healer or it won't work

during the middle ages all the healing arts had guilds which regulated the affairs of their healing art. during the 1700's and 1800's guild wars were fought, resulting in the bloodletters becoming the surgeons of today (remember those blue, white and red candy-striped poles in front of barber shops? the barbers of old were the bloodletters and the poles were the sign they hung on the street advertising their practice) and the apothecaries becoming the pharmacists of today. they were the ones that won the guild wars, the rest were outlawed and must practice as private citizens, but they still attract many patient followers who can only heal themselves if they follow the advice of their own personal choice of healers

remember this - 30 years ago, accupuncture was thought of as an obscure medical practice of the orient that really didn't have any scientific basis of validity. now due to overwhelming demand by the oriental community it is accepted by the medical plan as 'real' medicine, and i can assure you - IT WORKS! although in reality, it doesn't work, the patient's own immune system is what is working, it just needs the intervention of the healer, the accupuncturist

 

[bcneil]

Does anyone remember on BNN late at night when they go to infomercials.
They had this clown selling his book, with the CURE for every disease/condition you could name, from Cancer to the common cold.
He had the cure. $29.99

 

[lenny]

I have been using homeopathic medicine for years and it does work most of the time. Try using Boiron name brand. It can be found at Shoppers and Save On Foods. Or go to Finlandia Pharmacy on Broadway to learn more about homepathic medicine. They have pharmacist there that will tell you whats good for you.

That`s what i`ve done also & this has been my experience. Though i`m wondering if it`s just been mind over matter, self-hypnosis, positive thinking or "placebo effect" since recently reading the following thread on TERB. Therein is a debate between two guys, one who is into, and seemed quite knowledgable about, alternate medical practices, but stated the following:


"No one says that so called "natural medicine" isn`t filled with unproven stuff (echinacea and homeopathy are notable in being recently proven to be junk science), but you must have a straight face when you compare the racket of natural cures to the racket that is Big Pharma/Big Medicine. It ain`t even close." (post 97)


"Ass licking and parasites: Read this if you like to lick ass."
https://terb.cc/vbulletin/showthrea...d-parasites-Read-this-if-you-like-to-lick-ass.

Besides using the Boiron brand , which BTW are solid pills not "water", i also take a "Headache & Migraine" homeopathic item by Homeocan. But i don`t depend on just homeopathics when i have a headache, although they may be my first line of defence. If they don`t work fairly quickly then i`ll try a creme (DermaMed) that i apply to the temples and under the nose. In the unlikely event they don`t achieve the desired result, i`ll pop some Advil.

BTW i find it interesting that if such products have no "science" behind them they can still say things on the package like "natural balm to soothe head tension and pressure" or "Helps relieve symptoms due to Headache and Migraine". How is that allowed?

In any case, as long as they keep "working", why not keep taking these "unproven medicines"? I find they are all rather inexpensive.

For a while i was using the herb White Willow Bark in powder form for mild pain. Willows "contain salicin, a substance that chemically resembles aspirin. It temporarily relieves headache, stomachache, and other body pain. Salicin is metabolized into salicylic acid in the human body, which is a precursor of aspirin.[10]" BTW i suppose Aspirin has plenty of so-called "science" behind it`s effects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow#Medicine

Why does "for profit" medicine have to stop the huge Natural Medicine INDUSTRY from conducting research?

"For profit" medicine has to prove their stuff works and note the side effects and get approved from the government etc to make those claims.

Why can`t the big natural medicine industry band together to simply conduct double blind studies on a few "remedies" and their actual efficacy on specific conditions? That really doesn`t cost a lot of money and the natural medicine INDUSTRY has tons of industry groups already. Why don;t they each kick in a few bucks and fund one study a year on something or another. With the same parameters as "for profit" medicine?

Why not?

Because these studies have already been done in universities and through private companies and they fail to deliver much more than a placebo effect.

The one exception I know of is COLD FX which is simply ginseng root. It helps reduce the frequency and duration of colds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-fX


Various groups conducted such properly structured studies and Health Canada approved their claims

"Health Canada approves the marketing of COLD-fX as helping "to reduce the frequency, severity and duration of cold and flu symptoms by boosting the immune system."[6]The Center for Science in the Public Interest, in a legal review of 10 popular natural cold remedies, concluded that “...Cold-fX is the only remedy we found with any evidence that it might improve your chances of getting through the cold and flu season without coming down with something.”[7]"

post 75 @


"Ass licking and parasites: Read this if you like to lick ass."
https://terb.cc/vbulletin/showthrea...d-parasites-Read-this-if-you-like-to-lick-ass.

 

[Tugela]

If you think the big pharma companies dont want the "gov" to regulate out their competition you are bat shit crazy. As you admit cancer has so many different mutations then why do they all undergo the same broad spectrum chemo treatment that kills just as many good cells as bad? Why do they use chemo when it's been proven people who undergo it are MANY more times likely to get another cancer later on in life? There are different cures for cancer but good luck finding one that isn't regulated out of existance in the usa.

The reason they use (or used to, nowdays chemotherapeutics are directed against specific targets) broad spectrum treatments is that most pharmaceuticals currently used were developed when the molecular basis for cancer was poorly understood or not understood at all. So, the only effective option was to use the sledgehammer approach.

The other thing to understand is that all anti-cancer pharmaceuticals work by killing cells. Cancer cells are the same as normal cells, except that they have some minor mutation that causes them to replicate out of control. Drugs on the market today work mostly by killing cells that are in the process of replication (by one means or another). This targets cancer cells because they are replication much faster than normal cells, but it will also target other rapidly replicating normal cells (which is why you get the side affects such as nausea, immune suppression, hair falling out etc). No drug on the market, whether from Pharma or some homeopathic snake oil, has the ability to selectively act only against cancer cells, because cancer cells are basically the same as any other cell in your body. There are biologics in the very early stages of development that in theory will do this more effectively and should be more selective, but all of these require highly specialized technology (that for the most part has not been developed either) to get them to actually work in a real world situation as opposed to a petrie dish.

Getting a secondary cancer later on is due to two things: One: many drugs used to treat cancers (especially the older ones) are potent carcinogens themselves, and (two) because most cancer agents target rapidly replicating cell populations, they tend to take out your immune system. This allows other cancers which are being held in check by your immune system (these types of cancerous cells form all the time) to get a foothold somewhere in your body. That might seem bad, but it is a small price to pay for the extra life you get. Living life for ten years and then getting a second cancer is a whole lot better than being dead today.

Btw, there is no "cure" for cancer (other than surgery to remove a single tumor, if that is all you have), it will allways be there and sooner or later you will die to it unless you get lucky and your immune system recognizes it as foreign (does happen, but is quite rare). The best you can do is to buy more time and enjoy what life is left to you as best you can.

Lastly, there is nothing stopping the snake oil peddlars and homeopathic quacks from running their own trials to demonstrate efficacy in their products. They don't do it because they know that such trials would allmost certainly prove that their products don't work, and they don't want that since it would kill their profit margin. And btw, most clinical trials are not run by pharmaceutical companies, they are run by academic medical hospitals. If any of these bogus treatments actually did anything, trust me that there would be some academic out there who would use the opportunity to grab some thunder. There is no big conspiracy.