homeopathy

[philh 0]

Last night there was a debate at the Natural History Museum entitled “Does Homeopathy work?”
Well, it was sold out so why not do it here?
Does anyone out there use homeopathic medicine?
I think its complete nonsense. Here’s why:

Homeopathy was founded by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 1700’s. He noticed that cinchona bark, the source of quinine used to treat malaria gave him similar symptoms than malaria and from that he concluded the first homeopathic law
1The Law of Similars
This stated by Hahnemann “similar similbus curentu” that like cures like i.e. what causes the same symptoms as the disease cures the disease.
This was based on a set of provings where Hahnemann took various substances and noted the side effects. This was done in a time when no randomised controls had ever been thought of and of course were not carried out. So I see no reason to trust them. Of course there may well be cases where this does hold but to call it a fundamental law is completely without foundation. Sniffing an onion will not cure you of the flu.

The Law of Infintesimlas
Hahnemann realised that taking quinine gave you a fever so he diluted the substance to get rid of the side effects. He found the more he diluted the more side effects went.
I think what was really going on is that he was comparing his medicine with the medicine of the day. The medicine of the day included things like blood letting which would surely make one worse.Diluted no medicine would certainly compare well with a medicine that actually harmed the patient.
But he did not see this, instead he came to the utterly ridiculous notion that the more diluted a substance is the higher the potency. This is complete contradiction to all we know of modern chemistry and physics.
Homeopathic medicines are diluted in this manner:
Take a solution with 1 part medicine to 100 parts water (it may be another dilutant but I will use water here to simplify) , shake it up and you have a 1c potency.
Take the 1c solution dilute that so you have 1 part 1c solution to 100 parts water, shake well and you have a 2c solution.
Those of you who are good at maths will see this 2c solution is 1 part active ingredient to 10,000 parts water!
What are the typical solution in homeopathic remedies? A quick walk to my health food store found the average was 30c , although there were some as “strong” as 200c (there is also an x formula where the dilutant is the ratio of 10 rather than 100).
So how dilute is a 30c remedy? We have one part water to 100 million million million million million million million billion parts water. In other words homeopathic medicine is simply water. We know this formally through Avagadros number which coverts atomic mass units into grams but is also a manner of determining how diluted a substance would be before a sample of it would contain no molecules of that original substance as wikpedia sates
“For example, the fact that a known number of atoms are in a given amount of a substance is one reason for scientific criticism of homeopathy, in which medicinal substances are often diluted to the extent that a single molecule appears in only one dose amongst the hundreds or thousands prepared, as a simple calculation involving Avogadro's number will reveal.”

But one deosnt have to be a chemist to relaise how wrong homeopathy is. You can find out for yourself by taking some alcohol dilute it homepathically and compare it to the original amount of alcohol, which one gets you drunk? I think you will find the homepathically diluted one will do nothing, as it is with all homeopathic medicine.

But lets presume that by some amazing mechanism the laws of chemistry and physics don’t apply to homeopathy, could that lead to homeopathy working? No it couldn’t, even if we forget Avagadros’s number and give the homeopaths the benefit of the doubt that somehow there is still an effect from the active ingredient there is still a big problem. Lets suppose we take an active ingredient which we call X and dilute it to the near infinite levels of homeopathy, now chemistry says that there is effectively no x left and so there will no effect. Homeopathy states that there will be an effect of x, but here’s the problem, we do not live in a vacuum. Why does that matter? The reason is simple, the air contains all sorts of things like ,dirt, microbial life, dust, skin particles.etc If the laws of chemistry are wrong and homeopathy is correct then all these things should be just as important as the active ingredient X, in this way the homeopathic doctor will never know what they are giving you. You can’t have it both ways, if infinite dilution is a real effect then all the other tiny microscopic materials in the air will be just as active as the ingredient the homeopath wants to isolate, so he/she can never isolate it. So even if we throw away the laws of chemistry and physics homeopathy still cannot work.

What I find really interesting is that when I talk to people about homeopathic dilution most people who use homeopathic medicine have no idea what it is. They were very surprised to learn that homeopathies fundamental principle is so contrary to simple laws of chemistry. On homeopathic bottles you will find a small number that might say potency 30c, but you will find no explanation of what this really means. Seems to me that homeopaths should at least be more upfront and honest about their theories than they reveal to the public.

[NCclimber 0]

I do think some homeopathic methods are effective. My problem with the whole industry is it smacks of snake oil sales. Too many of the highly touted remedies don't perform as claimed when tested using accepted clinical methods. The sales pitch for many of the products use testimonial anecdotes. Can you say pycnogenol?

[Remster 30]

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I do think some homeopathic methods are effective

Which ones?

Remster

[philh 0]

if you think any are effective then surely you have to explain why standard principles of chemistry are wrong.

[Butters 0]

Placebo Effect

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[NCclimber 0]

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if you think any are effective then surely you have to explain why standard principles of chemistry are wrong.

What are you talking about?

[SpeedRacer 1]

There are some homeopathic medicines that are not diluted to such a ridiculous extent, though.

Speed Racer
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[philh 0]

What I am talking about is the fundamental principle of homeopathy that the more one dilutes a substance the more potent it becomes even to the extent that it is effectively infinitley diluted. That is in contradiction to what the laws of chemistry state.

If there are remedies that have very low levels of dilution then ok its not impossible they could have an effect but even a low dilution of say 3c has one part active ingredinet to 1 million parts water. The fact remains the fundamentl principles of homeopathy have no scientific foundation and are in al least part in complete contradiction to fundamenal principles of chemistry and physics.

[SpeedRacer 1]

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but even a low dilution of say 3c has one part active ingredinet to 1 million parts water.

There are minerals in your water that can be detected in ppm or ppb (parts per million or parts per billion).

That would mean that in One Liter of Water you would have milligram of the substance for 1 part per million, or one microgram for 1 part per billion. There are some B vitamins whose USRDA is in the microgram range.


But of course you are correct about the homeopathic "remedies" that are diluted until there's nothing left of them.

Speed Racer
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[philh 0]

Well as i said above for those remedies that are not diluted very much its not impossible that they could work, but just becuase its not impossible that it works does not mean its probable that it does work.
What I think we can agree to is that fundamental principle that the more diluted somehting is the more potent it becomes is simply not true, in particular dilution beyond a certian level (determined by Avagadros number) guarantess a medicine cannot work beyond the Placebo level.

[nathaniel 0]

Homeopathy is an analogy. A little bit of the bad sometimes does good. If you crook your head, you can kind of see ways that it comes out variously in the real world. For instance, steel's tensile strength improves somewhat when it is initially loaded. Bones sometimes grow back stronger after a break. Allergies can sometimes be reduced by repeat limited exposure to the allergic factor. Vaccination, etc.

The real world works on physics tho, not on analogy. You can't use homeopathy to infer anything that you couldn't with physics, traditional medicine, chemistry etc, and homeopathic analogy is often very wrong.

If alternative medicine worked, it would be real medicine.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[rehmwa 2]

I'm a bigger fan of sociopathic medicine


try and get your insurance to pay for those treatments...

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[SpeedRacer 1]

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You can find out for yourself by taking some alcohol dilute it homepathically and compare it to the original amount of alcohol, which one gets you drunk? I think you will find the homepathically diluted one will do nothing, as it is with all homeopathic medicine.

This experiment has already been done. They call it "Lite Beer."

Speed Racer
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[AdD 1]

Homeopathy kicks ass, my mom has a stash of remedies, I have taken enough of them to say that if it is indeed placebo effect at work, bring on the placebos, I am a huge fan. And that sugary taste, mmm mmm

Life is ez
On the dz
Every jumper's dream
3 rigs and an airstream

[SpeedRacer 1]

My fellow Americans, we need a constitutional amendment to stop homeopathic marriages.

Speed Racer
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[Zenister 0]

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If alternative medicine worked, it would be real medicine.

tell that to the Chinese.. who's "alternative medicine" has worked for centuries, but isnt nice neat and billable the way modern 'western medicine' prefers...

Much of modern medicine has little to do with what is best for the patients and more to do with what most lines the most pockets....

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[nathaniel 0]

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tell that to the Chinese.. who's "alternative medicine"

Yes, China, that paragon of healthcare. Facing drastic levels of hypertension, renowned for mixing blood and responsible for SARS and covering up epidemics of h5n1.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[kelpdiver 2]

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If alternative medicine worked, it would be real medicine.

tell that to the Chinese.. who's "alternative medicine" has worked for centuries, but isnt nice neat and billable the way modern 'western medicine' prefers...

Much of modern medicine has little to do with what is best for the patients and more to do with what most lines the most pockets....

yes, "real medicine" have proven to be pretty useless in dealing with chronic problems. What is really better called Western Medicine is fabulous at acute care - keeping us alive - but not at making the quality of that life great.

Back care and arthritis/pain relief are examples where it is pretty much barbaric.

That said, the Chinese Herbal Clinic in Beijing that is part of the typical tourist tour looks pretty much like a con job, with every young man being told he has 'heat of the liver' from drinking too much.

[nathaniel 0]

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"real medicine" have proven to be pretty useless in dealing with chronic problems.

Yeah, like ulcers.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[philh 0]

if Chinese medicine worked so well why did they have such a low level of life exectancy until western medicine started to be introduced there. one could ask the same question of Ayurverdic medicine in India.according to Wkipde:

Similar gains have been enjoyed throughout the world. Life expectancy in China was around 35 years at midcentury. At century's close it had risen to around 71 years. Life expectancy in India at midcentury was around 32, by 2000 it had risen to 64 years.

[Andy9o8 2]

Ironic that at this particular moment the thread title "homeopathy" is directly above the one named "on calling bullshit"

[marcandalysse 0]

bach flower remedies seem to work even on animals.
the one called rescue remedy seems to work for many situations.

once a friend was in the hospital, with high fever and tremors. I put a drop on his forehead and the fever dropped within moments and tremors stopped.

"The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves so lightly." --GK Chesterton

[ryoder 1,590]

See the first section titled "Mass Suicide Failure":

http://www.randi.org/jr/060404mass.html

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[br0k3n 0]

Can anyone list what might be considered a "dangerous" or even "lethal" combination of Homeopathic remedies??? by either volume of mixture?????

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--+ There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.. --+

[philh 0]

Anecodtal evidence is not good evdidence in medicine for very very good reasons.
1. Anecodtes are hard to verify
2 even if they are verified one needs to control for placebo effetcs
3 even if placebo effects are controlled for one needs to remove the bias of the observers
4 one needs to be able be assured that the medicine actually cured the patient because its possible the patients recovery was coincidental with the administration of the medicine and not caused by it.
Thats is why real medicine is asseseed by double blind trials. Without that we canot say a medicine works with any confidence. The medicines you mentioned, have they been assesed in this manner/ If so can you please give us a reference?
Moreover would you explain to us if these homeopathic medicines work (im assuming they are homeopathic since thats the anture of the debate here) why the law of chemsitry are all wrong?