In support of homeopathy

[MHB]

Nope, those 2 scenarios are not synonymous at all. The way to determine medicinal efficacy is via Double Blinded Randomized Controlled Trials. Pharmaceutical companies' drugs undergo this process followed by rigorous peer review before they reach market. Alt med remedies undergo no such process. Whenever they are put through DBRCT's they don't perform better than placebo... Ever. This becomes dangerous when people forego actual medicine in lieu of alt med after listening to their chiropractor/naturopath/homeopath. We see rises in vaccine preventable illness (potentially affecting others in society due to their poor choice) as well as many people dying from very treatable cancers because they chose vit c injections/PH diet/coffee enemas or other such witchcraft. So no, it's not mass beer vs craft beer; it's medicine that has been shown to work vs magic water/powder/pills that doesn't work.

Well put
Mark

 

[Bribie G]

Nope, those 2 scenarios are not synonymous at all. The way to determine medicinal efficacy is via Double Blinded Randomized Controlled Trials. Pharmaceutical companies' drugs undergo this process followed by rigorous peer review before they reach market. Alt med remedies undergo no such process. Whenever they are put through DBRCT's they don't perform better than placebo... Ever. This becomes dangerous when people forego actual medicine in lieu of alt med after listening to their chiropractor/naturopath/homeopath. We see rises in vaccine preventable illness (potentially affecting others in society due to their poor choice) as well as many people dying from very treatable cancers because they chose vit c injections/PH diet/coffee enemas or other such witchcraft. So no, it's not mass beer vs craft beer; it's medicine that has been shown to work vs magic water/powder/pills that doesn't work.

Exactly. This is a fairly classical dilemma that emerges from time to time from the Utilitarian school of Philosophy that arose in the early 19th Century.

Ha philosophy, I hear you say.

Well, in fact Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and others) was the public philosophy adopted by most English Speaking nations as society changed drastically due to industrialisation, and it's become so ingrained in our psyches that we don't give it a second thought.

Basically:

Everyone should be free to live their lives as they wish as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. The greatest possible happiness for the most number of people at any one time. We take that as extremely sensible and who could argue, but it's only been around for as long as the First Fleet in fact.

Before that idea took hold, if you stopped someone in the (horseshit strewn) street and asked them how life should be lived they would come out with something radically different, such as "to worship the Lord, avoid sin, be loyal to the King / Lord of the Manor, be prepared to fight in an army and be clean, moral and industrious whilst knowing my place in society as decreed by my betters .. etc....".

However as you can imagine, Utilitarianism has given rise to a number of paradoxes, for example motorcycle helmets. Not wearing a helmet is illegal because it harms others, namely the taxpayers when you crack your head open. In the USA you don't have to wear a helmet because the taxpayer angle isn't involved. Mill himself saw paradoxes in alcoholics who are free to drink, under strict Utilitarianism, but they harmed their families by not providing for them.

Booargy's argument is libertarian, namely you can do whatever you like if you have the money, but as stewy says we should take the "greatest happiness" view in the case of treatments that are preventing people from seeking proper treatment, or causing them to end up as a burden to taxpayers and others and thus his argument is "modernised utilitarianism" that is generally how society stumbles along, at least in most Westernised countries.

ed: spellngk

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

There is a difference between naturopathy and homeopathy so we shouldnt get them confused

Naturopaths can use homeopathic remedies, but not the other way around.

Naturopaths will give herbs,plant etc with medicinal qualities whereas homeopaths give a remedy of water the has had a picture of some medican flashed past it

 

[stewy]

Of course they're different.

However, Naturopathy is still not evidence based & Naturopaths are often complicit in pushing dangerous pseudo-science & bare some of the responsibility for the rise in vaccine preventable illnesses

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Yes, but at least haturopaths will use known herbal remidies ( which pharmaceutical drugs have been sourced from, like aspiran etc ). Homeopaths just give you a bottle of water and basically false hope

 

[Topher]

Q: What do you call Alternative Medicine that has been proved to work?
A: Medicine.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Dont be bringing any of that fancy science stuff into this debate. Cant trust them scientist. They all work for the big pharmaceutical companies and we all know we cant trust them

 

[technobabble66]

There is a difference between naturopathy and homeopathy so we shouldnt get them confused

Naturopaths can use homeopathic remedies, but not the other way around.

Naturopaths will give herbs,plant etc with medicinal qualities whereas homeopaths give a remedy of water the has had a picture of some medican flashed past it

Yes, but at least haturopaths will use known herbal remidies ( which pharmaceutical drugs have been sourced from, like aspiran etc ). Homeopaths just give you a bottle of water and basically false hope

Wow - it took a while, but finally an informed opinion.
+1 Ducatiboy Stu.
Maybe those wishing to lump naturopathy with charlatans and placebos should probably check what naturopathy actually is.
It's actually just a particular philosophical approach to healing someone - to find the root cause of someone's ill health. The choice of modalities and professional conduct, or lack thereof, is up to the individual practitioner. Unfortunately, as an unregulated industry, there's both good and bad and unprofessional naturopaths - like all industries out there.
Yes, I'm a naturopath. I only practice using diet/lifestyle, nutritional therapies and herbal medicines. I have a science degree majoring in biochem and subsequently sit on the far "sciencey" end of the spectrum of naturopaths. Fwiw, I'm not at all surprised with the findings on homeopathy. I've trained in it and chose not to use it - not solid enough on evidence for me to subscribe to.
Homeopath does not equal naturopath.

 

[stewy]

The point remains valid : naturopathic herbal 'medicines' do NOT pass DBRCT's

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

There is a lot

The point remains valid : naturopathic remedies do NOT pass DBRCT's

I dont think that is strictly true. Homeopath yes, Naturopath no.

And there is a fair bit of anecdotal evidence that is valid ( especially when looking and Chinese/Herbal medicine. Ginger for nausea, garlic for cold, beer for stress relief, willow bark for headaches, St Johns Wort for depression, ..etc..), but there is also plenty of straight out bullshit as well.

 

[stewy]

There is a lot

I dont think that is strictly true. Homeopath yes, Naturopath no.

And there is a fair bit of anecdotal evidence that is valid ( especially when looking and Chinese/Herbal medicine. Ginger for nausea, garlic for cold, beer for stress relief, willow bark for headaches, St Johns Wort for depression, ..etc..), but there is also plenty of straight out bullshit as well.

Anecdote =/= data

Herbal meds/ Chinese meds have been put through DBRCT's, they fail. We cannot say medicine works unless it passes a DBRCT as its crucial to eliminate both cognitive bias & placebo effect

 

[Liam_snorkel]

There's plenty of "real" medicine that's no better than a placebo too. Phenylephrine for example.

 

[Bribie G]

Friend of mine is undergoing cancer treatment and has been a fan of Chinese herbal medicine for years but has gone strictly conventional (operation etc). The specialist says that they are actually doing a big test of Chinese herbs at the John Hunter Hospital and find that some of them have "encouraging" properties. After all nearly all our most powerful drugs came originally from plants ... aspirin from willow bark, penicillin from mould, opioids from poppies, birth control pills from some plant out of the Amazon, beer from barley. I'd guess a lot of the Chinese concoctions could be helpful, but a lot of them superstition.

 

[stewy]

Yes you're right, although prescription meds pass DBRCT. Over the counter meds can be just as ineffective as alt meds

 

[Liam_snorkel]

Fair point

 

[wide eyed and legless]

The best thing about the placebo effect is that it's real.

And it still works even if you know its a placebo!

 

[mckenry]

All this talk reminds me of the Steiner school. I lived next door to a woman whos kid went to one. 11 years old and this kid could hardly read and his maths was terrible (I did baby sit him a few times and checked him out).
Should have seen him paint his emotions though. **** me!

 

[technobabble66]

The point remains valid : naturopathic herbal 'medicines' do NOT pass DBRCT's

Not *entirely* correct. In fact, completely false.
I've recently discovered this amazing new device called "Google". I tried "searching" on the Internets for "double blind randomised control trial herbal medicine"
Apparently some studies have been done.
Note: This was exactly the first search i did, non-doctored. Not all of those results are positive. For example, the third one on Echinacea reports a failure of prophylaxis, but a 10-20% reduction in the risk of infection of an URTI. However, another way of saying this is that Echinacea has been shown to not immunise against the common cold (surprise surprise) but results in a mild to moderate reduction in the incidence. Keeping in mind the subjects could still be pie-eating, smoking alcoholics. So obviously these herbal medicines will be worth squat if you're still a complete idiot with your lifestyle - well, actually not useless, approximately 10-20% effective, apparently.
I don't mean to get stuck into you, Stewy, but your statement is patently not true. I can only assume you might've mixed up "homeopathic" remedies with "herbal" remedies. Very, very different things.
As mentioned above, just check White Willow Bark, St John's wort, Echinacea, Ginger, etc. They're all herbal medicines. They all have significant effects shown in DBRCT's. There are hundreds of other herbal medicines out there. Some have been researched and many others haven't. Many traditional uses have been debunked and many others haven't.
Sadly there're many dubious naturopaths out there that do not chose to use evidence-based medicines/therapies, and there's quite a few that are seriously dangerous in there negligent advice to patients. And sadly they're particularly good at lightening the wallets of foolish &/or trusting people. Any good medical practitioner should know the bounds of their expertise and when to refer. Any good practitioner *does* know this - it's the dodgy charlatans that are the big problem, as are the ones that have blinding faith in their skills/"gifts".
Unfortunately, there's also far too many people out there who are just too trusting or simply want to believe, and these practitioners can easily take advantage of them. Tragically they just don't seem to stop at any point and think "hang on, this guy's full of shit", especially when they or their loved ones are clearly not getting any better or the modality seems patently irrational. Welcome to an unregulated industry! (actually kinda similar to the financial advice industry ).

I'd point out that DBRCT's are *extremely* expensive and the funding is simply not out there for Herbal medicines, hence there is an extreme lack of research for this field - i.e.: money rather than a lack of efficacy is the main reason for the lack of research on herbal medicines. Yet another extremely strong argument for government-funded research organisations rather than leaving it all up to private organisations. CSIRO FTW.

Just as a minor point to consider: for 40-odd years, the message from doctors/GPs/AMA and dieticians was that all fat was bad and we should all be eating low protein diets high in cereals. There were only a few lone voices who decried the ridiculousness of this advice, based on the actual, documented, biochemical research science at the time - namely by a small number of biochemists, nutritional therapists and naturopaths. These lone voices were essentially persecuted by the medical fraternity for years. I think we know how that turned out.
Always make sure you're reading/listening to the actual science, rather than someone else's unfounded opinion or a lobby group. And appreciate the limit of a so-called expert or professional's knowledge.
... exactly the same philosophy to always apply to brewing (as well as life)!

I hope that wasn't too ranty.
And apologies to Stewy or others - this is intended to clarify a misunderstanding rather than have a go at anyone.

Btw, BribieG, the vid in the OP is a pissa. Homeopathic lager - too funny!

 

[technobabble66]

Q: What do you call Alternative Medicine that has been proved to work?
A: Medicine.

Q: What do you call a Medicine that isn't patented by a multi-billion-dollar, multi-national pharmaceutical company?
A: Alternative.


Sorry Topher, couldn't resist

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

What I want to know is if bottled water is anymore healthy than tap water...

And if Homeopathy really worked, all we would need to do is drop about 1ltr of homeopathic medicine in Warragamba Dam and that would be enough to cure the entire population of Sydney.

Its got me F&^%D how they missed that one. So damn simple.. Hell it worked with Fluride and tooth decay