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(Message started by: vig on Aug 26th, 2005, 10:56pm)

Title: Homeopathy
Post by vig on Aug 26th, 2005, 10:56pm
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/25082005/325/new-study-says-homeopathic-medicines-don-t-work.html

discuss amongst yourselves...
;;D

Title: Re: Homeopathy
Post by Kevin_M on Aug 27th, 2005, 12:52am

Quote:
"This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homeopathy are placebo effects," it added after examining findings from 110 homeopathy trials and an equal number of conventional medical trials.

Practitioners of homeopathic medicine, invented in the late 1700s by German physician Samuel Hahnemann, believe that the weaker the solution, the more effective the medicine.


Huge popularity in 1779 Paris too when Franz Mesmer was magnetizing people.  Booted from Vienna, Marie Antoinette gave him a government pension in Paris, being she was Vienna-born royalty herself.  Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate Franz Mesmer.  
 Ben Franklin was appointed to the commission but Antoine Lavoisier directed it.  The language was not yet in place, but what Lavoisier introduced to the study of magnetism was a placebo control and blind test.  
 The commission, which also included the ill-fated Dr. Gulliton, who afterwards died by his own invention, unanimously dismissed the practice as quackery.  They determined back then, the possibilities of abuse were great.  
 Well aware that sceptism was harder to sell than the supernatural, Franklin commented, "There is a wonderful deal of credulity in the world, and deceptions as absurd have supported themselves for ages."
 Mesmer continued unabated, the exercise of reason - and well planned inquiry - could not eradicate superstition.  Franklin would be surprised at the persistence of delusion, a more lucrative business than he had imagined.  Franklin himself had toyed with electrotherapy and concluded the minimal results were psychosomatic.*

327. 7304  S


Title: Re: Homeopathy
Post by Ueli on Aug 27th, 2005, 9:05am
In Hahnemann's time his treatment of giving patients a few drops of water was much better than the 'conventional' cures. The usual blood-letting, purging and other more harm- then helpful procedures of the time were rather weakening than helping an already sick patient. So Hahnemann can be credited for letting the natural healing power work, enhanced by the wonder drug "placebo".

In todays science there is nowhere the slightest hint of the 'memory effect' of water, the cornerstone of the homeopathic superstition. Or could it be, if, for example, meteorologists adopted the homeopathic view of water, they could make better weather, with rain and wind more evenly distributed than today?   ;;D

Alchemists had to buy lead for their attempts to make gold. In homeopathy tap water is turned into the equivalent of gold, money.
 
I'm glad to observe that our government did at least one sensible thing this year: They kicked off homeopathy from the list of treatments health insurance has to pay for (together with craniosacral and other bogus treatments, but sadly not acupuncture).    [smiley=laugh.gif]

PFNADs, Ueli                 [smiley=smokin.gif]



Title: Re: Homeopathy
Post by BikerBob on Aug 27th, 2005, 12:10pm
Homeopathy --

I found a "homeopathic remedy finder" on the net and entered the symptoms of CH. It said the homeopathic remedy for CH symptoms is belladonna.

The following is a quote from Erowid about belladonna:

"First of all I like to inform all that playing with belladonna is like playing with dynamite. LSD, X, DMT are no comparison to atropine based plants. With most these drugs no matter what you see (I do not call for example LSD a hallucinatory substance, it causes severe distortion of sight, sound and mind) you are still aware that the plant or chemical are responsible for the effects. With belladonna the entire concept of reality goes down the drain, the very fabric of reality will break down. you can be sitting down watching t.v. at one moment and next you see your dead grandmother next to you on the sofa asking for more tea. I am not kidding here you will not know what is real and what is not. I personally took a bath with over million insects and did not know that this was not real. You can be contacted by numerous alien entites (remember witches at sabbat using among many other things belladona, visiting satan himself) that either can frighten you to death or make you touch an angel. Now enough scaring you. No, not enough you can easily die and I mean easily... Last note even seasoned trippers like Terence McKenna are afraid of where a belladonna trips takes them. As Terrance once told me, the places belladonna takes you, you were not meant to go."

BB

Title: Re: Homeopathy
Post by Melissa on Aug 27th, 2005, 12:28pm
I read the article on Yahoo news yesterday, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't homeopathic treatment also include using the likes of LSA, shrooms and kudzu??

Also, I was looking to see who sponsored the study.. I couldn't find any info. on that. :-/

Title: Re: Homeopathy
Post by floridian on Aug 27th, 2005, 1:07pm

on 08/27/05 at 12:10:02, BikerBob wrote:
Homeopathy --

I found a "homeopathic remedy finder" on the net and entered the symptoms of CH. It said the homeopathic remedy for CH symptoms is belladonna.


No doubt that the various chemicals in the atropine family can have serious negative effects.  But the dose is the poison for many compounds.

With homeopathic meds, there is a strange notion that less is always more.  Some of these are so diluted that they don't contain a single molecule of the 'active' ingredient. You would probably get a bigger dose of those strange and terrible compounds driving by a corn field where datura grows as a weed (and even that has no effect).  

To make things more knarky, some things being billed as 'homeopathic' remedies do contain relatively large amounts of a compound (ie, some are standard herbal salves, etc).    
---

Good to see you back, Ueli, I assume all went well.   Doctors with balloons worry me less than clowns with balloons.

---




Quote:
I read the article on Yahoo news yesterday, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't homeopathic treatment also include using the likes of LSA, shrooms and kudzu??


Homeopathic  concoctions can use anything - herbs, minerals, medicines, etc.  They believe that a very low dose of a compound has the opposite effect that a high dose does.  So if something causes a fever, the 'laws' of homeopathy say that a very diluted amount will cure fever.  They also believe that the more diluted the fever causing compound is, the more powerful the homeopathic fever reducing power becomes.  

Taking several capsules of kudzu a day is not a homeopathic dose.  Taking a low dose of shrooms is not homeopathic - the clusterbusting effect usually doesn't require a full blown trip, but most people do feel something equivalent to a few beers --- it is acting in a normal shroom way, not is some paradoxical anti-shroom way.


Title: Re: Homeopathy
Post by eyes_afire on Aug 27th, 2005, 1:11pm

on 08/27/05 at 12:28:02, Melissa wrote:
I read the article on Yahoo news yesterday, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't homeopathic treatment also include using the likes of LSA, shrooms and kudzu??


Based on the definition of homeopathy, I would say that treating CH with those things is not an example of practicing homeopathy:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=homeopathy&x=20&y=14

--- Steve

Title: Re: Homeopathy
Post by Melissa on Aug 27th, 2005, 1:43pm
Ok, thank you for the correction Flo & Steve!

:)mel



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