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Originally Posted by Elena Zagrebelnaya
And here we should keep in mind that "successful" in holistic medicine (not only homeopathy) is defined/understood in a very different way than in so-called conventional medicine - so I'm not sure that everyone would be able to agree that the swan is black unless people start to think (I'm sorry to repeat myself) about people in the first place, and the oath of Hippocrates which states "no harm" first.
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You have to define success before any trial. It may be survival after a period of time, elimination of an infectious organism by an accepted test or relief of symptoms.
You are quite right about agreement on the black swan. There were three people travelling on a train to a conference in Scotland when they saw a black sheep in a field. 'Ah', said the first, a biologist, 'there are black sheep in Scotland'. The second, a physicist replied, 'We can say there is at least one black sheep in Scotland'. The last was a mathematician and shaking his head, said 'All that can be said is that there is a sheep in one field in Scotland, of which at least one side is black'.
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Originally Posted by Elena Zagrebelnaya
And what about ethics re the details of homeopathic treatment that I've mentioned?
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I thought I had responded to your point, my apologies if I haven't and could you point to the unobeserved section.
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Originally Posted by Elena Zagrebelnaya
Also do you suggest that "successful" treatment exists in every possible condition? I have often read re cancer treatments, for example, that "the operation was successful, but the cancer spread to other organs and patient succumbed to this shortly afterwards". Now, what should "successful operation" mean here in the first place? Clearly the span of trials and assessment of treatments should be extended - and the quality of life somehow included in the aspects to be assessed (in allopathy) - then it will become clear which treatment regime is (I will not say successful) beneficial to the patient. Homeopathy, for one, always thinks in terms of the whole time-line of the person's life-long existence... And I have also read about complete recovery from (adult) leukemia - only on a Russian homeopathic site
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Modern science and indeed medicine does not talk about absolutes. The wonderful universe we are in doesn't allow us that luxury, we can only talk about probabilities.
Surgery, at one time, was the only option for cancer tumours, and as you point out, if it had metastased, it would appear elsewhere in the body. Once this was recognised, a combination of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery have improved outcomes.
As mentioned above, the success of a trial has to be defined before the trial starts. Quality of life is obviously an important ingredient in any outcome, blood pressure can easily be reduced by amputating all the limbs but nobody would ever advocate that as a treatment. At the extremes, it is easy to examine quality of life, it is much more difficult to assess this in the middle. For example, is someone's quality of life reduced by expending wealth on a useless 'cure' for the common cold? The mere act of expenditure for one person may just make them feel good, for another it may mean them having to buy less nutritious food.
Have you a reference to the adult leukaemia case? The clear demonstration of a complete recovery of a non-self limiting disease would go a long way to showing that homeopathy can work.
BTW The word allopathy is used by many homeopaths as a derogatory term (cf Hahnemann). It doesn't worry me, but in the interests of open discussion it may be better to leave it out.