I was sad to see this (link below) in my paper this morning - the Globe and Mail, here in Canada. The published results will be in the Lancet this week. I wouldn't even know how to form a response to this article and I'm sure several readers of the paper will join forces in support of this nonsense. It is a national paper so there are potentially 10 million readers. Can anyone form a proper rebuttle? Something to do with the way the tests were conducted? The letters section can be easily accessed online at www.globeandmail.com and they routinely publish responses from around the world.

thanks,
Martha

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...enceandHealth/

For a mainstream article this wasn't so bad. It was fairly balanced if you read the whole thing - although the cons got the headline (that's the news biz.)

Richard Knapp

My first post here. I run a "natural-health" clinic at East Grinstead in Sussex south of London, and use homoeopathy for animals, which I select on the basis of dowsing. I've been 25 years at this and quite a lot of the time the answer to a case or a problem of any kind is given to me directly in the mind. We have an excellent classical homoeopath here and after explaining to him the fine details of the application of Arsenic Met, Strychnine and Belladonna to different characteristics, I got him interested in learning dowsing for himself - the doom of course of any classical homoeopath since it gets them immediately into compound homoeopathy - multiple remedies. I don't use homoeopathy for people because its "mind-set" doesn't go deep enough for me into individual psychological problems which animals don't suffer from. Anyway, enough intro.

I have long been interested in why orthodox trials of natural medicine don't ackle the way actual practice does, but now things are getting nasty with this Swiss metastudy saying there's nothing in homoeopathy when anyone who practises or uses it knows that this is nonsense. Dowsing itself comes hopelessly unstuck in trials, to the degree that the Society of Dowsers issues warnings about becoming involved in them: quite evidently there is psychological influence of some sort. Dowsers are sure this is because of hostility to anything weird on the part of researchers: but with dowsing I don't think this is right. The hom. hospital in Glasgow tested dowsing in 2002 and it failed completely: how could they be hostile to it when some of them used it ? What I found was that it is enough if the majority of people involved in a study don't subscribe to the therapy or practice themselves: they throw water over any unconscious expectation foreign to them. A James Randi trial of dowsing on TV in 1992 had this effect undone by an affirmation by two of the dowsers that he couldn't affect them and it went very well - he even tried to have the programme pulled !

This is a complex business and I won't go on about it, but we shall win through in the end once we have learnt what the remedies are. Of course it doesn't affect practice but I do wonder if we don't unwittingly spike practice by harbouring unwitting negativities ourselves ...

Dan Wilson
www.acorncentre.org/

The intention seems to be a global onslaught against homeopathy!
My first reaction was - you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all of the time. Most of the people in India who use homeopathy will have a good laugh that the effect is placebo - but there are many without the homeopathic exposure on the fence, and of course it could push them back on the other side.

BEsides hey - do you know that the 'placebo effect' is also a well documented positive therapy? So this is not a "Bad" review. What is the next step is to prove that homeopAthy can work BEYOND the palcebo effect - and that will be documented only is clearly pathological or "incurable" cases. Its time for homeopaths to Bite the Bullet....
MIASMS anybody??

There have been many discussions about the authenticity of these trials conducted - but I think the most relavent one is that COntrolled trials are not conducive to homeoapthic principles of prescribing remedies.
Here is a very useful article a team member at hapthy.com wrote for the ezine that would be worth reading on trial protocols:
http://www.hpathy.com/research/shere...homeopathy.asp

The other aspect is to keep in mind the relative economical insecurity developing in certain large industries when people begin to accept that expensive drugs are not required, that vaccines are not required, and people will go to a doctor for a diagnosis but refuse to take or be prescribed any medication.... Gone ar ethe days when a medication was prescribed and the patient had to take it. Today, it has become the patients prerogative to accept antibiotics and steriods or not!

that's my 2.5 cents...
Dr. leela

__________________
http://www.homeopathy2health.com

All we need to refute this is to have case studies with animals or trials with animals. Having used it on my dog and brought him back from paralysation with Conium I have to attest to its power. Still those that dont believe or open their minds will be doomed to a life of darkness and superficial healing that never really heals completely.

You can only pity them because they refuse to acknowlege signs or messages that teach and enable them to grow. When you think you know everything, you really know nothing. I have to remember that constantly and keep learning.

Then there are those that put all their faith in a piece of grilled cheese sandwich that resembles a figure no one really knows what he really looks like!!

The British Homeopathic Association (BHA), which says it has 1,000 doctors on its books, strongly disagreed (with the Lancet report). “The report should be treated with extreme caution. It is being heavily spun,” Peter Fisher, clinical director at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, said on behalf of the BHA.

“For a prestigious medical journal it is a strange bit of reporting. It is a small sample and they don’t even tell you what they are basing this on. Yet they come to these very sweeping conclusions and write this very strongly worded editorial,” he told Reuters.

“Homeopathy has been suffering these types of attacks for 200 years but it goes from strength to strength because people want it and many studies prove it works.”

http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1446132.htm

Friday August 26, 12:06 AM


New study says homeopathic medicines don't work

File photo of drugs
Click to enlarge photo

LONDON (Reuters) - The world may be beating a path to the doors of homeopathic practitioners as an alternative to conventional medicines, but according to a new study they may just as well be taking nothing.

The study, published in Friday's edition of the respected Lancet medical journal, is likely to anger the growing numbers of devoted practitioners of and adherents to alternative therapies that include homeopathy.

"There was weak evidence for a specific effect of homeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions," the study concluded.

"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.

In an editorial, the Lancet urged doctors to tell their patients they were wasting their time taking homeopathic medicines -- but also to make more time to connect with the patients rather than just prescribing and forgetting.

"Now doctors need to be bold and honest with their patients about homeopathy's lack of benefits, and with themselves about the failings of modern medicine to address patients' needs for personalised care," the journal said.

Entitled "The end of homeopathy", the editorial queried how homeopathy was growing in popularity by leaps and bounds when for the past 150 years trials had found it ineffective.

"It is the attitudes of patients and providers that engender alternative-therapy seeking behaviours which create a greater threat to conventional care -- and patients' welfare -- than do spurious arguments of putative benefits from absurd dilutions," it said.

BOOMING SALES

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.

In Britain alone, sales of homeopathic medicines have grown by a third in the past five years to 32 million pounds in 2004.

The study's lead author and statistical analyst Matthias Egger of Switzerland's University of Berne, said once data from small, less rigorous trials was extracted and evident bias in both taken into account, the conclusions were inescapable.

"We acknowledge that to prove a negative is impossible, but we have shown that the effects seen in placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy are compatible with the placebo-hypothesis," he wrote.

But the British Homeopathic Association (BHA), which says it has 1,000 doctors on its books, strongly disagreed.

"The report should be treated with extreme caution. It is being heavily spun," Peter Fisher, clinical director at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, said on behalf of the BHA.

"For a prestigious medical journal it is a strange bit of reporting. It is a small sample and they don't even tell you what they are basing this on. Yet they come to these very sweeping conclusions and write this very strongly worded editorial," he told Reuters.

"Homeopathy has been suffering these types of attacks for 200 years but it goes from strength to strength because people want it and many studies prove it works."
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Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

Lancet study on homeopathy biased.

The Lancet has published the results of a study comparing peer-reviewed studies in homeopathy against studies in conventional medicine. Out of 110 matched studies only 8 of the homeopathic studies were compared to 6 studies of conventional medicine. The report concludes that homeopathy is no better than placebo. The study is poor, but makes some very strong claims.

Researches were highly selective and looked at only double-blind placebo-controlled homeopathic studies (which were probably prescribed on allopathic rather than homeopathic principles). In a double-blind placebo-controlled study normally only one medicine is given against the placebo. Homeopathy will naturally do poorly if the selected medicine is not similar to the symptoms displayed in the patient.

Prescribing methods for homeopathy are not compatible with this type of study because the homeopath needs to make a homeopathic diagnosis, not a
conventional diagnosis. For example, for someone with asthma there are a number of remedies that could be used depending on the characteristics of the disease. It may be more bronchial (wet) or dry asthma, be affected at different times (eg, worse at night) or in different seasons. Hence 10 people with asthma may require different homeopathic medicines.

Constructing a study on homeopathy is difficult, as the method of diagnosis is so different to conventional medicine. Also, the amount of funding for studies into homeopathy is almost non-existent compared to the funds available for conventional medical studies.

It also seems that the researchers of the Lancet study are quite biased in anything that does not match their concept of treatment, as the following quote from a researcher suggests (emphasis mine):

[ Juni thinks the findings show that homeopathic remedies don’t have any biological benefits. “Based on these trials, remedies which do not fit into our
traditional concepts of biological mechanisms do not have a specific effect,” he said. “We cannot prove the negative, but we find an effect which might just be a placebo effect or a nonspecific effect.” ]

Not long ago a large study showing that homeopathy is more effective than conventional medicine had a brief mention by one news source (the telegraph), while this new study saying it is no better than placebo has been picked up by a number of news sources. It seems main stream media is keen to show homeopathy in a negative light, simply because it does not conform to the scientific status quo.

This new study also conflicts with a preliminary report on homeopathy from the World Health Organization. It states that the majority of peer-reviewed
placebo controlled studies of homeopathy over the last 40 years demonstrate that homeopathy is superior to placebo. The WHO study says that homeopathy is equivalent to conventional medicine in its effectiveness.

Just recently placebo was found to have a physical effect on the body, releasing opioid like substances called endorphins. Endorphins are the body’s own natural pain-killing substance that are much more powerful than any pain killing drug.

Homeopathy is becoming very popular again. In Britain alone, sales of homeopathic medicines have grown by a third in the past five years to 32 million pounds in 2004. Recently Prince Charles issued an inquiry into alternative medicine, which found that £480 million could be saved if just 10% of GP’s prescribed homeopathy instead of conventional medicine. Homeopathy is not only cheap it is effective.

The study is poor and goes against the general finding that homeopathy does
work and is just as effective (in some cases more effective) than conventional medicine. More disappointing is the mainstream media’s strong reporting of such a weak study as cold hard fact.

References at:
http://www.althealthinfo.com/2005/08...propag%5Canda/


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Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

It was bad in the UK GUARDIAN, which is the most liberal of the big nationals and I was pretty shaken by it. Not to mention furious. The thing that enraged me the most is some extraneous joker being QUOTED as saying that

According to homeopathic thinking, if I find the optimal remedy for you, I would expect an aggravation which could be very hefty and put you into hospital for several days with your symptoms. . . . The safety isn't there. They say it is necessary on the way to recovery' . . . which is not only TOTAL rubbish, but they're trying to have it both ways: homeopathy is nonsense and does nothing, but homeopathy is DANGEROUS and will make you WORSE.

I'm trying to tell myself that they wouldn't bother trashing it so comprehensively if it were no threat to the established order--it was a lead story on the tiny news headlines clips on Radio 3 yesterday for pity's sake--but it's really depressing that the LANCET is going down the bash-homeopathy route so enthusiastically. Again from the GUARDIAN 'a hard-hitting editorial in the LANCET, entitled "The end of homeopathy" demands that doctors recognise the absence of real curative powers in homeopathic medicine.' Not even a question mark after that title.

Robin

amazing also that this report just *happened* to be ready to come out hot on the heels of a report saying that Homeopathy was effective

Simon

It's a shame that every news organization is carrying a reference to this Lancet article, even Reuters - which means now it's worldwide news. Here's the latest:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9078909/

My own physician has been diplomatic about his choice of words re homeopathy, but now he's got the Lancet to cite - the Lancet is pretty much the last word in medicine for doctors - along with JAMA. I'm never going to hear the end of it now.

Martha