I have answered this before, but here is a view from that blog referenced by colmcq. It supports my original response to you:

Do you disagree with this?
In any case, I reiterate that the first priority with any trial of homoeopathy is that the homoeopath/patient interaction must not be interfered with.

All these cases were not treated conventionally, except for the cancer case, of course, who receives the necessary thyroxine and had surgery. SHe was telling me that so many of her comrades as per treatment were having recurrence and metastasing that she was wondering - but she has not had these so far.

THere was a case of a small girl with leukemia - she was pronounced hopeless by the doctors, left several weeks to leave, her mother took her away from the hospital and to her home in Okinawa islands, just to make the last weeks pleasurably and with her family around - and guess what, the girl recovered completely, she's fine now. You would certainly say that the therapy has finally kicked in, then why this did not happen to other children in the ward with high enough percentage - I'm sure the newspaper would have written about that, also I would expect doctors to be able to discern the "temporary effects of the aggressive treatment" from a hopeless situation. A study in Australia - I was unable to locate the link now, but I'll post it as soon as I come across it again, has shown that chemotherapy's success rate is 2% and maybe it should be taken away from some public financing programme where it was on.

Japanese are funny people, they like to measure everything, so they tried some ART therapy - people staying in the hospitals were asked to select the paintings that they like most out of a set of several paintings, what they'd chosen was put on the wall in their hospital room, and all the lab tests were taken before this was done, and a week after - all the tests were improved in the people week after, and needless to say, this did not happen in the people who did not have this change introduced. The hospital is thinking about doing this for the majority of patients therefrom. THink about it the way you like, though!

And I would like to point out to you that given how "friendly" (vehemently denying in fact) the conventional medicine is towards homeopathy, at least here in Japan, and many other countries, I'd say, it is not possible for any homeopath to provide what you are looking for. In the States it might be even illegal in some states to do medical checks for people receiving alternative care.
So if you would rather keep your minds a bit more open and just allow a small possibility that alternative treatments - on the whole -can be in any way beneficial and SHOULD NOT be discriminated against in the public healthcare, so that the legal frame etc could be changed accordingly, only then you will be able to get the kind of evidence that you are asking for - that would convince you. Otherwise it just looks as though you prefer to feel safe - in whatever meaning - when you are being guarded from these possible monsters who are trying to steal money or whatever from general public (please, do not take that personally! But it looks somehow that a certain proportion of people somehow feels that way), and tell to the person whose arms are tied up to pick up something for you and get angry when he is not able to do that.

It's a matter of how one is able or willing to process incomplete information, but please, do not forget that information is ALWAYS incomplete in some way, so things that you beleive will persuade you are impossible to obtain in principle. Once you get one well documented case of cure, you can always say that it's spontaneous and would need to be replicated to convince you etc. You simply close off your way.

Well, if you are so sure that it was the conventional treatment that helps patients after all - then wy bother? You are able to choose it for yourself, but I think it is not quite ethical, democratical or whatever, respectful of other people, to try to force this on other people who are of a different opinion. Homeopathic remedies are really cheap, so I don't see how permitting them covered under your HealthCare system in UK - this is what your concern is, right? - is going to really put someone in being able to buy them less food, THIS is much less probable. There is a study - I read about it in Le Nouvel Observateur, and now some one posted a reference to it on another forum, here's the summary
Caisse Nationale de l'Assurance Maladie des Travailleurs Salaris
January 1, 1996


1996

A study of 130,000 prescriptions confirmed the results of the 1991 French Government Report (see below) and suggest further benefit and savings to the homeopathic approach to care. This survey also noted that the number of paid sick leave days by patients under the care of homeopathic physicians were 3.5 times less (598 days/year) than patients under the care of general practitioners (2,017 days/year). Although homeopathic medicines in France represent 5% of all medicines prescribed by physicians, they represent only 1.2% of all drug reimbursements due to their lower cost per prescription. (Homeopathic medicines are reimbursable under the French health care system).

So, in fact, people using homeopathy are a much smaller burden to public Finance than people using regular medicine. And would have been a greater burden if you would force them to use the regular medicine "as everybody else", and then someone might find themselves short of money to buy the food they need...

Many homeopaths work for free - as I also do, when I'm asked for acute prescriptions, I do not constitutional prescribing yet, - so this should not be a concern as well.

I hope you will apologise me for not posting any detailed information about myself, because I do not have any clinical assessments of my own state and my daughter's - I simply do not go to the hospitals for any check-ups etc, one of the reasons is I don't have money to do all this medical stuff and I don't think it is especially beneficial for us in any way, and obviously, for the reasons I mentioned above it's not going to persuade anyone of anything, will be just another anecdote, so I'm not going to do this, and I will just go on with my studies and help the people who come to me to ask for help.

Again, thank you for reading, hopefully other people who are committed to try to persuade someone will go on. And in any case all is well that ends well, so my personal goal is to have as many people recovered from their ills in a positive way as possible, so far I was able to do my little lot, and I will just continue with this.

SOrry to have disappointed you, that all was not quite scientific.

Elena,

No apologies are required. I didn't expect you to supply that information. I could see from your previous posts that that would be impossible. I was just saying that, in the absence of such information, it is impossible to decide whether or not the homoeopathic treatment is helping (in your third case) or curing (in your first two cases). And, yes, even if you could supply the information, it would still just be anecdotal evidence which we know to be unreliable.

Also, two points:
I live in Australia, not the UK. In Australia, homoeopathy is hardly ever used. I am not concerning myself with cost but about evidence for effectiveness. I think this is very important.
And I hardly ever get angry, but I am concerned when there is clear evidence for effectiveness of some conventional treatment - for example, vaccinations - and alternative treatments, such as homoeopathy, are promoted for which there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever. In these cases people can be harmed. This concerns me, but I don't much is achieved by getting angry.

As for proof, meaning total 100% proof, there is rarely any such thing. Science rarely establishes 100% proof. Science is all about probabilities. But these probabilities are based on evidence. If there is no evidence for something, we have to initially assign a probability of zero. As more and more evidence accumulates, the probability goes up, but very rarely up to 100%. I like to keep an open mind on everything but I will not actually take anything "on-board" unless and untill the evidence starts accumulating.

Finally, just to be clear, there is plenty of things that I think are wrong, and sometimes badly wrong, with conventional and pharmaceutical organisations and treatments. I do not champion their causes. If I am "for" anything, I would say, I am a "for" evidence-based medicine..

regards,
BillyJoe

BillyJoe,

THanks for clearly writing what your stand is, I think it will be helpful to understand better what you write.

I do not really have much more to say, I have my subjective indications that my remedy is helping me, but this is not the point.

Homeopathic treatments are not really promoted - if you find them pushed on you, most probably, they are not really homeopathic at all, just using potentised substances, but this does not mean it is homeopathic in the strict sense.

People might sometimes choose to harm themselves, some people even kill themselves, but I'm not sure to what extent other people should interfere with their decisions - if they felt life was unbearable to them, well, keeping them alive would just mean making them suffer more.

ANd obviously, you personally will not be forced to use homeopathy, so really, you should not worry about that.

Rather, show more kindness and respect to other people, this is certainly going to help them to feel better. And if it takes a homeopath to do this - why not? Or somebody else for that matter, in case you do not like homeopaths...

Elena,

If someone chooses to attend a homoeopath, is not harmed, feels better for the experience, and pays for the service and feels it's money well spent, who am I to complain or stand in the way.

But there are still two nagging concerns: You should not expect the public to foot the bill unless there is clear evidence of benefit. And I am still concerned about possible harm, as in the example of vaccinations.

regards,
BillyJoe

"unless there is clear evidence of benefit" - who and to whom has to show this in your opinion? (I pay my homeopathy bills myself, of course, and the remedies I get for free from a homeopath in the States whom I have not even personally met - so he was not able to "touch" the patient and all the rest that Mr. Goldacre in his writings implies is a big source of the patient's improvement.

"And I am still concerned about possible harm, as in the example of vaccinations."

WHat do you mean by this?

By means of DBRCTs as described in one of my previous posts in the thread.


As I said, there is clear evidence of benefit from conventional vaccines but no evidence at all from homoeopathic vaccines. Yet homoeopathic vaccines are recommended by most homoeopaths. This is a situation in which real harm can be done.

BillyJoe,

I feel there is a contradiction in what you write, let's get that clear, if you don't mind.

"If someone chooses to attend a homeopath, is not harmed, feels better for the experience and pays for the service and feels it's money well spent" - you do not feel the need to look into that matter further. However, if the same person does the same - under the public health insurance system - you feel that they've taken your money. Maybe, you forget that this person also pays into the system, and as the study in France that I mentioned suggests, the people who visit homeopeopaths spend LESS of public money, so it might well be that they get paid back even less than they've paid into the system, although, this needs to be looked into, but that's what I feel myself here. We have not visited a doctor not once in 10 years, the children were born with the midwife and no medication at all, still we pay into the local scheme, obviously we are now paying for someone's conventional treatment... Although I'm not that attached to money and do not mind this at all.

ANd re "homeopathic vaccinations" I personally am totally against the idea, and while I think there will not be much harm, I also think that it's not how the homeopathy is done in the classical way. You can only treat people when they have symptoms, not before that.

And I would never suggest anyone to forgo usual vaccinations either though I avoid vaccinating my own children completely. If the people feel safer that way, they should make their own decisions, if they ask me what homeopaths think about the issue I'll tell them, if they'll ask me why I do not vaccinate my children, I will tell them, but I'll certainly add that they are in no way obliged to follow my advice, but should weigh all pros and cons themselves - and bear the responsibility for their choice. I know a woman whose child, when he was 2, was hospitalized in coma after receiving a flu shot. The mother has learned something from this incident, needless to say, he did not get any more vaccinations after that. He's 7 now, so far he had no big problems from lack of vaccinations.

Because the basic concepts are totally different!



Conventional medicine either treats and make disappear symptoms or is very
happy when numbers go back to a statistical normality: "normal" blood
pressure, blood sugar, behaviour, whatever, end of the treatment until next
named disease appears.



Homeopathy (and Herbalism, and Acupuncture, and others) consider a person
who happens to have one or more of those "abnormalities" as part of a
reaction mode or behavioural mode, so those named diseases are only a
fragment of everything that has to be addressed. Sometimes those fragments
are life threatening and must be solved before going further, but this would
only be one or the first step in the cure.



Conventional drugs do the work for the patient. Remedies give the impulse to
the patient's own physiology to do the work.



Light-years apart!



The only possible comparison is populations treated by either mode
exclusively and how they fare in the long term.



Dr. J. Rozencwajg, MD, PhD, NMD.

"The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind".

Visit http://drjoesnaturalmedicine.blogspot.com for some articles and
comments.

-------Original Message-------



From: homeolist (AT) otherhealth (DOT) com

Date: 15/01/2008 12:37:03 p.m.

To: homeopathy (AT) homeolist (DOT) com

Subject: [H] Re: @ gimpy: proof of homeopathy



WHy does nobody say that for a really correct trial you would need to

Find a large number of people HAVING THE SAME DISEASE (to assure the

Standard of action, that is to permit a resonably good comparison with

Control - placebo) and NEEDING THE SAME REMEDY at the same time. This,

Given that any homeopath will say that the frequency of prescribing the

Same remedy even for people with different sort of complaints is not

Quite high to say the least - this is something that is being dismissed

As far as I was able to ready any discussions, - is something it would

Be very difficult to do without support from a large number of

Homeopaths, maybe, or in any case, something rather difficult to deal

With.



For obvious ethical reasons you would not want to suppress the

Condition in people with a superficially "similar" but unindicated

Remedy, if you are familiar with the homeopathic method enough to see

This?





--

Elena Zagrebelnaya

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View this thread: @ gimpy: proof of homeopathy

Yes, Dr. J. Rozencwajg,

As I wrote my answers I realised that I'm somehow being caught into this frame of considering disease SEPARATE from the people, thanks for reminding this!

I also wanted to ask you, actually, if you could provide some history to the legislation in New Zealand that you've mentioned, how practitioners all have equal(?) legal rights unless they are an impostor. Was it so from the start? And if not, what were the arguments that the people were putting forward to have it in place?

THanks!

Elena