Gimpy,

There was a documentary a few years ago called Supersize Me. It's about a man who ate only McDonalds fastfood for a month or more. Big Macs, Egg McMuffins, Chicken McNuggets and more every meal, every day. His health deteriorated dramatically during this period, cholesterol soared, liver enzymes out of whack, etc. One result of this documentary was McDonalds eliminating SuperSize portions and moving towards adding more healthful options while saying these changes were unrelated to the documentary. It's a humorous documentary with many implications.

Google Supersize Me to see the documentary, etc.

Why not do the same for homeopathy?

Start taking a remedy a day for a month at a time. Start with standard Boiron 30C blue tubes you can buy at almost any healthfood and many drug stores. In England, the designation may be 30CH or 30D.

Try Mercurius Solubius 30C daily for a month or maybe try the Hitler Protocol, take Belladonna 30C and Nux Vomica 30C daily or close your eyes in front of the Boiron display and randomly grab one.

To adhere somewhat to classical Hahnemannian homeopathic standards, you should only take one remedy at a time. To make it easy, just one pillule under your tongue daily per 4th edition Organon methods. No need to dilute in water and succuss as in 5th and 6th editions.

Since you blog that scientifically homeopathic remedies can have no possible effect plus you don't have a belief in them and thus would not suffer any placebo effects, this is truly a harmless and interesting experiment for you to do. Then you can honestly post that homeopathy had no effect to PROVE your point.

If you don't accept this challenge, please let us know why.

Susan

I'll do it if the remedies are free. I refuse to pay £5-6 for water when I can get perfectly decent stuff from the tap.

Taking the *same* remedy every day would be more likely to produce
effects.
And, to make it more scientific, the reporting on "effect / no effect"
should be done not only by him (after all, subjective report *is*
meaningful when we are talking about an individual's health), but also
by other people, from other parts of his life, who *do not know* that
he is engaged in this experiment. We need impartial observers!

I have zero belief that he would do this at all, and less-than-zero
that he would report favorable results accurately, if he did. But
still this would be a reasonable challenge for *him* to do, for his
*own* understanding--if he were actually interested in finding out
whether remedies have an effect.
Shannon

On Jan 10, 2008, at 7:15 AM, <blissgogo-hpthy5 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

> Gimpy,
>
> There was a documentary a few years ago called Supersize Me. It's
> about a man who ate only McDonalds fastfood for a month or more. Big
> Macs, Egg McMuffins, Chicken McNuggets and more every meal, every day.
> His health deteriorated dramatically during this period, cholesterol
> soared, liver enzymes out of whack, etc. One result of this
> documentary was McDonalds eliminating SuperSize portions and moving
> towards adding more healthful options while saying these changes were
> unrelated to the documentary. It's a humorous documentary with many
> implications.
>
> Google Supersize Me to see the documentary, etc.
>
> Why not do the same for homeopathy?
>
> Start taking a remedy a day for a month at a time. Start with
> standard Boiron 30C blue tubes you can buy at almost any healthfood
> and many drug stores. In England, the designation may be 30CH or 30D.
>
> Try Mercurius Solubius 30C daily for a month or maybe try the Hitler
> Protocol, take Belladonna 30C and Nux Vomica 30C daily or close your
> eyes in front of the Boiron display and randomly grab one.
>
> To adhere somewhat to classical Hahnemannian homeopathic standards,
> you should only take one remedy at a time. To make it easy, just one
> pillule under your tongue daily per 4th edition Organon methods. No
> need to dilute in water and succuss as in 5th and 6th editions.
>
> Since you blog that scientifically homeopathic remedies can have no
> possible effect plus you don't have a belief in them and thus would
> not suffer any placebo effects, this is truly a harmless and
> interesting experiment for you to do. Then you can honestly post that
> homeopathy had no effect to PROVE your point.
>
> If you don't accept this challenge, please let us know why.
>
> Susan
>

Wonderful,
If somebody works this out, we can suggest the whole antiquacks and
co. to participate in a homeopathic proving, they can hardly be
against the invitation since it will not work anyhow.
Lets do a double-blind with some remedy we know already, so they can
even see the similarities that will show up. let us try something like
rhus-t. or glonoinum or something else that gives nice, objective
symptoms that cannot be suppressed.

Roger

Thats a pittance. Maybe you can expense it to big Pharma as part of your duty to discredit homeopathy.

jdc325 (gimpy?) wrote:

"I'll do it if the remedies are free. I refuse to pay £5-6 for water when I can get perfectly decent stuff from the tap."

It's not water, it's sugar pills.

Setup a free PayPal Personal account. I and hopefully others should have no problem contributing to your education.

Let's open our wallets and Gimpy/jdc325 open your mouth!

Susan

Before we go any further, I should point out that I am not Gimpy. I answered your challenge to Gimpy as I quite fancy taking homeopathic remedies just to see what (if anything) happens. I also wanted to make sure it wouldn't cost me anything because (a) I'm tight with money and (b) Unfortunately, I can't "expense it to big Pharma". They don't pay me and never have done.

Incidentally, I'm somewhat baffled as to why homeopaths always assume that any dissenter is somehow in the pay of Big Pharma. Another common misconception is that when there are two or more dissenters, they must be the same person posting from two different accounts. There seems to be a collective paranoia that pervades homeopathic forums, blogs etc. Perhaps this paranoia is merely symptomatic of the muddle-headed thinking that predominates the alt-med lobby.

Sure, I'd be happy to chip in too.
But how shall we arrange independent documentation? So far none of
these folks have been interested in reading or evaluating *anything*
positive about homeopathy, so what reason is there to think that they'd
report accurately? Or even take the remedy as agreed? Anyone have
ideas on that? (jcd325, do you?)


On Jan 10, 2008, at 8:46 AM, <blissgogo-hpthy5 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

> jdc325 (gimpy?) wrote:
>
> "I'll do it if the remedies are free. I refuse to pay £5-6 for water
> when I can get perfectly decent stuff from the tap."
>
> It's not water, it's sugar pills.
>
> Setup a free PayPal Personal account. I and hopefully others should
> have no problem contributing to your education.
>
> Let's open our wallets and Gimpy/jdc325 open your mouth!
>
> Susan
>
>

This challenge seems similar to the one Rob Hinley is undertaking over at hpathy. While I have no objection in principle to this I am not sure how you will know that I am being truthful about taking the medication or reporting the effect. Obviously I know I am honest but I don't think you should make that assumption as it would invalidate the test if I am not. May I suggest homeopaths take the Quackometer's challenge which is much more thorough.

The idea is not to prove anything to those of us who know homeopathy but to prove it to the skeptics so documentation doesn't matter.

Richard Knapp
EAS - Data Warehouse Group
University of Missouri
615 Locust Street #200
Columbia, MO 65201
573-882-8856
knappr (AT) umsystem (DOT) edu


-----Original Message-----
From: homeopathy-bounces (AT) homeolist (DOT) com [mailto:homeopathy-bounces (AT) homeolist (DOT) com] On Behalf Of Robert & Shannon Nelson
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 10:16 AM
To: homeopathy (AT) homeolist (DOT) com
Subject: Re: [H] Re: The Gimpy Challenge

Sure, I'd be happy to chip in too.
But how shall we arrange independent documentation? So far none of
these folks have been interested in reading or evaluating *anything*
positive about homeopathy, so what reason is there to think that they'd
report accurately? Or even take the remedy as agreed? Anyone have
ideas on that? (jcd325, do you?)


On Jan 10, 2008, at 8:46 AM, <blissgogo-hpthy5 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

> jdc325 (gimpy?) wrote:
>
> "I'll do it if the remedies are free. I refuse to pay £5-6 for water
> when I can get perfectly decent stuff from the tap."
>
> It's not water, it's sugar pills.
>
> Setup a free PayPal Personal account. I and hopefully others should
> have no problem contributing to your education.
>
> Let's open our wallets and Gimpy/jdc325 open your mouth!
>
> Susan
>
>