otherhealth.com  

Go Back   otherhealth.com > Homeopathy > Research and the Scientific Validity of Homeopathy

View Poll Results: Which is more scientific? Homeopathy or Allopathy
Homeoapthy 2 100.00%
Allopathy 0 0%
Can't Say 0 0%
Voters: 2. You may not vote on this poll

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Display Modes
  #231 (permalink)  
Old 2nd October 2009, 03:00 AM
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Kuantan
Posts: 55
chiongguo is on a distinguished road
Default

Moopet wrote :

Quote:
If it's not a science without laws, then laws are a prerequisite for science.
If you can't make the law with reference to science, what do you make it with? This is obviously nonsense. A branch of science can exist with any number of "laws" associated, including zero.

This seems to me a misleading argument, you're trying to make homeopathy seem valid because it has "laws" associated with it. But those laws did not come from any other branch of science. They came to support homeopathy. And now homeopathy is supported by those laws? This is circular, and pointless.
.......Continueing

Having established that science is blind let us now look at 2 very fundamental mechanism of scientific thinking and i.e. deduction and induction.

An inductive logic is one whereby we form a generalisation after countless events. As an example if we drop a piece of iron into water and it sinks. If we repeated this 100 and 1000 times then we can generalise a conclusion that "iron do not float on water." If one day someone came along and found that when a piece of iron is placed on water and it doesn't sink but float then the generalisation is either demolished or they will further analyse and see if the water is really water and the iron is iron or perhaps something else is really happening. Again science is blind because its focus by the nature of its paradigm has to be narrow in that it excluded everything and often such exclusion excludes the truth.

In medical context FDA allowed that if 2 or more studies confirm the efficacy of a drug then the drug can be approved. This is really taking inductive logic to a new low. Pharmaceutical companies had been known to search for "cooperative researcher" to support the efficacy of its drugs eventhough countless others had shown it to be dangerous and ineffective but these negative results were never published.

Doesn't the supposed gold standard losing a bit of its shine ?

From the foregoing it is obvious that negative results are very important in scientific discovery and understanding. In fact only negative results can guide us to the truth of how effective the medicine really are and yet researchers are not compelled by law to reveal any negative results and this is what was reported in "Black Hole" of medical research--Negative Results Don't get Published - JAMA, WSJ
Sat, 5 Jun 2004


Quote:
The JAMA report notes that 80% of industry sponsored trials conducted at universities such as Yale, Hopkins, and others, are reported as positive, reflecting bias.
"In almost two-thirds of these cases, the results omitted concerns over potential harmful effects. Independent researchers were just as prone to bias as those funded by industry. Crucial information, from the intensity of pain to survival rates, was either downgraded in importance or omitted from the published report."
The Wall Street Journal also addressed the "Black Hole" of unreported scientific findings: a Finnish analysis of the cardiovascular risk from hormone-replacement therapy found that only 23 of some 200 trials submitted to regulatory authorities were published. Kay Dickersin, an epidemiologist at Brown University, found that only 30% to 50% of all studies, regardless of funding source, are eventually published.
That means that 50% to 70% of clinical trial results are negative - but the public never knows about it, nor that the products tested, may possibly be dangerous.
The medical research community and its self-regulating system is dysfunctional; failing to protect the public from hazardous drugs and medical procedures, and tainting the credibility of the scientific literature with fraudulently manipulated findings.
Not only the scientific paradigm is flawed in handling our health its many practices by big pharma industry violate the scientific principles in search of filthy lucre.
Reply With Quote
  #232 (permalink)  
Old 2nd October 2009, 03:32 AM
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Kuantan
Posts: 55
chiongguo is on a distinguished road
Default

Moopet wrote :

Quote:
If it's not a science without laws, then laws are a prerequisite for science.
If you can't make the law with reference to science, what do you make it with? This is obviously nonsense. A branch of science can exist with any number of "laws" associated, including zero.

This seems to me a misleading argument, you're trying to make homeopathy seem valid because it has "laws" associated with it. But those laws did not come from any other branch of science. They came to support homeopathy. And now homeopathy is supported by those laws? This is circular, and pointless.
.......Continueing


Deductive logic is one that uses a premise - which is a generalisation of events to form a "prediction" of similar events. As an example "If I take poison I would die". That is a premise that all of us could agree on. However if I were to die tomorrow could I then infer or deduce that I had taken poison the day before ? There are so many causes that could kill me but to infer from an established premise that I was only killed by poison, you would agree, is silly. But isn't this exactly what allopaths wanted us to believe.

Let's take a concrete example. Taking ephedra would reduce asthmatic symptom. In truth this statement is true only in some cases. The cases in the study in which asthmatics had found relief were actually not due to the drug but due to other events. Using ephedra or the synthetic version of it came from traditional chinese medicine. The chinese had used ma huang, a natural ephedra drug, for healing asthmatic symptoms. In chinese medicine there is no diseases only imbalances. But such wholistic medicine understood that ephedra cannot be used for all cases exhibiting asthmatic symptoms. In the chinese wu xing model of the body-mind-spiritual complex the asthmatic symptoms could be due to problems in the Heart channel or in the Spleen channel. Only those cases where asthmatic symptoms are caused by external pathogenic factors could ma huang be used. If the causes are due to disharmony in the heart or spleen then suppressing the symptoms in the lung will cause what the chinese call a rebellion and the problems is driven inwards to the spleen or the heart.

More and more asthmatic patients now could not be relieved from using ephedra because the cause really came from stress(heart) than from external pathogenic factors. But allopathic medicine do not have the capacity nor does it have a model to distinguish between the various "asthmatic symptoms". And so if it worked for 30% of the test subjects than by inductive logic it must work for the rest. In truth the 70% of the test subjects that the drug has no effect or was harmful had a better foundation for the inductive logical conclusion that the drug doesn't work.
Reply With Quote
  #233 (permalink)  
Old 2nd October 2009, 04:57 AM
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Kuantan
Posts: 55
chiongguo is on a distinguished road
Default

Moopet wrote :



Quote:
If it's not a science without laws, then laws are a prerequisite for science.
If you can't make the law with reference to science, what do you make it with? This is obviously nonsense. A branch of science can exist with any number of "laws" associated, including zero.

This seems to me a misleading argument, you're trying to make homeopathy seem valid because it has "laws" associated with it. But those laws did not come from any other branch of science. They came to support homeopathy. And now homeopathy is supported by those laws? This is circular, and pointless.
Essentially allopathic medicine do not have a concrete or even workable model to work with. Its understanding of the human body is physical and biochemic in nature and even then it had only understood a small fraction of what is really going on in the human body. Allopaths are tying itself up in complexities that it has no way of extracting itself from. The growth of specialists was a direct result.

Modern medicine inspite of all its advances and instrumentations have not reached the stage of complete understanding in order to abstract a working and useful model from. In short it is still highly dysfunctional.

Then on the other side we have wholistic medicine such as homoeopathy and traditional chinese medicine. These medical paradigms are very stable and have established itself over the millenia(for TCM) and centuries for homoeopathy. In fact homoeopathy is a subset of TCM. Principles of like curing like is found in TCM as well. Let us now examine the scientific LAWS that underlie these wholistic medicine.

Central to homoeopathic therapeutics is the principle of "like curing like". This basically meant that if arsenic cause a set of symptom then a highly diluted form of arsenic would resolved the symptoms of arsenic poisoning. We have to establish if there is actually a scientific basis for such a principle otherwise it would be tautalogical or circular as you had said.

This basic principle had in fact been established by a number of studies and cited here is one

J.C. Cazin et al.. "A Study of the Effect of Decimal and Centesimal Dilution of Arsenic on Retention and Mobilization of Arsenic in the Rat," Human Toxicology, July 1987.


The study in brief. 2 groups of rat fed with arsenic. They started showing signs of arsenic poisoning. All the faeces and urine were collected and arsenic content measured. Our body has limited ability to expell arsenic poisoning. One group was given homoeopathic remedies and the body removed a lot more arsenic than the control. The control rats continue to show symptoms of arsenic poisoning while the group given homoeopathic remedies found relief.

Here are 2 more references :

a. Efficacy of a potentized homoeopathic drug (Arsenicum-Album-30) in reducing cytotoxic effects produced by arsenic trioxide in mice: III. Enzymatic changes and recovery of tissue damage in liver
Complementary Therapies in Medicine, Volume 8, Issue 2, Pages 76-81

b. Can Homeopathic Arsenic Remedy Combat Arsenic Poisoning in Humans Exposed to Groundwater Arsenic Contamination?: A Preliminary Report on First Human Trial (Can Homeopathic Arsenic Remedy Combat Arsenic Poisoning in Humans Exposed to Groundwater Arsenic Contamination?: A Preliminary Report on First Human Trial).


If like cure like principle had been established by scientific studies and millenia of observations and use (in TCM) then homoeopathy can be said to be on very sound scientific foundation while that of allopathy has hardly any foundation to stand on as yet.

--- to be continued.
Reply With Quote
  #234 (permalink)  
Old 2nd October 2009, 02:18 PM
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Kuantan
Posts: 55
chiongguo is on a distinguished road
Default

Moopet wrote :

Quote:
Quote:
If it's not a science without laws, then laws are a prerequisite for science.
If you can't make the law with reference to science, what do you make it with? This is obviously nonsense. A branch of science can exist with any number of "laws" associated, including zero.

This seems to me a misleading argument, you're trying to make homeopathy seem valid because it has "laws" associated with it. But those laws did not come from any other branch of science. They came to support homeopathy. And now homeopathy is supported by those laws? This is circular, and pointless.

If the law of similars had been demonstrated and proven repeatedly in controlled and randomised environment as well as in actual practice FOR MILLENIA the natural follow-on question is what is causing these physiological changes ? The main objection to homoeopathic remedies is that it contains "nothing" in the remedy to have any physiological effects and whatever benefitial result must be due to the placebo effects. This argument doesn't wash as many of these experiments were based on animals.

A properly trained scientist would not dismiss homoeopathic remedies because it pre-judged the remedies as having "nothing" in it. A good scientists will know that he is blind and instead of dismissing the lack of anything in the remedies would venture to try to discover what was in the remedies that had made it efficacious ? Fortunately many had done just that and some of the results were quite amazing.

One man set out to prove that water cannot after have any physiological effects after it had been diluted certain number of times and to his surprise the effects even became pronounced. Here are some references.

Jacques Beneviste - let the man speak to you himself at :

Digital Biology and the Memory Effect of Water

and the of all links 8-)

Scientific Research: Water (Memory) | Avilian

If the foundation of homoeopathy is soundly established then the efficacy or lack of it is highly dependent on the skill of the homoeopaths in finding the correct "like" that will cure the "like" of the disease state.

There is a "law" in TCM (traditional chinese medicine) that says that a single cure can cure a 1000 diseases and a single disease can be cured by a 1000 remedies. The use of 1000 is not meant to exaggerate but is meant to demonstrate that a disease condition has many causes and or combination of causes and different causes will result in different combinations of herbs or remedies. Similarly a particular herbs could be used in numerous situations depending on the disease condition.

How could science a linear paradigm solve the problems of a non-linear system such as the human body ? Look at our environment and all that modern science and technology had brought to mankind and one can't but conclude that for every problem that it had solved or more likely suppressed it created a 1000 more problems. Organic systems are whole and interconnected at levels that we can't even begin to imagine or know about and such a system is like a huge bubble. When it is in a disease state and a swelling occurs a linear system could only see the swelling and endeavoured to press down the swelling. This suppression of the swelling will result in it swelling up somewhere else.

Many allopaths doctors would agree that we don't get heart attack or cancer overnight. It is a culmination of a series of disharmony that we thought of as "irritants". Homoeopathy just as TCM talk about the progression of the disease state or disharmony(in TCM) and actually had over the years been able to bring such disharmony back into balance. Allopathic medicine do not have such capacity and TCM even has the capacity to predict how disharmony will arise. As an example of heart medicine. When the excessive heart energy is suppressed by medication one day it will create rebellious qi that will invade the kidney. Modern medicine did not know why this happen until recently. All these years of warning by highly competent TCM physicians were laughed at because allopaths DID NOT KNOW how the kidney and heart were linked. The chinese knew the link in a highly abstracted wu xing model few thousand years ago.

Which is more scientific ? Allopathy or homoeopathy ? I think the question cannot be answered adequately or completely but to me a far more important question to ask is :

Which is more sensible ? Allopathy or homoeopathy ? History and a huge body of references, cases and highly competent anecdotal evidences would suggest that homoeopathy is way ahead.
Reply With Quote
  #235 (permalink)  
Old 3rd October 2009, 11:25 AM
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Gurgaon, India
Posts: 111
Dr. Nancy Malik is on a distinguished road
Default Homeopathic medicines available at your nearby chemist

Quote:
Originally Posted by alach11 View Post
So are you against this?

You've said homeopathic treatment isn't effective unless it's sold by a homeopathic physician. This is why we can't prove its effectiveness with double blind trials. It only stands to reason that we shouldn't sell ineffective medicine right?
No I am not against it. Homeopathic Medicines should be available at chemist stores

I have never said that homeopathic medicines are not effective unless it is sold by a homeopath physiican. You are making your own judgment
Reply With Quote
  #236 (permalink)  
Old 26th October 2009, 02:53 AM
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Texas
Posts: 14
alach11 is on a distinguished road
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Nancy Malik View Post
No I am not against it. Homeopathic Medicines should be available at chemist stores

I have never said that homeopathic medicines are not effective unless it is sold by a homeopath physiican. You are making your own judgment
Fact: Clinical trials (double blind) have demonstrated omeopathic remedies sold in pharmacies are no more effective than placebo.
Fact: Visiting a personal homeopathic doctor is different than purchasing a remedy off the shelf.

Even if we accept that a homepathic doctor can effectively treat illness, it's ridiculous to sell in a store a product that claims to do something that it can't actually do.
Reply With Quote
  #237 (permalink)  
Old 27th October 2009, 05:43 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Denmark
Posts: 1,084
MRC_Hans is an unknown quantity at this point
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by alach11 View Post
Fact: Clinical trials (double blind) have demonstrated omeopathic remedies sold in pharmacies are no more effective than placebo.
Also fact:Every time this is pointed out, homeopaths claim that it is not correct homeopathy to just use a remedy without a homeopathic rex.

Hans
__________________
<i>You have a right to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.</i>
Reply With Quote
  #238 (permalink)  
Old 27th October 2009, 05:59 PM
Hahnemannian444's Avatar
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: USA
Posts: 542
Hahnemannian444 has a little shameless behaviour in the past
Default

Yeah, and double-blind drug trials are based upon wholly fouled-up and truly ignorant (deadly ignorant, in fact) basic erroneous assumptions, all of which we've explained to you and your buddy morons many times before, but you're expert sophists and obscurists as God-damned cohorts in Quack Busters, aren't you, you deceptive and sly devil wannabe, right? Although this is a long subject, specifically, there are no specific drugs for allopathically defined diseases, and those disease-diagnostic categories are total falsehoods, anyway. You therefore try to make -1 + 1 = something other than zero but always fail. 2700 years of failed experiments on 50-100 billion people, all of whom have been murdered by your buddies in allopathic medicine, is not enough proof to you morons that you've got something wrong? Yeah, drill some holes in your heads. That might work.

Moreover, that's just one reason allopaths have no cures and are inadvertent mass murderers, and you and your kind are directly complicit in their crimes. I had a near-death experience when I was 16 years old, and I know what awaits you and your kind. You're pitiful and pathethic. It was almost five years ago when I explained all of this to you, but you still haven't tested homeopathy, have you?
Link: Homoeopathic Hospital?. Answer some of those questions, you moron. Prove to us yet again that you're not a scientist and that you have horns. I'm otherwise through with you, though, so keep your evil spider's web to yourself, fool.
__________________
Albert, also Hahnemannian444B
www.GiggleBoggleJabbleGooby.com/HaHa

Last edited by Hahnemannian444; 7th November 2009 at 08:34 PM.
Reply With Quote
  #239 (permalink)  
Old 30th October 2009, 07:37 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Denmark
Posts: 1,084
MRC_Hans is an unknown quantity at this point
Default

Temper, temper .........
__________________
<i>You have a right to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.</i>
Reply With Quote
  #240 (permalink)  
Old 30th October 2009, 11:21 AM
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Gurgaon, India
Posts: 111
Dr. Nancy Malik is on a distinguished road
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by alach11 View Post
Fact: Clinical trials (double blind) have demonstrated omeopathic remedies sold in pharmacies are no more effective than placebo.
Links & studies published in journals: results better than placebo
1. Arnica Therapy in patients receiving knee surgery: Results of three randomised double blind trials

Researchers investigated the effeciveness of Arnica on post-operative swelling and pain

Three different randomised pacebo-controlled, double blind, and sequential clinical trials were conducted after arthroscopy, artficial knee joint implantation and crutiate ligament reconstruction.

A total of 227 patients were enrolled in the arthroscopy (33% females and the mean age was 43.2 years)

35 patients in artificfial knee joint implatation (71% females and mean age was 67 years)

57 patients in crutiate ligament reconstruction (26% females and mean age was 33.4 years)

The study conducted each with 2 parallel therapy groups, of which one recieved placebo, and the other with anica 30X.

The arnica Montana was manufacured by DHU in Karlsruhe, Germany in accordance with the guidelines of the German Homoeopathic Phamacopoeia.

In all the three trials, patient receiving Arnica showed a trend towards less post-operative swelling compared to patients with placebo.

Journal: Complementary Therapy in Medicne, Vol. 14, pp. 237-246, 2006
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Homeopathy Vs Allopathy j tikari Homeopathy List Discussion 29 31st October 2009 04:09 PM
Allopathy and Homeopathy often has to work together ! Wim Pets and Animals 1 27th January 2009 03:08 PM
Allopathy Vs Homeopathy Part II Dr. MAS Homeopathy Discussion 11 24th October 2008 03:07 PM
allopathy and homeopathy the contrasting chart g.tyler Homeopathy List Discussion 0 3rd September 2005 04:17 PM


All times are GMT. The time now is 10:47 PM.



The information contained on OtherHealth.com arises by way of discussion between contributors and should not be treated as a substitute for the advice provided by your own personal physician or other health care professional. None of the contributions on this site are an endorsement by the site owners of any particular product, or a recommendation as to how to treat any particular disease or health-related condition. If you suspect you have a disease or health-related condition of any kind, you should contact your own health care professional immediately. Please read the BB Rules for further details.
Please consult personally with your own health care professional before starting any diet, exercise, supplementation or medication program.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2010, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
SEO by vBSEO 3.3.2
Copyright © 2010 otherhealth.com