Homeopathy why the bad rap

Read the winning articles. Journal overview. Special Issues. Article Sections On this page Copyright. Received 22 Jan Accepted 10 Mar Published 05 Jun Now, if only nonfamous people, like most of us, would choose homeopathy. Ellen Feingold. More related articles. Download other formats More. Then he pulverized it into powder, added it to water, and commanded the Israelites to drink of the solution.

Moses did not know that he was using Aurum metallicum gold to treat despair and hopelessness, just as we homeopaths do today, thousands of years after Moses. Third, take a look at the extensive References after every chapter. It is another glimpse into the far reaches of the author's intellect. Now, delve into the book and let it carry you away. You will find fascinating stories of persons prescribing, using, or writing about homeopathy, most of it favorable, some not.

Over and over again we read stories of homeopathy getting a bad rap. The bad rap largely continues today, about years after it started among Western-trained physicians. Dana helps us to understand the forces at work that resulted in the near destruction of a system of medicine as efficacious, gentle and healing as homeopathy.

Many of the book's testimonials in favor of homeopathy are in the form of personal letters written by one or another famous person to the author. See, e. The second principle assumes that the serial dilution process used for homeopathic remedies renders them not less but more potent hence homeopaths call this process "potentiation". Both of these axioms fly in the face of science. If they were true, much of what we learned in physics and chemistry would be wrong. If anyone shows the concepts of homeopathy to be correct, he or she becomes a serious contender for one or two Nobel prizes.

Homeopaths often say that we simply have not yet discovered how homeopathy works. The truth is that we know there is no conceivable scientific explanation that could possibly explain it. Yet as a clinician almost 30 years ago, I was impressed with the results achieved by homeopathy. Many of my patients seemed to improve dramatically after receiving homeopathic treatment.

How was this possible? In order to understand this apparent contradiction, we have to take a step back and consider the complexities of the therapeutic response. Whenever a patient or a group of patients receive a medical treatment and subsequently experience improvements, we automatically assume that the improvement was caused by the intervention.

This logical fallacy can be very misleading and has hindered progress in medicine for hundreds of years. Of course, it could be the treatment — but there are many other possibilities as well. For instance, the condition could have improved on its own. Or the encounter between the therapist and the patient could have been therapeutic without any meaningful contribution from the treatment itself.

Or the patient could have had high expectations in the treatment that prompted a powerful placebo response. Or the patient self-administered some other treatments concomitantly that caused the improvements.

Here is the strangest thing. Every single criticism I have made could easily be managed with clear and open discussion of the problems. But homoeopaths have walled themselves off from the routine cut-and-thrust of academic medicine, and reasoned critique is all too often met with anger, shrieks of persecution and avoidance rather than argument. The Society of Homeopaths the largest professional body in Europe, the ones running that frightening conference on HIV have even threatened to sue bloggers who criticise them.

The university courses on homeopathy that I and others have approached have flatly refused to provide basic information, such as what they teach and how. It's honestly hard to think of anything more unhealthy in an academic setting.

This is exactly what I said, albeit in nerdier academic language, in today's edition of the Lancet, Britain's biggest medical journal. These views are what homeopaths are describing as an "attack". But I am very clear. There is no single right way to package up all of this undeniable and true information into a "view" on homeopathy.

When I'm feeling generous, I think: homeopathy could have value as placebo, on the NHS even, although there are ethical considerations, and these serious cultural side-effects to be addressed. But when they're suing people instead of arguing with them, telling people not to take their medical treatments, killing patients, running conferences on HIV fantasies, undermining the public's understanding of evidence and, crucially, showing absolutely no sign of ever being able to engage in a sensible conversation about the perfectly simple ethical and cultural problems that their practice faces, I think: these people are just morons.

I can't help that: I'm human. The facts are sacred, but my view on them changes from day to day. And the only people who could fix me in one camp or the other, now, are the homeopaths themselves. It doesn't all add up The 'science' behind homeopathy. Homeopathic remedies are made by taking an ingredient, such as arsenic, and diluting it down so far that there is not a single molecule left in the dose that you get.

The ingredients are selected on the basis of like cures like, so that a substance that causes sweating at normal doses, for example, would be used to treat sweating. Many people confuse homeopathy with herbalism and do not realise just how far homeopathic remedies are diluted. The typical dilution is called "30C": this means that the original substance has been diluted by 1 drop in , 30 times. On the Society of Homeopaths site, in their "What is homeopathy?

This is an understatement: a 30C homeopathic preparation is a dilution of 1 in , or rather 1 in , which means a 1 followed by 60 zeroes, or - let's be absolutely clear - a dilution of 1 in 1,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,, ,,,, To phrase that in the Society of Homeopaths' terms, we should say: "30C contains less than one part per million million million million million million million million million million of the original substance.

At a homeopathic dilution of C, which they sell routinely, and which homeopaths claim is even more powerful than 30C, the treating substance is diluted by more than the total number of atoms in the universe. Homeopathy was invented before we knew what atoms were, or how many there are, or how big they are.

It has not changed its belief system in light of this information. How can an almost infinitely dilute solution cure anything?

Most homeopaths claim that water has "a memory". They are unclear what this would look like, and homeopaths' experiments claiming to demonstrate it are frequently bizarre.

He has made it clear that this cheque would go to someone who can reliably distinguish a homeopathic dilution from water. His money remains unclaimed. Many homeopaths also claim they can transmit homeopathic remedies over the internet, in CDs, down the telephone, through a computer, or in a piece of music. Peter Chappell, whose work will feature at a conference organised by the Society of Homeopaths next month, makes dramatic claims about his ability to solve the Aids epidemic using his own homeopathic pills called "PC Aids", and his specially encoded music.

His book Bad Science will be published by 4th Estate in Full references for all the research described in this article, and the text of the Lancet article, can be found at badscience. This article is more than 14 years old. Time after time, properly conducted scientific studies have proved that homeopathic remedies work no better than simple placebos. So why do so many sensible people swear by them? And why do homeopaths believe they are victims of a smear campaign?

Ben Goldacre follows a trail of fudged statistics, bogus surveys and widespread self-deception. Homeopathic remedies. The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Monday December 10 The comment piece below responded in part to an earlier article by Jeanette Winterson: In defence of homeopathy , and referred to her view that there is a role for homeopathy in the treatment of HIV in Africa.

You now understand evidence-based medicine to degree level. The 'science' behind homeopathy Homeopathic remedies are made by taking an ingredient, such as arsenic, and diluting it down so far that there is not a single molecule left in the dose that you get.