George Vithoulkas Makes a Fool of Himself
This is a minor one but it is worth a brief post:
George Vithoulkas is considered to be one of the top intellectuals in the homeopathic world. Revered for his teachings and fundamentalist approach to the teachings of Hahnemann, he is probably one of the best known homeopaths alive today. His writings underpin much of the contemporary homeopathic opposition to modern medicine, vaccines and science. He thinks AIDS was caused by repeated use of antibiotics amongst homosexuals with venereal disease. You can find out more about him from the Google Knol he wrote about himself.
From his Greek lair, he has obviously been watching the collapse of homeopathy in the UK, and has decided to intervene with a challenge to the critics of his chosen art.
It is worth reprinting his challenge in full.
George Vithoulkas challenges the Sceptics! (22.2.2010)
As the sceptics have made a website calling it 10.23 http://www.1023.org.uk/ in order to degrade homeopathy, George Vithoulkas is suggesting to them the following proposal!
I challenge the Sceptics !
Several sceptics in 10:23 anti homeopathy campaign (swallowed in public each one a full bottle of different homeopathic remedies just to show that there was nothing in them.
I propose to swallow the same content of about 60 tablets but in a different way:
Swallow one tablet every day.I propose the remedy to be Alumina 200C ( a dilution far beyond the Avogadro number) and I promise them that in the end of 60 days a considerable number of them (up to 10% or more) will be suffering with slight to severe constipation.
In homeopathy one bottle or one tablet is considered as one dose only. Most probably they knew this?
The first condition for the participants of this experiment will be to have a good general state of health and a normal stool once a day.
The second to be brave enough to continue with the experiment till the end of 60 days and not stop with the first signs of constipation.
Tthe [sic] third, to be honest enough to report the effect.
I promise you that this experiment will settle the matter once for all.
You need to find 40 sceptics for this experiment.
As for the side effect? It will be over within a week or two after stopping the remedy.
If you are real sceptics dare to stay with your convictions and do the experiment publicly!
George Vithoulkas
The stupidity of this test really deserves no comment. But should any homeopath be reading this, I will spell it out for them.
Constipation is a normal condition in that any individual can expect to experience some mild (or more) form of this as part of the natural rhythms of our bodies. Anyone with a sufficiently varied diet and with a normal active lifestyle can expect their digestive process to show some variations. Only the dull are clockwork.
So, given any group of individuals, with normal stools on day 1, you can expect a small number of them to be suffering ‘slight to severe’ constipation at any arbitrary date in the future. Quite what number I would not like to say, but “up to 10% or more” is a pretty good guess as this covers a very large range of possibilities. George fails to say what would constitute a ‘slight constipation’. Would missing my ‘ten o’clock’ regular’ by two hours count as mild constipation?
Thus, without even taking the magic sugar pills, we should not be surprised at achieving Vithoulkas’s rather wide ranging blockage goals. George does not give us an expected baseline measure for what would constitute a failure of this test. Even better, he could have proposed that the trial was blinded and controlled so that we could compare taking the magic sugar pills with people who just take an identical placebo. We could then apply appropriate statistical tests to see if any result was significant. But no.
As such, any conceivable outcome of this test would be completely ambiguous and not allow any conclusion to be made. If George did, as no doubt he would, he would just be laughed at by anyone who used their brains to think rather than their bowels.
And this is supposed to be from homeopathy’s greatest mind. This test is from the man who appears to delight in proclaiming that James Randi bottled out of testing his homeopathic powers, when in reality Randi has asked Vilhoulkas to fill in the application form before going further.
But George appears to be above application forms.
If George is keen to demonstrate the powers of homeopathy, perhaps be would like to take my simple challenge – which is blinded and unambiguous. Given any six different bottles of homeopathic pills of his choosing, but with the labels removed, can he tell them apart using whatever method he wants and with as many helpers as he sees fit.
Nothing to stop you Georgie Boy. No annoying and demeaning application forms fill in. Just the regular guts to do it.
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It’s worse than that. Vithoulkas believes that modern medicine will cause the degeneration of the human race. He is predicting massive increases in mental illness as well as a collapse in physical health. Vithoulkas is also notorious for his comment that antibiotics can not cure syphilis, they merely suppress the symptoms and result in tertiary syphilis.
I can’t participate in Vithoulkas’ challenge as I often produc more than one stool a day. But, I thought that homeopathy was not effective in well people? Isn’t this one of the reasons that is given for it being safe? Vithoulkas seems to be contradicting himself. Also, he is not controlling for miasmistic influences.
I´m not a homeopath myself, but from what I know, a remedy given to a healthy person is supposed to give the symptoms the remedy is supposed to cure from a person who already has the symtoms. So someone suffering from constipation would be cured, while a person without constipation would get constipation. So he is not contradicting himself in this matter.
George is being nice with the constipation remedy.
There also are homoeopathic remedies which can induce suicidal disposition, dizziness, constant coughing, or excruciating pain, among other nasty things.
Oh, and the nice thing about taking Alumina for 60 days is that perhaps 10% of you will forget who you are.
See, this is exactly what I would doubt. Give me the suicide stuff, come on, bring it on, let’s do this!
I wonder if Vithoulkas thinks this is real science? Does he really think that any scientist or sceptic would be convinced by such an amateurish and obviously flawed ‘experiment’?
You’d have thought that he might actually have read an occasional scientific paper and realised something about the difference between real science and the Mickey Mouse science done by homeopaths and other deluded AltMed pushers.
One of top intellectuals in the homeopathic world? That doesn’t say much for the rest.
Why not simply accept the challange and perform the silly experiment and prove Mr. Vithoulka wrong once and for all. Logic and sensible arguments are fitile – let him fall into his own trap.
The trial design is very simple:
A. Any gastroenterologist can easly draft the clinical defention and criteria for constipation.
B. Placebo for the control group is indistinguishable from the “trial drug”.
C. No need for Helsinki approval as both gruops of volunteers will receive plain water
Because things like placebos and blinding and criteria are tools of science – and they keep telling us you can’t test homeopathy with science. So as soon as you use science and prove that homeopathy doesn’t work you actually prove that science can’t test it properly and they claim a win for their side.
And if they claim to have used science and proved that homeopathy does work – they again claim a win for their side.
This is not a good excuse. The outline of the experiment was suggested by “them”, so let beat them by there own weopon….
HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO APPLY THE RULES OF PHYSICS TO CHEMISTRY.. TRY DALTONS LAW OF GASES.!! YOU CAN’T. SEE.. THUS I KINDLY REQUEST THE ALLOPATHS NOT TO APPLY ALLOPATHIC RULES TO HOMOEOPATHIC SYSTEM AS ITS A DIFFERENT SYSTEM AND HAS DIFFERENT SET OF RULES.
ALSO, AS TO THE DOUBLE BLIND MATTER, VITHOLKHAS HAS ALLREADY REQUESTED THE VOLUNTEERS TO BE HONEST.. WHAT ELSE DOES DOUBLE BIND STAND FOR..
AS FOR CONSTIPATION, DEAR DOCTOR, LET ME REMIND YOU THAT WE ARE DEALING WITH LIFE AND JUST TO SHOW YOU HOW WELL HOM. MEDICNIES ACT, VITHOLKHAS, CAN’T GET PEOPLE KILLED, THUS HE HAS CHOSEN A SLOW AND LONG ACTING METAL LIKE ALUMINA..
IF YOU WANT TO TRY MORE COMMON REMEDIES AND ACUTE REMEDIES, I SUGGEST NUX-VOM, ACONITE, BELLADONA ETC.. BUT YOU WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RESULTS IN CASE OF A MISFORTUNE… AND PLEASE BEFORE TRYING.. MAKE SURE YOU BUY IT FROM A RELIABLE PHARMACY…
GOOD LUCK
Well, I think lecanardnoir already said why: it’s neither blinded nor unambiguous. Vithoulkas wants sceptics to take those pills (not magic water, but pills sprinkled with magic water, thereby making them magic pills), and expects “up to 10 % or more” to experience “slight to severe constipation”. How much is “up to 10 % or more”, what is “slight to severe constipation”?
Vithoulkas says “I promise you that this experiment will settle the matter once for all.”, but would he accept the outcome if it showed homeopathy to be worthless and close down his institute, or would he try and find a way to weasle out?
Have you blokes listened to yourselves? You are like children in the playground! Who said anything about sides? Our side, their side boo hoo. If any of you took 5 minutes out of your very important day to actually do some research and critical appraisal (that actually means having NO opinion until all the facts have been researched!!), you may discover you have an intellect previously unrealized. The world is not black and white and there are several methods of conducting trials that would be better suited to the homeopathic medical paradigm. But maybe you are not that academic! Your arguments are silly and petty. Homeopaths are not scrabbling around freaking out, homeopathy have survived for 200 years and arose from the quackery that was medical science at the time (ie blood letting??!!?). Homeopaths are all for advanced medical science. There is a place for everything, yet excessive pharmaceutical abuse is abhorrent, dangerous, and archaic mode of practice.
I fully agree with Ticketyboo.
> I fully agree with Ticketyboo.
I don’t.
Now that the blind statements of opinion are out of the way, how about we think of how to assess the reality of the situation? Ticketyboo, what means of critical appraisal do you suggest should be applied?
Can we follow up with a study where we vaccinate 20 homeopaths their way and 20 skeptics with vaccinations . After confirming antibodies in the vax group we infect them with disease (malaria for example) homeopaths can win credibility and Randi’s million or a Darwin Award!
Sadly there is no vaccine for malaria, but small pox may be a viable alternative to test your theory. Helsinki may well have problems with it though!
However, there is a vaccine for rabies.
Anybody taking part should promise not to eat a curry or kebab on Friday Nights with Guiness, because no magic pill is going to keep any of that in check.
Oh, and shouldn’t the pills be individualized, I expect George knows better though.
“up to 10% or more”
So then anywhere between none and 100% then?
If anyone decides to accept his challenge be sure to eat lots of fibre-rich food and eliminate meat and dairy products as much as possible. Drink plenty of fluids and exercise regularly.
Hey, did I just give you a common sense approach to the management of constipation?
Yes, but what a fool he is.
- No individualisation as required by homoeopathy.
- No control group as required by science.
- No sense as is typical of the altmed crowd.
This experiment is indeed not decisive for proofing if homeopathy works or not, because generally sceptics are already constipated (caused by the materialistic science).
Alumina heals the “absence of idea”, therefore I think Vithoulkas tries to heal some sceptics from their prejudice to the new science.
Madam,
your “new science” has been lying flat without supporting evidence for around 200 years now. I think it’s safe to say that it is neither “new” nor “science”.
Good day to you,
Daniel
Mr Antares ,
you are proving yourself to be just fault finding with everything. Just as you have done by picking up one word of that lady, instead of trying to understand the message.
Marie that was FANTASTIC!Give the materialists a laxative and we’ve won the battle.:)The Science has Spoken materialists are constipated.
I’ve looked through several Homeopathy web sites and Alumina is apparently a cure for constipation, so we would expect to see less cases of constipation. Which admittedly would fit in with the anywhere up to 10% or more being constipated, as the rest would be cured of their constipation.
Unfortunately this isn’t what Vithoulkas is saying he’s saying it will make the subjects constipated, so this is the opposite to the effect that it’s suppose to have, wouldn’t this be known as a side effect although I thought that was one of the benefits of homeopathy – no side effects. However if one of the side effects of the remedy is doing the opposite of that which it is supposed to do…
So I’ve confused myself – Alumina may cause constipation or it may cure it (how does it do both?)
Anyway if like cures like surely if we want to cause constipation we would have to dilute… Sorry
“I’ve looked through several Homeopathy web sites and Alumina is apparently a cure for constipation, so we would expect to see less cases of constipation.”
Ah but remember; homeopathy is founded on the idea that something which cures a problem in an ill person will induce symptoms similar to that problem in a well person (and vice-versa).
So someone with regular bowels, taking a homeopathic constipation cure, should develop constipation.
The requirement for 40 people to take pills for 2 months in order for maybe 10% of people to show any effect seems contrary to homeopaths’ normal claims that homeopathy is very potent and highly effective and can act quickly.
Marie,
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With siver bell and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.
Andy, this is excellent.
To wrysmile – Vithoulkas is asking you to ‘prove’ the remedy. ‘Proving’ is how homeopaths determine the symptoms that can be treated. No one has ever proven that ‘proving’ shows anything. By inducing the constipation in a healthy individual they ‘prove’ that this symptom can be treated by Alumina when prescribed homeopathically.
Vithoulkas really was one of the gurus for the last 30 years. His book ‘Science of Homeopathy’ explained homeopathy in terms of vibrations and harmonics long before the new-fangled quantum ideas came out. It was a must-read at the time.
You explain your points very well herre, Andy. Impressive stuff.
So you “Prove” something causes a condition and then you use that same something to cure the condition.
That clears everthing up then.
Yep, wrysmile, you’ve got it.
A little caveat on this.
Many of the early remedies were substances that had been used as standard medicines and caused significant pathology and death eg mercury, arsenic. The pathological reports were used to provide the most physically destructive symptoms rather than ‘proving’ that the substances caused those symptoms in otherwise healthy people.
Perhaps he is trying to come up with a test as rubbish as your simple test?
Obviously this trial would need to be properly refereed – beforehand to establish the state of the bowels of the volunteers , if I can put it that way. During, to eliminate cheating (by eating fibre rich foods or as mentioned above vindaloo curries) and to assess the level of constipation.
This would demand integrity, impartiality and a demonstrated level of expertise in poo. I therefore propose we approach the foremost expert in this field to run the experiment for us – Dr Gillian McKeith.
Problem solved.
I cannot believe that somebody with even the minimum of scientific education could mistake a simple ‘initial’ proposal for an experiment as a “complete protocol” for research and criticize it as such!!
If the sceptics would take up the challenge then we could devise a full protocol.
The process I was proposing is the one that we follow in order to “prove” a remedy. This is done usually with a few doses on healthy individuals.
Usually what happens is that in some individuals who happen to be more sensitive to the remedy, the characteristic symptoms of the remedy appear in the prover in a slight or more severe form and Alumina has as characteristic in its pathology a severe constipation.
My belief that the constipation would manifest (and you can be sure will be…. really experienced by some provers) was based on the fact of taking several doses (I suggested 60).
As a pilot study and as a matter of curiosity you may try this experiment yourself, if you dare.
Concerning the experiment you propose we tried it already with Randi and after five years of preparation and writing a 20 pages protocol and while everything was agreed in order to start the experiment in a Municipality hospital, Mr. Randi at the last moment demanded we start the process all over again!
Was this ethical? You can see the whole story in our website http://www.vithoulkas.com/content/view/1973/lang,en/
George Vithoulkas
Dear George
I reprinted your entire challenge so that it could not be misrepresented. And yet now you try to back-peddle and claim it is some sort of ‘initial’ proposal. If so, why did you not say so originally?
Many sceptics have taken homeopathic remedies. I took Lachesis 5MM every day for several weeks recently as you can see on my blog. Also, Belladonna 30C and Sulphur 30C. Of course – nothing – they are just sugar pills.
If you really think ‘provings’ do something, come up with a full workable and unequivocal protocol. Publish it on your blog. And then do it. Prove to us it works. I am more than happy to act as a referee and help with blinding. My simple challenge would be perfectly acceptable.
You don’t do it because I believe you know you can’t.
Piss or get off the pot. Stop blaming others or offering weak stupid challenges. It is your magic medicine. Show us you are not just deluded fools.
I had a dream about being constipated. Does that count?
Did you have a bottle of “Alumina 200C” lying under your pillow?
Yes, in my dream there was a bottle of Aluminia 200C under my pillow. It was left there by an eagle. Eagle are very important in provings.
Classic dream proving then. XD
I hope you understand that your slang language does not permit of any serious discussion.
I challenged the sceptics (not you obviously) to take up the challenge. If they do, I will provide the protocol.
George Vithoulkas
Why so secretive?
Isn’t research supposed to be transparent?
Or am I mistaken here?
George
I would have respect for you if you had put your hands up and said that “Yes, the protocol was rubbish. Thanks for pointing it out” and then gone away and devised a protocol that stood some chance of showing an unambiguous effect.
But no. Like all homeopaths, you choose to bluster and accuse me of being unscientific.
You see, it makes no difference is your proposed test was the final thing or just an initial protocol – it is still complete rubbish as I have outlined above.
If you had any intellectual honesty, you would go away and come up with a proper proposal. As it is, no one is going to take you seriously if you cannot demonstrate the basic level of thought required here.
I take it you will not take my challenge. The great George Vithoulkas refuses to take a simple test of identifying six homeopathic remedies by whatever means.
But I think you have no intention of either taking my test, Randi’s challenge or even offering your own fair test because, I believe, you are not a man of science, but a man ruled by pride?
Am I wrong?
In research experiments, we must to prepare carefully the protocol and the procedure of the experiment. In homeopathry medicine we have restrict and serious laws (etc the law of similar), which must following in every experiments. In other case, without previous laws we destroy the dynamics of this medicine.
In my opinion, the nature of human system and the nature of diseases following the theory of systemic and chaos and generally the theory of non linear dynamics, and we must be carefully in the research road for to find the “truth” and the phycics how the nature works…..
Leonidas Karakatsanis
Electrical Engineering
Phd Candiadate of Democritus University of Thrace
(we are following the last 6 years the homeopathy medicine for my family and we have seen that it works in a many cases of diseases in chronic and suddenly events)
Thanks for your patient and sorry for my poor english….
Dear Leonidas,
don’t worry about your English. I’m not a native speaker myself, and the most important thing is that your message got through.
In your reseearch subject, you are used to being skeptical. If someone claimed he could, for example, charge a battery by gently kissing it, you would ask him to demonstrate that under controlled conditions.
If soemone claimed he had found a better description of Electrodynamics than the Maxwell equations, you would ask him to show that his proposed laws actually work. You would certainly not take his word for it.
Then why do you believe the “like cures like” hypothesis of homeopathy? For 200 years, its proponents have failed to put together a sound mechanism through which “like” could “cure like”. Even worse, if we forget the “how” for a moment, they have not even shown THAT their remedies can do more for the patient than the patients own immune system could WITHOUT the homeopathic pills or potions.
You say that you have been using homeopathy in your family for a few years now and that people have gotten better, got cured, when they took the remedies.
But can you sincerely say that they would NOT have been cured had they NOT used homeopathy? That is the core of the issue: “I took the pill and THEN I got better” does not prove that “I took the pill and THEREFORE I got better”!
Without a control group and proper randomizing and blinding, your personal experience may just as well be the result of the placebo effect, the patient’s immune defense on its own or simply coincidence or good luck.
A lot of research has been done, and whenever one takes these possibilities into account, it shows that the homeopathic remedies do not perform better than empty sugar pills.
Kind regards,
Daniel
Biophysicist
PhD candidate in Clinical Chemistry, University of Oslo
We must design a serious protocol which cover the laws of Homeopathy technics under the supervision of Mr. Vithoulkas, else the dynamics of homepathy is gone.
For the same disease the person 1 takes the A remedies but the person 2 takes the B remedies. The results may be good for the person 1 and 2 but no for the general team of 2,3,4,5 persons. The law of similar is the basic method for the success of homeopathy.
The transition of sickness to health for the human system, i believe that corresponding in sensitivitive to initial conditions. The pattern of the homeopathy pharmacy unlock and improve the physical power, which helps the human to tranfer in a more healthy level in the state space of human system.
I repeat that we must plan a experiment with correct methodology for the homeopathy.
I can help in this procedure. I am not a doctor, but i have experience in non linear timeseries analysis.
Thanks in advanced
Leonidas Karakatsanis
(The placebo effect does not affect childen (3 yearls old) for the confrontation of asthma, otitis without cortisone, antibiotic an other chemical drugs
I’m confused by all the ‘bashing’. The scepticism that surrounds homeopathy is understandable and appreciated but there’s no need to be blatantly rude to someone who has won a Nobel Prize for his work. Clearly Mr. Vithoulkas is not a fool; he’s respected the world over. Perhaps you should read his work?
What you’re being asked to do is participate in a proving. A proving is an experiment where healthy people take a dynamized remedy and the symptoms they (the healthy people) produce as a result of this remedy are recorded. Those very symptoms that the healthy individuals expressed as a result of taking the proving remedy will be the same symptoms that the proving remedy will be able to cure in a person who is suffering from them. “Like curing like” is not a new concept in medicine…it’s been used successfully by practitioners for thousands of years all over the world.
In any scientific experiment, we have both a trial group and a control group (the same would be true for a proving, assuming there are enough participants). The proving is conducted using at least a double blind trial. Once the remedy and the placebos are taken by each group respectively, and after a certain amount of time has passed (usually one month), all participants come together and share their experiences of the proving substance.
So, your next question will be “how do we know that a said remedy produced symptoms and not something the person did or ate or experienced?” As a prover, you are asked to maintain a lifestyle that is ‘normal’ to your day to day lifestyle. If, for example you never eat Curry Chicken and during the proving you had 5 pounds worth over lunch one day and then you end up with diarrhoea well…it can be deduced that the food produced the diarrhoea and not the remedy…make sense? What would be important in this scenario where the proving is concerned would be the reasons for having eaten the Curry Chicken in the first place – was there a particularly intense craving for it (if so, that may be part of the remedy picture), if not – - maybe your friend dared you to eat it, then, it’s not included in the outcome because it wasn’t something spontaneous that came up in your person. You are asked for honesty during the proving time…it’s a time where one should reflect on what’s going on in their lives, in their bodies and how their day to day experiences differ from their norm. That’s the important key here – what a prover experiences that is different from their norm are the symptoms that are of interest. It is those experiences & symptoms that are important in a proving and that will make up the picture of the remedy.
Once this remedy picture is established the real work begins. In practice, a homeopath will come across an individual with symptoms of remedy “X” and will prescribe that remedy. The picture of that remedy will be further developed after it has helped the patient with their problems “a, b and c”…just as predicted by the proving. But wait, this patient also had problem “d” and the remedy was able to cure that too…so, “d” is then added to the healing scope of the remedy and a complete picture is formed of all the ‘problems’ this remedy can cure. That is how the Materia Medica of each remedy is established: over many years, through the proving and with clinical experience.
Now, your next question will be…”cure? Are you kidding?”…No, I’m not kidding. You had commented above that although Mr. Leonidas had “seen” results from using homeopathy in his family over several years, he really couldn’t tell you whether those positive health results were spontaneous or the work of homeopathy. Your comment is valid. How do we know homeopathy works? This is a subject that needs to be addressed as it’s obvious that scientific evidence is important. Homeopathic clinical trials need to be run so that we can clearly see the effect of homeopathic remedies on certain conditions (even though homeopathy treats each patient individually, not a particular disease). There are several problems with this model, however.
1. Remedies are dymanic and intangible
a. Aside – being educated yourself and in the field of biophysics, aren’t you familiar with the “memory of water”…? What is your opinion on that?
2. Each practitioner prescribes differently
3. Each person is individual in the way they express problems (even if it’s a seemingly similar problem) and therefore will require a different remedy
Here’s an example:
Bob’s problem: epistaxis, red blood, thick, clotty, from left nostril only, worse on going to sleep at night
Karen’s problem: epistaxis, thin watery blood, pink in colour, worse whenever she’s in a car, better cold application
Both of these patients are suffering from the ‘same’ problem but they need a different remedy because it’s expressing differently in them. Doesn’t that make sense?? I mean, the same thing is done in pharmaceutical therapy of cancer – you don’t just give someone Tamoxifen because they have cancer – Tamoxifen is specifically given to those with breast cancer. The same with homeopathic remedies – everyone gets their own remedy for their “problems” – period. So, that’s a major problem with implementing a clinical trial with homeopathic remedies.
What I know is that homeopathy works. How do I know this? Through personal examples and I’ll be thorough.
1. My mother suffered from asthma, constipation, hypertension and joint pain for many years. The asthma was controlled using cortisone and bronchodilators for over 30 years. The constipation was persistent for a similar amount of time – her diet is good and she hasn’t changed anything in her diet substantially over the years. After seeking homeopathic help, her asthma and constipation have COMPLETELY left her (after about 6 months of treatment) – no more drugs! The hypertension took a little longer to leave but it too has fully disappeared. The hip pain is now gone too. She’s been under homeopathic care for 2 years now without having changed anything from her ‘normal’ routine. During her homeopathic treatment he slowly felt the need to reduce her medication (under the supervision of her medical doctor) and she is now medication free and free from physical ailments.
2. My husband’s blood sugar began to spike two years ago; after 3 months of homeopathic care, that disappeared (supported by blood analysis conducted by his medical doctor).
3. My dog broke her leg last summer and had to undergo surgery. Her recovery time was super quick according to her surgeon and he had never before seen anything like it (how could this be a placebo effect?).
4. My father thinks that homeopathy is silly. He has leg cramps. Since he won’t see a practitioner, I gave him some tissue salts to help with the cramps – a week passed, the tissue salts had finished and he asked me for more “candies” – they apparently help with his leg cramps.
5. My personal experience is deep as well; homeopathy has helped me with asthma and infertility.
These are some very personal examples. You’re going to have a rebuttal and you’ll tell me that we have good luck or it was a coincidence…well, let me tell you, there’s no horseshoe up my butt!!! If there was, I would be on a beach all year long taking in the rays! You’re also going to tell me that I should prove this now…and I’m going to say that the proof is in the pudding.
As long as homeopathic practitioners are making good prescriptions and people are getting well, being cured of their health problems and are happy, that’s ALL the proof sceptics should be looking for. If homeopathy was a farce, our patients would not be returning time and time again for little sugar pills. Our offices are busy, our patients are happy and the sceptics are still questioning the methodology…who is wasting their time here? What is fundamentally important is the health and happiness of our patients and clearly, that is being achieved with homeopathy. If a proving would be too much for people to get involved in, why not try giving YOUR patients SUGAR pills and see how many of them come back because they are satisfied with your ‘treatment’ protocol? How many conditions can YOU cure using sugar pills? How many of YOUR patients will be lucky or have amazing coincidences in their lives and suddenly be cured from what ails them? As I mentioned, a healthy dose of scepticism is a good thing but please do your research, stop being so closed minded and try things out for yourselves before being so critical of a medicine that has proven itself consistently for sick patients for the last 200 years.
Now, I know that you said you tried different remedies (Lachesis, Belladonna and Sulphur) and you didn’t notice any changes in yourself. I can’t comment because I don’t know where you got your remedies and how you took them but if you’re really interested in seeing how homeopathy works, maybe you should seriously consider seeing a good homeopath or taking part in a proving. It shouldn’t be a matter of proving anything at this point (you already have your mind made up about homeopathy) but you might want to educate yourself and try something new. Why not try something you’re so vehemently against? …The right way, with the right practitioner. The father of Homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann said something that I carry with me always “Aude Sapere” – it means “Dare to be wise”…do you dare, or are you perfectly comfortable knowing only that which serves your preconceived notions?
Respectfully,
HB
tl;dr
However, Mr Vithoulkas never won a Nobel Prize.
HB has explained it in a very legible way. Now, if somebody doesn’t want to see the cases (and personnel experience ) cured with Homeopathy ( otherwise describes incurable in allopathic parallel) , nobody can do anything about it. According to the learned Scientists and educated skeptics , no body except medical professional, can see the truth of medical science.So they are self proclaimed advisors to the Govt. as to what should be offered to billions of people and what should be censored. Kudos to you !! There are more then millions and billions of educated people who are taking Homeopathy and are finding relief for their hitherto incurable diseases and according to the administrators they all are fools , who cant see behind the curtains. Mr administrator, Stop thinking general population as fools and that they are so bankrupt with their thought process that they cant decide as to what is best for them or not.Instead use the energies to get statistics of those cured and to make it a strong pathy that can benefit the whole mankind in an even more pronounced way. Take it in positive stride buddy !!
If it’s any help, homeopathy did nothing for me at all. It is complete and utter misleading twaddle. I realise that ones own mental attitude may be reinforced by placebo and a ‘cure’ be effected, but with a real illness, no.
Homeopaths should spend their time and intelligence doing something useful, not parasiting off the gullible and weak minded.
Good grief HB. I am in too minds as to whether or not I should trim your post.
It was difficult to continue reading after you asserted that Vithoulkas has a Nobel prize. No he does not. You have to be clever and come up with something amazing to win one of those.
Vithoulkas is one the world’s chief exponents in a discredited and nonsensical 18th Century medical hypothesis that has failed to prove itself. Worse, his ideas on real medicine make him a threat to public health, and as such he should be challenged and confronted.
Your stories are just that. Better explained by such notions as the natural course of illness. But you would rather believe in magic sugar pills. Your ideas, absurd nonsense.
dare to be wise? I would counter with Feynman – “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are
the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about
that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other
scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after
that.”
Vithoulkas, like all homeopaths, is a fool. And the worst sort – a fool who lacks the insight to understand that they are capable of foolishness. If homeopaths had that insight, they would be doing tests such as mine with the most care – to make sure that they are not kidding themselves. But their self-belief and arrogance prevents them from that thorough critical self-appraisal.
Mr Andy,
If all of my problems like arthritis , Diabetes and HTn can be cured as natural course of illness or some other psycho effect with the use of such sugar pills.then i am more than happy to get it cured that way instead of popping up humdereds of expensive tablets every months and still not getting cured. If Homoeopahty cures it in whatever way, I have no issues with it. haha.
Yes – but homeopathy does not cure – it has no effect on the course of illness – it is just sugar pills and wishful thinking.
All right, for real, curing Diabetes with sugar pills? You have GOT to be kidding me.
/Daniel
Why is it that every Cure done with Homeopathic medicine is a matter of chance or natural course of illness ( even in incurable diseases ) and if any research molecule of a big pharmaceutic company provides even one tenth of any such result in a lab , it is labelled as a billion pound finding and drug of the future ? only to be labelled as a failed finding or a hoax or with lots of side effects an year later.
But Pankaj, homeopathy has never cured an ‘incurable’. You cannot point to any study that shows homeopathy successfully treating any condition that real medicine cannot. All you have is stories – deluded stories.
Please stay away from sick people. You worry me.
You have to visit the real lab ( the clinics of Homeopaths ) to see the results. Meet the patients first hand , see the reports, tests , investigations done pre and post homoeo treatment. and then conclude as to it cures or not. No body is going to bring their reports for your certification in your drawing or bed room.
Dont quote the old research pointing the question mark about the content of medicines in Homoeo liquids. Science of today isn’t acute or fine enough to find the test for this.lets hope, scientist may find some method some day. But that doesn’t mean , it doesn’t work. or that scientist shouldn’t try looking for ways to provide answers to the unsolved mystery of finding medicinal energies of contents of homoeo medicines. See the results in real life patients and don’t just rubbish them off for the sake of it.
Pankaj – you are fooling yourself. Please – find an occupation that does not involve inflicting your delusions on the sick. No amount of assertion on your part about ‘cured cases’ will convince any serious thinking person. The reasons have been explained to homeopaths many times. If you insist on elevating your subjective experience over the systematic knowledge of science you will continue to be fooled and pose a serious public health risk.
This is not a subjective experience, but is an experience of millions. and if u see the drug induced injuries and idiopathic or drug induced diseases, you will come to know exactly as to whether homeopathy is a public health risk or its counter part allopathy.so you should stop spreading mis information that homeopathy is a public health risk. rather accept the fact that allopahty medicines have caused many of the serious problems to hapless patients.
An experience of millions can still be subjective. Think about lucky charms, “knocking on wood” or “crossing your fingers” to influence “good luck” – it’s completely idiotic, actually, and proven to have no effect. Still people will do it, over and over again, and may even believe it helps.
If everybody suffers from the same delusion that does NOT make it any less of a delusion.
And in health subjects, delusions cost people lives.
Daniel
Sorry, The word in the above post is ‘Iatrogenic ‘ and NOT ‘ Idiopathic’.
one does such kind of things like knocking on wood” or “crossing your fingers” to influence “good luck” – for harmless things where they think it wont do any harm at least ; and not for things like their own health or life threatening conditions. Millions of people are not fool enough to experiment this on themselves without relief or placebo relief. The problem is that few learned educated people thinks that all others are fool on earth and only they are bestowed with brains to judge the things in a critical way ; thus undermining capability of not few but millions of people. and may i know ur esteemed views on the Public health risk the allopathic drugs cause , if you are aware of those .
Unfortunately, you are mistaken. People believe Homeopaths because “their names sound sciencey” and “they use Latin for their pills” and “they have a thick book”.
Most “alternative healers” deliberately draw on science for their explanations, and that appeals to the public, given all the advances it has brought humanity over the last 150-200 years.
The quackies are pretending to be doctors and pretending to have some deep understanding when it’s actually all made up and unproven.
So easy.
and may i know your esteemed views on the Public health risk the allopathic drugs cause , if you are aware of those .
For more thoughts on Iatrogenic harm from drugs and how quacks, such as homeopaths, abuse and misuse the concept, see here:
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2007/07/quack-word-20-iatrogenic.html
Dear Andy,
It seems very difficult for me to comprehend , whether you are against Homeopathy or whether you are jealous of the success and fame of George Vithoulkas as your comments are no longer from a non prejudiced skeptic mind , but they are tending to be more personal and bitter.
If you really are interested in testing the power of homeopathy (and not of George Vithoulkas) , I would suggest you to meet 1000 people from all ages , who have been taking Classical Homeopathy for the last one year. Note about their personal experiences in detail and pen down all their symptoms that have been cured in this one year. Once you have done this, THEN use your logical and skeptic mind as to whether this can be done by placebo.
Andy, millions of patients are the biggest testimony that homeopathy works. History is full of successful allopathic doctors, who converted themselves to Homeopathy seeing the benefit of it on their patients , themselves and their family. But I have not heard a single instance when a successful homeopath converted to allopathy.
Think about it …….…………..if you can………..!!!!!!!!
Regards
Atul Jaggi
rally, a great post!! I fail to understand as to why they don’t want to do this and only insistent upon lab findings. Lab is not the only way to find the truth. Has education of today made them so devoid of common sense ?
Nobody is talking of “a lab” to find the truth. Quit putting up straw men to knock them down.
We do want to see the effect on real people in real life – just that unlike you believers we are aware of all those pitfalls (regression to the mean, spontaneous healing, placebo, chance, false attribution…) that are common when dealing with living, breathing humans.
Just closing your eyes to these facts and saying “but I KNOW it works” is no argument.
/Daniel
If this pitfall (regression to the mean, spontaneous healing, placebo, chance, false attribution…) is happening to even 40% of those visiting Homeopathic clinics . i would be happy to take a chance to be among those 40% that are cured by such pitfalls in homoeo clinics only and we rarely see such pitfalls happening in allopathic clinics. And believe me , in homeopaths clinics, you will find relief or cure results at least better than 40%. Not bad !! hunhh.,, is it ?
Show me the numbers.
Really, show me.
And not just a poll about “do you feel better now?”
I have already said to you to Go to the clinic of Homeopaths but with open Eyes and Brain ( if u could do that )and see the results yurself among various patients and various doctors. And the releif will not only be subjective feeling of ” Feeling well ” only, but you can see the results in documented reports, investigations and scans . But then don’t pass these off as Chance finding or your older excuses like Pitfalls or natural remissions .No body is having enpough free time to come to your house for your certification. You will have to visit them. Ok !!
How can anyone take seriously a comment from a person who hides behind a nickname and feels smug and delighted about his half-witted adolescent intellectual puke? Isn’t there something more interesting to do while online — like visit a nice porn site to jerk-off an excess frustration or watch a football with some Light beer or smoke something intoxicating to get your mind off problems that are too complex for a high school drop-out to comprehend? Maybe — Oh maybe — you can even read a book or two?? A science publication (with a dictionary at hand, of course.) Huh?
Perhaps you can then learn that to prove a point in a debate one has to articulate some hard facts and demonstrate sufficient knowledge on the subject not just repeat other moron’s comments from some yellow rag magazines. Insulting your opponent, addressing a grown man in this utterly disrespectful fashion — can you really expect to be taken seriously by thinking adults?
If you had enough courage and intellectual proficiency necessary for such an action as to “take a homeopathic remedy,” perhaps you can manage going back to school and finishing that grade 10 already, so your mama can be proud? Or maybe find another website where your adolescent “pre-humour” could be better appreciated? Perhaps you can even get laid and wouldn’t have to be going out your mind looking for entertainment abusing people whose life work of saving people as well as their publications would be treasured for centuries. Guess what’s going to be left after you and Randi the Ignoramus, whose ass must be sore by now from all your kisses, expire — a PUFF, a mere nothing!
Professor Vithoulkas, you dimwits, has received a Lifetime Achievement Award, which is often called the Alternative Nobel Prize.
I’ve always wondered — does it hurt to be that stupid and unenlightened?
Helen Cohen
Oh, this is getting boring. Andy Lewis is Andy’s real name (and it’s not hidden, the “about me” box is on top of every page), so there’s no “hiding behind nicknames”. As for trying to be taken seriously, I wonder if you think your own thoughtful, grown up comment will be.
So some people call the “Lifetime Achievement Award” the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, that doesn’t make it one. Vithoulkas hasn’t won a Nobel Prize, and it’s highly unlikely he ever will.
“addressing a grown man in this utterly disrespectful fashion”
Let me also go with a Feynman quote here: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
Helen, you are probably right about the tone, insulting people is not good style. However, it does not change the fact of the matter: If Vithoulkas is talking nonsense, everyone is entitled to calling him out.
Age and reputation impress people. For the facts, on the other hand, such vanities are utterly insignificant.
Daniel
You have replied exactly , what most of the readers want to say to him. Thanks for teaching basic decency lesson to a brat boy .
Basic decency is not telling people that sugar pills can cure serious illness. Basic decency is not inventing fictions about medicines that save lives, such as antibiotics.
Thanks, Andy.
It really makes me sad how many crackpots there are out there. Deluding themselves and deceiving others. Falling for the simplest tricks of the body and the mind. Closing their eyes to hard-earned objectiveness.
And above all, calling honest researchers narrow-minded.
/Daniel
The courtiers appear to be unamused that their Emperor has been shown to be wearing no clothes.
Above, HB is making the usual error of arguing that “individual treatment cannot be tested rigorously”. He is, of course, wrong:
“Here’s an example:
Bob’s problem: epistaxis, red blood, thick, clotty, from left nostril only, worse on going to sleep at night
Karen’s problem: epistaxis, thin watery blood, pink in colour, worse whenever she’s in a car, better cold application”
Well, for starters, one should not only have two subject, let’s make that 100, or 200, all with different symptoms for their problems. Now they all go to their homeopath, get all the talk and all the understanding they need. The only catch: The pills and remedies are not handed out by the homeopath but by a third party “dispenser”, who may even be present at the practioner’s place.
Half of the subjects will receive the right pills, the other half placebo, neither knowing which. This way you CAN have BOTH your individual approach AND a randomized, double-blind study. Isn’t science great?
Oh, and about the memory of water thing: Personally, I am less than convinced that there is a long-term memory. I am aware of the forty-something anomalies of water, but any long-term memory effect is in my mind highly unlikely and all experiments carried out so far were highly flawed. If it existed, it would of course raise the question how the water is told exactly WHAT substance to remember and which other substances (regular impurities, urine, feces, toxic stuff…) better to forget.
But my opinion on the memory of water is absolutely insubstantial: FIRST the homeopaths must show an effect over and above placebo and THEN we can start talking and wondering about the “how”.
Ist that quite clear?
Daniel
why to ignore the millions of stories of those Who have got cure from their chronic debilitating life threatening diseases with the use of Homoeo medicines. Most of these diseases doesn’t fall under the category of Healing with time or self limiting diseases, but are true chronic diseases .To me , satisfaction as to their efficiency on curing thousands of disease by seeing scores of such people is far more important than looking out for as to how they act .
“why to ignore the millions of stories”
Because a million stories are just that – stories. When will you folks get the difference between “stories” or “anecdotes” and “unbiased evidence”?
“I went to a homeopath and then I got better” is not a proof for “I went to a homeopath and THEREFORE I got better.” Why is that so complicated?
Or, to answer more directly to your stories, do you have any indications that your success rate is higher than what one would expect without treatment or with placebo treatment? Because believe it or not, even e.g. cancer does not kill all the people all the time. Just that -unlike conventional therapy- homeopathy does not increase your chances.
Why does Antares stick to a Word and crib about it. the real thing is the essence of post, which i have clearly conveyed.
Still ignoring the facts, that hundreds of people are cured by homeopathy.
Well, why bash homeopathy. For skeptics who will never be convinced by the proof that people are,were and will be cured by homeopathy
Why not just take allopathy medicine and leave other people to enjoy the benefits of Homeopathy.
Dear Ak,
as far as the evidence is concerned, homeopathy does NOT cure people. People get better, but homeopathy is practically ruled out as the cause.
So much for the facts.
Daniel
You cant say so sitting in your bed room. You have to visit the clinics of homeopaths and meet patients with cures from their incurable illnesses to make such a conclusion. No researcher has ever done that.
“No researcher has ever done that.”
That is an outright lie and I hope you realize that.
Researchers HAVE gone to practitioners and have carried out countless studies and trials, to one overall result: The better the study, the more significant the results… the less of an effect of homeopathy.
I would go so far as to claim that no one has ever been cured BY homeopathy, only by coincidence WHILE taking homeopathic treatment.
If this be the case ; can you please point or give links of few of the studies ? and please at least let me know the size of patients sample and number of clinic or hospitals covered under those studies ,if any ?
If you are serious you should know the literature.
The best and latest systemtic review is of course Shang et al 2005:
“Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy.”
It concluded:
“Biases are present in placebo-controlled trials of both homoeopathy and conventional medicine. When account was taken for these biases in the analysis, there was weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions. This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects.”
Of course, homeopaths have tried to rubbish this paper as it is so damaging to them. There have been no substantial criticisms – only some very weak and meaningless ones. This paper should have been ‘game over’ for homeopathy and any thinking and caring person would stop treating people with this delusional nonsense.
Mr Admin,
I think you have not understood what research i was talking about. Please read the thread above. The Talk was about the real life patient interviews with reports and investigations in the real life Homeo Clinics. I am pasting my Quotes for your reference.
“You cant say so sitting in your bed room. You have to visit the clinics of homeopaths and meet patients with cures from their incurable illnesses to make such a conclusion. No researcher has ever done that”.
Shang etal Review was definitely not this one.
Dear Antares
When a person is suffering from chronic ailments and he is taking allopathy medicine , person feels better for sometime and the complaints comeback.How come the person in this case didn’t get better on his own.How convenient,when homeopathy cures ,to say that the person got better by himself? Why it didn’t happen before the person took homeopathy medicine. You don’t have to do this circus of trials and scientific evidence ,when the evidence is that people are getting cured, esp the skeptics who after trying all other systems of medicine come to homeopathy as last resort and when they are cured ,they turn from Skeptics to firm believer of homeopathy.
Why are people spending all the time and energy to prove that it is just sugar of pills.Spend time in researching people who are better with homeopathy treatment.
According to you thousand of cases cured by homeopathy is by coincidence.Just think about it….it seems coincidence is common esp when taking homeopathy
And once again you have the choice of taking whatever treatment you want.So allow other people to enjoy the benefits of homeopathy medicine if they want to.
I have no intention of denying people access to whatever ritual they want. I just want
a) not waste tax money on it and
b) not have self-proclaimed healers exceed their limits.
A homeopath cannot cure malaria, AIDS or send cancer into remission. A crystal healer cannot make people immune against hepatitis, mumps or polio. A chiropractic cannot heal asthma. If they claim they can, then they are either lying (“knowingly misleading”) or bullshitting (“not caring about evidence”).
I cannot go into the details about “why thousands of homeopathy clients got cured”, until you provide some numbers on how many out of how many got cured of which ailments, what other treatments they received at the time etc.
For example, just recently we had the notorious case of a woman claiming, on the BBC, that homeopathy cured her cancer – a story with more holes than a swiss cheese: She did receive radio- and chemotherapy and may well have experienced a delayed remission, plus she never had a follow-up examination which could tell whether she actually HAS been cured.
I do understand that it is tempting to believe that one has found a true cure when one sees people getting better while one is directing their rituals – certainly very gratifying. But, unfortunately, this is simply what happens with most ailments most of the time in most people: They simply get better, no matter what. Humans are that great!
All the alternative “healer” has done is help them pass time. Nice, but hardly “healing”.
Daniel
The Tax payer amount spent on Homoeopathy is already minuscule, when compared to what is spent on the whole allopathic science and to compensate the victims who suffered from ill effects of allopathic drugs and vaccines. So stop cribbing about this notion of spending, when u already know the minuscule amount spent.If you spend he whole budget given to allopathy on development of Homeopathy, believe me, it will be a big leap forward for the welfare of whole mankind.
With the same amount under Homeo coffers, society will get rid of many of the so called chronic diseases.
A big leap forward for MEANINGLESS UNPROVEN PLACEBO-TREATMENT you mean.
You bore me.
Now you want to insult the intelligence of people who got better with homeopathy,that they have no common sense to know that Humans are so great that most of the ailments get better in most people by themselves.
As mentioned earlier,how convenient to say that patient would have got better with or without any treatment ,but does not happen when they take allopahty medicine,only the coincidence happen after taking homeopathy medicine.
Can you please list the chronic ailments that get better without treatment and list of illnesses that require treatment which cannot be better by themselves,So that we common man will be enlightened and not go even to the allopathy doctor, for ailments that will be better by themselves and by the way waste not tax dollars but dollars out of my pocket.
“only the coincidence happen after taking homeopathy medicine.”
Yes, exactly. Finally, you got it! It’s called “false attribution.” The rest is up to observer bias and cherry-picking. I’m not even saying people are deluding themselves and others intentionally. It’s just that too many of them are simply not aware of the pitfalls in finding-the-damn-reason-WHY-somebody-got-cured.
To your other question: There are virtually no ailments without a chance for spontaneous healing. There are cases where people got rid of their cancer, there are survivors of every catastrophic flu pandemic, there are people who live through malaria, tubercolusis and even an infection of HIV. There are people who smoke like chimneys all their lives and get 90 and older.
Don’t you get it? There are now around seven billion people on this planet – for every problem you will find someone who miraculously got rid of it. Usually they will then claim that it is something THEY DID that saved them, completely ignoring the chance of, well, chance. And if they don’t jump to conclusions themselves, other people will be eager to do it for them.
And, at the risk of repeating myself: Yes, “allopathic” treatments may have side-effects and may cost the taxpayer and the patient a whole f-ing bunch of money – but unlike sugar pills or magic water THEY RAISE YOUR CHANCES of defeating your ailment.
Good night,
Daniel
A man convinced against wishes is of the same view again . Same is for you Mr Daniel. Nothing can convince you because you are already too convinced against Homeopathy. Never mind ! your conviction doesn’t matter at all in this world.
See,
this is where one of our problems is: You assume that I could not be convinced of homeopathy. This is, of course, plain wrong. I have repeated it again and again and again. Show me the evidence, and I will reconsider my position. You show me that there is a consistent, predictable effect and I will be thrilled. In short: Given evidence, I’d be willing to admit that homeopathy works.
Proponents of homeopathy, however, would not abandon their position no matter the evidence. And they use, as you beautifully show, every possible trick and logical fallacy to convince themselves that they are right.
Good evening to you.
Daniel
“Unfortunately”, or “fortunately”, that depends of course on whether you are a pill-pusher or a happy patient.
Mr Vithoulkas
Given that your ‘challenge’ to sceptics is so obviously ill-conceived and pointless there is no purpose in discussing its detail.
I would just like to see whether you have the courage and honesty to answer a simple question. Given the self-evident flaws in your proposal, WHY DID YOU SUGGEST IT?
No one made you suggest something so stupid, you did it entirely of your own volition. Why did you do it?
The thing is that homeopaths only become really annoying when their foolishness is demonstrated unequivocally to them, but they keep trotting out the same tired anecdote-based rhetoric.
If Andy will permit a long post I’ll respond to your foolish ideas
HB on March 3, 2010 at 9:21 pm
I’m confused by all the ‘bashing’.
Why be confused? Stupid and deluded people kid themselves and exploit the sick. That this should be ‘bashed’ is not confusing; it’s commendable.
someone who has won a Nobel Prize for his work.
You are mistaken and have already been told so
Clearly Mr. Vithoulkas is not a fool;
Anyone who suggests an unblinded trial in medicine looks pretty foolish
he’s respected the world over.
Not by people qualified to comment
Perhaps you should read his work?
i have; it’s very poor
What you’re being asked to do is participate in a proving.
We know that, thanks
it’s been used successfully by practitioners for thousands of years all over the world.
Blinded trials show them to be mistaken in their belief
The proving is conducted using at least a double blind trial.
This is frequently asserted, but the actual methods used are usually so far from a properly managed blinded trial that your statement is very nearly a lie. The huge historical legacy of provings were not done properly blinded yet I see no evidence of homeopaths rejecting them.
A small number of trials have been performed as provings to adequate standards of blinding. The show verum and remedy to be indistinguishable.
Once this remedy picture is established the real work begins. In practice, a homeopath will come across an individual with symptoms of remedy “X” and will prescribe that remedy. The picture of that remedy will be further developed after it has helped the patient with their problems “a, b and c”…just as predicted by the proving. But wait, this patient also had problem “d” and the remedy was able to cure that too…so, “d” is then added to the healing scope of the remedy
So, even if provings had ever been done in an adequately blinded manner you deliberately contaminate the information. That’s pretty stupid. The scary thing is that far from being embarrassed by this stupidity you think you are doing something clever; you are not.
Homeopathic clinical trials need to be run so that we can clearly see the effect of homeopathic remedies on certain conditions (even though homeopathy treats each patient individually, not a particular disease).
That has been done. Individualised homeopathy is no different from placebo.
Also, if individualisation is so gosh-darned important where are the homeopathic campaigners demanding withdrawal of the standardised over the counter remedies sold by Boots?
There are several problems with this model, however.
1. Remedies are dymanic and intangible
a. Aside – being educated yourself and in the field of biophysics, aren’t you familiar with the “memory of water”…? What is your opinion on that?
Not shown to exist in any meaningful sense. Usually claimed from inadequately performed trials on systems capable of being ‘tuned’ to give the experimenters the results they want.
Most remedies are sold as tablets from which water or alcohol has been evaporated. Oops!
Some homeopaths believe in ‘grafting’ where one tablet can power up a whole bottle of tablets or even an adjacent bottle. Double oops!
3. Each person is individual in the way they express problems (even if it’s a seemingly similar problem) and therefore will require a different remedy
So, what? See above. Also where is your campaign against generic prescribing?
So, that’s a major problem with implementing a clinical trial with homeopathic remedies.
Not really. See above.
What I know is that homeopathy works. How do I know this?
Here come the anecdotes. The only problem is that we know from trials that if you switch blanks for remedies then the results are indistinguishable therefore your interpretation is wrong. Full stop. End of story. No room for debate. The persistence of your belief despite this is not to be admired.
These are some very personal examples. You’re going to have a rebuttal
See above. It’s really very simple
As long as homeopathic practitioners are making good prescriptions and people are getting well, being cured of their health problems and are happy, that’s ALL the proof sceptics should be looking for. If homeopathy was a farce, our patients would not be returning time and time again for little sugar pills.
And a million slaves died at the hands of the Aztecs to keep the Sun rising. Stupid beliefs can be very persistent. You have a personal financial interest in promoting that stupidity, which is despicable.
How many conditions can YOU cure using sugar pills? How many of YOUR patients will be lucky or have amazing coincidences in their lives and suddenly be cured from what ails them?
Tou have never “cured” anything. Your caseload consists entirely of chronic fluctuating diseases and the “worried well”, and patients “lost to follow-up”, together with, presumably, some patients with serious diseases who are under conventional treatment as well. The one thing you will never have done is cure a non-self-limiting disease, so please drop the bullshit and don’t pretend you have.
try things out for yourselves before being so critical of a medicine that has proven itself consistently for sick patients for the last 200 years.
Ah, yes, the Try It Yourself fallacy. The explanation why you will never learn is precisely you think trying it yourself is a valid approach to assessing efficacy in medicine. You are just plain wrong.
I can’t comment because I don’t know where you got your remedies
Your parade of fallacies was always going to contain a No True Scotsman and there it is. Do you understand why your statement is fallacious?
always “Aude Sapere” – it means “Dare to be wise”
Well, good luck with that. You’ve failed so far.
To all the apologists for homeopathy who have posted here;
Why do you think that rational sceptics dismiss so readily your anecdotes and millions of allegedly satisfied customers? If you can answer that question you will be a great deal wiser than you currently are.
homoeopathy is a system of medicine which has been tried by many since ages to dumb , but it is still surviving and that too the survivers are mostly the allopaths ,(kent,hearing….),engineer(vithulkas)and will always survive as TRUTH IS TRUTH AND NO ONE CAN CHANGE IT..if any one wants to prove it wrong , first study homoeopathy in detail and itself u will get the answers. mind it ,hahnemann himself is taking care of homoeopathy since ages in form of kent , ortega , vithulkas ,vijaykar and all the dedicated students of homoeopathy. rem-IF GOD IS WITH US THEN NO EVIL CAN TOUCH US…MANY PEOPLE LIKE YOU HAVE COME AND GONE BUT HOMOEOPATHY IS THE SAME,AND THE RESULTS SPEAKS.GOT IT.HAIL HAHNEMANN…HAIL HOMOEOPATHY.
Is this a spoof?
Is that you Jago?
If one single person died while undergoing homeopathic treatment for a serious condition, you’d be up in arms bashing homeopathy as “dangerous quack medicine”. When hundreds of thousands of people undergoing expensive, state-of-the-art mainstream treatment, all too frequently die after having suffered debilitating side effects – that’s just too bad; that’s just “unfortunate”. To you, all evidence is equal but some is more equal than the rest.
No homeopath in their right mind will refuse that mainstream medicine can be valuable, indeed indispensable, especially in advanced cases that require invasive procedures. Serious, well-educated homeopaths, never put their patients’ lives in danger.
On the other hand, how can you be refusing and discrediting the honest accounts of thousands of people whose lives have been transformed by homeopathy? Perhaps you feel superior in intelligence? Is your truth, along with your evidence, more equal than other people’s truth? Do you think all the people who swear by homeopathy are so ignorant, uneducated and downright stupid that they can’t even tell the difference between being ill and being cured? I’ve been very ill in the past (and yes, I was cured by homeopathy) and let me tell you, the difference between the two was pretty stark. And the line that separated the two was abrupt – not some smooth, linear process whereby I would eventually get well anyway.
I know dozens of highly educated, professional, intelligent people who swear by homeopathy because it gave them back their health after mainstream medicine kept failing to deliver the goods. Why else do you think they’d be insisting that homeopathy works? People are not fools. Instead of carrying ouy witch-hunts you should give at least some of these people’ stories some credit, and if the physics and chemistry seem to be lagging behind, which they do, by all means help fund research so that we can discover what’s going on. That is, unless you feel satisfied in believing that, in the year 2010, physics has divulged all its mysteries and nothing else remains to be discovered? I would bow to your wise certainty, were I not tempted to refer you to this list of statements, hilarious by today’s state of knowledge, which were nonetheless once made by “experts”: http://www.ixibo.com/2009/03/30-failed-predictions-about-future-of-technology/
I would recommend a less arrogant, less know-it-all attitude because science, like life, loves surprises.
‘If one single person died while undergoing homeopathic treatment for a serious condition, you’d be up in arms bashing homeopathy as “dangerous quack medicine”. ‘
Well obviously people die while undergoing hpomeopathic treatment. Some sick people die, some sick people get well. The difference is that homeopaths claim the latter as ’successes’, building up an ‘evidence base’ purely on anecdote.
To tell whether homeopathy works, you need to see whether it ‘cures’ more than would have been ‘cured’ anyway. ie a double-blind test. Not that difficult. Every such test, properly conducted, has concluded that homeopathy does not work.
Oh – and the reason that homeopathy has no side-effects is the same reason why the Goodies (back in the Seventies) could announce that electrical machines wired with string were perfectly safe: “it doesn’t work”.
LK on March 6, 2010 at 3:50 pm
If one single person died while undergoing homeopathic treatment for a serious condition, you’d be up in arms bashing homeopathy as “dangerous quack medicine”.
Yes, of course, and in the rich West it would probably not happen. In poor countries many people use homeopathy instead of effective medicine. From these countries many stories of dramatic cures emerge; none are ever substantiated
”. To you, all evidence is equal but some is more equal than the rest.
Evidence is not all equal. What is your point?
No homeopath in their right mind will refuse that mainstream medicine can be valuable,
There are plenty of homeopaths who disagree with you. They’re even more scary
Serious, well-educated homeopaths, never put their patients’ lives in danger.
So want went wrong with the Australian couple who killed their daughter? Why did homeopaths give dangerous advice about malaria? Why did the SoH do nothing? What are homeopaths doing in Africa pretending to treat AIDS? The list goes on…
On the other hand, how can you be refusing and discrediting the honest accounts of thousands of people whose lives have been transformed by homeopathy?
Because they are mistaken
Perhaps you feel superior in intelligence?
I don’t know. Nothing you have said is hard to comprehend, but much of it us just wrong
Is your truth, along with your evidence, more equal than other people’s truth?
Truth is better than error. You are in error, but you could choose not to be. Does that require intelligence or honesty or both?
Do you think all the people who swear by homeopathy are so ignorant, uneducated and downright stupid that they can’t even tell the difference between being ill and being cured?
They can tell the difference between being ill and getting better. Getting better is very different from being cured. Why do you find this hard to grasp?
I’ve been very ill in the past (and yes, I was cured by homeopathy) and let me tell you, the difference between the two was pretty stark. And the line that separated the two was abrupt – not some smooth, linear process whereby I would eventually get well anyway.
Name the illness and let’s test the validity of your assertion
I know dozens of highly educated, professional, intelligent people who swear by homeopathy because it gave them back their health after mainstream medicine kept failing to deliver the goods. Why else do you think they’d be insisting that homeopathy works?
I know very well having read many of these miracle stories. People want to believe, but that does not make their inferences correct.
. That is, unless you feel satisfied in believing that, in the year 2010, physics has divulged all its mysteries and nothing else remains to be discovered?
Don’t be ridiculous. There are many mysteries in the universe. Homeopathy is not one of them. Indeed, you’d find the universe much more interesting if you acquired the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. Believing in homeopath is a sad waste of a life.
I would recommend a less arrogant, less know-it-all attitude because science, like life, loves surprises.
Telling someone they are wrong can appear arrogant. You can fix that by not being wrong. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
I know dozens of highly educated, professional, intelligent people who swear by homeopathy because it gave them back their health after mainstream medicine kept failing to deliver the goods. Why else do you think they’d be insisting that homeopathy works?
I’ll bet you don’t know dozens of anything of the sort. I do spot a few tell tale signs of homeopathic exaggeration though.
Basically what you are saying is that you know dozens of “intelligent” people who claim that plain water and sugar pills cured them of their ailments. Good job you don’t describe them as either “knowledgeable” or “informed”. But you don’t say what their ailments were. Nor do you say what yours was. Which sort of makes you ever so slightly less believable than homeopathy itself.
WOW
For an experiment with no logic like 10.23, everything is OK for u.
If there is an alternative to that, to try out another way, is stupidity.
Great mind opening you have… LOL
Dear Ricardo,
please point out
a) why you believe there is no logic to 10.23 and
b) what would be a better experiment
Buy wait, you only came here to troll, right?
Oh my.
Daniel
Homeopathic Remedies for Breast Cancer
2/15/2010 6:35:00 AM
HOUSTON—A new study published in the International Journal of Oncology revealed homeopathic remedies have a beneficial effect on breast cancer cells (2010 Feb;36(2):395-403).Researchers conducted an in vitro study to determine if products prescribed by a clinic in India have any effect on breast cancer cell lines. They studied four ultra-diluted remedies (Carcinosin, Phytolacca, Conium and Thuja) against two human breast adenocarcinoma cell lines (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) and a cell line derived from immortalized normal human mammary epithelial cells (HMLE).
The remedies exerted preferential cytotoxic effects against the two breast cancer cell lines, causing cell cycle delay/arrest and apoptosis. These effects were accompanied by altered expression of the cell cycle regulatory proteins, including downregulation of phosphorylated Rb and upregulation of the CDK inhibitor p27, which were likely responsible for the cell cycle delay/arrest as well as induction of the apoptotic cascade that manifested in the activation of caspase 7 and cleavage of PARP in the treated cells. The findings demonstrated biological activity of these natural products when presented at ultra-diluted doses.
Moshe Frenkel, M.D., lead researcher and associate professor at the University of Texas and the medical director of the Integrative Medicine Program at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, said: “We felt homeopathy needed to be tested in the same way we test new chemotherapeutic drugs. We were quite impressed to find homeopathic remedies have similar effects to chemotherapy on breast cancer cells but without affecting normal cells, a very exciting finding. As far as we know, this is the first study that evaluated the effect of homeopathic remedies on breast cancer cells.”
When are you homeopaths going to learn to critically appraise your own work. This cancer study is a classic in poor science.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/a_homeopathic_bit_of_breast_cancer_scien.php
How wonderful,if the solvents in which the homeopathic remedies had been diluted is toxic to MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells,why not use just these solvents without homeopathy medicne to kill cancer cells????
why to experiment with alumina?
rather to prove the homoeopathic medicinal effect, use nosode (eg.tuberculinum!)in 1M potency for 60 days! and be ready for the consequences..
After reading all the comments , I would request all the Anti Homoeopathy enthusiasts to do some collective action.
1.Ban Homoeopathy in any form in all the countries.
2.Destroy the “non sensical ” Homoeopathic literature.
3.Make Homoeopathic practice a criminal offence punishable under law.
But before you do this ,please be kind enough to read or go through the following books and websites.
1. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/
2.The Medical Mafia- Dr.Ghislaine Lanctot MD
3.Selling Sickness by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels.
Try to clean up your home first!!
Good thing George Vithoulkas did not challenge the skeptics by asking them to drink the mother tinctures of Homeopathic Medicines.Would anybody like to drink Potassium Bromide solution or any other source from which Homeopathic Medicines are prepared?The basis of Homoeopathy is on the dose and the strength of the Medicine.
Thank you.
PS:The writer is a BHMS graduate and a Registered Medical Practitioner in India and Registered as Associate Doctor Of Homoeopathy in Dubai,UAE.
Do you have any actual evidence for homoeopathy? Your attempts to attack medicine suggest that you don’t.
As for the comment about mother tinctures, you are using a strawman argument. One reason for the implausibility of homoeopathy is because of the dilutions involved. Nobody suggests that the mother tinctures cannot have any effect.
Dear Mojo,
The evidence which I have is the records which I have collected over years of treating patients and recording their progress towards a relief of their complaints.Almost every Homoeopathic Physician will have them as detailed case taking is a must for Homoeopathic prescription.The problem we have is that we do not have a “one size fits all” remedy.This has never bothered me ,but it does not make my work any easier.
“The evidence which I have is the records which I have collected over years of treating patients and recording their progress towards a relief of their complaints.”
A couple of hundred years ago most of the doctors in Europe would have been able to sat precisely the same thing about bloodletting, purging, and emetics. They “knew” from their clinical experience that they worked. As we have discovered, this sort of evidence is not very reliable.
Dear Mojo,
I agree.Who knows, after 100 years ,you may be proven right.
However ,I can also argue that a lot of “scientifically tested” and “clinically proven” drugs in Modern Medicine were discontinued or withdrawn from the market even though they “worked”.
Your fight and enthusiasm should be in convincing the public to reject Homoeopathy as it is unscientific.Modern Medicine and the Pharmaceutical companies have enough power in the form of money and PR machinary to achieve this goal.On the top of that you have very convincing scientific evidence.So don’t you think that your energies would be better directed in focussing on convincing the Governments who allow the Homoeopathic Practice and Homoeopathic education?For a start ,convince the Health Policy makers.Once the public can be convinced that they are following a system which just utilises water and alcohol and some sugar pills and paying money for nothing, they will stop visiting Homoeopathy Physicians and this system will die out.
I wish you all the success in this endeavour.
No evidence then.
Thank you for that, Mr Chandran, but many of us are well aware of Prof Ioannidis’ work and, as that article tells us, its principles are being incorporated into the discourse of medical science.
Obviously, the thing to do would be to abandon medical therapies that are the most obviously wrong. As that article says;
His model predicted, in different fields of medical research, rates of wrongness roughly corresponding to the observed rates at which findings were later convincingly refuted: 80 percent of non-randomized studies (by far the most common type) turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials, and as much as 10 percent of the platinum-standard large randomized trials.
Where on that spectrum does the entirety of the literature supporting homeopathy lie?
Perhaps you can explain why consuming “mother tincture” of any chemical would tell us anything about homeopathy. No one is disputing that ingesting a toxic chemical will have toxic effects. What marks homeopathy out is ingesting pills from which water/alcohol has been evaporated after that water/alcohol has previously had some chemical rinsed out of it.
I do welcome your suggestion that practising homeopathy should be criminalised. How do you think that such a law should be drawn up?
Dear Badly Shaved,
Criminalising Homoeopathy practice would be difficult as we homoeopaths can always get away because our medicines do not contain matter!So ,a solid proof cannot be produced.
In a lot of countries where Homoeopathy practice is legal, the Homeopathic Medical School curriculum includes Surgery and General Medicine so that the limits are well set.
Looking at it in another way,Homoeopathy would never have survived if there was no demand from the public.So what you should be really doing is to take your fight to the masses ,educate them and wean them away from this system.You fighting me will not mark the demise of Homoeopathy.Nor will your arguements that Homeopathy medicines do not contain any medicinal substance in the material form.As long as the patients get some type of relief for their ailments ,they will continue to visit their Homoeopathic Physicians.
Now ,before you do that ,think-why do people come to consult a Homeopathic Physician?It is because of their frustration because the Mainstream Medicine cannot provide solutions.All my patients do not have insurance coverage and they pay out of their pocket.Why should they do that despite the fact that they can have a treatment which is covered by insurance?Rather than arguing about the “quackery”of Homeopathic Physicians and this system, you need to address the fundamental question of why patients visit us.Once you cut off the source of our funding ,which are the patients,Homoeopathy will die a natural death.
Despite the efforts for over 100 years ,Homoeopathy is still surviving.Maybe it is a matter of time that it will be pushed into oblivion,maybe to be resurrected later.Who knows?So ,why hurry?
His model predicted, in different fields of medical research, rates of wrongness roughly corresponding to the observed rates at which findings were later convincingly refuted: 80 percent of non-randomized studies (by far the most common type) turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials, and as much as 10 percent of the platinum-standard large randomized trials.
Where on that spectrum does the entirety of the literature supporting homeopathy lie?
“Where on that spectrum does the entirety of the literature supporting homeopathy lie?”
Brown?
Balls to all this bickering.
Can someone from homeopathy circles tell me which commonly available remedy and dilution will cause me the most harm if I buy it and take it every day for say 2 months (more if you feel it necessary). The one someone mentioned earlier as causing suicidal thoughts would perhaps do. Even better one that will cause me as much physical pain/illness as possible.
I’ll happily do it and report here daily as to my progress.
As soon as I get the info from someone I’ll go and buy it and start the ‘proving’.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions (with proposed symptoms please so I know what I’m in for),
Jonathan
http://www.vithoulkas.com/en/books-study/online-materia-medica/3861.html
Thyroidinum: Palpitations.
Discalimer: consult your doctor before taking this remedy. I cannot be held responsible in any way for any effetcs/side effects. This is only for educational/research purpose.
In 30C potency for few weeks
Discalimer: consult your doctor before taking this remedy. I cannot be held responsible in any way for any effects/side effects. This is only for educational/research purpose.
PS if I don’t receive any suggestions within a week or so I’ll go for the “Alumina 200C” George Vithoulkas proposed, although a 10% chance of mild constipation doesn’t exactly fill me with dread. Sounds more like the sort of torture Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition would dish out.
Dear All
I am new to the world of homeopathy and had no knowledge or opinion about it at all.
however, on viewing and reading material on both sides of the argument, i have this one immediate observation. if it has been an effective treatment for 200+ years, why any debate about its efficacy at all? there is no debate about penicillin,aspirin or viagra.
or have i missed the point?
jay mcdonagh
Hi Jay,
I wouldn’t say missed the point but, the length of time a treatment has been used is not a very good frame of reference as to its efficacy. Sacrifycing virgins to appease the Gods was very popular to get a good harvest for hundreds of years. I think we’ve outgrown it now.
Homeopathy is very easy to test. In trials you get exactly the result you would expect from inert sugar pills.
You have some small studies appearing to show positive results but when counted among the greater data, the meta-analysis shows that this form of treatment is no more effective than a placebo.
This comes as little surprise given the thoroughly implausible ritual undertaken to produce these remedies.
@JayMcDonagh
Bloodletting was used as a routine treatment for almost any illness for hundreds, possibly even thousands, of years by physicians who thought it was an effective treatment. They thought it was an effective treatment for exactly the same reasons that homoeopaths think homoeopathy is an effective treatment. They were wrong.
As you all allopaths and allopathy lovers think about allopathy that it is an effective and curative treatment! lolz!!
Why dont you try this experiment before using your empty minds?why dont you all accept sir vithoulkas’s challenge?are you afraid?
for the reasons given above.
It has been recently posted elsewhere, hence the quotation marks, but maryam, you should read this;
“I kept expecting that some homeopath would say something really clever that would make me seriously wonder whether there was ’something in it’. That has never happened. All I have seen are the same exasperating retreats into anecdote and fallacy. I also was shocked how homeopaths would fail to acknowledge points that they had lost and so modify their positions.”
Does homeopath make people stupid? Or do stupid people get taken in by homeopathy?
I think it’s a bit of both. Poor critical thinking gets you in. Desperate need to avoid self-doubt and the embarrassment of admitting a huge error lock the door.
You guys got to look closer to home than some homeopath in Greece. Check out Jan DeVries. He is a meglomaniac, just read his books. He wrote two about himself saying he wanted to save the world from ill health ( like it isnt part of life). He claims to have introduced homeopathy into the canadian, and swiss medical systems. He also boasts that Hitler and Himler were both fans of homeopathy. He succulently concludes that his ’secret’ is to ‘influence’ people, (I think here says it all). His books and an interview he done with the Glasgow Herald some years ago reads like the testimony of a sociopathic meglomaniac. I am not exagerating, you gotta check this guy out.