Huffington Post promoting homeopathy

The Huffington Post has a soft spot for pseudoscience

Their health reporting is filled with every variety of woo. But I suppose if that's what their readers want....

Don't they know that articles about homeopathy will be even more effective if they are less concentrated?

I can't find any background information about any of the links in the opening thread. Who funds these people? Is there any corporate backing? How can we trust them?

Don't be fooled by names like "Science-Based Medicine." Corporate front groups like to use innocent-sounding names. Friends of Science comes to mind, for instance.

I don't want to initiate an argument, but I have seen several homeopathic remedies appear to work quite dramatically and consistently in a way that could not be explained by placebo or return to mean (it involved infants).

I have enough of a lay understanding of the science that I get all the arguments. I have no idea what happened. All I really cared about was that the baby stopped freaking out whenever I gave her the little pill (and no, it wasn't the sugar, because sweet stuff like breast milk did not do it).

If you don't want to use it, don't use it, but considering the ridiculous abuses and the corporate empires built up around allopathic drugs, I think people might want to hold off a bit on the ridicule.

Personally, I have never had family members killed and almost killed by homeopathic remedies. I wish I could say the same for allopathic drugs.

Caregivers can also be under the influence of the placebo effect when they give what they believe is medication to children and animals. This article is about ADHD, but it can obviously be applied to any disorder.

*chuckle*

Yeah, that must be it. I was imagining that the baby stopped crying every time I gave her the medicine.

Anyway, I don't really care how or if it worked. All I know is the baby got to sleep and we did too.

You probably were not imagining the child's behaviour, but it is possible that some other thing was soothing the child and the homeopathy had nothing to do with it.

Does anyone think that homeopathic remedies should be covered by national health care plans?

There are higher-priority things that should definitely be covered first.

That said, our government seems to be moving in the opposite direction with Bill C-51, not just WRT homeopathy, but with natural remedies as well. Force all remedies to go through drug trials and anything that is not tied to large companies and profit will either be off the market or underground. After all, who is going to come up with the bundle of cash to test something that grows in your back yard like comfrey or valerian?

Boy does comfrey EVER grow in your back yard, sometimes to the point of making the gardener weep.  Word to the wise, don't roto-till where comfrey has grown.

No, I don't think homeopathic remedies should be covered by health care.  I think instead we should be funding nation wide education about the importance of eating real, unprocessed, preferably organic, food.  AND of course, we need to find the means to make that food available and affordable to everyone.......not a small order but hey dream big.

Start by getting rid of mc-junkfood outlets.  Ick.  Quit stuffing our kids faces with shit that comes out of a box and I think we'd find that the next generation wouldn't need so many dollars for health care.

Along the lines of polly bee's point: 7 Foods So Unsafe Even Farmers Won’t Eat Them

@ pollybee

Yes, and remember to top that valerian before it goes to seed too.

I was under the impression that natural remedies were not covered under health care plans anyway?  It has been my experience, in Alberta and Quebec (the only provinces I've purchased medicines) that only prescription drugs are covered, and even if you are prescribed something that is over-the-counter, that OTC medication is NOT covered. 

Vitamins, for example, even if prescribed are not covered by any drug plans, government or private.  Neither are things like valerian.  Yet some homoepathic remedies are covered? (I ask, because thinking about it, I've certainly never purchased any so don't know if they are or not)

As far as I know, neither homepathic treatments nor herbalist treatments are covered by Canadian medicare.

@ Yiwah

Regarding coverage, I know it differs from province to province, but no I don't vitamins are covered unless they are actually prescribed - folic acid for pregnancy, or the very absurd situation my dad was in when he had kidney failure. He couldn't eat one of his favourite foods - bananas -  because of their vitamin D content. Then suddenly when he was on dialysis  they started prescribing him vitamin D pills instead of telling him to just  eat his favourite food.

My reference to C-51 was because the legislation will take some medications off the counter altogether unless someone can finance expensive trials.

You may want to look into homeopathy for yourself.  I'm sure you'll find the evidence that is fraudulent overwhelming.

They're not fraudulent, only unable to repeat baseline testing like pharmaceuticals in the absence of better research.

Meaning, you can't judge a medicine by it's effects as a whole.  No humans carry identical conditions.  It's a wonder they don't do more isolation studies.

An analysis of meta-analyses of homoepathy studies had this to say:

"Collectively they failed to provide strong evidence in favour of homeopathy. In particular, there was no condition which responds convincingly better to homeopathic treatment than to placebo or other control interventions. Similarly, there was no homeopathic remedy that was demonstrated to yield clinical effects that are convincingly different from placebo. It is concluded that the best clinical evidence for homeopathy available to date does not warrant positive recommendations for its use in clinical practice."

So there were various large studies which reviewed the results from many smaller studies (these are the meta-analyses).  This study looked at the results of the meta-analyses.  Homeopathy, on the whole, is not much different from the placebo effect, and even in cases where it's somewhat more effective than a placebo effect, this still does not mean it is worth using, or prescribing.

Whole heartedly agree with this have for years. But some people are so invested in wanting others to keep  the status quo, that they are extremely resistent to this.

For years my daughter was not allowed "junk food", of any type, nor sugars or food dyes. Not even if she was visiting with people, if they did not want to feed her appropriately, she was not allowed to go there.

And ya know what, someone actually called child protection services on me, as they did not feel I had the right to deprive her of "junk food" if she wanted it. And if I was depriving her of junk food, what else was I depriving her of, and I was basically holding her "hostage" by controlling her food intake,  they believed. Guess they would have rather had me put her on ritalin, and allowed her to eat food that made her bounce of the walls.

FFS, the ignorance of some people is mind boggling.

Then of course there are those sociopaths who have stock shares in the "mc" junk food companies and pharmaceuticals, so they do not want people to stop eating junk food, and taking the medications to off set the symptoms of what is happening to their bodies from said non-foods. They won't eat the crap themselves, but they want others to.

I have a friend who is a homeopath. I have no idea how to tell her in a polite way that her education was wasted.

Perhaps she feels the same way about your education....

She may.

Unfortunately, there are publicly accessible and verifiable studies showing how the tools of my trade have been effective for the client's needs. This is not the case for homeopathy.

I don't know what your profession is, but to take a relevant field like western medicine:

For all the studies and hard science around drugs and treatment (and not all of it IS that rock solid, actually) there are certainly lots of doctors who don't know how to use those tools properly. I have had one family member killed by being given the wrong drugs, and another who went into paranoid hallucinations on one occasion and almost died on another because some doctor didn't bother to read the label on the drugs he prescribed.

In the case of the hallucinations we wound up down at the hospital in the middle of the night, with the people on staff not knowing what was going on. When we opened their drug book and looked we - the untrained lay people - saw it written right there.

Let's not pretend that western medicine is a system which we understand completely and which works perfectly all the time. It is simply not true.

None of that changes the fact that homeopathic medicines are WATER.  Just water.

Save a buck and use the tap in your kitchen.  It'll have the same physical effect on you.

I agree 100%, and would also point out that the dominant paradigm regarding how childbirth is treated is also not based on a clear understanding of the research.

All medical practices should be subjected to rigourous analysis.

reported

For being correct?

I am confused. Are you saying that you reported this post as objectionable?

I was merely agreeing with 6079_Smith_W that medical practices are sometimes inconsistent with the latest medical research. And I added a specific example of how childbirth practices are an example of how the patient's health or freedom are held secondary to the doctor's (somewhat incorrect) wishes.

For more information concerning my claims about childbirth, I suggest reading this book: Obstetric Myths Versus Research Realities [34].

If we are going to criticise homeopathy for lack of effectiveness, it is only fair that we rigourously ensure that the practices we believe are effective actually are so.

yes pants, I found/find it objectionable, as it, like  a couple other of your posts have done, make/made, IMV, an oblique attempt to insert an opinion, or try to start, a dialogue that is about women's choice. aka "myths of childbirth".

remind, I saw your objection, and I really think you're reading things into this that just aren't there.  Let's stick to the general realm of Huffpo and homeopathy.

The only position I have ever supported, or ever will support, in regards to childbirth is quite simple. I completely support the woman involved. This is not only due to the respect we should all have for bodily autonomy, which is reason enough to support the mother, but also because the medical research shows that when you put the mother in charge instead of a (usually) male doctor, it is usually healthier for the woman and her child.

I realise that this discussion is not relevant to the discussion on homeopathy, and I have only expanded on it to clarify my personal position. If you wish to start a thread about childbirth, I will be more than happy to discuss it with you.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Kind of like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uZbq8z9vOk

A classic!

Guess it went under your heads.  Guess you didn't read the next post #19.  Pharmaceuticals are the fraud.  They cause much more harm than homeopathy.  Good ol' Looney Tunes.  Thanks for the laugh.

The reason that pharmaceuticals can cause far more harm than homeopathic remedies is that homeopathic remedies have as much medicinal value as a glass of water. If homeopathic remedies actually did anything, they would have the same issues in terms of side effects that regular pharmaceuticals do.

True.  It's certainly true of some herbal remedies that have active ingredients.  You can no longer buy comfrey, for example, because people were drinking comfrey tea and causing liver damage, IIRC.  It should only be used topically. 

As we've been through on previous threads, the real danger with homeopathic remedies is that some people will use them instead of seeking medical treatment for serious or life-threatening illnesses.  The Penelope Dingle case in Australia is particularly sad - she had colorectal cancer and was "curing" it with the help of a homeopath.  The coroner was hearing the case recently. 

The Huffington Post has waged a war on science, at least a war on science-based medicine, ever since its inception, a mere two weeks after which it was first noticed that anti-vaccine lunacy ruled the roost there [46].

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=473 [47]

Wow, you got 1 case of homeopathy dead?  What was the pharm cure?  Details help. 

Why shouldn't we question the POOR SCIENCE in pharmaceuticals?

No-one said you shouldn't question pharmaceuticals.  I'm not sure where you drew that conclusion, unless it's part of your own bias.

However, if you're going to question poor science in pharmaceuticals, perhaps you should question the poor science in other remedies as well, including homeopathy. 

In fact, I find the pattern of argument here sort of disturbing.  The thread is about the problem of homeopathy being a bogus remedy.  But we don't see any argument on the merits or drawbacks of that position.  We see that people embrace diet and exercise as aids to health.  Okay, great, but what does it have to do with homeopathy?  We hear that pharmaceuticals are bad.  Okay, but again, what relationship does that have to the fact that homeopathic remedies do not contain active ingredients?

Red herrings and non sequiturs all over the place, but not a real argument for homeopathy to be found.  I can only imagine that it's because there isn't one.

It's still just water.  As I said before, save your money and get it from your kitchen faucet.

ETA:  An article on the coroner's inquest into the death of Penelope Dingle.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/inquest-into-dingle-death-...

I think the big problem here (and almost anywhere this discussion occurs) is that people try to use naturopathy and homeopathy interchangeably, not realizing they are two very different entities.  I see often that people try to defend homeopathy while using examples of people who have been helped or cured using a holistic (but not homeopathic) approach.

You're right Polly B, I may have made that mistake.  I believe in natural healing, especially given my experiences.  Apologies if I may have confused the issue.  But I'm still going to rail against the Pharma like they rail against natural medicine.  There's much to be aware of in Pharma's bid to disrepute natural healing and living.  I'm just not too good on teh interwebs and writing and stuff.

Singing to the choir RP, I totally agree.  Got off the pharma wagon almost two years ago and haven't been healthier in my adult life. :)

A glass of cool homeopathic water has no active ingredients but it sure is a good remedy to cure a hot body on a hot summer day.

Cold water is definitely underrated.  People should have more.  I'd be impressed to see a study of those who drink enough healthy water and those who don't.

I am not sure about cold water, but serving cool glasses of water with a non active ingredient smile, in the waiting rooms of the hospitals and doctors offices might go a long way in reducing our pharma dependencies and tempers.

Darn straight.

Maybe that's why homeopathy works?  It actually gets people to drink water rather than pop...

I enjoy Huffington Post and I don't see a problem with homeopathy? It works for some, as long as they don't know it's sugar and water! The power of the placebo..

Are you saying homeopathy can cause cavities and drowning?

Pure water is an efficacious remedy--but only if it is diluted 100x

Vitamin C and Alzheimer's disease

Gifford Jones is really Ken Walker, MD.

How scientific is modern medicine, really?, asks homeopath

Coming Friday, January 14, on CBC Marketplace:

Cure or Con?