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.
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.
no this is incorrect
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.
At least there is someone understanding what happens…when…
But they just don’t know how to really heal…
Gosh, we can use that in this community….
See, this is exactly what I would doubt. Give me the suicide stuff, come on, bring it on, let’s do this! 🙂
Antares
You are not serious. No sane homeopathic doctor will help you in this activity. It is possible for patient to die if a remedy prohibited in a defined condition is used: Continuous doses of Phosphorous will lead to Euthanasia for a patient with tubercular lungs.
You should try a scientific medicine doctor for such possibility. You can achieve suicide without much trouble.
“Lucien Leape of the Harvard Medical School in his excellent article, Errors in Medicine, published in 1994 in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol 272; page 1851-1857) gives a very graphic description of all the errors that we have been committing. This has been updated recently by Barbara Starfield in her excellent article in the same journal in the year 2000 (JAMA 2000;284:483-485) which reiterates the same, adding many more glaring dangers to the list already given by Leape. To date, I have been able to trace more than seven thousand articles showing the mistakes of modern medicine in the best western journals.
Nearly 225,000 people have died in one year in the US alone due to iatrogenic diseases. Of these 140,000 has been exclusively due to adverse drug reactions. In addition, an equal number died during out patient management of Adverse Drug Reactions that cost the buyer a total of $ 79 billion in prescription bills in one year. There have been three million injuries due to medical interventions in a year with 44,000 to 98,000 deaths annually. Nosocomial infections alone caused 80,000 deaths in one year in hospitals. One hundred million people suffer from chronic debilitating illnesses partly due to medical interventions. These figures look horrible if one takes into consideration the relatively small population of US. The sad story does not include the escalating costs of modern medicine.”
These are yearly figures and for USA alone.
So if for some reason you miss death, you still can have the benefit of living with a chronic condition all your life. Then you would become serious about health.
No, not really, Sarah. Homeopathic remedies in and of themselves cannot ’cause’ anything. a homeopathic remedy is made by taking a MINUTE part of that which causes, on its own, a given set of symptoms, and then taking that minute (small, not time) part, and increasing the energy of it. I won’t bore you with the process of how this is done. It works for me. Doesn’t cause amnesia. or for that matter, cause anything at all. That’s the amazing thing about homeopathy. Watch any of these commercials for these so called “medicines” proven in “clinical trials”. If you take the wrong remedy, nothing happens. Nothing.
LOL!
Going back in history of Syphilis according to the laws of Hahnemanns Organon, the illness may/has very well manifested in the human organism. Antibiotics cure the Symptoms! yet leaves the organisms tendency to develop a certain illness (more than another) uncured.
Take asthma as an example & find it not healed by prescribing allopathic remedies but rather end in the need for cortisone. Take chronic inflammations treated with antibiotics, which reoccur often to the degree of developing resistance to the prescribed antibiotic.
As to prescribing a remedy to a healthy organism it depends on dosage/dilution, if you have as result only a so called temporary “proving”, or if the healthy organism irreversibly develops & remains (in) the ill state of the remedy prescribed.
Homeopathy is a divine science, far away to reach from you peanut-sized brain.
First reach the Level of George Vithoulkas and then question him, not with your empty brain.
Those who know everything about Homeopathy are well-aware of what it can do.
Please keep your principles of allopathy to yourself.
Everyone around the world is seeing what magiv homeopathy can do.
warhelmet….
please…read the organon…and your question(s) will be answered sufficiently.
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.
Homeopathy works for me. You carry on with the limitations of conventional medicine. Doctors are not trained properly in medical school. They do not look at the patient as a whole. They claim to be scientists but when the scientist lacks common sense, he will fail. Vithoulkas is not interested in the egoic mind or form. He does what he needs to do. We leave you to waste time on contemplating your navel. What is real science??? Patients are being healed with homeopathy all over the world. Get over it and get a life.
Aware; Is there ANY possibility that homoeopathy simply doesn’t work? Or do you have a closed mind?
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….
Who made u judge and jury u don’t seem to have enough education get into university let alone question something u have no idea how it works or the biology behind it. Your comments are nothing but ignorant comments based your arrogance. He is not just a homeopath he is an MD, what r u ?
What medical school did Vithoulkas graduate from?
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
Very well said.
Really excellent reply Andy .. marvellous
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.
What a marvel Marie … Excellent reply
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.
You are a LIAR.
That is your only response isn’t it? To accept that I might be sincere in my criticism would be a massive psychological blow to the followers of the One True Medical Truth.
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.
Mr Vithoulkas won the Right Livelihood award which is also known as the Alternative Nobel prize. Not the Nobel prize.
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
Only you are wise sir ! and your wise comments only cause the homeopath of world to give up practice and follow you.World are waiting! come ahead and lead them.Prove you have better solution than S.Hahnemann or George vithoulkas.Please sir don’t think common people are fool ,they are wise enough to decide whether you or G Van. is right.
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.
All those who don’t understand the fundamental nature of life force thinks that homeopathy is unscientific , not a medicine etc. Guys just from your common sense try to understand everything you know is called as science, then what you don’t know from the nature but still you experience it’s existence is also science, the fact is that you cannot prove from existence fundamental of science. Take for an example the life force, which is difference between alive and dead. What you call as death, if life force force is removed from living organism, then it is deadly, very we’ll know fact.Then life force is fundamental mechanism of the nature for living beings, all our medical science should be based on that.the so called scientific beliver can give the scientific formula for this life force, so you can make dead person to alive. But modern medical science does not talk about the life force, why? Can you say life force does not exists or it is inscientific, since it cannot proved by scientifically. The entire existence of life is being controlled by this Devine natural force, which is fundamental for any living being, and homeopathy cure completely based on this and today’s modern mediocre completely ignorant about it and simply for the sake of argument they blame other system of medicine as quacks or unscientific. Though the life force or vital force which rules our body and existence is true, which we feel from every breath, you cannot say it is not scientific, it is failure of today’s modern science to understand or find the chemical formula for it. it is supreme energy, and homeopathy works in this energy leve and sameul hahneman understood it’s basic principle and how it works in mind and physical level and gave us such wonderful homeopthy system to human mankind.
Oh dear.
Ravi – modern medical science does not talk about magic pink unicorns, why? Can you say magic pink unicorns do not exist or it is inscientific [sic], since it cannot proved by scientifically. The entire existence of life is being controlled by this Devine magic pink unicorn, which is fundamental for any living being, and homeopathy cure completely based on this.
Do you see the problem here?
Hi Andy
Have you ever tried homoeopathic remedies? As either a test or as prescribed?
Yes, thank you.
I’ve can understand how difficult homeopathy is to comprehend. It makes absolutely no sense in terms of newtonian-cartesian science. Where ii not from having both positive and negative experiences from ingesting homeopathic remedies I would have no faith in it either.
The remedy Nat. Mur is particularly peculiar. As it is nothing by common salt, which is digested in regularly every day. When homoeopathically prepared gower it becomes active in manner that will leave certain sensitive people fearful of even approaching the remedy (I’m talking succussed dilution way pat the point where there nothing remains of the original salt). See below, homoeopaths are themselves willing to admit that their remedies remain a riddle.
I don’t presume I can convince you otherwise as really it needs to be experienced and you have already given it a shot. One thing to keep in mind is that a good many well-trained allopaths have seen fit to adopt homoeopathy instead. Either they are all deluded, or homoeopathy has a subtly that makes it hard to perceive.
NB: Everyone understands gravity, except physicists.
[Moderated: Cut for length. Please post comments, not cut and paste essays.]
You should have stopped at “makes absolutely no sense”. You would have been correct up to that point.
Homeopathy makes no sense no matter how you look at it. It is spherically nonsensical.
Re “You should have stopped at “makes absolutely no sense”. You would have been correct up to that point.”
If something defies explanation, that does not mean it is not real. There are two aspects to science. There is the theory and the phenomenology, the study of facts. The scientific method requires both. To dismiss a phenomena on the basis of no comphrehending theory, is as bad as dismissing a theorem on the basis that it can’t be tested. Make sense? This is standard philosophy of science.
The origins of the universe for example remain unexplained, yet here we are. Do you disbelieve that something could come from from nothing? Or are you willing to grant just this one miracle only?
Given your hesitation to proceed beyond the realm of knowing, It would seem you have made a faith, rather than a practice, out of science.
Yarm – the problem is that homeopathy has yet to demonstrate any unambiguous unexplained phenomenology. Any claims for a cure always have alternative possible explanations – such as regression to the mean, natural course of illness etc.
Without any observations to explain, there is nothing to comprehend about homeopathy. We can explain everything through various psychological biases and the behaviour of people in cult-like thinking.
Thats simply not true.
Evidence of curative responses aside, the homoeopathic Materia Medicas of Hahneman, Herring, Clarke, Kent detail the provings of various substances upon the human organism. The meticullous nature of this research enters into a level of detail that finds not equivalent in modern drug trials.
Are you aware of the methodology adopted to conduct a proving? From your statement it would seem you are not. You should do your research before claiming that Homeopathy fails to present the phenomena/result of its research.
Re ‘We can explain everything through various psychological biases and the behaviour of people in cult-like thinking.’
This means nothing. Your position as a skeptic can also be explained as a psychological bias, or as ‘scientism’ (as much a faith as any religion).
Science requires investigation, not a dismissive attitude. While skepticism may be the chastity of the mind, taken to the extreme, nothing new or bewildering can enter your consciousness. You will never need to face a mystery. Your world view will never face a challenge and your intellect will remain enthroned. But its a small world. If, by nature you’ve an inquisitive mind, your skepticism will need to become a tool rather than school of thought.
I guarantee you, if you approach the subject of homoeopathy from an intellectual perspective only, you will only remain with what you already think. There are other approaches to gaining knowledge, but these involve getting up and out of the philosophical arm chair.
Vithoulkas suggest an experiment. He did not call for a leap of faith. Take Alumina 30C every day for 30 days. See how you feel, and then wrap you head around that.
Either you investigate for yourself. Or you maintain your belief in a rationalism dominated by the Newtonian-cartesian paradigm. Here you would not be alone, skepticism is the result of a hard won quest for objectivity, but in and of itself, is yet another limitation imposed upon the mind that is as perverse as any blind religious faith.
Make sense? Do you see the difference between the theoretical and experimental approaches to science? A major stumbling block these days is that many who ascribe to modern science have little of the actual scientist in them. Instead they make a high-priest of the likes of Dawkins.
I always find it funny when homeopaths claim that I am ignorant about such things as homeopathic provings and that I ought to ‘do my research’.
From your statements I am happy to conclude that I am much more knowledgable about provings than you as you assert things about then that are demonstrably untrue.
You claim they are ‘meticulous’ and ‘detailed’. This is not true. Homeopathic provings have never been able to show consistency and repeatability under controlled conditions – i.e. free from expectation biases and the like.
The largest homeopathic proving ever was actually meticulously undertaken with hundreds of provers taking belladonna and comparing it with placebo – without knowing what they were taking. The homeopaths who undertook the study had to conclude that “Ultramolecular homeopathy has no observable clinical effects.”.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1884394/
If homeopathic remedies could be reliably proven then my challenge for homeopaths to tell six remedies apart (with the labels off) would be trivial. No homeopath in 200 years has ever been able to show such a capability.
Provings are junk science. A ritual that homeopath use as some sort of right of passage.
I could be proved wrong by someone taking the challenge set out on my home page.
I have taken Lachesis 5MM every day for a month as I was assured it would produce unmistakable outcomes. Nothing , of course. Your assertion of taking Alumina 30C is undoubtedly equally as hollow.
So, over to you, Would you like to explain what you mean by the “Newtonian-cartesian paradigm’ and why I am stuck in it and getting out of it might change my mind.
I look forward to your detailed, informed and evidenced response.
That is one study. Try a collection.
http://www.facultyofhomeopathy.org/research/randomised-controlled-trials-in-homeopathy/
If you have tested homoeopathy an found nothing, then so be it. I doubt you’ve any interested left for further exploration (an personally indicated remedy to which you may be sensitive for example).
My experience with homoeopathy has been otherwise, hence this debate.
It is not just ‘one study’ We were talking about provings and that study is the largest ever proving, undertaken in a methodical way. You then respond with a list of clinical trials which are not provings.
That is moving the goalposts.
To keep the goalposts in the same place, can you deomnstrate with any study that provings are reporoducable and show observable clinical effects?
As for the Faculty list, they were blasted by the house of commons for producing such misleading and selective lists. These trials have been shown to be mediocre and flawed on many occasions.
And when you say your experiences have been different, I would suggest your interpretations of your experiences are entirely wrong. Either that or all of science has got it wrong about matter and energy. Who to believe? Your interpretations of your subjective experiences, which will suffer from many cognitive biases, or all of science?
This is starting to sound like Steiner’s “Etheric body” crap…
Anyway, I’ve got my test prepared… I’ve got my bottles of homeopathic remedies in one box, and my bottles of placebo in another box. Only one problem, I’ve mixed up the boxes… can anyone help me determine which one is which? Maybe the great Greek Dr. Vitmalakas might have some way of telling them apart… he’s practically a Nobel prize winner after all… if he can’t do it, nobody can!
See and believe.. Do anybody believe that any one had a great great great grand father… If you believe that you had… did you ever see him..?
Homeopathy works! its true.. we can see the effects. If skeptics says it does,t and is mere placebo.. let it be.. Some if by placebo homeopaths performs the cure..It is always better and the best way… unlike taking all the dangerous antibiotics and other crude drugs which are not producing the desired results that the patient needs.. more here http://homoeoscan.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-case-study-of-anemia-and-homeopathic.html
see Homoeoscan
GVGV said:
That’s your problem, right there.
Homeopathic medicines , CURE,tonsils, Brain Tumours, CANCER, Angina Pectoris, and almost all ailments, some problems are wihout Surgery. I am using these medicines, about more than 70 years ,in our entire family.
George Vithoulkas is not a fool and by the way Homeopathy really works, see the truth at http://adidarwinian.com/father-of-human-pharmacology/ to know why it works and is not placebo.
Deary me. I clicked the link hoping to find, you know, evidence. More clueless nonsense.
. ;).. i invite everyone to take a remedy such as Lachesis, or Opium or any other remedy at ur choice ..LM… whatever dilution… for quite a while ( “overdosed” over lets say 3-4 months?) ..& i promise you to become a chronic case for the rest of your life suffering incureably frm the symptoms of this remedy ( of course wont tell you which one you get ..so no placebo possible) .. this probably might “cure” some from ignorance ?? ..there is nothing wrong with allopathy under certain circumstances & to a certain degree…but there is a lot wrong with allopathic industry .. makin a fortune on the back of peoples well being..and creating new diseases rather than to cure the ones existing. Think please!
You are only a stupid critic who knows nothing about homoeopathy and also you are not equal to 1% of vithoulkas.you fuckin people just want to criticise homoeopathy but you assholes are making fools of yourself. Yes vithoulkas is wrong here but you people can’t challenge him idiots.
Vithoulkas is a genius! he has said it 100% correct. Just try his test. Anyone reading this if you have a very slow reflex and slow movement take causticum 200 for 60 day one pill and a day and I promise your movements would be very fast plus your body strength will double and that will be without any exercise or training.
Also if some feel they lack the confidence to speak out in public or make eye to eye contact with confidence try silica 200 for 60 day one pill a day. That will give you heart of a lion.
Homeopathic remedies can do things which modern medicine cant even dream of.
I dont ask you to believe me try it and confirm.
Interesting how the writer of this articles scoffs at this challenge and presumes to know the outcome without any trial. Not very scientific and obviously doesn’t have a clue about the how homeopathy really works.
If you know how homeopathy works then please stun the world and let us know.
Homoeopathy works off the principle of “like cures like”. That is, the symptoms which a substance may cause, may also be treated. This is done by provided a highly diluted, yet “energized” dose of that material. This process of dilution and energization is referred to as potentisation.
This is what is not understood, and defies the principles of classical chemistry. And this is the hurdle that many educated people can’t get over. Rather than test it out (a science experiment of 1) they will tend to dismiss potentisation as rubbish. This dismissal, without inquired or test, lacks the objectivity expected of a more scientific inquiry. The test is really to take a remedy repeatedly and watch for a symptom picture to emerge. This is the posed challenge. But the test won’t be conducted by anyone who is already convinced of the outcome. This is the subjective bias of ‘scientism’ and is not rational despite protesting to be so. As Mark Twain so eloquently explains, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”.
I agree that Potentisation remains incredibly difficult to comprehend within the framework of the classical sciences. That said my experience of homoeopathy has required that I put aside that particular framework as a means of explanation. As such homoeopathy remains magical to me (in Fraser’s view that magic precedes science).
No doubt this will stir thevirevof those who wonder ‘how’ homoeopathy could possibly work? But that is a far different question as to wether or not it does. These two questions are often confused. Homoeopathy needs to be seen to be believed. Hence Vithoulkas’ challenge.
The rejection of homeopathy and potentisation is not some sort of lazt ‘scientism’ but because of the complete lack of any scientific rationale and the darth of evidence.
You say that the test is to ‘to take a remedy repeatedly and watch for a symptom picture to emerge.”. Before I waste my time on such nonsense iit is worth noting that no homeopath has ever been able to do this test themselves under proper rigourously controlled condition – such as blinding and with statistical significance. Until homeopaths themselves can demnstrate this convincingly, why would anyone else easter their time on this nonsense?
“It simply cannot work because there is no possible explanation” is flawed argument. Science 101, get the facts first, put your hypothesis to the test. Rather than adopt a theory as if I were already factual.
You don’t have to do the test, just don’t delude yourself that your adopting and objective or scientific stance.
I agree that to rejection homeopath because one cannot find a possible explanation is indeed flawed. But that is not why it is rejected. It is rejected because it contradicts well established and fundamental results in physics, chemistry and biology. That is, it is utterly implausbible given that which we can know with a very high degree of confidence – like the chemical make up of matter.
So, to challenge you. Has any homeopath been able yey to establish that taking a remedy repeatedly will result in a particular symptom picture to emerge? What is the best documented evidence for this to date?
Yes, many homoeopaths have established that taking a particular remedy will result in a certain symptom picture. These are called provings and they are very meticulously documented. I’m surprised your not aware of this body of work. You should study the data prior to dismissing it with seemingly plausible but baseless arguments.
Re homoeopathy contradicting known classical science principles, that can also be interpreted as being due to the limits of the scientific model. Science thrives on challenges to the established model. That is how it evolves. It’s not meant to be a doctrine.
To me it sounds like you’re caught in scientism. Your scienctific world view has yet to embrace modern physics which is full of contradictions such as light being both a particle and a wave as just one example.
Craig – many homeopaths claim that this happens in provings. There is no reliable evidence that this is so. That would require blinding and controls and publication.
Are you aware of any papers that document this?
I know of one paper – the world’s largest proving, conducted by homeopaths, on belladonna.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1884394/
The paper is entitled, “Ultramolecular homeopathy has no observable clinical effects. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled proving trial of Belladonna 30C”. As you claim to know the body of work around homeopathy, I am suprised you did not bring this up.
By the way. I did not say homeopathy contradicts classical science principles. It contradicts fundamental results in physics, chemistry, biology. Including quantum physics. Indeed, Quantum physics expressely forbids the sort of effects homeopaths claim for materials. Would you like to debate that? Or are you just repeateting what others have told you about quantum physics and you yourself are ignorant of the subject?
Andy Lewis
You write a blog: Can you not get your English spelling and Grammar correct?
You did not handle your junior school education properly, still managed to get a PhD (really ?) and now write on homeopathy.
Now you know the reason, why no one accepts your arguments against homeopathy.
Make a restart. Take control your English, do your PhD (really!) and by then, all the presumptions that you have about homeopathy would have been resolved.
We would then discuss “How to stop allopathic doctors from killing patients by learning to use homeopathy.”
IKZ
Your angry, arnt you?
Or is it,
Youre angry, arent you?
Or,
You’re angry, aren’t you?
Please let me know when my spelling, typos and my grammer meet the standards required to point out homeopathy is a load of nonsense.
I beg to differ. There is plenty of material that has been gathered. It may just not meet the excessively rigorous standard by which you expect homoeopathys efficacy to be gauged. Santayana once said “skepticism is the chastity of the mind”. However while you might remain immune to new age hogwash you also run the risk of closing off altogether. And will miss out on such jewels as homoeopathy.
Albert Einstein was no skeptic…
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”
So, now you are to wear the garb of Einstein? When you say that homeopaths evidence “may just not meet the excessively rigorous standard by which you expect homoeopathys efficacy to be gauged” what level of evidence do you expect? Anecdote? Wishful thinking?
I have presented to you, in that Lewith paper, very high quality evidence from a well conducted trial with hundreds of provers that show there were no effects from taking Belladonna 30C. ANd you come back and say there is ‘plenty of material gathered’ but are unable to point to any of it.
That is not how science works. It is not even how common sense works.
I am not immune to new ideas. But I have a mind and I use it. If you present good evidence then my mind will change.
Tell me, can you consder an experiment that if it failed would change your mind about homeopathy? What would it take to convince you that you were wrong? Please answer this question. It is the simple test for open mindedness if you can reasonably contemplate your own potential for error.
If you think science is limited to the experimental method then your understanding of scientific investigation is exceedingly narrow. An appreciation of homoeopathy typically requires a qualitative approach.
In the Myers-Briggs type personality types would you be a thinking type? To really appreciate homoeopathy you need to have developed the feeling function also.
Otherwise you will need to wait for some statistical study, or just let it go.
But obviously your interested for some reason. What remedies have you taken and for what condition? I’m curious to know what your real world experience of homoeopathy is.
In terms of an experiment, it would be a large group taking a remedy like alumina or Lachesis or sulphur say, repeatedly daily for a month in low potency, but still highly dilute, and not experiencing to any significant statistical degree, those symptoms already listed under the selected remedy. This is how provings are conducted. And still are conducted.
Would you not agree this would allow for an objective assement? There are literally thousands of such proving that have been done. And the results have been recorded.
My apologies for being a thinking type.
The key here is to ask if someone took Lachesis for a month and did not experience the appropriate symptoms would you change your mind about homeopathy. If not, you have not answered the question I asked you.
If it requires hundreds of repeats why did you not change your mind after reading the Belladonna paper I posted (did you actually read it?).
By the way, I gave taken Lachesis 50MM daily for a month and experienced nothing. Does that change your mind?
By the way. You have still not said where these thousands of proving a have been published for proper appraisal and critique? You are not just expecting me to accept the anecdotal interpretations of subjective experiences are you?
Of course not anecdotal, Homoeopathy prides itself on its exhaustive detail. It’s incredibly faithful in recording data to be later collated and analyses for themes. See Herring for detailed provings. The other materia medicas have summarized the provings of the various remedies. Are you aware of the material medicas of Clarke and Boericke?
Re the experiment, key points:
1. Lower potencies like a 6x
2. Large group
3. Repeated administration
You can’t get a symptom picture from one individual alone. You need to find what’s common. Some people in the group will elicit stronger symptom pictures than others.
No need to apologize for being a thinking type, most males are that way inclined. What matters is the ability to see beyond your default stance and open to additional ways of seeing and understanding. Being open to ones shadow side clears the way for a more wholistic perspective.
The key challenge here is to dethrone the ego. The ego tends to lack humility. It’s naturally built out what it thinks is correct, while its opposite remains weak and less functional. Much like the left hand of a right handed person.
Can you appreciate how much emphasis you place upon your thinking function? This is clearly your strength. But thinking is blunt instrument in the ‘art’ of homoeopathy.
Feeling is also a rational function but is not black and white. Whereas thinking thinks in terms of right and wrong, feeling is more interested in what is good or bad. And while this may appear more subjective, it is a valid and valuable mode of perception.
What’s your birthdate? I can suggest a remedy that might assist with a more real world experience of homoeopathy if you are prepared to put it to the test once again.
I’m not sure your that interested however. It would seem your certainty has enthroned your preferred egoic stance, and nothing outside of this stance will be considered.
I’ll agree that homoeopathic potentisation makes no sense. But in my case, my experience of homoeopathy trumps this inability of mine to conceive of how it could possibly work. As a feeling type, my rational thinking function has less of a chance to monopolize my outlook.
I am sure it is much easier to write about my weakness for thinking rather than answer the questions posed. Let me try to summarise what I think you are failing to answer.
1) What would change your mind about homeopathy? What reasonabble experiment, or experience (or feeling) would make you reconsider your belief in homeopathy?
2) The Lewith paper on Belladonna is thw largest documented proving ever condiucted. I presume you reject its conclusions. Why is that?
3) Can you give references to these ‘thousands of provings’ that might change my minds? Please post a URL to the best review paper on the subject. (By the way, uncontrolled, unblinded provings will not do that, for obvious reasons.)
4) Why did I not experience anuthing after taking Lachesis for so long? I was told I would most definately. Can you explain this?
Perhaps as one further question.
5) I have explained in the above blog post why Vithoulkas’s ideas for a proving are just idiocy. Please point out where I am wrong.
0. On the contrary. To answer you I need to highlight your blind spots. I don’t think you’ll arrive at an understanding of homoeopathy without adopting an alternative mode of perception. Your thinking just isn’t going to unlock thus door.
1. I’ve lived with homoeopathy for too long to change my mind on it. I appreciate however that it is very subtle and so easily missed. In no way are you alone. I would reconsider homoeopathy if I found that it ceased to work.
2. I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on this paper you speak of. if your looking to understand homeopathy then you really need a personal experience of it. Otherwise it sounds too incredible to be true. Imagine witnessing something first hand, then later reading that there is no such thing. Say you saw a ghost, but read a scientific treatise saying there is no such things as ghosts. Would you dismiss you personal experience over your intellectual understanding?
3. Refr for salt http://www.homeoint.org/clarke/n/nat_m.htm
The pons asinorum of homeopathy.
4. I don’t know the answer. Probably it was not closely suited to your being. See http://www.britishhomeopathic.org/bha-charity/how-we-can-help/medicine-a-z/lachesis/
If this does not characterize you, then the remedy at that potency would have little impact. Don’t try the same exercise with a remedy that does match however. That would be detrimental to your health.
So, let me try to summarise your responses.
0) You want to appeal to ‘special ways of knowing’ and my character flaws rather than discuss the evidence for homeopathy. This is a sure sign you are busted.
1) You will not change your mind and yet it is you accusing me of being closed minded. I will change my mind when presented with robust evidence. You will not change your mind. Which one of us is closed minded?
2) You will ignore robust large scale provings that are written up in journals that go against your preconceived notions and instead priviledge your own interpretations of your subjective experience. Somehow, you have special insight and are immune from error and that reason and evidence can say nothing to you. Forgive me for not taking this seriously.
3) I am sure asinorum are easily able to cross this pons. Thinking people might not be so easily led. It is just a list of symptoms and nonsense and no description how this has been arrived at in a way that has removed the possibility for bias, mistake and error. No indication of how repeatable this and no indication how this might differ from a baseline. It really is utter nonsense.
4) I know the answer. Because the pills were just sugar pills despite being labeled as Lachesis and I was not subject to any somatoform symptoms as I am not a believer in magic. This is a very parsimonious explanation and I suggest you condider it carefully or at least show how I might be wrong.
Your argument has become monotonous. And yes your character flaws are problematic when it comes to fruitful discussion. Has anyone explained to you that you come across as being quite conceited? Like a ‘know-all’?
I’m convinced this is just sport for you and that you merely feign a genuine interest in understanding homoeopathy.
Lachesis would not be a match for you. Your remedy picture is actually quite clear. And it’s definitely not Lachesis!
Why not take up Vithoulkas’ on his challenge rather than sneer at it? It can’t hurt right?!
It is quite amazing that you accuse me of being ‘conceited and a know-all’. Let me reflect back a few things to you that you have said,
You presumed to know more about physics than me…
“Your scienctific world view has yet to embrace modern physics”.
And the scientific method,
“your understanding of scientific investigation is exceedingly narrow.”
You told me I was deficient in my congnitive approach,
“you need to have developed the feeling function also.:
You presumed you could give me some sort of treatment to solve my alledged cognitive deficiencies,
“I can suggest a remedy that might assist with a more real world experience of homoeopathy”
And that I was incapable of understanding due to some unstated bias.
“but your unable to see past your own bias – a bias that is so common to a classical science outlook.”
And you presumed my mind is closed to any alternatives,
“Your mind is closed, and you don’t allow yourself any other avenue. You can’t be told, and you’ve invested too much.”
Just who is adopting a superior stance here?
In contrast, I have asked you for evidence to back up your assertions. I have told you I will change my mind if the evidence is good enough. I have relied, not on my intuition, my feelings, or any other egotistic aspect of myself, but on third party evidence. You have dismissed this evidence by saying that your own personal interpretations of your experiences trump carefully controlled observations and the agregated results of 200 hundred years of advances in physics, chemistry and biology. And you call me conceited? Your ego is so large that you presume to know that which you do not and are unprepared to consider that you might be wrong. You said ” I’ve lived with homoeopathy for too long to change my mind on it.” No-one can tell you anything. You cannot be pursuaded by rational argument or evidence. Your view is that your beliefs are infallible.
Yet I am a know it all.
As for Vithoulkas’s challenge. I have carefully explained in the above blog post why it is utter nonsense. I have asked you to tell me where I am wrong (the action of a conceited man I guess) and you have failed to point out where I am wrong. Have you even read it? Or do you again not need to actually read arguments to know they are wrong?
I have made a challenge to homeopaths over the past decade. A challenge to change ny mind. If a homeopath can demonstrate this, then I will be wrong.
Here is the challenge:
1) Pick any six different remedies of your choosing. Any remedies.
2) Get someone to remove the labels and replace them with the letters A to F.
3) Use any method you like and as many homeopaths as you like to prove them or test them and match the remedy to the letter.
4) If you get all six right, you win.
YOur claims that remedies produce symptom pictures in provings ought to make this simple. Yet no homeopath in 200 years has ever made such a simple demonstration. All there are is excuses as to why they cannot.
Do you think this is possible?
Details here…
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2007/12/simple-challenge-to-homeopaths.html
I just noticed this is your blog. You say “This is a site about critical thinking” but your unable to see past your own bias – a bias that is so common to a classical science outlook.
Many know that the British royal family has been treated by homoeopathic physicians for centuries. The Queen mother was a devoted patron of this healing art and Queen Elizabeth II is a patron of the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital.
Human rights leader Mahatma Gandhi was an advocate of homoeopathy. It is also a fact that the first medical college in the world to accept female students was a homoeopathic medical school.
Many prominent artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries developed a deep appreciation of homoeopathy. The impressionist painter Camille Pissarro asserted that his friends and fellow artists pursued homoeopathic treatment. These noteworthy friends included Vincent van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, and Degas. Many music geniuses of the nineteenth century including Ludwig van Beethoven, Paganini, Chopin and Richard Wagner all promoted and used homoeopathic medicine. This has been handed on to our modern musical legends such as Yehudi Menuhin, Dizzy Gillespie, Tina Turner, Cher, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, to name just a few. For the record, Beethoven dedicated two canons to his homoeopathic physician and Tina Turner publically acknowledged that homoeopathic treatment assisted in her recovery from tuberculosis.
The list goes on. The nineteenth century literature greats Thoreau, Emerson, Longfellow, Stowe, James, Alcott, Hawthorn, Irving, Twain, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Doyle, Shaw, Dickens and Tennyson all received homoeopathic treatment.
All professional sports people need a competitive edge, and because injury can seriously impact a successful career, many superstar athletes use homoeopathy. David Beckham, Martina Navratilova, Boris Becker, Jose Maria Olazabal as well as Olympic medallists have all publically expressed appreciation for homoeopathy.
It could be concluded that many of these famous people could pick and choose any medical treatment they wanted, and yet famous people and cultural heroes often choose Homoeopathy. This “tried and true” form of traditional medicine has a lot to offer and is increasing in popularity throughout Europe, India and South America.
For you however, homoeopathy will remain quakery. Your mind is closed, and you don’t allow yourself any other avenue. You can’t be told, and you’ve invested too much.
For you, all those people who do appreciate homoeopathy have been duped despite their bright minds. It must feel good to feel smarter than them.
It would appear that you’ve a strong, personal investement in exposing supposed quakery, so I doubt I will manage to convince you to explore homoeopathy with a fresh or alternate perspective. Rather the argument will go in circles.
It seems to be a game for you.
Oh my word. You have taken to cutting a pasting the work of others: in this case the thoroughly discredited Dana Ullman. I have written about his lack of attention to the truth in his writings about ‘cultural heroes’. You may be interested to understand how he misrepresented the beliefs of many of these people, like
– Charles Darwin
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2007/08/charles-darwin-and-homeopathy.html
– Florence Nightingale
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2010/11/on-the-the-reckless-physicking-of-amateur-females.html
I could paste more, such as Chekov and Dickens.
It matters not one jot what an artist or composer thinks of homeopathy. These people can be mistaken too. Just as you are. What matters is evidence. A matter you have a very lose association with.
I really don’t think there is any getting through to you.
Your arguments are monotonous and your mind is closed.
Good luck with that!
A straightforward question about a straightforward test of homeopathy.
You declined to respond.
Like every other homeopath.
Happy to let others be the judge of that.
I didn’t so much decline to respond. I simply realized your mind is already set, and that you’ve no genuine interest in understanding homoeopathy as you so certain it holds no value. I mean what sort of person runs a skeptics site! Get a life!
I’m sure you will experience the same futile engagement many more times in your bid to disprove homeopathy.
Vithoulkas challenge is relatively simple. Your suggested experimental design is needlessly complex.
You have declined to respond.
Two questions remain:
1) What is wrong with my analysis of Vithoulkas’s experiment? If you can tell me I am wrong, I am willing to take the test.
2) What is wrong with my challenge? Could it be passed – even in principle? Would you be willing to give it a go? Is your mind opne enough to test your own beliefs?
I am not trying to ‘disprove’ homeopathy. That is a complete misunderstanding. My poision is this: homeopathy is utterly implausible. It is up tio homeopaths to demonstrate their beliefs have merit. My challenge is not about disproving homeopathy but nderstanding why homeopaths are so resistant to testing their own beliefs.
Homoeopaths conduct provings, and assess cases. These are standard tests and ways of working.
Your asking homoeopaths to conduct an experiment that is of no value to them. They’ve no motivation to prove that which is already apparent to them. It’s not like big pharma has research funds to put into such an exercise.
However, for your own interest you could take up the simple challenge posed by Vithoulkas. Why have you not done so to date. If you can’t be bothered as its ‘implausible’ then you too lack motivation to test homoeopathy.
I am getting a little fed up of you not responding to my question about Vithoulkas’s challenge. I have clearly articulated why I think his challenge is nonsense and why it would be a waste of time doing it. This is not because there is no value in testing claims, but that his idea is deeply flawed to the point of being utterly stupid. Doing his test woud not demonstrate anything. I have asked you to point out where I am wrong in my analysis and you have failed to do so.
There are two possibilities here that I can think of:
1) You have not read my article which suggests an intellectual laziness.
2) You cannot find a flaw in my argument and are not honest enough to say
Which is true? Or do you have another explanation for not responding to my criticism of Vithoulkas?
As for homeopaths not finding value in my test, I find that not credible. To pass the test would be for the first time, unequivocal evidence that homeopathy had specific effects on people in accordance with Hahneman’s doctrines. The world of science and medicine would have to sit up and listen if this test could be shown to work. The reason homeopathy is not taken seriously is because what you think are tests are easily dismissed as excericses in confirmation bias – just as Vithoulkas’s challenge is. The whole world of homeopathic provings is one of confirmation bias, poor understanding of the need for baseline measurements, controlled comparisons and blinding. My test gets around this.Vithoulkas’s does not.
This suggests to me that homeopaths are not interested in truth but only in preserving their belief in homeopathy – which defines themselves. It is too much of a psychologial risk to expose yourself to a situation that might force you to rexamine who you are That is straightforward intellectual cowardice. Homeopaths care not one jot about healing but only in their belief in their medical religion. If this was not true, we would see homeopaths desperate to test their claims as fairly as possible, to challenge their assumptions and prior beliefs, and to understand how best to treat patients whether using homeopathy or not.
Am I wrong?
You seem to believe in science and that potentised remedies have not effect. Vithoulkas is asking u to test this hypothesis. But you can’t be bothered because your already sure of the outcome. Except that your wrong. Potentised remedies do have an impact that is not explained by classical physics.
So test it. Simple. Vithoulkas raises a challenge, but your saying I can’t be bothered, you prove to me why I should. And that ain’t going to happen. So if your not sufficiently curious, and well satisfied with your hypothesis that needs no testing, then move on.
You’re so argumentative. Make an effort. Don’t be so lazy. It would be far simpler for you to conduct your own test, but you won’t? Why not?
The “I’m right, prove me wrong” is lazy.
Oh deary me. Once again. I have explained why Vithoulkas’s challenge cannot do what he thinks it can do. Why would I take a test that is deeply and idiotically flawed?
Direct questions.
Have you read my article that explains why the test in nonsense?
Is there something wrong with my analysis?
What’s wrong with your analysis is that it does not consider the dynamisation process used in the preparation of homoeopathy.
But I’m sure yiu already know that you’ve conveniently glossed over that.
In what way does the ‘dynamisation process’ invalidate my argument?
Please be specific.
What specifically am I ‘glossing over’?
There is something wrong with your understanding of the scientific method. Vithoulkas challenge is not flawed. What is flawed is your unwillingness to test your assertion. You make the bold claim that it does not need to be tested.
Like Copernicus, Vithoulkas is inviting you to look into the telescope, but you won’t. And indeed why should you bother? Everyone already knows the sun revolves around the earth….
You’ve too much faith in science (scientism) in you, and not enough of a true scientist.
Once again,
Direct questions. Please answer yes or no to the first and give specfic reasons to the second.
Have you read my article that explains why the test in nonsense?
Is there something wrong with my analysis?
[By the way, Vithoulkas is not inviting me to look through a telescope to look at the stars but to look through a toilet roll tube smeared with ink whilst wearing a clown’s outfit.]
Remind me again. Why do you think the test is nonsense?
I go to some length in the blog post above to explain in more than enough detail why Vithoulkas’s test is nonsense. In short, it cannot distinguish between there being an effect and there not being one. The outcomes Vithoulkas proposes would be expected anyway without an effect. It really is not hard. Please do me the courtesy of actually reading the post if you wish to critique it and tell me I am wrong.
a very good retort to the all above written.
Iqbal
You are too lenient with your statistics, however I commend you for posting your research. I was one of the “fortunate” people to have had near-death results of strictly following the directions by my physician, while taking a low dose of the antic-anxiety drug, XanaI complained that I was getting side effects, and she told me it wasn’t side effects, it was anxiety. Like a trusting fool, I didn’t see another physician; however, I am intelligent enough to know one doesn’t stop that particular med without supervision. The long and short of it–I was found unconscious in front of my house. EMTs were called and I was transported to various hospitals because no one could wake me up. I was on a ventilator, and had two blood transfusions. My leg showed “drug induced parameters”. Xanax and levothyroxine were the only meds I was taking. Levothyroxine is a synthetic hormone to treat hypothyroidism.
I am currently under he supervision of a practitioner of Classical Homeopathy, and feel like a new person.
Kudos on your research 🙂
Don’t blame homeopathy without knowing the basic principles and foundations on how it works.
Georgie is right. I am with him. I understand your point, if you are saying anyone in 60 days could be constipated for some reason or the other.
Alumina 200c will also cause dry skin in some, prolonged speech in some, confusion of mind in deciding the things in some.. Which were not observed in them before.
Moreover if out of the given observers , there is some one who is Alumina patient , will find that he/she is getting well from his/her diseases , if any.
Sceptics pls read the totality of symptoms which are written in alumina , and after 60 days (if georgie is saying) you will see the effects in yourselves .
But read the symptoms from some good author’s book like Kent, boreik or George vithoulkas
You will note the change within yourself.
But before performing the experiment , I understand , you all observers don’t agree with homeopathy , but then again don’t be against it.
Just be neutral , when you are proving something for any thing in your life.
Who is anyone to judge unless you have attain the wisdom of observing and giving unbiased results.
Unbiased , unprejudiced observer will definitely get the results what we homeopaths say.
George Vithoulkas you are a very nice man. Thanks for contributing so much for new generations homeopaths and me 🙂
To the writer, the test which you are offering to Georgie shows , your lack of knowledge about homeopathy. :/
Sorry I am not accusing you. I would have also believed in you , if I have not seen the miraculous results of Homeopathy. The cure it do.
But dear, pls read organon of medicine by Hahnemann… Listen to him with neutral mind … Then proove the medicines they way we proove them . not the way allopaths proove them . beacuse we are not allopaths. Our system is no way similar to allopathic medicines , thus not the case taking , thus not the drug proving
If don’t understand something , then don’t love it, but don’t hate it either 🙂
As for James Randi is concerned , I know the exact Homeopathic remedy , which will cure his ANY disease , he will be suffering from . He wants a proof , I will give him a proof , by curing him, with his holistic homeopathic medicine and I don’t even want his money which he has offered to the prover of Homeopathy 🙂
I will do it for free for James Randi
Dear Sonam, I suggest you look up the Dunning-Kruger effect and try to understand how this might apply to you.
Dear Andy, Here’s the difference between our point of views , I suggest you to look up the Dunning-Kruger effect and try to understand how this might apply to you. Homeopathy works on universal principles. Law of smiliars, theory of dynamization, theory of vital force, doctrine of chronic diseases, law of minimum dose, totality of symptoms, individualised case taking. All this Hahnemann proved via inductive logic. You think you can deny them. Even if think you’ll succeed , They still exists and they will continue to exists.
Please Andy before making huge statements about homeopathy and for homeopaths pls pls read organon of medicine !
Moreover what harm it will do to you, if you read the organon of medicine. And If you still think you are right, you can carry your mission of defaming homeopathy and homeopaths with much stronger evidences . With this you will be able to convince easily to others about the flaws of Homeopathy after reading the foundations and principles of Homeopathy.
Or may be we will have one more homeopath added in our group ,supporting homeopathy. :p
Andy Dunning Kruger is your name!
It is a feature of the Dunning Kruger effect that those that are unskilled are unable to recognise it.
I have read Hahnemann. It is unmitigated nonsense from start to finish and only those ignorant of the past 200 years of scientific progress and medical research techniques could be taken in by it.
I only hope you are also not a narcissist who believes their substandard education is enough to actually treat people with serious illness.
Relax dude ! 😀 it’s OK. I got it, you are deadly against Homeopathy. It has been since Hahnemann time , he has faced this kind of opposition. And it’s OK , I certainly believe you have your own reasons to not to believe in homeopathy .
No hard feelings! We both have quite a different point of view , but it’s OK… Your intentions are good , Now I understand the cause because of which you are so much against homeopathy . If you really believe that homeopathy doesn’t work, then you are trying to convey everyone to not to rely their lives and major illness on that. That are really good intentions!
It’s OK ! 🙂 and if you have already read Hahnemann you must have read , that how much he was against allopathy. He like Georgie and other homeopaths , use to say, and till today say that allopathy suppress the illness & later comes out with worse manifestations. They certainly have their own reasons.
But Andy, I don’t know…. I personally think it’s all part of individual’s human experience. And we all are in search of truth , always in everytime and in everywhere you will find, few set of people will believe in homeopathy, few in allopathy , few in other pathys , few will beleive in nihlistic therapeutics, and few may be in search of / experimenting to their capabilities entirely new pathy.
I just happened to read your article, I and my father both are homeopaths. I am in my last year. Now , I know whatever I will say, you will try to convince me that I am crazy, but dude, people here in our clinic comes only when they get no good results or severe side effects in allopathy or when they want to avoid surgery.
Most of them really doesn’t understand the concept of cure or suppression. They want to be well again with any pathy… Based on my personal experience I was just trying to convey you it works…
Though I think it’s not a right blog to share the case taking of our patients , which will show how they got the results. And also I have no intentions to revoke you anymore , so I will stay out of this :p
I personally think , the only way to prove homeopathy is to try it for cure when a person is in disease/s, but be sure the homeopath is a good and a reputed one , who try to cure with holistic symptoms. Then only one can see the results.
Well anyway.
It’s OK dude ! 🙂 As for me, anything done with good intentions and pure heart is worth doing.
Again glad to meet you. 🙂
Hi Andy!
6 Years have passed with a lot of arguments, quarrels about “BOGUS” Homeopathic medicines left behind in this thread.
I am just interested to know, are your thoughts are the same about Homeopathy at 2016?
I am a Programmer and software engineer who had started B.Sc in in Homeopathy at Medical school at the age of 37 at 2016, after getting cured of my 15 years suffering from tumors (Lipoma) in whole body in about one year without any surgery. My case was incurable one to conventional medical approach. I am a crude materialistic person with logical thought. I am interested because there is something beyond my “logic” and I want to catch that.
Now-a-days there are millions of evidence with proper methodology followed for analysis that supports Homeopathy, there is nothing to argue or foolish.
Regards
N. Ahsan
Andy Lewis, i want to know what challenge you want to put to test the homeopathy. Let me see if i can accept that.
Andy Lewis, i see that you are very much against homeopathy. I think you have not seen any benefits of homeopathy and that is why you are so against it. Tell me your challenge, and i will see if i can prove that to you.
Also remember there are so many cases cured with homeopathy, and all these cases are chronic and without homeopathy they would have not be treated and placebo cannot treat those.
I can also ask you to do one thing, if you have any chronic problem then you can share with us and let us fix it for you to convince you about homeopathy.
Don’t think that if physically homeopathic medicine does not have any substance that does not mean it will not act. It has some dynamic powers which you can see with the results you get.
You are right that I have not seen the benefits of homeopathy. No homeopath has ever been able to provide convincing evidence that homeopathy works. All their claims are best explained by other means such as regression to the mean, natural course of illness, misdiagnosis, misreporting or even fraud. Why I am against it though is because it is absurd and harms vulnerable people.
Homeopathic remedies do not have any material substance in them. Therefore, the defy the laws of chemistry and physics. You claim that they have ‘dynamic powers’ but these are just words that hide your ignorance. Can you define these powers? Can you measure them? No. Empty words.
So you want to have a go at my challenge. I can guarantee you will not do it – like every other homeopath. A version of my challenge has been around for 180 years – and no-one has ever been able to do it. But my challenge is simple:
– Homeopaths claim their remedies are different. That they have different properties and that is why it is important to prescribe the ‘right’ remedy. Any old pill will not do. Homeopaths have to match properties of the remedy to the ‘symptom picture’ presented on an individual basis. Homeopaths claim these unique properties can be discovered through their ritual of ‘proving’. Some claim they can see differences through various physiochemical techniques.
So – the challenge. You need to select any six remedies – any you want – with distinct symptom pictures. This is your choice. You need then to get a trusted third party to remove the labels and place on the vials the letters A, B, C, D, E, F. You will not know which remedy corresponds to which letter. All you then have to do is match each letter to each remedy using whatever technique you like. Once you have made your choices, the code a can be revealed. You can do provings .You can do physical tests. You can do chemical assays. I do not care. If I am right you will not be able to do this as all (post 12C) remedies are identical . They are just sugar pills. If I am wrong then science will be overturned.
Will you do this? Or will you bluster and make excuses like every other homeopat?. If you think the test cannot be done then please state your reasons clearly.
Andy – clearly you still don’t get it. Read up on how proving so are actually conducted.
This is a very typical response to my challenge. It contains no specific reason why the challenge cannot be done. I know how provings are done. What is your point? Do you have one?
What I’m saying is that the challenge is ill conceived. Just pick one remedy and conduct a blind proving of that see what symptoms and states are reported. Simple. No need for several remedies. I was thinking you may have had a research or science background. What do you actually do? Keep up!
The problem with this is defining acceptable success criteria. SO many remedies have huge lists of symptoms. Many overlapping with others. The larest blind proving ever conducted in Homeopathy was on Belladonna with hundreds of provers. There was no significant difference between the ‘belladonna’ and the control. My test has clear objective success criteria – was a match made or not? ANd we know the odds of getting a false positive 720:1.
Andy, i am ready to take your following challenge:
So – the challenge. You need to select any six remedies – any you want – with distinct symptom pictures. This is your choice. You need then to get a trusted third party to remove the labels and place on the vials the letters A, B, C, D, E, F. You will not know which remedy corresponds to which letter. All you then have to do is match each letter to each remedy using whatever technique you like. Once you have made your choices, the code a can be revealed. You can do provings .You can do physical tests. You can do chemical assays. I do not care. If I am right you will not be able to do this as all (post 12C) remedies are identical . They are just sugar pills. If I am wrong then science will be overturned.
The challenge here is that I need people to do proving and lets say i start with drug A, i need 50 people to help me in proving. Once i confirm drug A, i will move to drug B and I need same 50 people to do proving for drug B and so on and after certain periods (may go months), i will be able to complete all 6 drugs,
Who is going to provide me those 50 people, I am ready to take the challenge but i need man power to help me. I have few friends who can help me, but that is not sufficient. I will start searching more, but can you help me in getting 50 people.
Also if i win the challenge will you believe in homeopathy.
Ultimate goal is to see if homeopathy works or not, and I too want to test and let you believe that it works.
I will choose 6 remedies once you tell me how will i get 50 people for proving and I need the remedy in 30c potency.
Hero
Hero – you are following a well trodden path in this challenge in putting the onus onto me to make it succeed. Let me be clear. This is a challenge to homoeopaths. This sort of evidence has never been provided by homeopaths and would be groundbreaking. It is completely incumbent on those making the claims about homeopathy to support them. You provide no rationale for why 50 volunteers are required but use it as a way to block your own progress. If you think you can do this then find the means. It is not up to me.
Hero, Andy won’t do this with 50 people, let along test a few remedies on himself. He’s an armchair skeptic, not a scientist with a genuine interest.
Andy, you are making the claim that homoeopathy is invalid despite many many peoples experience otherwise. If your not prepared to test for yourself, no amount of evidence will prove to you otherwise.
A man convinced against his will, will remain of the same opinion still. For you homoeopathy will never be valid. Simple.
So do t bother troubling others to with the futile exercise of trying to open your eyes to that which you so clearly have no genuine interest in.
What nonsense. I am not making any extraordinary claim. That homeopathic remedies have no material content is not in dispute. That they can have no material effects is a claim that is in complete agreement with all we know about chemistry, physics and biology. Homeopaths make the extraordinary claim that this is not true and it is therefore their task to provide the evidence that their claim is true. Should they be able to then we will have to reassess what we know about the material world.
Now , it is true that people have experienced improvements in their health after taking homeopathic remedies. But is then part of the homeopaths job to show that those improvements were actually due to specific effects of the remedies. No homeopath has ever been able to do that.
My position is based on evidence and reason. I will change my mind is a homeopathy can show convincing evidence and reason.
cjarman,
i want to prove because of my personal reason, not because andy asked me. I wanted to see how provings work, though we have read in books but i never tried it so i want to try it now.
Good for you. Nothing is stopping you.
Andy, we can only find this by provings, and so i need 50 people as every homeopathic medicine will not be proved in all persons, because each medicine has different susceptible levels. so i need 50 people for proving each medicine.
I know you cannot provide, because you are not interested in finding the truth. Then also i will accept your challenge.
Tell me who will change the labels and give that 6 bottles to me. where do you live?
let me know the person who will remove the real labels and attach A, B, ..labels.
I am in San Francisco, Ca, do you know any one here who can change the labels and give me bottle with A, b, c.. labels, and he should note the original names of medicine attached to A, B, labels.., so that we can confirm after i prove that.
And you haven’t answered me, will you believe in homeopathy if i win the challenge.
I am afraid I am struggling to take you seriously. You are making a series of assertions about this test but providing no reasoning to back up those assertions. For example, please provide a robust analysis of why you need 50 people (and not 2 or 200).
And I must repeat, this is a challenge to homeopaths. It is up to you to come up with a protocol that is convincing and robust and that includes finding people to label the bottles and establish appropriate trust relationships. Should I change my mind if you win? That is entirely up to you how you conduct this test. If it is convincing then so be it. The trick is that you have to take full responsibility for providing a convincing protocol and demonstration.
“That they can have no material effects is a claim that is in complete agreement with all we know about chemistry, physics and biology.”
This is a very stupid statement. What does physics and chemistry have to do with what goes inside the body – specially in terms of disease and medicine? Chemistry has been used for over 200 years to generate medicine, and what have you got in return?
“One of the most frustrating aspects of patient safety is the apparent inability of health care systems to learn from their mistakes. Tragic errors recur in new places over and over again. The solution to this problem is to investigate our errors and share lessons learned through a reporting system.” (2007) http://www.who.int/patientsafety/information_centre/interviews/leape/en/
It just keeps going down hill:
http://hub.jhu.edu/2016/05/03/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death (2016)
Effect of antibiotics: “Deaths from resistant infections are currently at about 700,000 per year, and estimated to rise to 10 million per year by 2050. If nothing changes, the World Health Organization predicts the future will look a lot like the past—where people die from minor injuries that become infected.”
Now to homeopathy:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17628642
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17628642
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25525452
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17362845
http://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Abstract/2006/03000/Treatment_of_Mild_to_Moderate_Psoriasis_with.7.aspx
http://phl.sagepub.com/content/5/3/157.abstract
http://phl.sagepub.com/content/5/3/157.abstract
It is difficult to take someone seriously who cannot understand the relationship between chemistry and biology. Not the relationship of chemistry to the ideas of homeopathy for that matter.
Let me answer your question though: biology cannot exist without it being underpinned by chemistry and physics since all living processes are chemical in nature powered by the dynamics of energy governed by physics. Homeopathy denies this.
And by the way, cherry picking a few poor studies is not impressive.
“And by the way, cherry picking a few poor studies is not impressive.”
If homeopathy does not work, there are no cherries to pick.
The studies are either correct or flawed. You define a poor study as lack of understanding or surprise to see homeopathy work? The day you accept homeopathy works, your web page closes down!!!
Why would Pubmed carry such “poor” studies?
Oh dear. Pubmed is not the arbiter of good or bad studies. It does not only publish flawless studies. That is a sill idea. It just lists. That is all it does.
Iqbal Krishna said:
Let’s start with the first one: a pilot study on 18 subjects. Seriously?
Do you want me to continue?
“My position is based on evidence and reason.”
You have no clue to what you write here. Or are you comparing homeopathy with the allopathic system?
“Medical decision-making itself is fraught with inherent subjectivity, some of it necessary and beneficial to patients, and some of it flawed and potentially dangerous. For these reasons, millions of Americans receive medications and treatments that have no proven clinical benefit, and millions fail to get care that is proven to be effective.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/demand-better-health-care-book/
” The quality crisis is that the care that we’re delivering is highly variable. The same patient can go to three different doctors and get three different recommendations.” http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/Exprts_intrvw/d_eddy.htm
What evidence are you looking for?
Andy, when you are asking me why 50, seems like you are ignorant about homeopathy. I said 50 because proving cannot be done on single person, i have to give that remedy to 50 people, now why 50, i want minimum 50 people, if i get 200 then it will be more good for me, i can prove it correctly.
And i wanted to show you the test so i want you to change the labels of bottle, if i ask any third preson then you won’t believe it as Hahnemann has already did that but you are not believing in him.
If you want your challenge to be taken by someone then find someone in san francisco whom you can trust and i will take your challenge, if i find some one you will not trust him.
If you still cannot find anyone here in san francisco, then trust the person whom i will find and if he says i find it correctly then you have to believe in him, r u ready to do that.
Only giving challenge to world is not sufficient, take part actively in it when some one accepts your challenge.
Hero – many homeopaths have challenged me to take a single remedy as I would not be able to deny the consequences – such as Lachesis 5MM. Now either homeopathy is either so subtle and unreliable that you need huge numbers of people to spot a small signal or it is powerful and strong. It cannot be both. Which is it? Were these homeopaths wrong to tell me to try a remedy? Or are you right that this would not have worked and the signal is too subtle?
Hero said:
You even asked yourself why 50, yet you failed to even answer that.
I already gave you the answer, i said i need many people, i just said 50 because i assume i will get result in 50, but if i get more it will be better, got it? or still your mind cannot come to ground and understand this silly thing.
Good you are not believing in homeopathy because homeopathy is far from your understanding.
Hero – you show no understanding of why this question has been asked of you.
Hero
No, you have not given an answer: you may have given an answer that would satisfy a homeopath but not anyone able to think critically. You have just made it up and assume 50 is the right number but have given no rational whatsoever. Why not 49 or 51 or 1,000? Think about what it is you are trying to measure, how accurate you want it and to what level of confidence you need the outcome to be. This is stats 101 – if you need a lesson in it, there are many websites that will help you understand where you are going wrong.
Andy Lewis
“…biology cannot exist without it being underpinned by chemistry and physics since all living processes are chemical in nature ….”
You can use chemistry to create drugs to kill humans. (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/health/american-death-rate-rises-for-first-time-in-a-decade.html) Or chemicals to provide temporary relief like pain killer or blood pressure control (a la Colgate Pro relief toothpaste soothes the nerve ends and builds a protective shield…).
How do you create MEDICINE with chemistry?
“..powered by the dynamics of energy governed by physics.”
Which energy type are you referring to here that is linked to medicine and follows rules of physics as you know it.
Deary deary me. I suspect you are a vitalist. You believe in some pre-scientific magic force that animates life. Am I wrong?
Alan Henness
“Do you want me to continue?”
Please do. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1297497/
Alan,
Here is my answer,
It seems you are not a science student, science tells us to do different experiments, so i said 50, i may get result in 2 also, 30 also, or i may not get result in 50, i may need more. it is all experiments.
Also this challenge is not to tell you how i am finding, i have just to prove that what are there in 6 bottles. I don’t have to tell you the method how i find it, And even if i tell you, you won’t understand because you are not science student.
Another thing, i got from your comments is that you don’t want to hear the truth, you are just trying to debate on the matter. If you were genuine then you would have taken interest about what truth is.
Hero
Here we go – the inevitable attempt to bluster out of the challenge. No. You are quite right. You do not need to tell me how you do the challenge. But the thing is you tried to offload the work onto me so you do have to tell me. What you do have to do is set up the appropriate trust mechanism for blinding. Again you tried to offload that onto me rather than think about how you would do it. It is not impossible and actually not that hard. You just need to think rather than bluster. Off you go.
You’re not getting this, Hero, are you?
All you have to do is provide a justification of why you chose 50 and not some other number. If you can’t do that and you just plucked the number out of thin air, please just say so.
Alan, i already replied, may be you are not reading it or you are not understanding it.
You may think you have but you have given no rationale for your number of 50. Normally such a figure would be associated with a sensitivity calculation to show how many people you require to give a desired level of confidence in any result given the expectations over the size of the effect you expect to observe. You show no indications you understand what you are proposing.
Well, that wasn’t the next one in your list, but…
The methods section would be downright hilarious (and ethically dubious) if it wasn’t so tragic, but it was just a preliminary report of a small trial (n=55) and one verging on the incompetent. Do you find that compelling? Has the full report been published yet?
Andy, i will accept your challenge, but you should change the label in my presence or someone you know is in san francisco, otherwise, you should not put the challenge, you should accept your loss already.
Because if you want i should do in front of any 3rd party then Hahnemann has already did that. And you should then trust him.
If you believe the challenge had already been done then please reference the write up. Trust can be established. You just need to think about how you might do it. But if you can get to Las Vegas today then I could help you…
Andy, i already explained you why 50, i said it is just figure where i think i can achieve the proving result. Have you read how to do proving in homeopathy, I want to do that, Now you got the answer of 50, if not then you are nut and you don’t have any brain.
Go read hahnemann’s proving and you will see how homeopathy works. See the chronic cases how homeopathy has cured those. If you think it is not medicine then you should know water cannot cure chronic diseases.
I won’t come to las vegas, you have to come to san francisco if you want to see the result.
Ok. So it is just s figure you have plucked out if the air. This is not inspiring confidence. I also presume that you agree that homeopaths have therefore been wrong to suggest I “just try it ” and take a remedy to see the effects of a proving on myself since such effects if they exist are unreliable and small.
And by the way. I an aware of what a Hahnemanian proving is. It is just I believe any reported effects are nothing to do with the remedy and are just coincidental or the result of expectations and maybe nocebo effects.
Andy, so you believe that Hahnemann’s result are only coincidence or placebo effect. Now 2 things,
Let’s assume i believe you that it is a matter of coincidence, to prove that I will surely do your 6 bottle test myself to see if Hahnemann is saying truth or not, I may not need you to confirm, I will do it myself to confirm it. Though it will take long as proving does not show up in minutes, but i will do it surely. Thanks for your views, we must prove him whether what he developed is correct or not?
Another thing, till i prove above test myself, how about if you or any of your friend have any chronic problem which is not going by any means, I would like to give homeopathic remedy and if that goes then you may have double confirmation and you may start believing in homeopathy. (This is not required, i just ask you if you would like to try this also in addition to above test)
Thanks
I am glad you are doing this test in yourself. This is exactly what every homeopath should do during training. Get a friend to remove labels and blind the test for you. As for your challenge to me. It is seriously flawed since if I do see improvement at some later point in time then I can never be sure if that is just the normal course of the illness or was due to the remedy. It is a fundamental problem that homeopaths appear incapable of understanding.
Ok, i will do test,
Its upto you that you don’t want to test on real disease, its ok.
I will contact you soon once i do label test. It may take few months as i need to find some provers who can help me in doing the process. I will soon write to you once i complete the test.
Good luck.
By the way you have shown no appreciation of why testing on a “real disease” cannot provide evidence. Did you understand what I said? Or have you just ignored it?
Yes, i got your point, you think you may get improvement through natural course of illness and you won’t be able to judge if it is due to remedy or if it is natural?
This makes sense.
so first step is to prove if homeopathy does what it claims to be i.e. if medicine which don’t have real substance can produce the symptoms in the body. And to prove this I have to choose six remedies and remove label and tell which bottle is of which remedy.
I got this challenge and I want to do it for my satisfaction also. And if I cannot prove it then homeopathy is meaningless without any benefit. I will ask my fellow friends to help me in proving this challenge.
I will soon start this challenge and let world knows before I start it and I will publish everything on internet with the name of third party who will hide the real labels. I am trying to find 50 to 100 people who will help me in this experiment. Once I get those, i will publish it online everything.
Andy Lewis
“Deary deary me.”
You claim to have a PhD. Your guide should be terminated immediately.
Both of you with your 10 percents are just guessing. And if you don’t do the experiment (with appropriate methodological modifications such as a control group), anybody’s ideas about the outcome don’t really seem worth talking about for so long.
Havent even read 30% of the article ….
How ignorant .. of the author 🙂
Was working for more than 15 years with animals and homöopathy. Seeing cases cured which had been given up totally by vet. meds. ( Healed personal chronic problems as well )
Placebo ? Sure.. I used to explain to animals to please heal up after they got the remedies 🙂
Also told them how the dilution works so they could decide how fast and on which level to heal first …according to potency given….
Its a desaster that there are so many homöopathic quacks cause they ruin whatever homöopathy really can accomplish.
Please read .. Organon by Hahnemann.. Case studies by Vithoulkas, Sankaran, etc… Materia Medica by Kent or others ( not Metzger!)…and use grey cells and a little spirit before bowing to the allmighty allopathy talking rubbish about homöopathy without understanding or knowing!
Theres nothing wrong with surgery and allopathy, so long it cant be avoided.
Homöopathy though works on levels where no scalpell can reach.. let alone heal .. in the sense of the word ….
Since homöopathy is holistic .. its not to be proved or tested the way youd try to test “Aspirin”..
please use reason and logic even in your critisizm! Sure only .. if you understand the matter as such.. which you dont.
Wishing you a long and healthy life! 🙂
So when you start by stating that you have not read the article and then claim the author is ignorant I think we can quite quickly dismiss everything else you have to say. Come back when you have the good grace to read something before posting.
The guy subsrcribes to scientism. You are wasting your time.
Perhaps you would like to tell the world how you personally differentiate between science and scientism?
Did the author take the challenge or just deflect?
The stupidity & ignorance of the authors conclusions about Homoeopathy, as well as his glaringly missing knowledge & education on the matter is as painful as hard to bear. With all respect for the right to have a personal opinion – the only one making a (n ignorant) fool out of himself here is the author. Despite of this, regards & best of health !
What did the author get wrong? Please be specific.
@Alan
..almost everything. Sorry for not being able to explain homöopathy/authors lacking understanding/knowledge of topic in detail here!
You just need to be brave enough to say one thing I have got wrong, otherwise toy can be simply dismissed.
No apology necessary, Karin, but it could indicate the possibility that you can’t actually point to anything Andy has got wrong, could it not?
Andy leaves the mistakes into moderation indefinitely!!!!!!!
@ Andy …
We can leave the ground of “political correctness” I guess ?
1 The site exists to dismantle quackery (basically a noble effort)
2 Your article as well as the language you are using is obviously designed to degrade/ridicule homöopathy as such and Mr. Vithoulkas here in special. But fair enough – it’s your job to point out the false..
3 If you find his suggestion foolish –
pls try f.e. Lachesis LM18 daily 1 drop for a period of at least 3 months & you will find yourself probably in an irreversible state of Lachesis.
(Historically proven by Tyler Kent whose wife took part in this proving- experiment & developed an incurable “Lachesis” -state/constitution for the rest of her life).
4 Constipation is not a normal state of health.
So the mentioned 10% is an average ever since each individual reacts differently according to its a) given constitution b) state of immune-system c) sensitivity towards remedy(ies) as such.
It’s obvious that no higher potency was suggested (which would have a deeper or more visible/lasting effect ) since it can cause a change of basic constitution in the individual. Mr. Vithoulkas was being responsible, not a fool – albeit he should maybe have explained more thoroughly which he did not. Something I wholeheartedly can understand … …
5 Your own suggestion of taking 6 bottles of different remedies & challenging “Georgy boy” to find out which remedy is which:
pls review point three of my comment & rest assured that after alteration of constitution every classical homöopath who is worth his/her salt will be able to point out the correct remedy. At least a 80% depending on how closely the 6 remedies are/ might be related & how specifically the Probands system will react to it on a specific level(s)
Ever since it were irresponsible to conduct such a proving (reasons explained above) your suggestion is ignorant & proves “Andy boys” – to keep it in your own terms – lack of knowledge about the topic.
Judging & arrogantly degrading something without having the slightest idea about its basics seems however more foolish to me than Mr. Vithoulkas suggestion.
“If you want to understand the universe think in frequencies” – Nikolas Tesla
Best regards & health.
Just to let you know that another idiot homeopathy suggested I take Lachesis for a month so I took Daily a dose of Lachesis 5MM on the understanding that it would paralyse me. Of course nothing happened because they are just sugar pills.
ps.
Bravery by the way contains an open mindedness – the courage to explore ideas/theories which we cannot/cannot yet fully understand or prove. To entertain views which do not fit our habitual & conditioned understanding of the world/nature and its functioning(s). and It further does not contain the degradation and lack of respect for your “opponent / enemy”. This is below the dignity of a warrior.
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win” Sun Tzu, The Art of War
@ Allen
Somewhat an hour ago I replied to Andy who asked the same question. Pls find my reply re. ” things got wrong” amongst the comments. Thank you.
The dosage might have been wrong, the remedy not “clean” , you might have antidoted it unintentionally one or several times during the process, or you are highly insensitive ( your immune-system strong) to remedies as such, thus the potency might not affect you over one month in a for you noticeable way in general.
If it’s just sugar-pills why don’t you try again for 6 months with a higher potency.
There is always an excuse. Both you and this former homeopathy goon were convinced it would do me harm. It was sourced from a reputable homeopathic pharmacy in the UK in the highest potency they could muster. It was shipped without warning considering how dangerous you consider it to be. Homeopaths are irresponsible and full of shit.
Thank you for your kind reply.
For some things & symptoms there simply are no remedies..
just out of curiosity….pls describe how, when & how much of the remedy you took in & in which way. Thank you.
@ Andy …
there really always seems to be an excuse..
So long you deny to share the procedure of taking in the 5MM – there’s no way to find out what went wrong.
Unless the purpose of your information was solely to state that all homöopaths are idiots, irresponsible & full of shit.
@Anonymus..
pls elaborate why it is incorrect.
Hello my dear Andy Lewis, What George is saying is from his pure clinical experiences and observations, (verified and re-verified many a times) of more than 50 to 60years,
He had studied and the one who knows this difficult science of homeopathy in its fullest detail and also answered to every query regarding homeopathy. In this modern era he is like a bright light for the medical field and also for budding homeopaths who wants to do future in homeopathy.
About your challenge – my dear..! It’s very simple logic that before challenging someone who has 60 years of experience in a particular Field, and one who rewarded as master of that field. first you have to read, study, understand, and practically experience that field in its fullest extent. You are giving a challenge which looks like too fullish (innocent) for someone who knows homeopathy, it seems that you never Read, studied and not experienced homeopathic science yet.
And because of your lac of knowledge about homeopathic science you are also making fun of George’s Alumina 200 experiment (challenge)
IDEALLY YOU ARE MAKING FOOL AND FUN OF YOURSELF BY POSTING SUCH A FOOLISH THINGS (as you don’t know the details)
So my dear Andy Lewis you need to study homeopathic science first and then you can argue on any points about homeopathic field and about George’s teachings.
I will suggest you to read books of George first.
Best wishes to you…
Thank you..
Yet one more homeopath who puffs up their chest and blusters rather than accept a simple challenge.
Dr ravindra, very well said
Dont bother. We are 7,3 billions. who prefers to damage themselver via allopathy.. go ahead.
Go ahead and damage yourself with allopathy.
lol..no
the hom. remedies are absolutely sufficient !!
guess u got me wrong :)..using hom. for over 20 years 🙂
No comment….
Obvioulsly you don’t have neither the optimal knowledge to understand what homeopathy is, nor experienced the right remedy you may need in order to enhance your defense mechanisms and stop needing losing time writing non sense about this impressive and so useful medicine when correctly understood and correctly prescribed.
If you test Alumina let’s and you are sensitive to this substance so you will get an idea about what Pr George Vithoulkas ment.
Constantin Hering was asked to disqualify homeopathy and finally became one of the greatest homeopath in history of homeopathy.
Never saw more daft comments than this one. The challenge he proposed is even more daft. I will give you a new challenge boy. Please take one Rhus Tox 200 for 15 days, night and morning. Then tel me how bad your aches and pains are. Will you be sincere enough to own up about the errors of your ways?. This test is simple enough. If you are genuine -take the test!
Or he can also take Alumina 30 daily once for one month.
In response to a challenge, I once took Lachesis 50M every day for a month. Nothing happened, of course. It was just sugar pills.
Yes, that will do it too, but will this wise guy take the challenge?
In my whole career as a Homeopath (and yes I have studied under Vithoulkas), I have offered this challenge to many people and professionals. None has taken the challenge. Why the fear when they so strongly argue that Homeopathic medicine is only placebo?
You can’t have it both ways.