Homeopathy PDF
Homeopathy PDF
Homeopathy PDF
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Homeopathy is marketed as a safe, natural and holistic treatment for a range of ailments and illnesses, including arthritis, asthma, depression, eczema, diarrhoea, hayfever, headaches, insomnia and toothache. Homeopathic products and services have become a large industry. Despite this, it has not been embraced by medical science. The scientific evidence shows that homeopathy acts only as a placebo and there is no scientific explanation of how it could work any other way.
Not to be confused...
Proven proving is the method homeopaths use to determine the symptoms a substance causes (with a view to treating diseases with similar symptoms); after the process a substance is said to be proven. Scientists use proven to describe a statement that is, by logic, necessarily true. human and animal waste, dead plants, bacteria and minerals; it would remember the test tube in which the homeopathic preparation was made.
The evidence
Over 150 clinical trials* have failed to show that homeopathy works. Some small-scale studies have yielded positive results, but this is due to poor methodologies or random effects. When all the evidence from many trials is pooled together, homeopathy is no better than a placebo. A recent Lancet paper1 compared 110 homeopathy trials with 110 conventional medicine trials. The authors found that the higher quality trials offered strong evidence that conventional medicines work and no evidence that homeopathic preparations work. In other words, the better the research, the less effective homeopathy appears. Over a dozen similar analyses have arrived at the same conclusion: that homeopathy does not perform any better than placebos.
Minimum dose
Homeopathic preparations have been diluted to such an extent that many do not contain a single molecule of the active ingredient. For example, a common dilution of 30C means that one drop of active ingredient is diluted in 100 drops of water, then a drop of the resulting solution is dissolved in another 100 drops of water, and so on, until 30 dilutions have taken place. The chance of a 30C homeopathic preparation containing one molecule of the original active ingredient is less than the chance of winning the national lottery five weeks in a row. Homeopaths believe that water can remember the active ingredient. If water had this ability, it would also remember the other substances that have been diluted into it over time, such as
*Clinical trials
In a sense, all pills are effective; even sugar pills can make sick people feel better if they expect to feel better. Doctors, though, need to know the difference between the placebo effect and a clinical effect. To do this they use clinical trials. The gold standard clinical trial is the randomised trial. Volunteers suffering from the same ailment are split into two groups (the more people, the less likely individual peculiarities will skew the results). Half are given the real drug, and the other half are given a placebo. The trial is usually double blind which means that neither the patient nor the doctor know which group each individual is in. All conventional medicines must pass such trials to prove that they are both safe and effective before they are licensed for use.
symptoms are at their worst, it will appear that whatever medicines they took made them better. This is true of many diseases that homeopaths treat, including acne, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression and even multiple sclerosis.
Veterinary homeopathy
Homeopaths argue that homeopathy works for animals, which cannot be explained by the placebo effect. (The same is also true for babies). However, these trials depend on human observations that, without standardised observational measures or independent veterinary surgeons, can suffer significant (unintentional) bias. Those studies that correct for observational biases show that homeopathy does not work.
Potency
Placebo effects only work on minor ailments. It may be effective for symptoms like pain, swelling, fatigue, nausea and so on, but it is not effective for curing broken bones, infectious diseases or cancers. In other words, its best application is dealing with symptoms of disease, not with the disease itself.
A powerful placebo?
Reports that homeopathy has cured quite serious conditions are sometimes attributed to a powerful placebo effect. But there are a number of other possible explanations that should always be discounted first.4 Sometimes the administration of a pill will coincide with recovery, but not be related to it. This could happen through Spontaneous recovery
Unless an illness is chronic or fatal, the bodys own recuperative processes will restore the sufferer to health.
Fluctuating symptoms
For example, the pain associated with arthritis comes and goes. When the pain is bad, it will soon improve of its own accord, with or without treatment. As people tend to seek treatment when
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A. et al. 2005 Are the clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy and allopathy Lancet, 366: 726-732 R. 2005 Stress-associated immune dysregulation and its importance for human health: a personal history of psychoneuroimmunology Brain, Behavior and Immunity, 19: 3-11 3 Lovallo, W.R. & W. Gerin 2003 Psychophysiological reactivity: mechanisms and pathways to cardiovascular disease Psychosomatic Medicine, 65: 36-45 4 Kienle, G.S. & H. Kiene 1997 The powerful placebo effect: fact or fiction? Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 50: 1311-1318
2 Glaser,