I keep trying to make a detailed response but my iPhone keeps crashing to home, so I'll just post this link.








4 Creepy Ways Big Pharma Peddles its Drugs | Drugs | AlterNet

7 Reasons America's Mental Health Industry Is a Threat to Our Sanity | Drugs | AlterNet

The 10 Most Dangerous Meds Driving America's Pill Crisis | Drugs | AlterNet

This is why we need to #OccupyBigPharma.

As for what I meant by eastern/western medicine coming together to benefit each other. I meant that eastern medicine could further increase effectiveness by certain scientific findings made by the west, or certain technologies like time-release capsules, etc. Again, best of both worlds, unless one feels that the west has all the answers and nothing to gain, but I think the above link shows a good bit that there's something wrong with the medical establishment. To reject all alternatives is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, if you ask me.


Integrating modern and traditional medicine: Facts and figures - SciDev.Net

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I meant something like this. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

On a side note, here's something interesting I came across involving shamanism.

Though the effectiveness could be that holistic, traditional medicines contain active ingredients that do have health benefits, even if they are non-western.

On a side note, now that I'm on my computer trying to add to this post, NOW my computer just crashed on me. Sheesh, something out there doesn't want me to write this reply.:shoop:

I have this study, (The Lancet being, in the BBC's words, "one of the world's most prestigious medical journals") which says, and I quote:
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.

There has been no/little suggestion that any of those are actually effective beyond what the body does naturally. That's why they are excluded, not because scientists have some bias against god. :P

Unfortunately, misleading language and pedantic wording are not banned. However, lying is, so you might want to talk to whoever manages advertising standards in your area.

Feel free to come up with your own theory of fundamental objects, but keep in mind you have to explain images like this. (Context) ;)

Well, according to the physics that brought you nanotechnology, and the chemistry that brought you artificial genetic engineering, distilling it to that level reduces its effectiveness. You've either got to "take their word for it" (i.e. believe evidence corroborated by basically any chemistry experiment) or show that the foundation of all modern technology is wrong.

From the National Centre on Homeopathy ..

"Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, also pioneered the importance of hygiene.

Hygiene was insisted on by Dr. Hahnemann even though it was almost totally unknown in his era. Obvious procedures such as scraping a wound clean or bandaging with alcohol-soaked clothes and fresh air, exercise, and cheerful company were innovations to Hahnemann's brothers in the medical arts."
"

'Failure in our field' referring to Allopathic Medicine admitting to its 'skewing of its own data'

Critically important conventional drug research routinely suppressed, study authors find | National Center for Homeopathy

The failure of the medical literature to report such findings "has been a major failure in our field," said Eugene Carragee, a Stanford University orthopedic surgeon and editor-in-chief of the Spine Journal. Last year, Carragee spearheaded an unprecedented independent analysis showing that Medtronic and a circle of orthopedic surgeons who have received millions of dollars in royalties from the company systematically have failed to report serious complications with the product.

Carragee said the BMJ analysis and its call for disciplinary action against offending doctors is "an important departure from the historical laissez-faire attitude of the recent past."

A surprising finding in the BMJ analysis was that serious lapses occurred even in clinical trials funded by the National Institutes of Health.

That research showed that less than half of NIH-funded clinical trials were published in a medical journal within 30 months of the completion of the trial and after 51 months, one-third of trials remained unpublished.

While industry-related profit motives may not be a factor in such cases, there are other possible explanations, said senior author Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University professor of medicine and investigative medicine and public health.

Sometimes researchers may get an unexpected finding that contradicts a position they have staked out, he said."It is a conflict of their academic beliefs," he said.

At the same time, medical journals may not want to publish negative findings, he said.

A second BMJ paper looked at clinical trials of drugs that already had received at least one Food and Drug Administration approval. In such cases a law requires the reporting within one year of the completion of the trial.

Despite the law, only 163 of 738 such trials, or 22%, had reported the results within a year, the paper found.

Lead author Andrew Prayle, a researcher with the University of Nottingham, said he hoped the finding would spur more researchers to post summaries of the work at the NIH site, ClinicalTrials.gov.

He died over 150 years ago. That's like citing one of Newton's disproved theories and claiming that the fact that Newton got a lot of other things right is more important than all of the current, more advanced data.

And there's not a single mention of the word "Homeopathy" in that article. Applying it in that way is a completely unjustified logical leap.

"We would like to bring this to the attention of the larger homoeopathic community. As many of you know, there has been an ongoing campaign to discredit and annihilate homoeopathy in the UK by posting false information and unfounded and inflammatory opinions."

Homeopathy is under attack once again | National Center for Homeopathy

THE INQUISITION
How predictable; the Pharmaceutical Inquisition have discovered my site and they are squawking away in a hysterical frenzy. I take this as a compliment and thank them for the publicity.

Alas, the pharma-inquisition has a nasty little habit of nit picking other peoples blogs as if they were a scientific document, misstating issues, taking them out of context and amplifying them into a malevolent distortion of truth.

So getting back to the OP question.

There are some general reports coming out from mainstream, that seem to be indicating this concern, that with all the modern hygenic practices, or more so specifically products, that we collectively are losing 'natural' resistencency to fighting off 'bugs', but that discourse also indicates the rise of 'superbugs', that 'apparently weren't around before. That said the same reports discussions also recommend getting children back into natural enviroments, to boost their inherent natural resilency, so would seem its come full circle, back to less germ aphobic, and more let them play in dirt and get muddy! :)

I have also researched it - simply resorting to an appeal to tradition won't change that fact. Your age has nothng to do with your knowledge; I have known people both older and younger than you both better and worse informed than myself on a wide variety of subjects. Personally, I prefer to rely on research and evidence than claiming that age/time-in-field makes someone automatically correct.

Link time, is it?

BBC NEWS | Health | Homeopathy not a cure, says WHO

Government healthcare reviews:

http://www.publications.parliament.u...tech/45/45.pdf
A critical overview of homeopathy. [Ann Intern Med. 2003] - PubMed - NCBI

Clinical trials:

Examination of bias in papers found to have artificial 'proof' results including systematic methodological error:
Evidence Check: Bryce Wylde

Examination of failures including illegal marketing claims:
Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake

Review of research:
The Scientific Evidence on Homeopathy > Health Issues > ACSH
From a nonpartisan site, examines claims made for and against its efficacy, and comes to the conclusion that it has no effect past the placebo.

A very interesting history, from an unbiased point of view - it points out that homeopathy was often better than 18th century medicine such as bloodletting, but still indistinguishable from doing nothing:
homeopathy - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

Report summarising research:
Homeopathy

Non-scientific BBC trial finds no efficacy:
BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - Homeopathy: The Test


As I said before, he did advocate some methods that were better than many of the day, but doing nothing is also better than bloodletting, for example, yet doing nothing in itself is not a valid form of treatment for any even moderate condition.

False dilemma / excluded middle. Pointing out a failure in process of a specific consumer organisation (from a partisan site, no less) does not challenge the efficacy of an entire category of products which have literally tens of thousands of controlled, peer-reviewed studies to prove efficacy. Underreporting of side effects is known, and is not some kind of 'flaw' in reality, as it does NOT in any way question the effectiveness of real treatment, only that a single element is less reported.

You're misunderstanding the meaning - that has nothing to do with pseudoscience and everything to do with people not wanting to publish when a trial was found to be ineffective. There are millions of failed designs, it's a consequence of volume of research.


How about finding a nonpartisan site to back up your claims?

I thought not.

That has exactly nothing to do with medical treatment and everything to do with over-caution. Also, you misunderstand how bacteria develop resistance.

Your right, clearly, age and education are no indication of capicity for understanding, or lack thereof. What are you trying to 'prove'? And really to whom? I don't know what world you exist on, but I do know in the real world, in the twenty first century, intolerance of individualism that needs to hold on too and prove their point, at all costs, inflexible, aren't part of the new tolerant shift of the evolutionary shift taking place in the human collective consciousness. You're a dying breed of 'the out worn old'.

I provide links to let people read for themselves and make up their own mind, in the end. I am not attached to ego's need to control the outcome for others.
Or society as a whole.
You want to live a life entrenched, do so, I am the kind that will slip betwwen the tightly fisted cracks, and go swimming in life, how i want, where i want, the way i want, while in the distance the cities crumble.

If science is a dying idea, then humanity is doomed. In the long term, I do not think that's an exaggeration.

Since it has to deal with the distractions of irrationality, rhetoric, uncontrolled hedonism and misinformation, science is a very, very dim candle in the dark, but it is the most critical, out of all narratives, because without it, you cannot say who will take advantage of you, who you will hurt, or whether you will hurt yourself in doing anything else. Letting that candle go out would be catastrophic, because then we would lose our only reliable, adaptable weapon in a dark and chaotic world, full of evolving grues who will harm us in every way they get the chance to. You might be happy for a little while now because of it, but in doing so, you've sacrificed your ability to know about anything at more than a superficial level, and that includes anticipating catastrophic and even deadly consequences.

Orwell has a nice image of a boot stamping on a human face forever, but I don't think it would be accurate to describe a future without science like that. It'd be more like falling down a staircase with no handrails or walls to right yourself against. However, the staircase doesn't have the decency to be infinite - at some point, you break your neck, and you find that everything that you and all of your ancestors have ever lived for is irrelevant and meaningless, because humanity is dead, and there's nobody else to even notice, let alone care.

(Sorry if that depressed anyone. I'm in a little bit of a bad mood.)

The only thing he's not tolerating is factual incorrectness. The irony is that you are the one making personal attacks, not him. The earth revolves around the sun. If someone wants to say otherwise great but I am totally justified in pointing out the facts. And I don't really think calling me intollerant for doing so is justified.

I'm not sure that the kind of principles holistic medicine relies on is just 'pure water'... For a lot of the remedies, they contain naturally occuring substances like vitamin c or zinc that encourages the body's natural defence mechanisms. Vitamins and minerals that the body actually thrives on to fight illnesses. Surely it doesn't matter if you take a pill or drink a certain drink to get these minerals, as the human body utilises them both just the same. In which case, neither is more sucessful than the other.

Surely you're not going to claim that the only way the human body can get what it needs to fight off disease is through a pill...?

Also, if this is indeed the case, why do we need modern medicine for the everyday occurences at all? (I'll say again that I do agree that with the threat of more serious disease, more 'engineered' principles are needed to treat them.)

(Also, as a side note, it seems that a lot of people's personal bias is slipping into the debate on both sides in terms of many different issues also creeping in at the sides. We should be focussing on whether homeopathy works and why, not how medicine companies are profiteering, arguing about tolerance of principles, how we'd all be doomed without science or throwing vaguely slanderous comments at each other.)

Actually, I think drug company profiteering is definitely relevant to this topic. Being snake-oil salesman/profiteers is a claim often lobbied against homeopathists, I think it is only fair to point out that the medical establishment is capable of this same behavior.

I think it's also important to point out that homeopathy, holistic, traditional, and natural medicine are four separate things. The first is the most "New Age" (in a non-derogatory meaning), holistic is somewhere in between, and...well, traditional and natural medicine are as old as humanity (maybe even older, as animals have been observed self-medicating before).

Would anyone claim that western medicine has all the answers?

Well said! I had forgotten about that animal behaviour, till you noted it, but I have read about it. That when an animal is sick, it knows what plant to eat in its environment, to heal itself. Also if it accidently eats a poisionus plant, what observation has shown is that not only the animal know what plant to eat to counter the poision, is that consisently the 'remedying' plant is almost right beside, or in the immediate area of the poisionus one. Which than leads into the concern, how many remedys or cures have we lost from Mother Natures garden.

Homoeopathic medicine is (usually) literally pure water, by design. The pseudo-science is that it's supposed to have an effect anyway.

Homeopathic Medicine - Methods of Preparation

Homeopathic Medicine - Methods of Preparation

Exactly - I would also add that it is the duty of that person to try and prove if if they want to be taken seriously, and find a provable method that also invalidates all the literal centuries of research proving the opposite.

So, in other words, yes, pure water.
The equivalent concentration of active ingredient is around the same as a single pixel on a monitor in the entire solar system (~8.8 trillion square miles).

http://rationalwiki.org/w/images/3/31/Magnitude.svg
To demonstrate orders of magnitude, the area of the largest square in this diagram is only 5 orders greater than that of a single pixel. A square that was 10^6 larger would be just under the size of the average computer screen. By 10^15, it would be 1 square kilometer and by 10^20 it would be the surface area of the Earth. 10^28 would be a disc the area of the Earth's orbit...[5] So imagine that one pixel on an image the size of the solar system and we're talking homeopathic dilution.

The methodology is also flawed since it is very specific about 'shake X times', yet person A's n shakes might be equivalent to person B's 2n shakes, or person C's 0.33n shakes.

I wouldn't say they have no negative practices, yet they still undeniably sell products that do work. Stop poisoning the well.

...and I'd agree with you there, but that has nothing to do with your previous point. Homeopathy is not the same as using plants with documented medical effects in therapeutic doses (which is much older, being in some cases older than recorded history). Such things, while sometimes not as effective in pure strength or elimination of associated conditions/symptoms, are viable treatments for some conditions. Unlike homeopathy, they still contain active ingredients, in some cases the same one as mass produced pharmaceuticals, or an isomer (similar structure, same actual chemical composition, same effect) of it.

Sure, but that's 'holistic', not homeopathic. Different things, especially since when disease becomes apparent, it is typically when the immune system is compromised or overwhelmed, so it's past the point that vitamins can do anything alone. Good for prevention, not good for treatment.