Alternate Medicine: Homeopathy

[Mr. Jon Donnis]

Alternative Medicine is alternative for a reason; it’s untested and unscientific. It generates an annual collective income of $15 billion dollars or £7.3 billion and has fast become a trusted aspect of a society that’s obsessed with staying healthy. Originally insurance companies wouldn’t touch any practitioner or business associated with Alternative Medicine, but as its popularity increased insurance companies decided to support them as they became a successful cash cow, securing our trust in there practices.

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[scrappydoo]

Homeopathy and other alternative medicines are becoming big business as you have quite rightly said. Now I for one have nothing against these alternative medicines as long as people are made to realise that they are NOT cures and understand that some remedies CAN comprimise any medication being taken.

I am from an old fashioned family that still use some old fashioned remedies, like warm milk for bathing eyes with when conjuctivitis is present BUT at the same time still using the perscribed medication from the doctors.

I do agree more research needs to go into the remedies to make sure they are safe and people do need educating to realise they are not cures and should only be used along side medication if safe to do so.

[Dippy]

I think so much research has already been done through the ages and people seem to come up with the same answers - in my opinion rubbish! Sorry but as I have said before I will stick to what the doc gives me, at least the research has been done and passed by various boards.

[Deleted]

I feel much safer taking what the qualified doctor gives me.
Yes, some natural remedies probably might work, but I like the tried, tested, passed mediciagtion much better when I am in pain.

[bobdezon]

lolquacks.blogspot.com/

[Kim]

Give me drugs any day!

[muttley]

Any rational person with even a small understanding of some simple science will soon realise that homeopathic remedies cannot possibly have any curative or palliative effect, other than acting as a placebo. That is because they don't contain any active ingredient. It is diluted out to extinction, so that only the solvent (usually water) remains.

For anyone who is not clear on how homeopathic medicines "work", there's a good introductory article over at UK Skeptics:

www.ukskeptics.com/article.php?dir=articles&article=homeopathy.php

Now an argument often heard is that using homeopathic remedies "won't do you any harm", and generally-speaking that may be so. Dosing yourself up with a drop or two of water is unlikely to cause problems. But one area which really is of concern is the protection of travellers against malaria. Use of homeopathic preparations for this cannot be anything other than useless, but many homeopaths continue to recommend them, and gullible people keep using them, with predictable results.

This has been talked about for ages. Here's a bit from Bad Science from over a year ago: www.badscience.net/?p=260. And a similar bit from Quackometer from a year later: www.quackometer.net/blog/2007/07/lethal-trust.html.

Nothing seems to change. People still risk their lives.

Read up about homeopathy, then tell everybody you know about it.

[Mr. Jon Donnis]

welcome to the site Muttley

[muttley]

Thanks.

Just finding my way around at the moment - lots of interesting stuff to go through!

[calamitykate]

Oh I wish I'd read this thread a week ago...

I got absolutely SLATED on a dog owners forum for daring to suggest that whilst a human believing in, and taking, homeopathic "medicine" was up to them, giving something COMPLETELY unproven to a dog to prevent disease, rather than traditional innoculations, was unfair.

Oh! The crossness I encountered was considerable.

Of course I was denounced as being "small minded", "closed minded" and all that hooey.

My original thread on there was about the latest episode of "Dog Borstal" where a woman had a greyhound which was a lovely dog apart from the small matter of it wanting to kill and eat other dogs. She was attempting to help this problem by hanging "calming" crystals around its neck...

I managed to resist suggesting that a rather better way of stopping it attacking would be to hang much larger rocks round its neck so that it couldn't actually move. I didn't think they'd appreciate that.

[mollymac]

It's great news that Tunbridge Wells homeopathic hospital is to close - one down four to go. The demonstration opposing the closure looked pretty scary, though. Here's a link to a pic of it:

www.thinkhumanism.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=4&pos=3

[Mr. Jon Donnis]

I think we have seen that homeopathy can do harm