http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/about-homeopathy/what-is-homeopathy/

This is complete quackery. The granules are nothing but sugar pills with a tiny drop of ultra diluted water on them; so diluted, in fact, that there are effectively no molecules of the active ingredient. It’s plain ol’water.

WTF???

They tell us that the water remembers the properties of the active ingredient. Bollox. There is no known mechanism that can do this. If there’s no active ingredient, then there’s no pharmacological interaction with the patient’s body. This is wholesale fraud, especially given that the State reimburses this nonsense. It’s used for minor ailments that will eventually go away themselves, so the logical fallacy of posthoc ergo propter hoc comes into play. At best it’s a placebo, at worst it has no effect whatsoever.

Pure charlatanism. And shame on the French government for funding it!

“NDs Coward & Lewis Absurdly Defend Homeopathy as ‘Medicinal Science’ – Citizen-Times, 2009-06-25″ [ISYN]

(see http://naturocrit.blogspot.com/2009/06/nds-coward-lewis-absurdly-defend.html ) [NDs posing as scientists].

What an interesting week or so in the homeo. news cycle:

homeo. awareness week, Zicam, NDs defending homeo. as “science” in a local newspaper in an article categorized as “local news” [NDs posing as journalists].

It’s unfortunate that that newspaper doesn’t apparently label such a fringe opinion piece for what it is, and the public ends up assuming the content of such an article as accurate and competent.

What’s really interesting is that when you search per “homeopathy” in that newspaper online, the results are categorized in a single page, and right under the “local news” citation / link for that article I wrote about, are advertisements / listings for those NDs’ practices who authored the “news” article.

Conflict of interest, maybe? Pseudoscience & commercialism under the guise of medical science journalism, maybe?

“You make the call.”

-r.c.

You ask:
“Why is it, as homeopaths claim, that and extract of onion should treat colds, which are caused by a viral infection, simply because onions irritate mucous membranes and cause tearing and secretions similar to the common cold.”
The answer: A homeopath may use Allium cepa (onion) for those symptoms that it is known to cause in overdose. By using a drug that mimics the symptoms of the body’s efforts to fight infection, Allium cepa helps resolve the viral infection faster.

This perpetuates one of the commonest canards about homoeopathy: that dilute remedies are used to treat the symptoms caused by the crude substance (giving the impression that the dilution somehow leads to the remedies having the opposite effect to that expected). In fact, while Hahnemann’s early provings were of undiluted substances, he initially also used the undiluted substances to treat patients. After finding that this caused “aggravations that amounted, in some cases, to dangerous toxic reactions” he decided that diluting the remedies (and banging them on a Bible, of course) would remove the toxic effects while preserving the therapeutic ones. He also switched to proving remedies at 30C, and most modern provings are carried out using diluted remedies, with the remedies then used to treat the symptoms that they are alleged to cause. See for example Kayne and Caldwell (2006): Homeopathic pharmacy: theory and practice, 2nd ed. pp. 52-53.

Homeopathy gained its greatest popularity in the 19th century in the US and Europe due to its impressive success in treating infectious disease epidemics of that era, including cholera, scarlet fever, typhoid, pneumonia, and influenza.

Homoeopathy gained its popularity in the 19th century because the orthodox medicine of the time was largely ineffective, and often actually harmful. Since homoeopathy involves doing nothing it tended to be less harmful. Additionally, you are almost certainly not comparing like groups. Homoeopathy was popular among the middle and upper classes, so those treated with homoeopathy will inevitably have been better nourished and generally in better health, and thus better able to recover from these diseases. In one example that I have seen used, patients treated at home by a homoeopath were compared to those admitted to hospital for orthodox treatment: surely you can see that there is a potential difference between these groups?

Homeopaths determine what a medicine is effective in treating based on experiments in toxicology called “drug provings.” People here might benefit from learning about drug provings: http://jop.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/5/543

I notice that in that one they didn’t ask their “materia medica experts” to try to identify the remedies from their allegedly distinctive “proving symptoms”, unlike their 2004 paper which found that “the materia medica expert was not able to determine the correct medicine” (see Homeopathy (2004) 93, 179-185 at 182).

Except there is no proof of any of that. An example of a “chronic” disease would be Type 1 Diabetes. Where is the evidence that homeopathy has allowed someone with Type 1 Diabetes to permanently be taken off daily insulin treatment?

In reality, there is no reason for homeopathy to affect any biological system in dilutions greater than 12C (look up Avogradro’s number). The problem with your magical hand waving statements like “may be effective towards other chronic diseases” is that people have substituted real medicine for their chronic conditions like asthma, epilepsy, eczema and even cancer and have suffered greatly:
http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html

“4) Is only ever applied to minor ailments. I’ve never seen a homeopathic remedy for an infected wound or a severe asthma attack. If it is so effective why are there not remedies for more serious ailments? Because dead patients would draw too much attention to this quackery?”

You should give some thought to your questions before you ask them. An infected wound or severe asthma attack would require immediate medical attention that can deliver a swift response to ensure that the condition does not worsen. These conditions indeed do lie outside the realm of homeopathy, but keep in mind that homeopathy does not claim to be a panacea for all our illnesses and ailments. It’s like asking if homeopathy can fix a broken bone. You can’t dismiss homeopathy simply because it doesn’t treat these acute conditions as well as conventional medicine can. Homeopathy may be effective towards other chronic diseases that conventional medicine may not be as potent towards.

I think Wayne Turnbull’s e-mail response is a good enough defence i.e. he didn’t replicate every aspect precisely but the differences he made are not substantial enough to invalidate the test and indeed steps were taken to make sure that folks agreed with the procedure.

You disagree with his perspective and Prof. Ennis is defensive of her results being challenged. No big surprises and no big mystery. Any negative result from any study and you would have found reason to dismiss it.

I mean let’s face it you are still promoting Benveniste’s research so it’s clear that your bias prevents you from ever recognising a failed replication as valid.