[quote=“SecretaryofEvil, post:7, topic:719083”]
Relevant clip from Futurama that sums up my opinions on the subject.
[/QUOTE]Nice. I bet they got a few angry letters for that one.
Nice. I bet they got a few angry letters for that one.
Like cures like so all you’ve done is cure your enemy of any sword injuries they might already be afflicted with.
I’ve written a letter to the Minnesota Board of Veterinarian Medicine about a vet who is a homeopath. (2nd link goes to Great Debate about her). I sincerely want her license to be revoked. If it isn’t, my next plan is to start appealing to local law makers to amend the law to make it illegal to have a practice where the two could be “confused”.
Tap water contains everything medicine known to homeopathy-drink up!
According to homeopathy, increasing the dilution increases the potency.
I’m afraid to drink tap water lest I overdose.
My cousin died from the medical effects of Jesus urine. 3 whole molecules was just too damn strong.
[quote=“SecretaryofEvil, post:7, topic:719083”]
Relevant clip from Futurama that sums up my opinions on the subject.
[/QUOTE]
It’s even worse in Canada - homeopathic “medicines” are specifically licenced as “natural health products”.
Efficacy? It’s … water.
To my mind, giving a homeopathic medicine a license based on “proven efficacy” is officially aiding and abbetting pure quackery.
uses evidence submitted by applicants…
I’m sure that’s unbiased. :smack:
Well, that’s the least objectionable part - after all, every applicant for a drug license submits evidence (like clinical trials) in an attempt to prove their product is both safe and effective. It’s the job of the regulator to view this evidence critically.
The thing that burns my ass is that, in the case of homeopathic so-called “medicines”, there can be by definition no actual evidence that the stuff is “effective”. It is, after all, water.
The way the regulator get around this is to invent a whole new category of licence, which requires a different sort of “evidence”. From the guidance:
This is bure, unadulterated bullshit - though the general public may not realize it. Of course there are no randomized clinical trials that demonstrate the efficacy of homeopathic medicines! It’s water.
What this really means is that Health Canada will accept evidence from “homeopathic materia medica, homeopathic pharmacopoeias, homeopathic provings, homeopathic repertories” (that is, bullshit), which the guidelines state is “the most common” form of evidence (really, the only form).
This is Health Canada’s way of having its cake and eating it, too. It proclaims the superiority of actual science (that is, the use of randomized clinical trials), while at the same time accepting pure, unadulterated bullshit as “evidence” - albeit “Level IV” evidence - of efficacy.
I work in the area of medical product regulation, and it never ceases to annoy me that Health Canada accepts this. A member of the general public could be forgiven for thinking that, after all, if Health Canada licences the stuff in a process that proclaims it is designed to only licence products that are “effective”, there must be some truth to it. :mad:
I have a good, university-educated friend… who recently posted on Facebook a link to a crowdfunding page for a homeopathy “documentary” about its supposed effectiveness (and implying that it is actually useful and isn’t bullshit.) When one of his friends called him out on it, he wrote a very poetic and completely nonsensical defense of homeopathy, and had another one of his friends (who is also my friend) agreeing with him on everything. The things these two friends of mine were saying, defending homeopathy, were so stupid that I couldn’t even think of a reasonable thing to reply, so I just said nothing.
I don’t know what I find worse - the fact that these two friends of mine are so defensive of homeopathy, or the fact that this homeopathy “documentary” crowdfunding page has raised so many thousands of dollars!
We’ve resorted to homeopathy in dealing with a sick toddler. We’ve given her some kids Tylenol, but she wants more. So we’re putting water in the mouth syringe we use for giving her the Tylenol, and she’s happily squirting it into her mouth. It’s special medicine water, put in the syringe where she can’t see us doing it. I am ashamed, but needs must, when the devil vomits in your kettle (or when you have a sick, fussy toddler).
That isn’t homeopathy. That is just standard placebo effect which is curiously very real and stranger than most people realize. All of homeopathy is a placebo too but the difference is in the underlying explanation and the profit motive. The placebo effect isn’t just a sham or ineffective treatment. In many cases, it has a very measurable effect over the target condition compared with no treatment control groups. Oddly enough, the placebo effect also works on animals and even for people that are told directly that they are getting a placebo. It is still one of the greatest unexplained mysteries in all of the medical and biological sciences.
There is nothing wrong with ‘medicating’ your toddler that way. Chances are that the fake Tylenol is really helping her for reasons that no one fully understands.
I was joking that it was homeopathy- we’re using water as medicine, after all 
It’s certainly helping us- less fussing. Helping her, too, no doubt- she’s got an upper respiratory infection of some sort, so she needs to drink more water.
My main worry was making her think it’s ok to take a lot of medicine. But that doesn’t hold much water (ha!) when it’s evening and there is a fussy toddler to appease.
The Amazing Randi gives talks on quackery, and he brings a box of homeopathic sleeping pills, shows everyone the overdose warning on the label, and then eats the entire package.
Har!
I tell people that once a year I go to the ocean and have a sip of seawater- which contains the most diluted thus the strongest homepathetic cures all in one sip.
Very interesting. I have made this same point- back in 1810 a lot of what was then “medicine’ would actively harm you. Having a regime which is 100% harmless and could cure thru the placebo and 'caring professional” effect made homeopathy almost a miracle cure back then.
But we’ve moved beyond this.
Seeing as how homeopathy relies on water having a memory of anything that’s been dissolved in it and is stronger for having been enormously diluted, that statement is absolutely true.
Around that time, Lewis and Clark made sure to take mercury-containing laxatives with them on their expedition. At least, if you took homeopathic medicines, you only died of the disease- you didn’t get mercury poisoning from the medicine you took.