# Homeopathy--quackery or legit medicine? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 21, 2011, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899 "2011-07-21T19:49:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/81 "2011-07-22T19:53:08Z")
> [@Lothario\_1](#): > > I’m not a doctor or someone from the medicine profession so I don’t have an obligation to show you research papers on homeopathy. You can probably google them on your own. There may be lots of them. Actually, on this board, you do. As has been stated, this board’s norms require that people who make supposed factual claims are under an obligation to back up those claims. You are claiming that homeopathy, a treatment form that has absolutely no active ingredients whatsoever and that is either water, sugar, or a combination thereof, has medical efficacy. Your anecdotes are not sufficient to disprove the laws of physics. Therefore, you must provide actual published research (again, in peer-reviewed journals) to explain your so-called improvements using products that contain no substances whatsoever. If you did actually experience the results you claim, there are a number of possible explanations for those results that have nothing to do with the ingestion of water (which is all homeopathic “medicines” are). Losing weight does not require homeopathy, losing weight often mitigates knee pain, and “preventing” something is such a loose concept. How do you know that your listed products aren’t also preventing shark attacks? I mean, you haven’t been attacked by a shark lately, so they MUST be preventing the attacks! > [@Lothario\_1](#): > > I’m only an end user of these products and shared my experience on how they worked for my personal benefits. When is sharing one’s own experiences considered foolish? When those experiences violate the laws of physics and decades of scientific research. ---
**Author:** ![awldune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@awldune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/awldune)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/82 "2011-07-22T20:18:31Z")
> [@Lothario\_1](#): > > Knee pain: Something called APIS MEL > > Weight loss: PHYTOLACCA BERRY tablets apis mellifera (honeybee) and phytolacca (pokeberry) are traditional “herbal” medicines. If you took tablets containing several milligrams of these ingredients, it is scientifically possible they had some effect on you. This is not technically “homeopathy” but rather “herbal medicine”. A typical homeopathic preparation of the above would be somewhere between a thousanth of an effective dose and dilutions best expressed in scientific notation (“6C” preparations are 1:10^12, “12C” are 1:10^24). This is what most of us here cannot accept as scientifically valid. We’re talking about a 100ml jar of water with a 10% chance that it might have a molecule of the active ingredient. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/83 "2011-07-22T20:39:34Z")
Part of the confusion comes in the fact that there are certain homeopathic “remedies” sold which do indeed purport to contain superdilute quantities of those same substances which are also used (under entirely different theory) as herbal/botanical medicines. There’s also the fact that homeopaths hold that microscopic-to-nonexistent quantities of these substances can _reverse_ precisely the same symptoms that we’d expect to be _caused_ by them at normally effective doses. For example, purported extractions of bee venom–or of whole bees–being used to treat the swelling and itching resulting from insect bites and stings. A plant that an herbal practitioner might use as an emetic, “sufficiently” diluted by a homeopath, becomes an imaginary treatment for nausea. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/84 "2011-07-22T20:49:32Z")
Why doesn’t the last fraction of a molecule of poison ingested act as a homeopathetic remedy for the rest of the poison ingested? ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/85 "2011-07-22T22:40:11Z")
It has to be diluted about a million times to be effective! So add a million molecules of water and you might get there. Don’t forget to shake the mixture after every dilution of 10; this is apparently a key step. (Yes, I know you were being facetious.) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/86 "2011-07-22T22:41:38Z")
I read once that homeopathy earned its reputation, back in the 19th Century, simply by not killing its patients. Which was an impressive achievement for 19th-Century medicine – allopathic (i.e., mainstream) doctors in those days dosed their patients with truly reckless amounts of drugs, just so they could feel like they were doing **something;** if you wanted to die of your disease instead of the remedy, you had best avoid them. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/87 "2011-07-23T02:11:05Z")
> [@Lothario\_1](#): > > I’m not a doctor or someone from the medicine profession so I don’t have an obligation to show you research papers on homeopathy. You can probably google them on your own. There may be lots of them. > > I’m only an end user of these products and shared my experience on how they worked for my personal benefits. When is sharing one’s own experiences considered foolish? It is considered foolish when you are not sharing your experience, but are just telling us that you are. It also can look foolish to call someone else “ignorant” when they have more knowledge in a given area than you do. At least we can spell the names of medications we have taken. We still don’t know how you took these medicines (alone? with any other changes in habits or behaviour?), or why you believe they had anything to do with your weight loss, relief of knee pain, or hair retention. I still respectfully ask for details and not simple assertions. ---
**Author:** ![Dinaroozie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Dinaroozie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinaroozie)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/88 "2011-07-23T04:02:43Z")
I’m generally not one to weigh in on great debates, but I feel it’s worth providing this link - it’s a good source for people wanting to learn more amount homeopathy: [http://www.howdoeshomeopathywork.com/](http://www.howdoeshomeopathywork.com/) ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/89 "2011-07-23T04:24:16Z")
> [@Dinaroozie](#): > > I’m generally not one to weigh in on great debates, but I feel it’s worth providing this link - it’s a good source for people wanting to learn more amount homeopathy: [http://www.howdoeshomeopathywork.com/](http://www.howdoeshomeopathywork.com/) 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/90 "2011-07-23T04:37:49Z")
But acupuncture works, right? ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/91 "2011-07-23T04:51:23Z")
> [@Dinaroozie](#): > > I’m generally not one to weigh in on great debates, but I feel it’s worth providing this link - it’s a good source for people wanting to learn more amount homeopathy: [http://www.howdoeshomeopathywork.com/](http://www.howdoeshomeopathywork.com/) I LOL’d so hard I woke up the dog. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/92 "2011-07-23T14:49:49Z")
> [@grimpixie](#): > > Not a believer by any means, but I have read something recently in a book called “13 things that do not make sense” by Michael Brooks that seems to indicate that there _may_ be something going on in homeopathic remedies that is not as simple as the placebo effect\* > > A summary of each chapter of the book was printed in New Scientist (chapter on Homeopathy on [this page](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-that-do-not-make-sense.html?page=2)) and the abstract for the research referred to in the chapter can be [found here](http://www.springerlink.com/content/dmby16rmj02dhxat/). > > Of course, the true believers seize on research like this to say “YOU SEE - its all TRUE!!!”, which is nonsense - but to absolutely dismiss it out of hand also appears unwise. Actually, dismissing homeopathy remains wise, despite the research you cite. Because [it’s been debunked](http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathytrans.shtml). The purported positive findings by Benveniste and Ennis (regarding superdilutions’ purported effect on basophils) appear to be yet another demonstration of how even trained scientists can be fooled if they don’t follow proper procedures. [The conclusions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Benveniste) of a team that reviewed Benveniste’s work: \*"In response to Benveniste’s refusal to withdraw his claims, the team published in the July 1988 edition of Nature[3] the following critiques of Benveniste’s original study: 1. Benveniste’s experiments were “statistically ill-controlled”, and the lab displayed unfamiliarity with the concept of sampling error. The method of taking control values was not reliable, and “no substantial effort has been made to exclude systematic error, including observer bias” 2. “interpretation has been clouded by the exclusion of measurements in conflict with the claim”. In particular, blood that failed to degranulate was “recorded but not included in analyses prepared for publication”. In addition, the experiment sometimes completely failed to work for “periods of several months”. 3. There was insufficient “avoidance of contamination”, and, to a large extent, “the source of blood for the experiments is not controlled”. 4. The study had not disclosed that “the salaries of two of Dr Benveniste’s coauthors of the published article are paid for under a contract between INSERM 200 and the French company Boiron et Cie.” 5. “The phenomenon described is not reproducible”. “We believe that experimental data have been uncritically assessed and their imperfections inadequately reported.”\* > [@Lothario\_1](#): > > I’m not a doctor or someone from the medicine profession so I don’t have an obligation to show you research papers on homeopathy. You can probably google them on your own. There may be lots of them. Oh my, yes there are (I linked to a long list of them in the ill-fated reiki thread). What papers purporting to show a positive effect for homeopathy overwhelmingly have in common are 1) small sample size, 2) inadequate blinding and/or other protocol deficiencies, and 3) publication in poorly regarded homeopathy/alt med journals. Good double-blind studies and systematic reviews consistently fail to show efficacy of homeopathy. As with other forms of woo, devotees of homeopathy are left with anecdotes (“it worked for ME, so there”), pseudoscience, rejection of real science under the pretense that it cannot measure their woo, conspiracy theories (Big Pharma Ate My Baby) and the citing of impressive-sounding but [utterly deluded](http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/06/your_friday_dose_of_woo_the_circle_is_co_1.php) authorities who believe in homeopathy like Nobel Prize-winning scientist Luc Montagnier (google him and other Nobel winners who have fallen for quackery. It’s hilarious yet depressing stuff). ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/93 "2011-07-23T15:12:34Z")
> [@Lothario\_1](#): > > I’m only an end user of these products and shared my experience on how they worked for my personal benefits. When is sharing one’s own experiences considered foolish? You need to understand what happened here. You drank some water and got better using your body’s natural healing (or weight loss) mechanisms. The expensive water you drank didn’t do anything. But since your body’s natural mechanisms helped you after you drank the expensive water, you’ve convinced yourself that the expensive water healed you. This is how people who cheat other people make their money. It isn’t because you’re stupid or degenerate. It’s because you took something and it seemed to work. So you’re weighing your personal evidence (even though it isn’t evidence at all) greater than the scientific evidence of the numerous studies that shows that expensive water is utter bullshit. The people who make the expensive water are liars, and are simply evil. They give genuinely suffering people false hope, and they take well-meaning people like yourself and manipulate them into believing nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/94 "2011-07-23T15:18:51Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Why doesn’t the last fraction of a molecule of poison ingested act as a homeopathetic remedy for the rest of the poison ingested? My WAG would be that spiritually that molecule is not different from the rest, they all were used for the initial process of causing illness. In use of sympathetic magic to cure you need a source of healing love introduced in this case into a substance that can carry it to counter the effects. That substance can be the same source of the poison, with loving intent placed into it and diluted to a form that is harmless and actually contains no more toxins at all, that given to the person will magically do the same to counteract the poison. In your question the healing love was not added to the poison so it doesn’t work to cure. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/95 "2011-07-23T15:29:53Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > My WAG would be that spiritually that molecule is not different from the rest, they all were used for the initial process of causing illness. > > In use of sympathetic magic to cure you need a source of healing love introduced in this case into a substance that can carry it to counter the effects. That substance can be the same source of the poison, with loving intent placed into it and diluted to a form that is harmless and actually contains no more toxins at all, that given to the person will magically do the same to counteract the poison. In your question the healing love was not added to the poison so it doesn’t work to cure. > > 😛 For the record, this right here, is complete nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/96 "2011-07-23T16:09:25Z")
I _think_ **kanicbird** was making a joke. I _don’t_ think the explanation offered is the one homeopaths would give, not that it really matters. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/97 "2011-07-23T16:15:25Z")
I’m confused - it looks like sarcasm, but it’s Kanicbird. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/98 "2011-07-23T16:38:54Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > I’m confused - it looks like sarcasm, but it’s Kanicbird. I think he’s making a joke about the poison comment Czarcasm made. But he’s incorporating (seriously) the God’s Healing Love™ nonsense, where medicine only works because of GHL™. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/99 "2011-07-23T17:04:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I read once that homeopathy earned its reputation, back in the 19th Century, simply by not killing its patients. Which was an impressive achievement for 19th-Century medicine – allopathic (i.e., mainstream) doctors in those days dosed their patients with truly reckless amounts of drugs, just so they could feel like they were doing **something;** if you wanted to die of your disease instead of the remedy, you had best avoid them. The medical state-of-the-art in the 18th and 19th centuries was the Heroic Theory, which basically argued that you should do horrible things to the patient until he got better. The logic behind this eludes me. Homeopathy was an outgrowth of this idea. The homeopathic idea was that you would massively dilute the noxious substances that had previously been given full-strength to patients. Supposedly, the good effects of the substance would remain in the dilute form while the bad effects would be eliminated. So homeopathy was an improvement over heroic medicine in the sense that it did nothing as opposed to actively harming the patient. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899/100 "2011-07-23T18:53:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The medical state-of-the-art in the 18th and 19th centuries was the Heroic Theory, which basically argued that you should do horrible things to the patient until he got better. Certainly some treatments were actively harmful, though this was not a development of 18th century medicine. There were aggressive and often brutal medical treatments long before this time (bloodletting for instance goes back thousands of years). The “heroic” school supposedly had its heyday only from about 1780-1850. > [@](#): > > The homeopathic idea was that you would massively dilute the noxious substances that had previously been given full-strength to patients…So homeopathy was an improvement over heroic medicine in the sense that it did nothing as opposed to actively harming the patient. Homeopathy’s introduction was more than just a reaction to harmful medical practices of the era - it was [a philosophy that attempted to address root causes of disease](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy): _“In 1828, Hahnemann introduced the concept of miasms; underlying causes for many known diseases. A miasm is often defined by homeopaths as an imputed “peculiar morbid derangement of [the] vital force”. Hahnemann associated each miasm with specific diseases, with each miasm seen as the root cause of several diseases. According to Hahnemann, initial exposure to miasms causes local symptoms, such as skin or venereal diseases, but if these symptoms are suppressed by medication, the cause goes deeper and begins to manifest itself as diseases of the internal organs. Homeopathy maintains that treating diseases by directly opposing their symptoms, as is sometimes done in conventional medicine, is ineffective because all “disease can generally be traced to some latent, deep-seated, underlying chronic, or inherited tendency”. The underlying imputed miasm still remains, and deep-seated ailments can be corrected only by removing the deeper disturbance of the vital force.”_ Uh-huh. It’s true that doing nothing (which is what homeopathy has always amounted to, apart from possible placebo effects) is an improvement over actively doing something harmful, which is why patients treated with water generally did better than those subjected to bloodletting and harsh purges with noxious drugs/metal compounds. By the way, the term _allopathic_ which was mentioned earlier, was invented by Hahnemann to contrast with his _homeopathic_ philosophy. These days, with the exception of medical educators who occasional use “allopathic” to describe mainstream curricula, virtually the only people using the word do so to demonstrate their contempt for mainstream, evidence-based medicine. It’s not just homeopaths who do this, but advocates of various kinds of woo who seem unaware that their own modalities often aim to provide allopathic remedies (i.e. treating disease with agents which are claimed to have properties that alleviate detrimental symptoms). Thus if you hear someone criticizing “allopathic” medicine, it’s a solid indication that they are woo-meisters who are misusing the term to boot. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeopathy-quackery-or-legit-medicine/589899.md?page=6)