started on 2/28 and has been raging ever since. They’re up to 5 pages by now, so be warned, it’ll take forever to load. But THAT’S the thread with the real information, rather than just slanging opinions back and forth.
Welcome to the SDMB! I was about to say, “We’re not always like this,” but then I realized, well, yeah, actually, we are. :rolleyes:
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
I guess what really bugs me is that one word: “failure.” It’s certainly true that modern orthodox medicine can’t do everything we’d like, even when it is administered in sufficient quantity and quality. But describing its limitations as “failures” certainly has, shall we say, an editorial slant to it.
If a fireman charged into a burning building and saved 4 of the 5 people inside, few would describe the heoric fireman as a failure on account of the one casualty.
The homeopathic doctor, though, would apparently not only call the fireman a failure, but try to sell the survivors a bottle of diluted hot sauce. “Rub this all over your body every day, and eventually you’ll become fireproof! After all, you can’t count on those losers over at the fire department, can you? Here, take these weakened cigarettes, too, they’ll protect you from smoke inhalation!”
A not-very-useful nitpick on your nitpick, it turns out. I wonder why this subject gets me so agitated?
In the long running other thread, I gave an anectdote about a homeopathic medicine working for me, against my expectations. I stand by that, and have also seen this particular remedy (Arnica Gel) work for others. Even though it goes against my intellectual predisposition, I’ve seen it work. So, I’ll consider myself an open-minded agnostic when it comes to homeopathy.
I would like to clarify the analogy of homeopathy to vaccination, though. It gets touched on here, but we should make it clear. Homeopathy takes substances that produce a reaction in the body,(allium cepa-onion- for example, causes weepy red eyes) dilutes them, and then attempts to bring the body back into balance by introducing them to the patient. By my understanding, these are usually substances that produce an effect, but not known pathenogens.
Vaccination takes a known culture of a disease-causing substance and introduces it to the body, creating a now well-understood immune system response, so that when a similar organism is encountered, the body recognizes it and is better equipped to combat it.
These are two very different approaches, to my mind, and I think that, for both sides of the arguement, that distinction should be made.
In open-mindedness to homeopathy, perhaps we will one day scientifically understand the operative principles. But, until then, it really serves no purpose to advance the "vaccination is the same thing " arguement.
Actually, these days vaccines may not even involve the pathogen. Some of the newer vaccines are made by taking the markers from the pathogen and attaching them to something harmless.
Whether it’s poo-pooing the historical claims of wiccanism or debunking homeopathy, we see the same trend:
Cecil writes a less than flattering article on the subject.
The ignorant fans of said subject are enraged that their delusions or income sources were challenged.
Said fanatics jump to the website to see who this Cecil Adams is and find the message board the perfect place to display their sheer cluelessness and to ‘refute’ Cecil.
Their post simply states all over again their incorrect knowledge and baseless claims which Cecil has already debunked. Not to mention lots of whining and crying and emotional pleas to simply let their alternative realities be.
As a new member of the board who came to challenge Cecil, their profile shows that they’re brand new. However, all of a sudden, other posters chime in agreeing with everything the OP said (and adding nothing new) – and wouldn’t you know it – they’re brand new posters, too. Coincidence, collusion, or sock puppets? You be the judge.
The Cecilites dismantle the OP – to no avail unfortunately. For either the OP disappears or plunges into a futile flame war. Sigh.
Peace.
Since Dr. Mitchell simply repeats all the homeopathic idiocies we’ve already heard, this proves that a quack echoes.
…And good ol’ Dr. Mitch, who is so sure of himself that he wrote a letter to the editor, can’t even be bothered to defend his points after his original post.
I think it’s doubtful he ever intended to debate at all. The OP is just Cecil’s column and then Dr. Mitch’s letter to the editor, and that’s all. There’s nothing like, “What do you say to this?”, asking for rebuttal.
I think he just found a bulletin board, tacked his post up there with pushpins, and left. He’s probably putting them up all over town.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
…not to mention the fact that as soon as he knocked on the door, and Arnold opened it, a big ol’ rottweiler named “David B” leaped out at him with fangs bared…
::: fleeing down hallway, big ol’ Rott in pursuit :::
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Thanks, jab1, it’s been too long since I’ve seen that movie. Roll in ze hay!
Hopefully, I can convince you to accept “hopefully” as a disjunct adverb.
Frankly, I would be lying if I said I were confident.
Perhaps this subject is simply too complex for me to explain.
Unfortunately, I would be lucky to explain my way out of a paper bag.
From the local alt-weekly which runs Cecil’s column in Madison:
Bitter Pill
"Cecil Adams seems to think that the millions of people like myself who have relied on homeopathy to successfully treat a variety of illnesses are all a bunch of walking idiots who can’t distinguish between effective medicine and a placebo.
"He clearly failed to do any serious research, or he would have learned that today homeopathy flourishes in England, France, Greece, some Eastern European countries, Sri Lanka and India.
“He also would have learned that there are indeed reliable double-blind studies proving homeopathy’s efficacy. Just because Cecil is incapable of grasping how homeopathy works is no reason to totally discredit an entire modality of healing.”
The first thought that ran through my mind when I read the OP was that it’s not an argument in search of a debate; it’s simply an advertisement, a way for the homeopathic doc to drum up business. Cecil’s column provided the doc to write a defense of the homeopathic enterprise, get his name in the local (alternative) paper, and rake in some customers – people who read the word “potentization” and go, “Yeah, gotta get me some of that!” And how convenient: the doc has even provided us with his commercial email address, the name of the town where he presumably practices, and a link to a commercial web-site!
As I mentioned on the other, now-closed thread, I saw a box of thirty homeopathic lemon-flavored lozenges for sore throats priced at five dollars.
As Woodward and Bernstein were advised, “Follow the money.” And, as H.L. Mencken said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” And since homeopathy is practiced world-wide, it’s obvious Americans have no monopoly on ignorance and misinformation.
Although I can neither explain nor understand it, homeopathy WORKS. Until Jan 18, 2000, I considered it just another crackpot theory. On Jan 18, my two cats had an appointment with a homeopathic vet--and now they're well. These cats were dying, both with weak immune systems and myriad problems. And now they're well! I had never considered that they could be well, I just wanted to make their last days easier. No other vet had suggested they could be cured.
It distresses me to see Cecil dismissing something he doesn’t know anything about. And I agree that the language used to describe homeopathy makes it hard to understand. The concepts behind it are foreign to allopathic ways of thinking, so I’m not surprised Cecil doesn’t understand it. But his close-mindedness about it. . .
Oh, well, if you say so. I mean, who are we to argue?
Well, that sure proves it! One anecdotal account is all it takes to convince me that something that runs completely counter to all of science must work! Hallelujah!
It distresses me to see people repeating this line and assuming that Cecil doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
The only thing that is hard to understand is how people can actually believe in this stuff.
He is not “close-minded” and he does understand it. You, on the other hand, don’t seem to understand how science works. Here’s a hint: We don’t overthrow all of physics, chemistry, and medicine because some woman’s cats got better.
Or do you have some actual scientific evidence to bring to bear?
Sally, here’s another explanation. People and cats get sick and get better all the time. If your cats were sick and got better after taking some homeopathic remedy, that’s called an anecdote. People who aren’t familiar with the science frequently draw faulty conclusions based on anecdotes. It’s easy to do, and a good scientist has to work really hard to keep from drawing conclusions without enough data.
To reach conclusions that are solid, you have to have more. Take data on thousands of cats, being careful to compensate for confounding variables, and see if the cats did any better. And then compare this to a similar group of cats who received a placebo (which their owners thought was a real remedy), and see how the two groups compare.
The problem is that no one has been able to demonstrate the effects of homeopathy in a well-designed experiment. This is not surprising, since if homeopathy were to work, we would have to completely throw out all scientific work done in the last 100 years, work which has been so successful in demonstrating how the world operates, and start over with a new world view based on astrology and psychic hotlines. This is because the fundamentals of homeopathy violate how we know the universe works, as well as simple logic. It’s not that we’re “close-minded”, but that you’re really asking us to throw out 100 years of scientific progress because your cats got better.
I’m glad your cats got better (mine hasn’t after his recent $1500 Iodine-131 treatment). You mentioned that you took them to a homeopathic vet, but you didn’t really say what he did for them. Could he have given them conventional medicine? Was he a “homeopathic” vet, or a “holistic” vet, like the guy in my town who writes a newspaper column called “The Holistic Vet”? The guy I’m familiar with not only does homeopathy, but other unproven treatments in addition to science-based (what you call “allopathic”) medicine.
