My friend (ah yes, it’s always a “friend,” but really, it is) got a bunch of drops prescribed to her by a homeopathic doctor, and, as usual, I’m looking to discredit a possible quack and ruin my friend’s day. Ha. So can someone explain the ingredients panel to me, the one that lists ‘Herpes Simplex D30’ and ‘Mononucleosis’ above ethanol and water? I’m going to assume that this is supposed to be Preventative or something, but how? What’s the verdict on homeopathic drops? I tried to find the true ingredients on the site (www.tegor.com, which seemed a bit flaky but maybe it’s the translation), but no deal. Anyone used these, maybe?
Here’s the Skeptic’s Dictionary take on it:
http://skepdic.com/homeo.html
Believe it or not, they are skeptical.
That’s a general take on it, and not an explanation of those particular ingredients, which I realize now is porbably what you are looking for. Sorry.
D30 means the ingredients have been diluted with water to one part in 10[sup]30[/sup]. At this level, it’s unlikely there is even a single molecule of the active ingredient left. Homepathy believes that the water somehow “remembers” the essence of the active ingredient.
H[sub]2[/sub]O. Water. Agua. L’eau. Dihydromonoxide.
And it’s expensive water too! 
Niiice. Both links are exactly what I was looking for. Time to strain another friendship. Taa!
***So what the heck is in these homeopathic drops? ***
A big fat placebo! And you should have put quotes around homeopathic “doctor”
Ya’ll are just jealous, is all. You wish you too lived in Philadelphia, so you could go and personally pay homage to Hahnemann College of Medicine. ( I especially love the butterflies in the link…heh ).
I would ascribe it all to placebo effect but for the following tale. This is first-hand, I have played with this child since he was adopted at roughly the age of 3 months. He is now 8. His emotional age is perhaps at the 2 1/2- 3 year old range. He is a Fetal-Alcohol Syndrome child, has Cerebral Palsey, mild mental retardation and a host of other signifigant complications. He’s also sweet, embued with a clever sense of humor and understands more than most people give him credit for. ( He’s also a splendid hugger, that that’s besides the point here. 
)
In the last few years, he has exhibited classic symptoms of P.A.N.D.A.S.. The onset did indeed follow a relentless bout ( bouts, really ) of Strep. Compounding his other normal symptoms, the P.A.N.D.A.S. made this child incredibly miserable, and difficult to live with day to day.
His parents advocate for him at every step, never accepting blindly what just one “expert” says. They saw a handful of neurologists- every one of whom decided that he did not have any P.A.N.D.A.S. symptoms at all, that he just was C.P. and oh, so sorry, it’s getting worse.
They are already believers in Homeopathy, but this child is completely oblivious to such subtleties. A pill is a pill, drops are drops. There is no guile and no presumptions with this child, he’s the very rare 8 year old innocent. They gave him a course of treatments. His symptoms have completely resolved. If it is purely a case of homepathy being the Placebo Effect, how can I possibly explain this? The “force” of both of his parents wishing it would work somehow resolved the symptoms, but the actual treatments did nothing?
I’ve read up on Homeopathy, and I agree that it sounds like lunacy- and yet I have also tried various remedies along the way. It’s always been a non-event. Did nothing bad to me, didn’t seem to help. This event with this child however, is off the charts. He has displayed P.A.N.D.A.S. symptoms for over a year, this treatment course has completely ended the cycle of symptoms.
Sure, it’s just one case- but because of who this particular child is, I cannot possibly accept Placebo Effect as a cause. And, AFAIC, there is no such thing as a miracle.
Cartooniverse
One of my sisters, who is not apt to be a chump, secretly put homeopathic drops in her husband’s tea. He had a persistent rash that would not get better, no matter how many ointments and pills he took. But soon after he started getting the drops (that he didn’t know about) his rash cleared up. Coincidence? Perhaps. But it sure wasn’t a placebo effect.
I haven’t personally seen much effect from homeopathic medicine, except for this one time: I was nagged by my mom (the crackpot) into taking them; she shipped me out a bunch of bottles. And hey, they’re like sugar pills, not unpleasant at all.
I used to make this veggie chili from scratch, and it was tasty stuff. But when I started to taper off of the crackpot pills my mom gave me, all of a sudden the chili gave me the worst gas. Didn’t see the connection at first. But when I’d go on the pills, the chili was fine. Off the pills–oh my.
Now, I wasn’t taking the pills to cure gas, and I didn’t even make the connection at first, but after trying to do without the pills time and again, I saw the connection. Coincidence? Well, sure, I understand that no one else will believe me. I certainly think it does sound weird. But that’s what I experienced.
A final note: a former coworker was a medical doctor in her former life in Pakistan. She said that homeopathic medicines were quite common for more minor things–skin ailments, used for pets, and so on.
You know, I am exposed to the atmosphere which could contain a single molecule of almost anything, and has at some point in history! The memory off all of these bad things must have been remembered so therefore I must be slowly becoming immortal! Nukes, plague, old people, I have it all!
How surprised should we be when the symptons of a disease that the experts say isn’t there to begin with disappears? There is no evidence that the homeopathy did anything here as there was no solid, medically qualified, evidence that there was anything to treat.
Coincidences do happen, some things do just sort themselves out, children do grow out of things.
I try to be pragmatic about homeopathy. If it works, no matter how crazy the science behind it appears, then it works. It’s up to science to explain why. The problem is, of course, that no-one has yet proven that it does work and has anything other than a placebo effect.
And looking at that science for a second; if we’re to believe that the water ‘remembers’ the active ingredient, then we have to accept that it also ‘remembers’ just about every other compound it’s come in contact with since time began. That includes chemicals, dirt, bacteria, pesticides, orange juice and soapy bubbles. What makes the active ingredient so special that your body reacts to it and not to everything else ‘remembered’ in there?
No, homeopathy has a lot of explaining and convincing to do before it looks like anything other than quackery.
Often ypur body fixes itself, and doing nothing is better than some of the “remedies” out there since before the advent of modern medicine.
So it doens’t have to be the placebo effect. But you have to test a large sample to know what the spontaneous remission rate is, for whatever ailment, to know if the treatment did anything.
These quack cures gain leverage from the fallacy of * Post hoc, ergo propter hoc* - happened after, therefore was caused by. Also misunderstanding the difference between correlation and causality.
Sure there is. “Miracle” is just another word for an extremely unlikely coincidence. If something has a one a billion chance of happening, you can be pretty sure that it happens to about 6 people in the world.
Just remember, the plural of anecdote is not data. Only a statistical analysis of a blind test can show the effectiveness of a medical treatment.
What’s the homeopathic remedy for drowning?
That’s true to a point, scr4. Ten thousand anecdotes are still anecdotes. This is why I mentioned my little friend.
How can he deliver placebo effect results when he’s unaware? Or, the husband of the other poster? In point of fact, whether or not you wish to admit it, both instances are perfect blind tests.
Have you heard of the homeopath who drank a glass of water?
He died of an overdose.
toonie, placebo effect still exists even in the circumstances you describe. That’s what is so mysterious about it.
I wouldn’t classify either instance as a “test”. Most ailments get better on their own. Just because a few such instances happen to temporally correlate with taking homeopathic “medicine” doesn’t mean much.