I don’t understand. If you agree that your anecdote does not prove anything, why did you mention it? (One single case only counts as an anecdote, no matter how well documented and verified.)
What really pisses me off is Walgreens is selling homeopathic medicine (Zicam) right next to real medicine. Suckered my wife to buy some for me a couple weeks ago when I was suffering through the worst part of a cold.
I examined the box, found out it was homeopathic, and refused to take it.
Of course, that pissed off my wife. :rolleyes:
(I probably should’ve just taken the stuff to keep the peace.)
By the way, you can’t discount the placebo effect just because the patient is unaware. There are two aspects to the placebo effect, and the smaller of the two is that the patient believes he’ll get better so he really does. The much larger aspect is that most symptoms are not measurable, and when someone evaluates the severity, it’s a subjective process. If the person doing the evaluating knows about the treatment, then the placebo effect still happens.
Cartooniverse, you described the child as unaware, but how unaware is he? Did his parents tell him the medicine would make him feel better, speak soothingly to him while giving it to him, etc.? Parents usually do that when giving medicine (of any kind) to their children. And that seems to help in and of itself.
Results on what? As I already pointed out, by your own words medical opinion was that he was not suffering from what his parents had self-diagnosed.
So since it was diagnosed and pronounced ‘cured’ by the parents, who most certainly were aware, it is a perfect candidate for a placebo effect.
I’m not saying this is what happened, it’s also very possible the child simply got better all by himself. But you cannot eliminate the placebo effect.
… just to expand Qagdop’s point, the placebo effect can exist when the person taking the ‘medication’ is ignorant, if the doctor or someone else close to the patient believes there will be improvement. The patient can pick up on very subtle unconcious cues from those around him or her.
That’s why you use not just blind studies, but double-blind studies, where the person administering the ‘medication’ doesn’t know whether it’s a placebo or active ingredient.
And remember, with homeopathic remedies, a cold will usually clear up in less than a week, while without them, it might drag on for as long as six days.
Qad, for a proper double blind study, shouldn’t someone who didn’t know whether the drops were homeopathical or just distilled water be the one taking data, lest they think the patient cured and thusly subconsciously ignore scratchings and other such signs that the rash is unaffected? I’m not a doctor or a scientist, but I see a few things possibly wrong with drawing conclusions from that story.
Also, I have noticed very few homeopathic remedies for chronic or fatal conditions, leading me to believe that homeopathic remedies make you think you’re getting better while your body does the real work. On the other hand, botulin can effect your body at concentrations consistent with the low-end of the homeopathic power system, so it is concieviable that there are some chemical substances present in microgram amounts that effect people only on the low end of the scale. I doubt it, though.
Algernon, it’s a stretch to call Zicam “homeopathic.” Here’s the ugly history that I’ve been able to piece together:
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There are reports that Zinc helps with the symptoms of a cold. Studies don’t bear this out. Cecil did a column on it.
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Someone had the idea that Zinc suspended in a 1% solution in a gel, put into the nose, *would * help. A company funded a study and they got good results. The study was done by a university, and had a fair number of subjects (more than 150 IIRC). It hasn’t been replicated, so you can file this one under “maybe.”
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The manufacturer of this stuff wanted to get it on the market quickly and FDA approval takes a long time, and has to show safety and effectiveness. So they did an end run - they gave it a latin-sounding name, and got the body that controls the list of what substances are homeopathic, to show that the gel, in large doses, will cause symptoms like those of a cold. I don’t know the details, but it’s not hard to imagine that sticking a bunch of this up your nose would give you a runny nose and make you feel bad.
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Now they can sell this stuff without FDA approval because there’s a giant loophole that the FDA can’t touch “homeopathic” stuff.
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But the study was for a 1% solution! No problem - 1% is just a 10:1 dilution done ten times, so give it the homeopathic label “10X.”
So this stuff isn’t really diluted to the levels that most homeopathic remedies are. And the only reason it’s called homepathic is that they wanted to get it on the market immediately. I won’t buy it because 1) the data is suspect and 2) I think this way of marketing is somewhat unethical.
Which is a good reason for double-blind testing, with controls. Unfortunately, neither of the examples that have been related so far were double-blind or controlled.
CurtC, thank you for that informative post. I guess I overreacted to the “homeopathic” label on the box without doing the proper research.
No, that would be a 10:1 dilution done twice. And yes, by homeopathic standards that would be nowhere near dilute enough to do any good. Don’t forget though that it has to be “succussed” at each stage, or as you or I would put it, “shaken” :rolleyes: