The Price of Naturopathic Education

374 Replies to “The Price of Naturopathic Education”

1. You appear not to realise that Naturopathy is not Homeopathy. Neither is it Herbal or Nutritional Medicine. Neither is it Traditional Chinese Medicine including Acupuncture. Nor is it Ayurveda.

   And yet you seem to dismiss every non-Allopathic medical modality because of your poor experience with Naturopathy. Homeopathy is more than two centuries old and Acupuncture some three thousand and yet who flick them away because of your own disappointments.

   Naturopathy is a ‘little bit of everything’ modality and while I am sure there are some excellent Naturopaths, it is probably at the bottom of the list in terms of non-Allopathic medicine.

   in addition, the US has a poorly regulated system on every count and that includes your higher education. The chances of getting a dodgy university (college) or training system in the US is higher than probably in any other developed country. Patently that is what you experienced.

   In addition, the US higher education system is shockingly usurious and Americans pay obscene amounts of money for further education which, in other developed nations is either free or sensibly priced.

   So your complaints, while directed at all non-Allopathic modalities are really sourced in your own personal experience and the disgraceful cost of further education in the US. Is that fair?

   If you were to apply a little of the much-famed objective and rigorous approach of science you would know it is not fair.

   I believe Naturopathy was a poor choice, made worse by poor circumstances, but that does not give you the right to make negative claims about all non-Allopathic medicine.

   It sounds as if you desperately wanted to be an MD and were not accepted and so you took an alternative, Naturopathy. Which disappointed you.

   You say you are living in Germany. Why not re-apply for Allopathic medicine and pour your energy into doing what you wanted to do in the first place.

   Best of luck.

   p.s. they also some have some excellent Homeopathic doctors in Germany.

   1. Welp, a blatant argument from antiquity.

      Why are you relying on age of treatment (which if anything, is a NEGATIVE when it comes to medicine) instead of the prior plausibility and available evidence?
      Do you know WHY skeptics reject homeopathy? Are you not aware that homeopathy is a CORNERSTONE of naturopathy?

      1. Yes, I do know why sceptics reject homeopathy! Ignorance and egregious prejudice sourced in a deluded belief that materialist mechanistic reductionist science knows all.

         Homeopathy may be a cornerstone of Naturopathy in the US but it is not worldwide. More to the point, Homeopathy is so complex that it should never and can never really be a cornerstone of anything. It needs to be studied and practised alone.

         1. “The available evidence is that Homeopathy is highly effective. Ditto for acupuncture.”

            I’d like to see that evidence: please provide citations to the appropriately designed, blinded and controlled clinical studies demonstrating that homeopathy and acupuncture are effective as treatments for non-self-limiting illnesses and injuries. I know of none that suggest they perform any better than placebo treatments.

            “The available evidence is that of course the pharmaceutical industry has looked at Homeopathy but compared to the billions they can make out of materialist science and chemicals, Homeopathy is a poor payer.”
            It’s a great payer–worldwide the market for homeopathic products is roughly $3 billion annually, and homeopathic products can be produced far more cheaply (you’re selling pure water or sugar pills at exorbitant mark-up) generating far greater returns on investment than small molecule or biologic drugs with no necessity to expend any capital conducting research and development or performing multiple phase clinical trials to prove efficacy and secure FDA approval for release. There would also be no capital barrier for entry into that market, as pharmaceutical companies already have production capacity in place to produce homeopathic products under GMP conditions. Economically homeopathy is very attractive—the problem is ethical: they don’t do anything (again, being nothing other than water or sugar pills.)

            1. The available evidence is that Homeopathy is the second most used medical modality after Allopathy and the fastest growing.

               The available evidence is that MD’s and hospitals around the wrld practice it; universities and medical schools teach it and Governments include it in their health systems – none of which would happen if it were ineffective.

               As to the research you wish to see, if you have a modicum of real interest you can find it yourself. I have absolutely no interest in wasting time doing it for you because I learned long ago that where people have a serious interest they are prepared to do serious research. It is not difficult.

               Homeopathy is a poor payer for Homeopathic doctors compare to Allopathic doctors.

               The fact that there are commercial benefits for some large companies is just the way of the world these days. Obscene amounts of money are earned by Allopathic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry despite the fact they kill millions every year.

               Your comment about simply selling pure water and sugar pills is silly and reflects on you. It merely confirms my impression that you are playing games and have no interest in any real research.

               Economically Homeopathy is not attractive. Medicine cannot be patented and does not need constant replacement because of expiration.

               However the economy and durability of Homeopathy is another reason why it is growing in use in the Third World.

               You did make me laugh. You used the word ‘ethical’ in the same breath as pharmaceutical.

               1. The fact that that homeopathy is the second most used modality isn’t evidence that it works, only that it’s popular.

                  That MD’s and hospitals around the world practice it,universities and medical schools teach it and Governments include it in their health systems also isn’t evidence that it works, only that some practicioners believe that it works, that there is a demand for it, and that it’s sufficiently lucrative that hospitals etc. see a profit to be made providing it.

                  “As to the research you wish to see, if you have a modicum of real interest you can find it yourself.”
                  You must realize that isn’t how it works, and that as you’ve made a claim it’s your responsiblity to support it credibly if challenged. I’ll note also that evidence you’re either unwilling or unable to provide is functionally equivalent to no evidence whatsoever.

                  “Homeopathy is a poor payer for Homeopathic doctors compare to Allopathic doctors.”
                  Citations needed: what is the average net profit for a homeopath and a allopath whose practices are of similar size?

                  “Your comment about simply selling pure water and sugar pills is silly and reflects on you.”
                  A typical homeopathic dilution is 100C–that’s 100 serial 1:100 dilutions. Avogadro’s number is only 6.27 x 10^23″: at a 100C dilution zero molecules of the original solute will be present in the final preparation, and it will be completely indistinguishable in any way from pure solvent. (If that pure solvent is adsorbed and evaporated onto sugar pills, the sugar pills will be completely indistinguishable from sugar pills that have not had anything adsorbed/evporated on them).

                  “Medicine cannot be patented and does not need constant replacement because of expiration.”
                  Hoempathic formulations can and have been patented. That said, I’ll note that even if true a lack of patentability wouldn’t prevent generating a return on investment–after all, even though all vitamins, aspirin, etc. are off patent there’s still substantial profits realized producing and marketing them.

                  1. You said: The fact that that homeopathy is the second most used modality isn’t evidence that it works, only that it’s popular.

                     If it were simply popular and not effective it would not be practised by medical professionals or taught in academic institutions. Logic. Neither would it be taken up by Governments.

                     We live in an age of litigation. You are naieve if you think any of the above would touch it if it were known not to work and was just popular.

                     You said:That MD’s and hospitals around the world practice it,universities and medical schools teach it and Governments include it in their health systems also isn’t evidence that it works, only that some practicioners believe that it works, that there is a demand for it, and that it’s sufficiently lucrative that hospitals etc. see a profit to be made providing it.

                     I am not sure how much time you have spent around Governments, academics or the medical field. Trust me, if you were right they would not touch it with a barge pole. The loss of prestige, money, careers would be potentially enormous if they engaged in fraudulent practices which is what you are claiming.

                     It works, simple as that. Occam’s Razor.

                     You said:
                     You must realize that isn’t how it works, and that as you’ve made a claim it’s your responsiblity to support it credibly if challenged. I’ll note also that evidence you’re either unwilling or unable to provide is functionally equivalent to no evidence whatsoever.

                     Says who? It can work any way we choose. And let’s just say I have spent enough time discussing the issue with closed minds and those of extreme subjectivity and prejudice that I can no longer be bothered. It’s easy enough, do a search on medical conditions with positive conclusions for Homeopathy or one on, double blind trials, positive conclusions Homeopathy. Or just access the website of your national Homeopathic association. go for it.

                     You said:
                     Citations needed: what is the average net profit for a homeopath and a allopath whose practices are of similar size?

                     I doubt such data has been collected. As an example however, in Australia a homeopathic consultation is $100 for the first 1.5-2 hour consult and $80 for subsequent hour-long consults, including medication and you might see a Homeopathic doctor two or three times a year, or you might see them a couple of times in ten years. Around 20% is available as rebate if one has private health cover, but with free medical care, many do not.

                     There is no medication for life. There are no expensive drugs. There are no expensive procedures.

                     A GP in australia makes $50 for a ten minute consultation and three times that for over 40 minutes. You work it out.

                     You said:
                     A typical homeopathic dilution is 100C–that’s 100 serial 1:100 dilutions. Avogadro’s number is only 6.27 x 10^23″: at a 100C dilution zero molecules of the original solute will be present in the final preparation, and it will be completely indistinguishable in any way from pure solvent. (If that pure solvent is adsorbed and evaporated onto sugar pills, the sugar pills will be completely indistinguishable from sugar pills that have not had anything adsorbed/evporated on them).

                     You are applying classical chemistry to something beyond classical chemistry. Understanding Homeopathy will never come through classical chemistry.

                     It works.

                     yes, Homeopathic formulations can be patented but that is not what I was talking about. You can patent any individual formulation. Homeopathic medicine cannot be synthesized and thereby patented for profit as happens with Allopathic.

                     The issue is not about profit unless you believe all doctors should work for nothing. I would support that but I doubt the medical industry would given the massive profits in Allopathy even as it kills and hospitalises millions every year.

                     1. I teach at a North American medical school and I can guarantee that homeopathy is not taught at my reputable school. Again, please provide a source of a single North American medical school that teaches medical students homeopathy as part of their curriculum. I highly doubt it!!

                        1. And I attended a North American medical school, and I can confirm that homeopathy was not taught.

                        2. It requires a level of enlightenment and open-mindedness for medical schools to teach Homeopathy and the US is hardly a bastion of that. But the Europeans can show you how it should be done.

                        3. The US was at the forefront of Homeopathy in the 19th century but you are correct, it is quite backward at this time. Then again, the US has the most corrupted systems in general given the power and influence of corporations so it will take some time for Integrative Medicine to take hold but take hold it will.

                           It was the medical/pharmaceutical industry which set out to destroy Homeopathy in the US in the early 20th century because it was so successful.

                           Some inroads have been made in recent years by the anti-Homeopathy movement but the ever more sensible an enlightened Europeans, Scots and Irish have not been rolled by BigPharma.

                           But Integrative Medicine is the way of the future and it includes Homeopathy as it must, so things will change.

                     2. “If it were simply popular and not effective it would not be practised by medical professionals or taught in academic institutions.”
                        That does not follow. Blood-letting, if you’ll recall, was previously both popular, practiced and taught despite being not only ineffective but harmful. It was only abandoned when clinical studies demonstrated it resulted in increased mortality without providing any benefit.

                        “We live in an age of litigation. You are naieve i f you think any of the above would touch it if it were known not to work and was just popular.”
                        I’m not the one being naïve here. Popularity, absence of litigation, etc., can not serve in lieu of evidence demonstrating efficacy. Recall that Hahnemann developed homeopathy in 1796—it’s been in use for more than 200 years. If it were truly as effective as you claim there would by now be solid evidence demonstrating efficacy
                        .
                        Yet all you seem able to offer in support your claim is “Look—a lot of people believe in it, practice it, teach it, and have convinced some insurance programs to reimburse its costs.” You haven’t even attempted to produce a single well designed, appropriately controlled and blinded study demonstrating it’s effective as a treatment for any non-self-limiting illness and injury. I wonder why that is that? (That last was a rhetorical question, by the way.)

                        “I am not sure how much time you have spent around Governments, academics or the medical field.”
                        A great deal of time around the latter two.

                        “Trust me, i f you were right they would not touch it with a barge pole.”
                        You’ve given me no reason to trust your claim in this case.

                        “It works, simple as that. Occam’s Razor.”
                        You’ve offered no actual evidence that it works, so there’s no reason to conclude that it does.

                        “Says who?”
                        Anyone who possess any intellectual integrity. It isn’t the responsibility of others to hunt for evidence to support claims you yourself have made: it’s your responsibility to support those claims credibly.

                        “And let’s just say I have spent enough time discussing the issue with closed minds and those of extreme subjectivity and prejudice that I can no longer be bothered. “
                        And again: evidence you claim exists but you can’t be bothered to provide is the functional equivalent of no evidence whatsoever.
                        “It’s easy enough, do a search on medical conditions with positive conclusions for Homeopathy or one on, double blind trials, positive conclusions Homeopathy. Or just access the website of your national Homeopathic association. go for it.”
                        If it’s easy, identify the evidence and provide citations in support of your own assertions. Again: it’s your responsibility to do so, not mine.

                        Tell you what: to make it as easy as possible for you simply provide a citation to what in your opinion represents the single most credible and compelling clinical study demonstrating homeopathy is effective as a treatment for a non-self limiting illness and injury, and we’ll discuss it.

                        You said:
                        Citations needed: what is the average net profit for a homeopath and a allopath whose practices are of similar size?

                        “I doubt such data has been collected.”
                        Then you can have no factual basis for your statement that “Homeopathy is a poor payer for Homeopathic doctors compare to Allopathic doctors”_agreed?

                        “There is no medication for life. There are no expensive drugs. There are no expensive procedures.”
                        Citations needed.

                        You are applying classical chemistry to something beyond classical chemistry.”
                        And your evidence demonstrating that homeopathy is magical (i.e., that it ignores the laws of physics such that it is somehow ‘beyond classical chemistry) would be …what, exactly? Be specific.

                        “It works.”
                        Then you should be able to provide actual evidence that it works. Please do so.

                        “yes, Homeopathic formulations can be patented but that is not what I was talking about. You can patent any individual formulation. Homeopathic medicine cannot be synthesized and thereby patented for profit as happens with Allopathic.”
                        “Allopathic’ medicine itself can’t be and is not synthesized or patented to any greater extent than is homeopathic medicine: in both cases it’s the drug formulations or medical devices used that are patentable.

                        And I’ll note that despite your concerns re: patents companies are clearly able to generate substantial profits producing and marketing homeopathic products—Boiron, for example, made a profit of 144 million euros in 2014, on sales of 610 million euros.

                        “The issue is not about profit unless you believe all doctors should work for nothing.”
                        I don’t see how that follows_-and if the issue isn’t about profit, why did you bring up the subject in the first place?

                        1. My argument was that if Homeopathy were not effective it would not be practised by medical professionals or taught in academia…. for the simple reason that they would be behaving in a fraudulent manner and would be liable to lawsuits and would lose credibility.

                           You cite blood-letting yet again and as I pointed out, it was patently effective for thousands of years, albeit harmful if used to excess or used wrongly, and it has been validated in recent times by medical science.

                           It was abandoned because science was in ignorance of how it might work and the arrogance of the science medical industry knows no bounds.

                           So, blood-letting was a poor choice on your part.

                           You clearly have little understanding of Government, science, medicine and academia if you think a lack of litigation means anything other than that a procedure is valid. Particularly in the litigation obsessed US.

                           There is solid evidence demonstrating the efficacy of Homeopathy and a part of it is the embracing of the methodology by doctors, hospitals, academia and government.

                           No, it is not my claim: “Look—a lot of people believe in it, practice it, teach it, and have convinced some insurance programs to reimburse its costs.”

                           That is your misinterpretation of what I have said.

                           I said, demonstrably it works and demonstrably it is not fraudulent.

                           Since you ignore all advice regarding how you can do the research you demand I fail to see why I should waste my time doing it for you.

                           If you have spent a lot of time around Government and the medical field you have not taken on board the reality they are areas with kneejerk reactions to the possibility of looking stupid or being sued.

                           Perhaps you are a idealist in your field.

                           I remain bemused at how flimsy is the so-called evidence and how lacking in intelligence and integrity the case and yet the constant demand is for proof which will never be considered anyway.

                           Homeopathy works and that is proof enough. If you have no interest in it that is irrelevant in the scheme of Homeopathy and of life.

                           I have supported claims credibly – around the world MD’s spend more than two years qualifying as Homeopaths; hospitals practice it, medical schools teach it, etc. etc. and to anyone with a partially open mind that is proof of two things – a. it works and b. it is not fraudulent.

                           No, it is not my responsibility to deluge you with research data since we both know your mind is closed and you would not read it and if you did you could not process it.

                           If you are seriously interested, the onus is on you to prove to yourself one way or the other.

                           And since there is no single, most credible and compelling clinical study of any Allopathic medicine it is delusional to demand I for Homeopathy. That is why mega-analysis was invented.

                           And since most research data is flawed anyway, what is the point on any count?

                           Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according
                           to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with
                           experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance
                           that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.

                           https://www.newscientist.com/a…

                           http://www.economist.com/news/…

                           Quote: Most scientific research
                           unreliable or completely fraudulent says ex editor of Lancet.

                           http://www.drugawareness.org/e…

                           Scientific peer review useless…..

                           http://www.independent.co.uk/n…

                           Quote: Dr. Marcia Angell, a
                           physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal
                           (NEMJ)[sic],which is considered to another one of the most prestigious
                           peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject
                           quite plain:

                           “It is simply no longer possible to
                           believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the
                           judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no
                           pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two
                           decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.”

                           http://acsh.org/2015/05/scienc…

                           you said:
                           Then you can have no factual basis for your statement that “Homeopathy is a poor payer for Homeopathic doctors compare to Allopathic doctors”_agreed?

                           Perhaps I am better at basic maths and common sense. Crunch the numbers given to you on MD’s charges and time-frames and those on Homeopathic doctors and it is pretty clear who earns the most.

                           A modicum of knowledge about Homeopathy would know there are no expensive drugs, no medication for life and no expensive procedures. You consistently reveal abject ignorance. Never let facts get in the way of propaganda hey? so much for scientific rigour.

                           Magic is trickery. There is nothing magical about Homeopathy it is simply advanced in terms of the current understandings of science. That is not magic that is simply a lack of knowledge, understanding and development by modern science.

                           I did provide evidence it works. You ignore it.

                           Sigh, you have problems processing. I never said Allopathic medicine itself could be synthesized or patented…. I said Allopathic drugs can be and are.

                           Homeopathic medication cannot be synthesized but of course, a particular formula could be patented.

                           I don’t think you help your case by talking about companies producing Homeopathic remedies making a profit given the countless billions made by Allopathy.

                           In the best of worlds all medicine would be free.
                           You brought up the issue of profit.

                           We live in a commercial world, to our cost. I do not believe Homeopathics should be self-prescribed or sold over the counter and neither do I believe formulas are true to Homeopathic medicine. But we live in an imperfect world. There will always be people seeking to profit.

                           You cannot condemn Homeopathy because some seek to profit from it without condemning Allopathic medicine in entirety given that it is even more profit-based.

                        2. “You cite blood-letting yet again and as I pointed out, it was patently effective for thousands of years, albeit harmful if used to excess or used wrongly, and it has been validated in recent times by medical science.”
                           Your evidence that it was effective for the indications it was used to treat during those ‘thousands of years” would be what, exactly? Be specific.
                           Your evidence that it’s use as a treatment for the indications it was used to treat for those thosuands of years has been validated in recent times by medical science would be what, exactly? Again: be specific.

                           “There is solid evidence demonstrating the efficacy of Homeopathy and a part of it is the embracing of the methodology by doctors, hospitals, academia and government.”
                           Why then have you been compelely unable to point us to this evidence? The whole “it’s embraced by doctors, etc.” is simply an argument from authority.

                           “I did provide evidence it works. You ignore it.”
                           You’ve provided no evidence that it works to be ignored: instead you’ve asserted repeatedly that it works: you’ve offered nothing other than two known logical fallacies (argument from popularity and argument from authority) to support your assertions.

                           “I said, demonstrably it works and demonstrably it is not fraudulent.”
                           But you’ve offered no actual evidence in support of this claim, despite repeatedly being asked to do so. Why is that?

                           “Since you ignore all advice regarding how you can do the research you demand I fail to see why I should waste my time doing it for you.”
                           You should identify and provide evidence in support of your statements because you’ve advanced them. Basic intellectual integrity requires you credibly support your own arguments rather than insist others go looking for evidence to support claims you yourself have made.

                           “Homeopathy works and that is proof enough.”
                           It hasn’t been established that it works, though—certainly you’ve offered no evidence that it does—so your ‘proof enough’ is ‘no proof whatsoever’.

                           “No, it is not my responsibility to deluge you with research data since we both know your mind is closed and you would not read it and if you did you could not process it.”
                           My mind is not closed: provide actual evidence demonstrating the efficacy of homeopathy as a treatment for any non-self limiting illness and injury and I’ll happily revise my position. One goes where the data leads, whether that’s where you want to go or not.

                           All I have time to address right now.

                     3. you said iatrogenic is the third leading causing of death. Reference please!?!? Here is an up to date list! i do not see iatrogenic on the list. must be big pharma hiding the data?
                        Number of deaths for leading causes of death
                        Heart disease: 611,105
                        Cancer: 584,881
                        Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
                        Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
                        Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
                        Alzheimer’s disease: 84,767
                        Diabetes: 75,578
                        Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
                        Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
                        Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149

               2. Do you realize that if you could prove homeopathy works they you would win a noble prize for physics and probably medicine. It defies all we know about physics

                  1. Do you realise there is no need to prove Homeopathy works because it has been proven for centuries which is why MD’s and hospitals around the world practise it; medical schools and universities teach it and Governments include it in State medical systems?

                     Proving how Homeopathy works would no doubt win prizes.

                     And no, it does not defy all we know about physics, it defies all we know about classical physics and all we currently believe about quantum physics. That is a very different thing.

                     You assume that what science knows at this point in time is all that there is and that in itself is unscientific.

                     1. ”You assume that what science knows at this point in time is all that there is and that in itself is unscientific.”

                        they all do [ ”pro” science types that tend to defend gmo, vaccination, conventional medicine] and you are right. it IS unscientific, it’s the opposite of the scientific spirit of inquiry.

                        1. Many advances in science have been made in the face of rejection, mockery, ridicule and conviction from most scientists of the age, convinced that they were right, because they could not or would not ‘think outside the box.’ In the case of medicine, often sadly at the cost of people’s lives.

                           Doctors were adamant that bacteria did not exist and continued to move from cutting up cadavers to delivering babies and death. The insanity of it beggars belief but they did it, no doubt ignoring the advice of women healers and midwives who had long ago learned the importance of hygiene.

                           Not a lot has changed really although the positive thing is that generally change is inevitable and the scientific luddites get dragged along eventually.

                        2. very much so. pushing out woman healers and midwives seems to be a very substantial and important part of the history of male dominated modern medicine.

                        3. They did not just push them out. They burned them.

                        4. Oh please don’t make this about feminism; it’s insulting to us feminists who are in touch with reality. I don’t know if you’ve realized but women become “healers” all the time these days by going to medical school and nursing school. And female medical researchers have contributed a lot to modern medicine. It’s insulting to women to claim that real medicine is some how inherently male.

                           The history of the medical profession is, of course, rife with misogyny, as is the history of most professions. Women have had to fight to get into most of them. Do issues of sexism remain in the medical system now? Yes, of course they do, because issues of sexism remain in world now. The problem is sexism, not medicine.

                        5. This might seem nitpicky but I feel like referring to it as “misogyny” waters down the word and it’s meaning (which is common among modern feminists). Is it sexist? Ofc, but that doesn’t mean there is a hatred of women lurking behind these historical motives

                        6. Eh, I would read more about the history of medieval medicine in particular before you decide that there was no “hatred of women” involved. A lot of physicians of that era were members of the clergy who were celibate and whose knowledge of women pretty much came from Church teachings about them, which were basically that women were wicked temptresses who were responsible for all the sin in the world (because Eve). They were downright terrified of and repulsed by women and it showed.

                        7. Sure. I was thinking more recent than that but that I guess would be a mistake on my part

                        8. the problem is sexism, misogyny, and the hierarchical, patriarchal medical system.
                           and given how women are treated by this medical system is very much a feminist issue, be it general health care, abortion, birth, vaccinations , as well as sovereignty over one’s body generally.

                        9. Luckily, women are making major inroads in the medical field. I agree, science is still male-dominated.

                        10. it wasn’t always. and this isn’t just about women working in fields. there’s no betterment for humanity just because a few women work in any given field being absorbed into those structures.

                        11. I hope they will restructure the system.

                        12. WE will have too by refusing what is. and embracing/supporting what we want, which can be hard with limited options.

                        13. No one is assuming this, sablemouse. While there is a lot of discovery still to be made, but there are some facts that have been firmly established. One of those facts is that for homepathy to work as claimed literally everything we know about chelsitry, physics, biology, physiology, etc., would have to be not only wrong but spectacularly wrong.
                            Surely you’re not arguing that because we accept we don’t know everything we can’t possibly know anything?

                        14. you contradict yourself.

                        15. Are you familiar with the idea of prior plausibility?

                        16. How so, sabelmouse? Point out the cotnradiction.

                        17. do your own thinking.

                        18. Got nothing, huh?

                        19. So your argument is that science must automatically reject anything which potentially could prove current beliefs to be spectacularly wrong?

                            Does that not run counter to scientific rigour, integrity, objectivity and process?

                        20. That’s not the argument. The argument is that it takes an immense amount of evidence to overturn scientific consensus in multiple fields. Hell, I can’t even think of an example where this has happened in more than one field.

                     2. I don’t realize this, roslyn, because I’m unaware that homepathy has been proven to be efetive at all.

                        The evidence which proves this would be what, exactly?

                        Oh, wiat…that’s right, You don’t have any.

                        1. Your correct statement would be:

                           You don’t have any evidence I would or ever could accept because my mind is closed utterly to the possibility that Homeopathy works.

                        2. My mind isn’t closed: if you could provide actual evidence that homeopathy is more effective than an appropriate placebo as a treatment for a non-self limiting illness or injury I’d revise my opinion. The problem instead is that you’re unable to do so.

                        3. I know Roslyn keeps saying we are closed minded and haven’t done the research. I have actually spent a lot of time lookong at all the homeopathic “studies” on pubmed and very few pass scientific rigour (words she ironically likes to use). I found 5 major meta analyses all that say homeopathy is nothing more than placebo. I have not found a meta analysis that says the opposite. I have read the studies (which I can guarantee Roslyn has not) and looked at whether sample size, blinding and whether appropriate statistical test was used …and it is all lacking. So my conclusion as is almost every other academic out there …there is simply no evidence. It is beating a dead horse to actually repeat these studies since the academic community agrees (as evidenced by the open letter from 90 of the worlds most prominent scientists –and with no retort from prominent scientists suggesting otherwise)
                           So I have done my research and come to my conclusion. So from my point of view it is a closed subject

                  2. You might find a book by Bill Gray, a Homeopathic and Allopathic doctor, interesting:

                     https://books.google.mw/books?id=6lXbygsxTNcC&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=homeopathy+will+be+understood+through+biophysics&source=bl&ots=BxnlDmiAMx&sig=yeIk-6rGURaSk1ADt-g_Xl3O1TU&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=homeopathy%20will%20be%20understood%20through%20biophysics&f=false

                     1. Can you instead provide citations to publications authored by Bill Gray in first or second tier peer reveiwed scientific journals which demonstrate the efficacy of homeopathic treatments?

                        1. Read the book. You might learn something. Oh, hang on, that’s right you don’t want to learn anything.

                  3. The key to understanding how Homeopathy works will come from thinking beyond the purely material. Science knows that everything has its own vibration – frequency, energy etc., and that is the level at which Homeopathic medicine works on the material.

                     And while the ‘water has memory’ theory gets flung around, the issue is not really about water having a memory but about the capacity of water to receive, record, retain and release information… at a ‘frequency’ level.

                     There are some fascinating areas of research in this regard, despite the general damnation by conventional science. Then again, a true scientist retains objectivity, an open mind and great curiosity.

                     There is so much science does not understand and it would be foolish to conclude that this world and everything in it can be reduced to the material and mechanical when the facts demonstrate the opposite.

                     Science is a useful tool, it is not an arbiter of all things and it should not become a religion where those who dare to dissent are ‘burned at metaphorical stakes,’ as currently happens in regard to topics like Homeopathy.

                     Luc Montagnier’s work is interesting:

                     http://montagnier.org/Electromagnetic-signals-DNA

                     Science will get there and be able to understand how Homeopathy works but, until it does and after it does, Homeopathy will continue to heal and to cure.

                     1. Your evidence that water can receive, record, retain and release information at a frequency level would be…what, exactly?
                        Why is the word frequencey in quote marks in your post above?
                        Are you using some idiosyncratic definition of the word ‘frequency’ here?
                        If so, please tell us what you’re actually referring to, how it is detected and measured, and what units it’s expressed in.

                        As for Montagnier, the findings most recent study he published that I’m aware are incompatible with homeopathic principles (see https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-montagnier-homeopathy-study/)

                        1. Science-based medicine is sadly a propaganda site. You need to read Montagnier’s research and make up your own mind as opposed to extruding the views of others.

                           Frequency is a word which has multiple meanings hence the use of ‘frequency’ indicating that it is the definition relevant to a capacity to receive, record etc.

                           Frequency in this case as wave, vibration…. but I assume enough common sense for others to work that out.

               3. The available evidence is you have no evidence whatsoever and are merely shovelling BS.

                  1. Thank you for revealing your egregious prejudice and high levels of subjectivity. Where is that scientific rigour when you need it?

                     1. Remember those times you were asked for evidence?

                        Where’s YOUR scientific rigor?

                        1. Remember those times I replied? My scientific rigour is in believing that those who have true objective curiosity are more than capable of finding all of the information they want.

                        2. All the evidence I’ve found supports only the conclusion that homepathy is not effective as a treatment for anything. If you’ve found evidence suggesting otherwise I’d very much like to consider it but as long as you refuse to offer citations I cannot.

                        3. Your replies are not evidence.

                           And your “scientific rigour” is nothing of the sort.

                           Science is not about “believing.” Nor is it about the information you “want.”

                           What you are describing is religion.

                     2. You keep claiming there is lots of “evidence” yet you seem continuously unable or unwilling to produce it.

                        The empirical evidence is that you have none.

            2. Why can you not patent homeopathic medicine? The only reason you could not is that then it would have to go under the rigorous testing that pharmaceuticals must go through and it would never show significance in a double blinded randomized control trial. So no one would spend the money to try. It is simply water.

               1. Allopathic drugs can be patented because they are synthetic copies of the real thing. You cannot make synthetic copies of Homeopathic medicine.

                  And since the third biggest killer is now, iatrogenic, most of it from pharmaceuticals, your much famed double blind randomized control trials are, well, pretty useless don’t you think?

                  Apart from which they work, when they work, on the basis of classical chemistry and Homeopathy is more advanced than that.

                  You must let all those doctors and hospitals around the world know they are selling water! And please inform the universities and medical schools they are supporting the sale of water and are involved in fraudulent activity.

                  Oh, hang on, do you think they might have done the research you have not done and know Homeopathic medicine is not simply water? I suspect so.

                  http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2014/03/17/randomized-controlled-trials-rcts-a-flawed-gold-standard/

                  1. Every single cochrane review shows that homeopathy is nothing more than placebo. It has been studies to death with zero proof put forward. If we have to explain to you why anecdotal evidence is useless then there is obviously no arguing with you. And please use real references in peer reviewed journals. I’m not willing to look at sources such as the peoples pharmacy

                     1. I repeat, if this were true then not one MD, hospital, medical school, university or Government would touch Homeopathy. Many do so whatever your Cochrane review says it is quite simply wrong.

                        And I can assure you that pure placebo does not work on cells, body tissue, plants, unconscious animals and humans or months after being taken.

                        Homeopathy has not been studied to death. It has barely been studied at all.

                        But you know, the approval of science is not required for it to continue to thrive. Just because American doctors are less independent minded and less open-minded, and more influenced by the medical industry, does not make you or them right.

         2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/20402610/
            Here is some strong evidence that homeopathy does nothing Why don’t you provide us some strong evidence that it does

            1. Because I am completely uninterested in making a case for you. If you are interested you can do your own research. There is a wealth of it out there although less than there will be when modern science can advance beyond the limitations of materialist reductionism.

               The most compelling evidence is that Homeopathy has survived and thrived for more than two centuries and is the second most used medicine after Allopathic and the fastest growing, along with the fact that around the world it is practised by MD’s and hospitals, taught in medical schools and universities and embraced by Governments as part of their health system. None of that would happen if it did nothing because medical professionals, academics and politicians live in terror of being sued or looking like idiots.

               1. Could you please provide me with one sample of a medical school that teaches its students homeopathy and uses it to treat patients in North America.

                  1. There may be none in the US but there are plenty in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Just because the US is less enlightened does not mean the rest of the world follows.

               2. Here is another peer reviewed article in lancet for you done you didn’t like the first one. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/16125589/
                  I know, I know it is all one big conspiracy by big pharma to hide the amazing effect of water.

                  1. I don’t believe in conspiracies. I find human beings arrogant, ignorant, stupid, greedy, incompetent enough to create any kind of chaos without the slightest plan.

                     1. I actually believe that most people who use homeopathy have no clue what it is and when given an explanation, they are quite horrified. It is the same with the basis of a lot of alternative medicine. Do you realize that homeopathy is a substance, often toxic, that is diluted over and over till it is not perceptible. Did you know that the basis of chiro is that all disease is caused by subluxations (yet to be proven in any way) of the spine. Naturopathy and vitalistic force… When I actually tell people that this is what they are ascribing too they are quite appalled and feel cheated

                        1. Oh dear, so you have never met anyone who consults a Homeopath?

                           Research shows most people who turn to Homeopathy do so after years or even decades of failed Allopathic treatment. Understandable they are converts when cured. That is not to say cure is guaranteed because no medical modality can guarantee cure, but when they are cured after failure by conventional medicine they are impressed.

                           Most people who consult a Homeopathic doctor will also consult an Allopathic doctor and generally are open to various medical modalities which is very sensible.

                           I know exactly what Homeopathy is but I suspect you do not.

                           I know a bit about chiropractic medicine but it does not make sense to me and is a very basic medical system compared to the brilliance of Homeopathy.

                           As to ‘vitalistic’ force, well it depends how one interprets it. I am not greatly impressed with naturopathy either. But ‘vitalistic force’ is another term for the body as energy/frequency. It is a complex topic and I don’t intend to pursue it here.

                           I have no idea what you tell people but given your egregious prejudice and high levels of ignorance in regard to non-allopathic medicine I am not surprised they are appalled. If they feel cheated them you are convincing them they have been. Th problem is in you, not necessarily their experiences.

                        2. Yeah, I’ve also noticed that most people have no idea what “homeopathy” really means. Because it incidentally contains the word “home,” many seem to think that it is all about “home remedies” or “natural remedies.” And though most home remedies are also ineffective or not very effective compared to actual medicine*, even a lot of people who believe in them would still find the principles of homeopathy to be utterly ridiculous.

                           *I use some “home remedies” but only those which have a clear mechanism of action. For example, I drink strong peppermint tea when I have a sore throat because the menthol gives temporary pain relief and I find it to be more effective and more pleasant than OTC menthol delivery systems. In that case, there’s no mystery to how it works and no magic required to explain it.

                  2. One study is one study. Homeopathy works. All that can be said is science at present cannot explain how it works but work it does.

                     1. So what percentage of the best studies done on homeopathy show it works? Where are your systematic reviews?

                        Ofc we shouldn’t trust just a single study but one study is worth more than a thousand anecdotes

                        1. I am not out to prove anything. There is no need. Homeopathy works. People don’t care that science does not know how, they just care that it works. It will certainly be interesting when science advances enough to understand how it works but it is not crucial to its us or efficacy.

                        2. I think you’re missing the point.
                           We have not established that homeopathy works, at all. IF we have strong evidence that it worked but didn’t know how, it would be very interesting indeed but we have strong evidence to suggest it doesn’t work and no reason to believe it would in the first place

                        3. We have established it works or no MD, hospital, medical school, university or Government would touch it. They would be fraudulent if they did. Of course it works.

                        4. That’s not a convincing argument. People can be convinced by bad evidence, even hospitals and governments. Otherwise, your argument works in reverse and any government that reject homeopathy is evidence that they don’t want to commit fraud

                           Cmon, you can do better than that

                        5. Having worked in a major hospital preparing material for publication and having worked for Government doing the same and having worked for universities doing the same, I can assure you, no hospital, doctor, academic institutition or government does anything which might compromise them without first fully researching all possibilities and discussing it with lawyers.

                           Perhaps my experience in the medical, academic and government field is broader than yours.

                        6. now you are really lying….with your complete lack of understanding of statistics…there is no way you worked for major hospital, doctor, academic etc.

                        7. Do you not read or do you not process. I said, worked in a major hospital preparing material for publication, i.e. editor and writer. Ditto for academia and Government.

                           And accusing others of lying based on your own prejudice reflects on you.

                        8. My background is an MD with a degree in public health and international health. I work in academia and I just find it hard to believe that you could be involved in such a field with no understanding of statistics, basic sciences, or medicine. I have worked and studies in many countries both in academia and on the frontlines. I have not met an MD anywhere that uses homeopathy. You make it sound like it is very commonplace?

                        9. “We have established it works or no MD, hospital, medical school, university or Government would touch it.”
                           No, we have not established that at all. You’ve simply asserted this is the case repetitively, embracing the known logical fallacies argument from authority and argument from popularity.

                     2. It’s not just that science can’t explain how it “works.” It’s that science can explain why it’s impossible for it to “work.” Foundational laws of physics would have to be wrong for it to work.

               3. You know, the three major monotheistic religions have survived for millennia. Doesn’t mean that God really exists.

                  1. Your analogy does not work. What it does mean is that people find religion useful, constructive, helpful, productive …. pick a word. People find that religion works. Same principle with Homeopathy.

                     And since it is impossible to prove a God does not exist, and people find religions works for them, I would say they are making sensible choices.

                     I have no time for any religion, having studied many, but I have a great deal of time for what I call God. Because it works to live my life from a spiritual perspective.

                     1. So are you claiming that homeopathy is a religion, a belief system, or science? Pick one. It can’t be all of them.

                        1. Homeopathy is a medical system and both science and art.

                           It is not a religion. All medical systems involve belief so on that count it is no different to Allopathic medicine which has its own set of beliefs, very different to Homeopathy.

                        2. What belief do all medical systems have outside of the very basic that we have to assume for a naturalistic world and to investigate one?

                        3. Your question is not very coherent. You need to clarify what you mean.

                        4. What belief is required of medicine?

                        5. What belief is required of medicine? Medicine is a system which seeks to heal so one presumes that any medical system contains a belief in its capacity to cure.

                        6. And is this belief unjustified?

                        7. Is a belief that the process seeks to heal justified? Yes. Otherwise why do it?

                           A doctor seeks to heal; a painter seeks to paint; a writer seeks to write; a lawyer seeks to apply the law etc. etc.

                     2. This is known as an argument from ignorance. “I don’t know X therefore Y”.
                        Besides, if something cannot be disproven, it isn’t “sensible” to believe it at all by definition. It is untestable.

                        1. No, the analogy does not work.

                        2. The analogy works perfectly. Religion has lasted millenia based on anecdotal evidence alone. Same with homeopathy but for a much shorter period of time. The testable parts of religious claims have been thoroughly debunked (ex/ global flood). The testable parts of homeopathy have been debunked (well, everything about it)

                        3. No, the analogy does not work. The survival of religion is not proof of God as taught by religion but it is proof that people find religion useful. Religion works.

                           And you are talking about fundamentalist religion with beliefs which are relatively easy to dismiss if one takes a literalist approach. Actually the flood has not been debunked but that is a digression.

                           And still wrong, the testable part of homeopathy have not been debunked. If they had been then he doctors, hospitals, universities, medical schools, governments making us of it would be fraudulent and that is not he case. Ergo, you are wrong.

                        4. Exactly. People “find homeopathy useful”. In other words, there exists something known as the placebo effect which makes people find things “useful” but which do not actually WORK

                        5. Useful means effective. Useful means it has constructive use. Useful means it works.

                           If I take care of my garden it flourishes. My efforts bring constructive results. It works. It is not placebo.

                           The placebo effect is something very different. Placebo effect is a part of all medical system, as is nocebo.

                        6. Ok so you should be able to demonstrate an greater-than-placebo effect if you claim it “works”. You cannot just appeal to anecdotes in order to do so

                        7. If you want research it is easy enough to find.

                        8. You keep saying that but the best studies I’m aware of (large sample size, randomized, double or triple blind, control) show homeopathy is equivalent to placebo.

                           Then you appeal to much much weaker evidence

                        9. If ‘useful’ means ‘effective’, and people finding homepathy ‘useful’ means it must also be ‘effective’, then there should exist evidence (other than people’s testimony they’ve found it ‘useful’) demonstrating efficacy.
                           Let’s see it.

                        10. There is. I would suggest you spend some time reading the thousands of books documenting case histories and also interview say a dozen qualified Homeopaths, perhaps, given your prejudice, find those who are also qualified MD’s and ask to see their patient notes and case histories.

               4. With such powerful concoctions at homeopaths fingertips, why are they not saving the world. Why do they not fly to africa and cure everyone of HIV etc?

                  1. Mockery is a sign of desperation on your part. Homeopathic medicines are powerful but the methodology is complex and requires time and effort.

                     Homeopaths do offer their services in Africa but the pharmaceutical/medical industry puts pressure on Government to keep them out.

                     And it is not a matter of curing everyone of HIV – that is the Allopathic approach. Homeopathy can certainly trigger cure for HIV but out of 100 people there might be 100 different medications. The individual is treated, not the disease.

                     For what it is worth the early missionaries from the 18th and 19th centuries used Homeopathic medicines in Africa – no use-by date; no harm done to malnourished people; and a simpler methodology than Allopathic medicine.

                     1. I’m sorry, but the idea of “individually” treating the same disease in different people is a common theme used by nearly all alternative systems that are not biomedicine. How could the homeopath possibly know what he or she is doing works? Please don’t say trial and error. That approach has killed millions until we got clinical trials.

                        1. Do you have any understanding of Homeopathic methodology and process?

                           A core tenet of the modality is that it treats the individual and not the condition and that is why for similar sets of symptoms in 100 people there can be 100 different medications prescribed.

                           How can a Homeopathic doctor know what they are doing works? In the same way an Allopathic doctor does – observation, empirical observation and following a path of healing and ultimate cure.

                           Trial and error is involved in all medical modalities but there is more of it in allopathy hence the kill-rate which has iatrogenic – most of it from pharmaceuticals, as the third biggest killer.

                           And sorry, with all your clinical trials, Allopathic medicine kills and hospitalises many millions every year. And as Richard Horton, ex editor of The Lancet has said, and as other medical professionals have said, most research is quite simply wrong.

                           The Allopathic industry is deeply flawed when it comes to research. The difference is it kills because of it. Homeopathy does not kill.

                           A Homeopathic doctor prescribes medication and observes. Just as an allopathic doctor does. If healing is triggered then pretty clearly the medication is the correct one. If not, then just as any doctor does, the process continues.

                        2. Please provide a reputable source for iatrogenic being the third biggest killer. That is pure garbage.

                        3. If homeopathy does not kill, then it doesn’t have an effect. Something has to cause a physiological response to be medicine, which can cause dangerous side effects at the wrong dosage. Homeopathy is nothing, therefore it doesn’t do anything. One cannot overdose on homeopathy, which proves it is nothing.

                  2. Why do they not fly to africa and cure everyone of HIV etc?

                     Speaking of Malerba, don’t forget Mission Ebola.

            2. You link to Edzard Ernst who made the fraudulent claim he was qualified in Homeopathy when in fact he spent six weeks after graduating as a doctor, working in a German Homeopathic hospital.

               He also promoted Homeopathy following this and then changed his mind a few years back.

               However, since it takes more than two years for a qualified MD to complete training as a Homeopathic doctor, Ernst was, shall we say, flexible with the truth.

               He has no credibility in regard to Homeopathy.

               And if it does nothing, explain this:

               Cytotoxic effects of ultra-diluted remedies on breast cancer cells.

               http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20043074

2. Roslyn, are you unaware that every treatment modality other than homeopathy naturopaths offer are–by definition–allopathic? Hanhnemann himself coined the term to describe all therapies other than homepathy.
   And no, alternative medical interventions aren’t being dismissed because of prior ‘poor experiences; but instead because there is either no evidence that they are effective, or there is instead strong evidence they are not safe and/or effective.
   “p.s. they also some have some excellent Homeopathic doctors in Germany”
   By what standard of comparison, Roslyn: how exactly can one reliably distinguish between an’excellant’ doctor of homeopathy and an average or bad one?

   1. JGC, I think how Naturopathy is taught and practised in the US is particular to the US.

      And no, every other treatment modality is not Allopathic. Hahnemann coined the term to differentiate between conventional medicine of his time and Homeopathy.

      Then again, I doubt he was aware of Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture or herbal modalities like Ayurveda etc.

      Not that it matters. Allopathy has been taken up as a term within conventional medicine anyway.

      Allopathy is not perjorative or the Allopathic medical profession and academia would not use it. It was not an invented word, it was a word brought into use to describe differences in methodology. And it is now a term used commonly within academia and Allopathy, having been taken up by the profession quite some decades ago. Check out its use by John Hopkins University:

      http://web.jhu.edu/prepro/health/allopathic.html

      Allopathy simply means ‘treatment’ which is ‘other’ than the disease. Homeopathy means treatment which is ‘like’ the disease or the symptoms.

      If you study herbal medicine you will find elements of the Homeopathic approach just as you will in Ayurveda and TCM. In fact there are elements of the Homeopathic approach in Allopathy where Ritalin is used to treat a condition and set of symptoms it will create in healthy people. Ditto for a number of cardiac drugs and of course chemotherapy and radiotherapy both cause cancer and are used to treat cancer. Admittedly, often unsuccessfully and doing a lot of harm in the process.

      In fact Stephen Goldssmith, a psychiatrist and homeopath in New York, who wrote the book TheHealing Paradox, has coined a better term perhaps than Allopathy – Antipathy.

      He does this on the basis that modern medicine treats ‘against’ the symptom,
      disease, condition as we can see from all the anti’s: anti-inflammatory;
      anti-depressant; anti-biotic (which actually means anti-life and given that it
      kills all of the good bacteria which keep us well in an attempt to kill the
      ‘bad’ it is certainly anti-life) …. and so it goes, the long list of
      ‘anti’s.’

      Your statement saying Homeopathy is rejected because it is not effective or possibly unsafe has no connection to realities. And a core reality is that around the world, in many countries, doctors and hospitals practice it; medical schools and universities teach it an Governments include it in their State systems.

      Most people are aware that the medical industry, academia and Government are even more than most, terrified of being sued or looking stupid and if you were correct and Homeopathy was ineffective and possibly unsafe, not one of them would touch it with a bargepole. Many do, ergo, you are quite simply wrong.

      As to how one knows the difference between an excellent Homeopathic doctor? The same way one knows the difference between an excellent Allopathic doctor. Success rate in treating patients.

      1. “Hahnemann coined the term to differentiate between conventional medicine of his time and Homeopathy.”
         Hahnemann coined the term to distinguish between homeopathy and all other interventions.

         “If you study herbal medicine you will find elements of the Homeopathic approach just as you will in Ayurveda and TCM.”
         Does Ayurveda, non-homeopathic herbal medicine, etc. embrace the miasma theory of disease, the Law of Similars and the Law of Infinitessimals? If not, what elements of homeopathy do you believe it embraces?

         “In fact there are elements of the Homeopathic approach in Allopathy where Ritalin is used to treat a condition and set of symptoms it will create in healthy people.”
         Nonsense. There are not elements of homepathy in the use of Ritalin to treat ADHD, for example.. Ritalin is central nervous system stimulant that inhibits catecholamine reuptake by blocking dopamine and norepinephrine transport in the synaptic cleft, which demonstrably results in improved alertness, focus and concentration. It’s for that reason reason it’s indicated for patients with ADHD—not because it appeared to cause ADHD symptoms in healthy individuals during a ‘proving’, and when used it’s used at measurable dosages, without any attempts at succession during it’s preparation.
         .
         “Your statement saying Homeopathy is rejected because it is not effective or possibly unsafe has no connection to realities.”
         Please provide citations then to the appropriately designed, blinded and controlled clinical studies which demonstrate that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for non-self-limiting illnesses or injuries.

         “And a core reality is that around the world, in many countries, doctors and hospitals practice it; medical schools and universities teach it an Governments include it in their State systems.”
         That it’s widely embraced attests to its popularity, not potential efficacy”

         “Many do, ergo, you are quite simply wrong.
         I suggest you google argmentum ad populum (and recall that bloodletting was once just as widely used).

         “The same way one knows the difference between an excellent Allopathic doctor. Success rate in treating patients.”
         How is that success rate quantified? It is, I would trust, on some basis other than patient self-reporting (i.e., the collection of personal anecdotes or testimonials.)

         1. Please cite your source in any of the dozens of books on Hahnemann where it states he did this. I have read quite a few and to my mind he was not acquainted with TCM or Ayurveda, both of which contain some similarities of approach.

            Apart from which it is a tad irrelevant don’t you think and as you can see from the John Hopkin’s site, Allopathic medicine has taken up the term so I don’t quite understand your hysteria.

            Ayurveda and TCM take an approach of individuality where the whole person is taken into account and not just symptoms which is the Allopathic approach. They are holistic in their approach and recognise the unique nature of each person and their disease – as does Homeopathy.

            Homeopathy has however taken it much further. Tossing in a couple of Laws which patently you do not understand in any real sense is a distraction.

            My point was, other traditional medical modalities have some things in common with Homeopathy.

            “If you study herbal medicine you will find elements of the Homeopathic approach just as you will in Ayurveda and TCM.”
            Does Ayurveda, non-homeopathic herbal medicine, etc. embrace the miasma theory of disease, the Law of Similars and the Law of Infinitessimals? If not, what elements of homeopathy do you believe it embraces?

            You either do not read carefully enough or you do not process enough. I never said there were elements of Homeopathy in the use of Ritalin – I said that there are aspects of ‘Like treating Like’ in Allopathy but of course it is unsophisticated compared to Homeopathy and there is no intent or purpose involved.

            My point, which you missed, was that Ritalin causes in healthy people the symptoms it treats in the unhealthy. It has that in common with Homeopathic practice.

            My point was that Allopathic medicine has elements of Like treats Like even though it does not recognise it.

            I have said before, there are numerous studies and if you are truly interested, off you go and find them. I don’t believe you are and have no intention of wasting my time.

            As to your feeble attempt to ‘flick’ away the substantive reality of medical professionals, academia and governments embracing Homeopathy, in your heart of hearts, inconvenient as it may be, you know as well as I do that they are all paranoid in the extreme about being sued or looking stupid and if Homeopathy were as you claim, none of them would touch it ever.

            They do, ergo, you are wrong and it has nothing to do with popularity. To be fair, Governments may be swayed by popularity but academia and the medical industry less so because their egos and credibility are at stake.

            You could also ask the question however: Why is it so popular? But I suspect you don’t want to go there because the answer is – it works.

            I suggest you google bloodletting and while you are at it, leeches and maggots, and discover that the mockery from Allopathic medicine has been ill-placed and all of these procedures are now being found to be of use. They always were of course but like modern medicine, doctors simply overused and abused and did harm with them, but nothing survives for thousands of years without having some value.

            Science/medicine was, quite simply wrong- one could add arrogant, ignorant and stupid – is its wholesale dismissal of ancient medical practices. Just as it is with Homeopathy. But, slow learner it may be, at least it does learn and along with finding blood-letting useful it will eventually advance enough to do the same with Homeopathy. In the meantime Homeopathy will continue to cure.

            “Many do, ergo, you are quite simply wrong.
            I suggest you google argmentum ad populum (and recall that bloodletting was once just as widely used).

            You ask:
            How is that success rate quantified? It is, I would trust, on some basis other than patient self-reporting (i.e., the collection of personal anecdotes or testimonials.)

            Allopathic medical success is sourced in self reporting, personal anecdotes and testimonials. Word of mouth. People need a certain kind of doctor and the first thing they do is talk to their friends.

            Allopathic doctors lose business and gain business because of word of mouth. Given their kill rate clearly there are problems with the quantification of success with Allopathic doctors.

            1. Hahnemann coined and expanded his views on the term ‘allopathy’ in a series of essays written in Torgau between 1804 and 1811. He addresses the character of allopathy extensively in the preface to his 1804 Organon.

               He used it to describe all standard medical interventions in use at that time, to distinguish it from the system he was developing (homeopathy). If we’re going to be strict about it’s usage, it should be used to refer only to the harsh practices innuse at that time—bloodletting, purging, vomiting, administration of highly toxic formulations etc.–which were founded in the ancient Greek humoural theory of disease which held that all disease results from the imbalance of four bodily humours (blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile) and four bodily conditions (hot, cold wet and dry).

               So if you’re going to argue acupuncture and Ayurveda are not ‘allopathic’ because Hahnemann was not aware of them at the time he first coined the term, we’ll have to accept that today’s evidence based medicine isn’t allopathic either since he was also unaware of the principles and form of modern medicine (the germ theory of disease, pharmacology, etc.)

               “Ayurveda and TCM take an approach of individuality where the whole person is taken into account and not just symptoms which is the Allopathic approach”
               I’m unaware that evidence based medical practitioners fail to take the whole person into account when providing health care. Certainly no physicians I’ve ever been to has done so.

               “Medication for life is not cure.”
               First, I’ll note you’ve yet to provide any evidence that homeopathy, Ayurveda, etc. cure anything at all.

               Second, the harsh reality is that we lack the ability to cure all known diseases, Roslyn. In some cases where a cure is not achievable long term medication demonstrably extends life span and/or improves quality of life (for example, insulin for diabetics, anti-seizure medication for epileptics, antiviral/protease inhibitor cocktails for HIV).

               “Having parts of your body regularly removed is not cure.”
               I’m aware of no medical protocol that involves regular removal of parts of one’s body—what are you referring to here?

               “Allopathic medicine is akin to ‘fixing the problem of the warning light in the car’ by cutting the wire to it!”
               How is diagnosing a bacterial infection and then prescribing antibiotics which eliminate the infection analogous to cutting a warning light wire rather than correcting the problem which caused the warning light to turn on?

               “Remove or hide symptoms and your Allopathic doctor considers it to be a success.”
               In the example above symptoms weren’t removed or hidden: the cause of the symptoms was eliminated.

               “Tossing in a couple of Laws which patently you do not understand in any real sense is a distraction.”
               I haven’t tossed in a couple of laws: I’ve cited the foundational principles of homeopathy. And I do understand those principles sufficiently to be aware of how they fail.

               “I said that there are aspects of ‘Like treating Like’”
               You offered Ritalin was an example of evidence based medicine embracing the aspect of like treating like: as I’ve shown above your example is incorrect.

               “My point, which you missed, was that Ritalin causes in healthy people the symptoms it treats in the unhealthy.”
               What symptoms of ADHD does Ritalin cause in healthy people? Be specific.

               “I have said before, there are numerous studies and if you are truly interested, off you go and find them.”

               That isn’t my responsibility. You claim to be aware of such studies: please provide citations in support of your own claims.
               “I don’t believe you are and have no intention of wasting my time.”
               But you expect others to waste THEIR time hunting for evidence they don’t believe exists to support claims YOU”VE made?

               “You could also ask the question however: Why is it so popular?”
               Because it makes very attractive false promises
               .
               “I suggest you google bloodletting and while you are at it, leeches and maggots, and discover that the mockery from Allopathic medicine has been ill-placed and all of these procedures are now being found to be of use.”
               In very different manners and as treatments for indications completely different than used in the past.

               “Allopathic medical success is sourced in self reporting, personal anecdotes and testimonials.”
               I.e., by means of nothing that even vaguely resembles evidence.

            2. So in order to know if a homeopath is a good homeopath, I either need to throw money at them and find out for myself or, as you say, rely on the collective testimonies of others who have already thrown money at them. A homeopath has to have been in business for a good long while, taking people’s money, before anyone has a clue as to whether or not they know what they are doing? Gosh, that’s convenient.

               I’m not saying I wouldn’t prefer a real, medical doctor with a lot of experience over one with very little experience but at least I know that that fresh, new doctor has had extensive training that is based in something besides magical thinking. “Lots of people have paid them” is not a measure of somebody’s competence at treating and curing disease.

               And I will never understand the whole “conventional medicine treats the symptoms, not the disease” trope. When I was a kid, I had strep throat and the symptoms were fever and excruciating pain in my throat, among others. So I was prescribed antibiotics, which took away the symptoms by removing the cause which was streptococcus bacteria. How is that not “treating the cause?”

               And yeah, they removed some beneficial bacteria too. It is not a secret that antibiotics do this and that they can have side effects, nor is it a gotcha that the meaning of the word “antibiotic” is “anti-life.” Anyone with a basic grasp of Latin roots can put that together themselves. The side effects and risks of antibiotics are why responsible doctors do not prescribe them frivolously. But the side effects are usually mild and the risks of not treating a potentially serious bacterial infection are far greater than the risks of antibiotic use in most cases. You can get over unpleasant gastrointestinal side effects from antibiotics and that’s usually all that happens, if that. However, untreated strep can cause death and very frequently did before modern medicine–scarlet fever, which killed many children, is caused by strep. And death is just a little harder to bounce back from.

               1. Wow, what a loaded first paragraph. You do not have to do anything at all.

                  If you want to have some understanding of Homeopathy I suggest you do some reading. If you do not want to spend money on books there is plenty of information available online for free. Look up Dr Larry Malerba and start there.

                  If you have an interest in Homeopathy find a qualified Homeopath. As to ‘throwing money’ given the cost of Allopathy I would humbly suggest you find yourself throwing a lot less money at a Homeopathic doctor.

                  I don’t know what costs in the US are but in Australia a first consult, 1.5-2 hours is about $110 and subsequent consults of an hour are $80. I have seen a Homeopathic doctor three times in a year for a problem which was resolved but mostly would see one a couple of times in ten years. The goal of Homeopathy is to treat minor so it does not become major and to enable optimal health ongoing.

                  But for goodness sake, if you have no interest don’t bother.

                  Oh dear, and then you use the term ‘magical thinking.’ Sigh. You just revealed to everyone that you are incapable of objective rigour on this topic and have high levels of prejudice combined with even higher levels of ignorance.

                  For what it is worth there are MD’s who practice Homeopathy.

                  I have no idea where the quote: “Lot’s of people have paid them’ came from. I suspect it is someone else’s attributed to me but quoting out of context is a bad idea and hardly denotes editorial rigour.

                  You don’t understand how Allopathy treats symptoms? Why are many, perhaps most Allopathic interventions prefaced by ‘anti?’ That means against. The goal is to repress or remove a symptom through the use of a knife or a drug. That is treating the symptom.

                  Allopathic medicine does not consider the body as a whole nor treat it as the organism it is. Doctors specialise in this bit or that and are incapable, as holistic medicine is, of understanding that something wrong with the throat is not about the throat but the organism as a whole. A diseased live is not just about the liver, it is about the body as a whole and other organs play a part.

                  As to strep throat, you give a perfect example:

                  You said: When I was a kid, I had strep throat and the symptoms were fever and excruciating pain in my throat, among others. So I was prescribed antibiotics, which took away the symptoms by removing the cause which was streptococcus bacteria. How is that not “treating the cause?”

                  Many, maybe most of us, in case you did not know it, have strep bacteria in our throats all of the time. The problem is not the strep but the organism which ‘fails’ and a sore throat develops.

                  The question is why, given you have the bacteria ongoing, it makes you sick now and why do others with the same bacteri living in their body, not get sick?

                  As Louis Pasteur said and as every Homeopath knows – it is not the pathogen but the terrain.

                  Sure, the Allopathic approach can bring perceived results – no strep throat. But what else did that do? If you had absolutely robust health from that point on then clearly it did not do much harm but someone else might develop asthma, eczema, digestive issues, hay fever…. a variety of other conditions sourced in the Allopathic onslaught to treat your sore throat.

                  Homeopathy can also treat such conditions but without doing harm.

                  Most doctors are not responsible with antibiotics and the abuse of them given their value is criminal.

                  The side effects of one antibiotic course might be mild in most but today many children have had a dozen courses in the first few years of life. That does great harm.

                  As research into C-section is now showing, the loss of natural bacteria from a natural birth combined with the massive doses of antibiotics given to the baby as prophylactic, and the mother whose breast milk is affected, is leading to poor gut function which compromises immune function and brain function.

                  Research is showing that our gut function is key to health. Once again scientists and doctors have done great harm from a place of ignorance and arrogance.
                  http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/gut-bacteria-on-the-brain/395918/

                  Quote: Short courses of antibiotics can leave normal gut bacteria harbouring antibiotic resistance genes for up to two years after treatment, say scientists in a new study. The researchers believe that this reservoir increases the chances of resistance genes being surrendered to pathogenic bacteria, aiding their survival and suggesting that the long-term effects of antibiotic therapy are more significant than previously thought.

                  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101101083144.htm

                  Quote: Impaired antiviral immunity and genetic variants may play roles in the link between early antibiotic use and subsequent asthma, according to a UK study by Aida Semic-Jusufagic, MD, from the Centre for Respiratory Medicine and Allergy, Institute of Inflammation and Repair, University of Manchester and University Hospital of South Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom, and colleagues, published online May 15 in Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

                  http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/825238

                  1. here in ireland i would pay 80 euros for a 1-2 hour consult, 60 subsequent for 30-60 minutes.

                     if i had to pay for a gp consultation i’d pay 45 euro for a measly 10 minutes of barely listening, maybe a little longer.

                     and then some meds that even i have to pay some part of and without medical card would be quite costly while the homeopathic remedies are part of the fee.

                     1. It sounds the same as Australia when you do the currency conversion although Australian salaries are quite high and the minimum wage is nearly $17 an hour so I am not sure how that compares to Ireland.

                        1. me neither but it compares well to what one would pay for conventional medicine.

3. I’m a skeptic who has received naturopathic treatment and
   absolutely received benefits.

   But I ONLY turned to a naturopath after multiple MDs failed
   to give me any relief from my debilitating symptoms. My internist finally gave
   up, saying I was most likely “somatizing depression.” True, I was very
   depressed at that point, but the depression started after symptoms showed up,
   not vice versa. My naturopath ordered some tests—from LabCorp, not some wacked
   out lab–that my MD hadn’t been willing to, and I turned up positive for celiac
   disease. I had the dx confirmed by endoscopy with a GI. My MD had been taught
   in med school that celiac is a rare disease with a few specific symptoms, while
   the naturopath had been taught that it’s a relatively common disease with a large
   number of symptoms—which has come to be the established medical thinking. Two weeks
   into a gluten-free diet, my symptoms were 90% gone. Based on this, I just can’t
   wholesale dismiss naturopathy as pure quackery.

   I’ve since consulted with her on a few other things—only as
   an adjunct to a regular MD, I’d never use an ND as a primary doctor—and I’ve
   always felt better following her recommendations (mostly diet, a couple of
   pretty standard supplements like fish oil). I’d never consider things like homeopathy
   or IV vitamins, but she doesn’t offer them.

   So…I don’t know. I am really confused and go back and forth
   on this. All that I am reading on this site makes complete sense, but I can’t
   deny that my quality of life was terrible before I saw the naturopath and is
   great now. The celiac dx aside, I am fully willing to believe that the relief I’ve
   gotten since then and the relief a lot of people I know have received from
   their naturopaths may be due to the “tincture of time,” the placebo effect, and
   the fact that naturopaths can spend 45 minutes with a patient, while MDs
   usually spend seven. But I always come back to the fact that I consistently
   feel better.

   Of course, treating cancer or strep throat with diet and supplements
   is clearly a terrible idea, but if someone I care about has been failed by the
   medical establishment and asks if he should see a naturopath, I’d be hard-pressed
   to advise him not to.

   1. PS: I AM NOT AN AYN RAND FAN. My Disqus account is connected to an old Twitter account that was attached to a parody site I used to run. Just had to make that clear!!! 🙂

      1. this is pretty funny.

         Why not just make a new one?

         1. I haven’t used Disqus since 2012 and doubt I’ll use it again for another three years, so it seemed like more work than it was worth. The site is still up, just google my username.

   2. Gluten free diet as a treatment for confirmed celiac disease is entirely standard of care, ayn–there’s nothing uniquely naturopathic about it.

      1. I know that. My point was the naturopath found what the MD not only missed but refused to test for.

   3. Just as some Allopathic doctors are better than others, so are all medical practitioners. What matters is that it works for you. There is much wisdom in many aspects of Naturopathy and we are all different. Homeopathy works better for some than others, ditto for Acupuncture, Nutritional and Herbal Medicine and Naturopathy.

      With the move toward Integrative medicine where all medical modalities are offered there will be more choice and less confusion.

      1. Spiritualism’s growth in popularity in America and Europe (at around the same time) was also due to people’s “experience of its effectiveness.” Those people genuinely had experiences that made them feel as though they were communicating with the spirits of the dead. So does that mean we all have to believe in ghosts now?

         1. The Spiritualist movement in the 19th century has been very well documented. There have been some excellent books written about it. There is no doubt there were some experiences which were questionable but there were also many which were not.

            It is quite a stretch to seek to compare Homeopathy with the spirituality movement but then I understand that those who oppose Homeopathy become desperate and in desperation, often irrational.

            If someone believes they have communicated with the dead it is difficult to prove although there are instances where the individual has information which would be available in no other way. However, absolute proof is difficult.

            But with Homeopathy it is not. There are thousands of case histories documenting process of healing and ultimate cure and many people today, Homeopathic doctors and patients, who witness cure, so proof is available in an absolute sense.

            And while there seems to be this naieve and prejudiced view that Homeopathy requires belief to be effective, it is, like so many opinions held by the generally uninformed, wrong.

            Homeopathy works equally well on those who absolutely believe, those who think it might work, those who think it can work, those who think it might not work, those who think it cannot work and those who are absolutely adamant it will not work. As you can imagine, cure in the latter group makes for a lifelong convert.

            The proof is in the cure!

            1. That’s quite the claim. Surely there has been a study or few to collaborate your claim?

               1. Which claim? You need to be specific.

                  1. This one:

                     “Homeopathy works equally well on those who absolutely believe, those who think it might work, those who think it can work, those who think it might not work, those who think it cannot work and those who are absolutely adamant it will not work. As you can imagine, cure in the latter group makes for a lifelong convert.”

                     This definitely sounds like the sort of thing you can back up with a study or few

                     1. It is not the sort of thing which would constitute a study because it is utterly irrelevant. You can certainly study cure in patients and you can certainly work your way through hundreds of thousands of case histories, meticulously documented over centuries.

                        I have seen it and any Homeopathic doctor will have seen it. Belief is absolutely irrelevant to the process. I certainly did not believe in Homeopathy when I first gave it a try. But I had an open mind. I then became fascinated with it because it is such a complex and brilliant methodology….

                        Many people turn to Homeopathy in desperation after years of Allopathic failure. I mean, why not! And some of them are adamant it cannot work but desperation creates a situation of ‘why not, it can’t hurt.’ When cure results they are not only impressed but astonished.

                        You can also talk to qualified Homeopaths if you are interested. There are plenty in the US. Send a note to Dr Larry Malerba who is qualified in Allopathy and Homeopathy, and who lives and works in NY State.

                        http://drmhomeopathy.com/

                        1. and yet people are studying it all the time. Why do you think that is? Do they not know better or do they realize that case studies aren’t enough for something entirely not plausible?

                        2. All systems need to progress or die. All things need to be studied so they may continue to evolve.

                           You have no idea what is plausible. No-one does. What science currently calls plausible was not considered plausible a century ago. It is a moveable feast.

                           As science evolves it will come to understand Homeopathy is perfectly plausible. Until it does, Homeopaths will continue to cure.

                        3. plausible = does not contradict the current body of science in multiple fields, at the very least. Homeopathy does not fit this description at all.

                           and no, this isn’t the same as me being “closed minded”. We have limited resources and they should be spent on the most plausible treatment options primarily, and not nonsense like homeopathy which when studied properly is no better than placebo

                        4. Send a note to Dr Larry Malerba who is qualified in Allopathy and Homeopathy, and who lives and works in NY State.

                           Ah, yes, Dr. Materialism Is Mean. I hate to break this to you, but if it’s necessary to discard materialism in order to save homeopathy, you’re stuck with the “explanation” that it’s supernatural.

                           If homeopaths would simply be up-front about this—and the law would respond accordingly—instead of babbling idiotically about quantum mechanics and nanoparticles and DNA emitting “low-frequency radio waves” (Montagnier for this jaw-dropper), I doubt there would be any more fuss than there is about other run-of-the-mill con artists such as John Edward.

                           The whole thing just has to be labeled “for entertainment purposes only,” attempts to diagnose or treat specific diseases have to be prosecuted as the unlawful practice of medicine, and the potions have be laboratory-demonstrated to be free of any active ingredients and be labeled as such.

                           Problem solved.

                        5. Malerba’s book I excellent. I bet you have not read it.

                           Materialism will never explain Homeopathy but that does not mean it needs to be discarded. Materialism is a part of our reality. The mistake science makes is believing it is all of our reality.

                           There is no super natural. Everything which exists is a part of this natural world. Science only calls things supernatural when it cannot explain them as part of its materialist reductionist paradigm.

                           Thanks or also demonstrating your complete subjectivity and lack of objective rigour by using the prejudicial tem ‘con.’ You cry scientific rigour and betray it on every count.

                        6. Malerba’s book I excellent [sic; tellingly?]. I bet you have not read it.

                           That’s not much of a book review.

                           Materialism will never explain Homeopathy but that does not mean it needs to be discarded. Materialism is a part of our reality. The mistake science makes is believing it is all of our reality.

                           There is no super natural. Everything which exists is a part of this natural world. Science only calls things supernatural when it cannot explain them as part of its materialist reductionist paradigm.

                           This is pudding-headed word salad, but you have at least rubbished the entirety of the comedy that is “physics”-based defenses of homeopathy in one swell foop. This is good; “frequencies,” etc., which are purely materialistic, are out. Gauge fields and the whole of QFT are out.

                           From here, though, it’s hard to even know where to start. The random plural-minds droppings, though, make it clear that you don’t even understand your utterances (e.g., “materialist reductionist paradigm”) as anything but slogans. I have little patience for this in general.

                           You posit plural, immaterial minds, right? This seems inescapable from your burblings. Where are they, and how is it not trivially reducible to supernaturalism?

                           I’d characterize your trip as Swedenborgian, but the bits you’ve left around suggest pure Blobovianism.

                           Thanks or also [sic] demonstrating your complete subjectivity and lack of objective rigour by using the prejudicial tem ‘con.’ You cry scientific rigour and betray it on every count.

                           By all means, deploy some scientific rigor to demonstrate that John Edward is not a con artist.

                           Whinging about subjectivity seems like a really weird choice for a homeopathic cheerleader who’s advocating Malerba, though, but whatever.

                           Then again, I could also thank you for (1) not knowing who he is, (2) endorsing his ability to contact the dead, or (3) both.

                           I’ve probably left something uncompleted in the foregoing, but there’s only so much time in the day for random, indignant representatives of the occultist/cosmic-mind brigade, particularly given that it’s just going to bounce off of their auras anyway.

                  2. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/11/homeopathy-not-effective-for-treating-any-condition-australian-report-finds

                     1. Yes, someone else posted it earlier. It is deeply flawed.

                        As a doctor would you support a research study into the efficacy of oncology for instance where there is no oncologist on the panel, none are consulted and research papers are chosen selectively, and where more than one panel member has a clear conflict of interest? I bet you would not.

                        That my friend is how this ‘study’ into Homeopathy was done. It is a disgrace and a betrayal of the best of science.

                        Quote: To illustrate this flaw, the NHMRC reviewers asked, “Is homeopathy effective for condition A?’, working from the premise that a positive trial showing that one homeopathic treatment is effective is somehow negated by a negative trial which shows that a completely different homeopathic treatment for that same condition is ineffective. This is a bizarre and unprecedented way of assessing scientific evidence. In conventional research the question asked would be, “Is treatment X effective for condition A?”, not “Is conventional medicine effective for condition A?” based on combining the results of all drug trials together. Some treatments work, some don’t. The whole point of medical research is to establish which treatments are useful and which are of no value. This is no different in homeopathy.

                        This single methodological flaw explains why the NHMRCs has failed to find any ‘reliable’ evidence that homeopathy is effective for any of the 61 conditions under consideration.

                        Secondly, we are deeply perplexed as to the reasons for the exclusion of some of the best evidence for key clinical conditions. In brief:

                        Jacobs et al performed meta-analysis a meta-analysis of the treatment of childhood diarrhea using homeopathy in 2003, N=242 in placebo controlled trials, p-value = 0.008. This meta-analysis was excluded … why? [Link]

                        Wiesenauer & Lüdtke conducted a meta-analysis into the treatment of hayfever in 1996, N=752 in placebo controlled RCTs, p-value <0.0001. This meta-analysis was excluded. Again we ask ourselves why? [Link]

                        Schneider et al conducted a meta-analysis of non-inferiority trials of homeopathy compared to usual care for the treatment of vertigo, N=1388, non-inferiority was clearly demonstrated. Again excluded, again why? [Link]

                        A Cochrane review by Mathie et al inspected the evidence for the treatment of influenza using homeopathy concluded in favor of homeopathy (N=1259, placebo RCTs, p=0.001) yet this evidence was simply ignored in the final conclusions on the grounds of possible bias in the underlying studies [Link].

                        The NHMRC also need to justify their use of N=150 as a line between reliable and unreliable trials and they certainly need to explain why size is relevant at all when the findings are statistically significant.

                        https://www.hri-research.org/2015/03/nhmrc-publishes-flawed-report-despite-concerns-raised-during-public-consultation/

                        1. such a conspiracy yet again. Everyone is just out to get you, and repress all the wonderful studies that you still are unable to produce

                        2. No conspiracy. As I said before, I find human beings ignorant, arrogant, self-serving, stupid, incompetent, corrupt and misinformed enough to create any and every kind of mistake without the slightest bit of planning.

                           And no, everyone is not out to get Homeopathy. There is a small number who appear to work hard to discredit it, perhaps for their own reasons or perhaps they are paid but they are pretty irrelevant.

                           Although I do see the campaign against Homeopathy as a positive because it allows those who do know something about it to present their views and to spread information more readily.

                           For instance, you and others keep moaning about wanting to see research and then when it is presented you ignore it. Open-minded readers see that and it makes a case against you. They also see people like myself directing people like yourself to sources where you can do the research and they see you rejecting and ignoring it. That makes a case for Homeopathy.

                           You are actually invaluable in spreading the word so keep up the good work.

                           I also believe that the campaign pushes Homeopathy to improve itself and that is always to the good. The best of professional approaches and good regulation benefits any medical modality.

                        3. As I said before, I find human beings ignorant, arrogant, self-serving, stupid, incompetent, corrupt and misinformed enough to create any and every kind of mistake without the slightest bit of planning.

                           Never let it be said that mirrors aren’t your friends.

                        4. It would be unwise not to apply to one’s self the same judgements. You should try it some time. Your position is you are right because science says so. My position is science is useful as a guide and tool on some counts and useless on others.

                           My comment applies to anyone and everyone.

                     2. Here are some good articles for you:

                        Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.

                        https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915-most-scientific-papers-are-probably-wrong/

                        http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong

                        Quote: Most scientific research unreliable or completely fraudulent says ex editor of Lancet.

                        http://www.drugawareness.org/editor-of-lancet-medical-research-is-unreliable-at-best-or-completely-fraudulent/

                        Scientific peer review useless…..

                        http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientific-peer-reviews-are-a-sacred-cow-ready-to-be-slaughtered-says-former-editor-of-bmj-10196077.html

                        Quote: Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ)[sic],which is considered to another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain:

                        “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.”

                        http://acsh.org/2015/05/science-publication-is-hopelessly-compromised-say-journal-editors/

                        1. That is the whole point of scientific research. We do not accept something because someone says it works. There is a constant changing body of research where we demand that results be proven over and over again until there is no doubt. For once you are right but for the wrong reasons. In science, we are skeptical and challenge every new finding. In homeopathy you do nothkng but claim it is true because John’s cold that was going to get better in 5 days, got better in 5 days.

                        2. You just don’t get it do you? If you went to a Homeopathic doctor with a cold he or she would send you home to rest.

                           You keep making the same mistakes because you have not done any research into Homeopathy. It does not treat conditions, it treats individuals. Colds, flu, digestive upsets etc., can be treated palliatively with many things including some Homeopathic remedies but really, the best thing is rest and nourishing food.

                           When Homeopathy cures coeliac disease, asthma, eczema, psoriasis, depression, ADHD etc. etc. etc., which have endured for years if not decades and which have not been cured by Allopathic medicine, only a fool would reject the modality.

                           Only someone with zero knowledge would or could believe that more than two centuries of Homeopathic medical knowledge is based on conditions or illnesses which will clear up in their own good time.

                           And in the meantime, all your faith in science is misplaced.

                           Editors In Chief of World’s Most Prestigious Medical Journals: “Much of the Scientific Literature, Perhaps HALF, May Simply Be Untrue” … “It Is Simply No Longer Possible To Believe Much of the Clinical Research That Is Published”

                           The editor in chief of Lancet, Richard Horton, wrote last month:

                           Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity [i.e. pervasiveness within the scientific culture] of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of “significance” pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale. We reject important confirmations. Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent, endpoints that foster reductive metrics, such as high-impact publication. National assessment procedures, such as the Research Excellence Framework, incentivise bad practices. And individual scientists, including their most senior leaders, do little to alter a research culture that occasionally veers close to misconduct.

                           ***

                           Part of the problem is that no-one is incentivised to be right.

                           Similarly, the editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell, wrote in 2009:

                           It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

                           In her must-read essay, Dr. Angell skewers drug companies, university medical departments, and medical groups which set the criteria for diagnosis and treatment as being rotten with corruption and conflicts of interest.

                           You put a lot of faith in a deeply flawed system and you expect others to reject Homeopathy because of it.

                           http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/06/editors-in-chief-of-worlds-most-prestigious-medical-journals-much-of-the-scientific-literature-perhaps-half-may-simply-be-untrue-it-is-simply-no-longer-poss.html

                           http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble

                           http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong

                           http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21604089-two-big-recent-scientific-results-are-looking-shakyand-it-open-peer-review

                           http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21591549-and-nature-and-cell-nobel-prize-winner-attacks-elite-journals-whats-wrong

                        3. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.

                           It’s impressive that nowhere did you give the slightest hint that you have read either relevant Ioannidis paper. Or, for that matter, that you could locate them on your own.

                     3. perlease, the guardian has become a corporate mouthpiece tabloid that supports scientism and is now mostly good for finding recipes.
                        and the commenters on that and other such articles are as close minded and downright silly as they’re on here.

                  3. below is a good article for you?

         2. You do run with balls not thrown. You don’t have to believe in anything although practising the rigour of objectivity and an open mind would stand you in good stead.

            I doubt it is an area you have researched but there is a great deal of data available, carried out by credible researchers, even scientists, which make it very clear that many experiences are not imagined. They may remain unexplained but they cannot be dismissed.

   4. If you do ever decide to investigate Homeopathy there is some interesting material here:

      Quote:

      Anecdotal Evidence

      Anecdotal evidence is not accepted as “scientific”; yet when it comes from a reliable and trustworthy source it demands attention. For most homoeopaths, their patients and their prospective patients, this is what is most important. Homoeopaths see their patients getting better, sometimes quite dramatically, while their patients experience noticeable improvements and tell other people. Homoeopathy has always thrived on people’s experience of its effectiveness. Its first major expansion occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century when Hahnemann’s students proved to be so effective in the cholera epidemics that swept Europe. The expansion of homoeopathy in America in the second half of the nineteenth century and the growth seen in Britain over the last twenty years have been fuelled almost entirely by people’s experience of its effectiveness. The death rates in homoeopathic hospitals and hospitals and institutions supervised by homoeopaths in nineteenth century America were a half to an eighth of what they were in conventional institutions.[2] Declines, especially the one that occurred in America at the turn of the century, have similarly come about because too many poorly trained practitioners have proved ineffective.

      The Test of Time

      That homoeopathy has stood the test of time makes it hard to ignore. Many cures and therapeutic modalities come and go with remarkable rapidity. Even in conventional medicine, most treatments and drugs therapies are out of date and replaced within a few years. Homoeopathy has grown and been refined, but the principles and the research that led to it are as important and valuable today as they were two hundred years ago. If these principles were not as effective as they are they would require continual “adjustment” to keep them fitting the facts of the time.

      Basic Ultra High Dilutions (UHD) Research

      It is the fact that any dilution beyond a certain level, which corresponds approximately to the 12c homoeopathic potency, will result in most samples containing no material substance that makes homoeopathy so unreasonable to scientists. Yet there are numerous studies of various types which have shown that both in vitro and in vivo effects can be caused by UHDs. Evidence ranges from Beneviste’s work on dilute IgE antiserum;[3],[4],[5] and Conte’s work with NMR;[6],[7] to other studies using various homoeopathic dilutions.[8],[9] In an overview of UHDs AK Vallance concludes that there is considerable empirical evidence of them.[10]

      There are also emerging plausible and experimentally supported possible mechanisms for the actions of UHDs. These include the ordering of water in microtubules;[11] and IE crystals found in water.[12]

      Clinical Evidence

      Even the evidence for homoeopathy that scientists regard as the “gold standard”, double blind clinical studies, is not lacking. Research on respiratory disease in piglets and mastitis in cows has shown homoeopathy to be effective with animals where the placebo effect can safely be ignored.[13],[14] In humans, a tiny selection of the published research shows the range of evidence available. Studies have shown homoeopathy to be effective in: vertigo;[15] pollinosis;[16],[17] postoperative ileus;[18] upper respiratory tract infection and otitis media;[19],[20] and depression and anxiety.[21]

      A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials published in the Lancet concluded that the results were “not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are completely due to placebo”.[22] An earlier study also published in the Lancet also indicated that the evidence for homoeopathy is reproducible.[23]

      As Dr Gaby says: “While statistically significant results will occasionally occur by chance, it is extremely improbable that a worthless treatment would repeatedly produce statistically significant benefits.”[24]

      http://www.positivehealth.com/article/homeopathy/the-scientific-evidence-for-the-efficacy-of-homoeopathy

      1. roslynn, do you beleive that extraterrestrials piloting faster than light vehicles routinely visit the planet earth, adopt human subjects and perform medical examinations on them (which seem to always involve sigmoidoscopy?) After all, there is a very large body of anecdotal ‘evidence’ offered by people claiming they’ve been subject to such abduction/examination.

         If not, could you please explain exactly how you decide which bodies of anecdotal ‘evidence’ you’ll accept as valid, and which you will instead reject as invalid?

   5. treating cancer with chemo is most effective for lukemia and testicular cancer. Otherwise chemo “works” only about 5% on other cancer. The problem with natropathic/alternaive treartments for cancer is the expense and dedication required on th part of the patient. Iv drug push 4 times a week. drinking up too a gallon of green juices a day removing mercury fillings.. the list goes on and on.

      1. That is not true! 10 year survival with chemo/surgery for breast, prostate , melanoma etc are all over 80%. I don’t think there is any proof that alternative treatment extends survival. I would appreciate sources if you have peer reviewed studies that shows that it does.

         1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630849
            I think that this the study

         2. Take prostate cancer. Its a very slow growing cancer. Most men Will die with cancer but not of cancer. So if you treat all prostate cancers aggressively you May kill the cancer but not extend the life of the patient

            1. This is something that doctors already take into account when treating patients, especially older ones. And that is exactly why they don’t always treat cancer aggressively.

               1. If a doctor works for a hospital, then. Limiting chemo may be taken out of his hands for the sake of profits.

         3. a good article on chemo and stage IV cancer Hint: it kills you faster but it pays the doctor well
            http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-chemo-end-of-life-20150724-story.html

            1. Here is cochrane report
               http://www.cochrane.org/CD006242/BREASTCA_efficacy-and-safety-of-trastuzumab-in-metastatic-breast-cancer

         4. It was always known more men died with prostate cancer than of it and new data is showing that doing nothing works best for most.

            The issue is not either/or but a need for integrative medicine where surgery is optional when it can be optional and chemo is an absolute last resort after using other medical options like Homeopathy, Herbal, Nutritional. Stay away from the chemicals for as long as you can. Look to diet and lifestyle issues.

            At the end of the day the body heals and cures – everything else is merely support. Chemo is a chemical onslaught against the body, akin to napalming a country, and it works on the basis that if the person survives you might have killed the ‘enemy.’

            The war-mongering motivation of Allopathic medicine runs counter to any concept of healing. Which no doubt is why the failure rate is so high and the kill-rate even higher.

      2. Well, I don’t mean to imply that the plural of “anecdote” is “data” (though I suspect that you might believe this is the case) but it’s pretty bizarre that most of the women I know who have survived beast cancer after undergoing chemo are all in that 5%.

         1. I should clarify then the study state the Chemo improves your 5 year survival rate by 2.1% in the US. Chemo is slighlty better than doing nothing.

            1. How is this a clarification of what you said? So now I should believe that these women, most of whom are well beyond the 5-year mark are actually in the 2.1% Wow, I must be a lucky charm! Forget medicine, alternative or otherwise. Contact with me must be the best treatment for cancer out there!

               1. If you know 100 women who survived breast cancer. And they all had chemo. Then only 2 of them were saved by chemo.

                  1. And the others were saved by…luck?

                     1. perhaps the body fight but also consider that some cancers can take years to grow before becoming dangerous.
                        And some cancers are not life threatening.
                        http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/11/11/2739398.htm

               2. There are many different forms of cancer and many different ’causes.’ Cancer triggered by HRT seems more fixable than others but that is not surprising.

                  What is most worrying is that we have an epidemic of breast cancer, particularly in young women, in ways never known before in human history. Why? No doubt the contraceptive pill plays a part but in a chemical soaked environment and electro-magnetically charged world, no doubt there are many factors.

                  Cancer of all kinds has increased vastly following the vaccination time-line. Particularly in children. And despite the fact that scientists and doctors in the past, including Jonas Salk, mentioned potential links between vaccination and cancer, it has been pretty much ignored as the power of the profitable pharmaceutical industry has pushed vaccination to levels beyond human reason. And more so in the US than anywhere else.

                  Children today suffer more serious and chronic disease than ever before, as do adults, but the rate in children is higher. And the biggest cancer killer of kids and young people is brain cancer – a disease now existing at levels never seen before in human history. Why?

                  Recent research begins to catch up with what holistic medicine has always known – the body is an organism and all is connected – and the brain and immune system are intimately connected. Since vaccines work supposedly on the immune system, even when it is barely functioning in babies, and this is linked to the brain, one presumes a focus of serious research will be into vaccination and brain cancer links.

                  A good start would be studying the health of unvaccinated kids compared to vaccinated. Why has it not been seriously done? Perhaps because small amounts of research have long shown unvaccinated kids are healthier.

                  We live in an age of maximum medicine and people have never been sicker. Worse, our children have never been so unhealthy.

                  1. If we have never been sicker then how do you explain that life span keeps increasing even in the USA where you said there is little homeopathy. In addition there has been no siginficant change in diet except inc toxins and GMO food. So how are people living longer if not for the improvements in medicine such as cardiac care and cancer cures

                     1. The longevity data is a case of ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ and number-crunching.

                        Comparisons are made with times past when poor hygiene, sanitation and nutrition meant high infant/maternal and child mortality rates and epidemics were common.

                        The UK began keeping data from 1830 and the US and many other Western nations from a few decades later. It clearly shows that improved longevity began with improved nutrition, sanitation and hygiene, long before the age of major medical intervention as we see it today.

                        The human body, logically, does not have a longer lifespan as research into Egyptian and South American mummies reveals. Where you have reasonable biological health and good nutrition, sanitation and hygiene, your chances of living beyond 100 are pretty good.

                        There was a study done by the Anglican church in Scotland in the early 18th century which revealed high numbers of people aged well over 100 – up to 120, men and women. What surprised them then, and the study is available in book form, was that people had excellent vision and hearing and most continued to do manual labour until they died.

                        When you remove the massively high infant and child mortality rates you get a more balanced and truthful assessment of longevity. However the medical industry wants to promote the medical industry and so it prefers to push the skewed data.

                        There is also no doubt that Allopathic medicine has skills in mechanical medicine, i.e. surgery and trauma/crisis, which has vastly decreased accident deaths in the past sixty years. That also impacts longevity data.

                        There has been a dramatic change in diet, particularly in the US which has never had a food culture like Europe. Highly processed food full of chemicals and low in nutrition is a norm these days. There was a study done some years back and no, I don’t have it but you could find it, studying nutrition levels in apples in the UK and comparing them to nutrition levels in the forties and before. Today you would have to eat ten apples to get the same nutrition levels.

                        Food, particularly in the US is highly processed and salt and sugar levels are much greater than before. People also eat a lot more meat and it is not good meat, as in organic.

                        Sugary coloured drinks and junk food are a norm for many.

                        Where I live in Africa the average longevity is 42! But that does not mean everyone dies at 42. Many live well into their eighties and nineties. It just means that the child/infant mortality rates remain high because of poor nutrition, sanitation and hygiene and the impact of Aids/HIV and malaria kill more people, more often.

                        Thank the engineers for longer lives, not the doctors.

                        Another interesting area of research is ancestry. Where you have good nutrition, sanitation and hygiene as most people in Australia had from the 20th century and also had it better than the UK or Europe from the 19th century, you find that in families of twelve children, which was once common, you might lose one child but generally most grew to adulthood and then you might lose one in their twenties, often from accidents, and then a couple in their fifties, a couple in their sixties or seventies, a couple living to eighty and beyond. etc.

                        The medical industry pushes the fantasy that it is keeping people alive longer when it is not in any general sense. What it does do however, is keep people alive longer in very, very, poor health and that is hardly a plus.

                        1. There it is the conspiracy theories. So the data from the CDC, WHO, World Bank, US government, etc, that longevity is inc in the USA over the last 30 years even the face of all these inc preservatives and toxins….is all damn lies! Who is getting desperate now

                        2. You mean your invented conspiracy theory. Vested agendas, particularly in the US where you have the most corrupt political system in particular and systems in general because of your iniquitous lobbying system and corporate power, are more than capable of looking after their own interests and selectively publishing data.

                           No conspiracy is required, just self-serving dishonesty.

                           It is not all lies but a lot of it is distortion.

                           Here are some good articles for you:

                           Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.

                           https://www.newscientist.com/a…

                           http://www.economist.com/news/…

                           Quote: Most scientific research unreliable or completely fraudulent says ex editor of Lancet.

                           http://www.drugawareness.org/e…

                           Scientific peer review useless…..

                           http://www.independent.co.uk/n…

                           Quote: Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ)[sic],which is considered to another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain:

                           “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.”

                           http://acsh.org/2015/05/scienc…

                        3. didn’t you say governments are all wholeheartedly supporting homeopathy. are you not from australia? not supported there

                           https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/media/releases/2015/nhmrc-releases-statement-and-advice-homeopathy

                        4. You have a tendency to misquote.

                           What I said was, in response to comments from you and others that Homeopathy did not work and was therefore fraudulent, was that given it was included by many Governments around the world as a part of their State health systems, patently it did work and was not fraudulent since Governments, like medical professionals and academia had a horror of looking stupid or being sued.

                           I did not say all Governments wholeheartedly supported it. That is your misquote, either on purpose or because you have problems reading and processing. That would be a silly thing to say because patently it is not true. And I never said it. I thank you for your apology in advance.

                           Yes, I am from Australia and no, we are not one of the countries with a sensible Government which supports Homeopathy. Having said that, Homeopathy is claimable under ‘extras’ private health cover.

                           I also pointed out when this was raised earlier that the report was deeply flawed. I am sure if such a report had been into oncology with no oncologist on the panel, none consulted and research data chosen selectively you would also consider it flawed.

                           I apply principles across the spectrum. I find it works better.

                           https://www.hri-research.org/2015/03/nhmrc-publishes-flawed-report-despite-concerns-raised-during-public-consultation/

                        5. I disagree. I am a specialist. If a review on the validity of studies is performed only by statisticians and epidemiologists, then I am fine with that. They will be unbiased and pick only studies that have been adequately randomized with proper controls. Whenever you don’t like the outcome, you just again regurgitate what other people study. Try learning how to critically read papers. That is the difference with you and many like you….you wholeheartedly accept and regurgitate what others tell you and have an inability to think critically and that is why others compare it to a religion

                        6. p.s. misquoting amounts to sloppy research and sloppy writing. Where is your scientific rigour?

                        7. p.s. you clearly missed the point on longevity data – it is skewed because it is compared to data from times when infant/child/maternal mortality rates were high. You have to compare apples with apples.

                           More people are living longer because fewer die in childhood because of improved sanitation, hygiene and nutrition but people are not living longer per se:

                        8. By the way, the single intervention that has improved the longevity of the people of the world is…..get ready for it roslyn…..VACCINES!!!!!!

                        9. Wrong again, but I fully understand why you believe that. The very useful data kept by Governments since 1830 also reveals that all diseases for which vaccines were developed were in decline BEFORE vaccines appeared.

                           In fact with the Salk vaccine it triggered a new outbreak of Polio.

                           And mortality rates from ALL diseases dropped significantly when improved nutrition, sanitation and hygiene were in place.

                           Here’s the thing, my parents were born in the twenties and were not vaccinated and neither had their parents been and no-one died. We went from families of twelve to families of five or six – no-one died.

                           I grew up in the Fifties and had the run of childhood diseases and I and my siblings got over them in a couple of days. Ditto for my kids in the early Seventies. I think they had maybe two or three vaccines and well past the age of one.

                           We now have the insanity, and the US is the absolute worst, that a child is likely to receive more than fifty vaccinations within five years of life beginning within 24 hours of birth for, wait for it, key canned laughter, a sexually transmitted disease which their mother does not have!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                           And following the vax-max timeline we saw SIDS appear – do a search on ncbi to see data linking SIDS to vaccines; Autism, both unknown before the vax-max age, and we have levels of cancer, behavioural and learning difficulties, auto-immune disease, allergies, asthma, coeliac disease etc. etc. at levels never seen in children before in recorded human history!

                           And countries have vaccine damage compensation programmes while doctors continue to claim vaccines do no harm!!! Oxymoronic.

                        10. You have a complete lack of understanding of statistics so it is very difficult to argue with you. Please take a course in statistics and then maybe we can talk. For example, you say people are not lining longer they just do not die on childbirth. Oh my god?! Do you know nothing about statistical methods. Do you not think we take that into accoint? Just simply look at demographic curves. You really do have your head in the sand if you think smallpox disappeared with hygiene. You do not understand the mechanism of disease. It is like arguing with someone that the world is round when they have the knowledge base in the times where they thought the world was flat

                        11. Um, no, I did not say that ‘people are not living longer they just do not die in childbirth’ what I said was:

                            the high infant and child mortality rates in past centuries where poor nutrition, sanitation and hygiene were the major contributing factors, skew the data if you make a simple comparison with today.

                            I said, unless you take into account the vast decline in infant, child, maternal mortality rates and the drop in deaths by accident, because Allopathic medicine is good at mechanics – I said that – then your number crunching will be distorted.

                            If you have ten thousand people and 150 years ago, 20% died before the age of five (that is a guestimate used for this purpose) then you will have, when you crunch longevity numbers as still happens in the Third World today, a lower longevity figure.

                            If in a Western nation today, although as I am sure you know the US stands out with exceptionally high infant mortality rates, worse than many Third World countries, you have say 1% dying before the age of five that means 19% will be living in ways they were not 150 years ago.

                            So, you have more people living, which can be crunched to look like more people living longer, but it is not that more people are living longer but that when more people survive the first five years your ‘odds’ and statistics change. More people live longer because there are more people living longer than the first five years.

                            As I pointed out before, here in Africa the average age of death is 42 but not everyone dies at 42 just as they did not in the West in past centuries. Many live into their nineties but poor nutrition, sanitation and hygiene mean more die in the first five years and HIV/Aids mean more die before forty.

                            I never said smallpox disappeared with hygiene. You really do misquote or perhaps misread.

                            I said, records show diseases for which vaccines were later invented were in decline BEFORE vaccines appeared and tht includes smallpox.

                            There is no doubt that the best and first medicine is food and where you have optimal nutrition you have better health. That means even when people become sick they are less likely to die because they are robust.

                            Where you have optimal sanitation and hygiene combined with nutrition you have the best circumstances or health and that means fewer people get sick and fewer of those who do, die. It also means fewer epidemics. Logic.

                            Diseases, as history also shows, have cycles where they increase and diminish and often simply virtually disappear, like the Black Death. They ‘burn’ themselves out in various ways.

                            The key point was that vaccines did not end smallpox or in fact, any other disease and that the diseases were in decline before vaccines and mortality rates plummeted where you introduced good nutrition, sanitation and hygiene.

                            For what it is worth there is some interesting data, mooted actually during the Fifties polio epidemic, linking the polio epidemic to the deluded medical practice common from the beginning of the 20th century, of removing tonsils and adenoids. Science in its ignorance and arrogance decided that since they did not know what purpose they served they must be useless.

                            Science has of course discovered its error but tonsillectomies are still far too common.

                            I find it interesting that you mention the world being flat…. or rather the belief in it. Did you know that many from ancient times did not believe the earth was flat and in fact knew the earth was not flat? Astrologers were well aware of this reality as the first astronomers.

                            Did you know it is yet another scientific myth, founded on the principle of ‘look how stupid they were and how clever we are’ that most people believed the world was flat. Some certainly did but then some people today believe you can inject a toxic cocktail of disease and chemicals, including material from aborted foetuses and from animals, into a baby with a barely effective immune system and expect that it will do no harm at all.

                            Clever scientists also said Thalidomide was safe for pregnant women. They said DDT was safe as a herbicide. They said asbestos was safe as a building material. They said it was fine to feed antibiotics to livestock. They said the foetus could not feel. They said a newborn baby boy could be circumcised without anaesthetic because it felt no pain. They said a chemical concoction cooked up in a laboratory, margarine was better for you than butter. They said saturated fats were bad for you.

                            I could go on. Many people get many things wrong a lot of the time and that includes scientists and doctors.

                        12. you just don’t get it. you have a complete lack of understanding of statistics. You think we can’t take into account the reduction in childhood mortality (which by the way is due to vaccines). Maybe look at population pyramids that maybe even a layman like you can understand

                        13. No, the reduction is not due to vaccines and the data proves that. It is a common myth that it is due to vaccines and I understand most medical professionals believe it because they must but it is not. The science/medical vaccine industry needs people to believe that vaccines have saved us.

                            The graphs are easy to find.

                            https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150107165598998.322979.69667273997

                            Here is a site put up by medical professionals. Yes, there are some who question vaccine dogma.

                            http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/

                        14. You need to learn to think critically. You just regurgitate things other people write. Do you know how to analyze a paper or research study so you can make your own decision.

                            Here is a much more accurate graph for you about vaccines.

                            http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/02/19/a-graphic-that-drives-home-how-vaccines-have-changed-our-world/

                            I find it so ironic how you like to quote the same journals and organizations that wholeheartedly debunk homeopathy when it suits you. But when it doesn’t suit you, then it is all false.

                        15. I remain open to all sources. Correct information can be found anywhere. you select sources, I do not.

                        16. Fortunately, every government in the world, every academic institution in the world, every international AID agency, WHO, UNAID, every medical school and 99.999 percent of MD in the world all disagree with you and wholly endorse vaccinations. But you know better right.

                        17. Not strictly true. There is a difference between endorsing vaccination as a theory and endorsing rates of vaccination. The US is the most vaccinated nation in the developed world with the worst health and infant mortality rates.

                            Of course most of these organisations currently support the theory of vaccination but that does not mean it works or they are right. It most certainly does not mean vaccines in children are harmless. And that is the point.

                            Many nations also have vaccine damage compensation programmes and increasingly parents are becoming concerned about the profit-driven max-vax industry.

                            Increasingly paediatricians are questioning vaccination policy.

                            As I said science/medicine once said Thalidomide was safe. I suspect if greed and profit motives did not control medicine we would not be having this conversation because kids would still get a couple of vaccines at older ages and not the more than fifty they can and often do have today.

                            Follow the time-line of vaccines and follow the emergence of SIDS and Autism epidemics and vastly higher rates of chronic and serious disease in children. Look at the increase in cancers in particular and brain cancer most tragically.

                            Look at the shocking rise in behavioural and learning difficulties – talk to any child psychologist, teacher or parent.

                            Sorry, if modern medicine was all it says it is kids would be healthier, not sicker.

                        18. By the way i just looked at the graphs you posted. Nice try. Those are mortality graphs. Of course the mortality rate was decreasing from these disease over time as supportive MEDICAL care was improving through out this time. If you would take the time to look at the infection rates from these diseases you see absolutely phenomenal reduction in rates as soon as vaccines are implemented. Again you completely do not understand statistics nor do you have the ability to think critically. It is laughable.

                        19. and yet you were talking about mortality in the comment s/he replied to.

                        20. Editorial rigour seems to be uncommon in David. He bounces all over the place and serially misquotes.

                        21. most of them do.

                        22. He was talking about extending lifespan.

                        23. he was talking about both, mikey.

                        24. Mortality rates dropping follow the timeline of improved sanitation, hygiene and nutrition.

                            And perhaps you can explain why, if modern Allopathic medicine is so good, that it is the third biggest killer in the US and fourth in other developed nations and rising? What happened to do no harm

                            The major cause of iatrogenic deaths is prescribed medication. At what point does modern medicine recognise it has it very wrong and toxic chemicals created for generic humans who do not exist, are likely to kill.

                        25. Those aren’t charts of the incidence (or the “reduction” in disease), and you know it. Care to post some?

                            How about measles, or HiB, or Polio? Can we see the incidence charts for them please?

                        26. Using the same logic that you use to support homeopathy, YOU should be the biggest CHAMPION of VACCINES!!
                            “it is practised by MD’s and hospitals, taught in medical schools and universities and embraced by Governments as part of their health system. None of that would happen if it did nothing because medical professionals, academics and politicians live in terror of being sued or looking like idiots.”

                        27. You just made my argument. Thanks. Vaccines are accepted by science because they are embraced by MD’s and hospitals, taught in medical schools and embraced by Government so why do scientists apply double standards to Homeopathy?

                            I await your answer.

                            As to my position, I do not support Homeopathy because of the above – I support it because I know it works. I merely use the above argument to point out to naysayers that their position is irrational, as you have now also articulated.

                        28. “I did provide evidence it works. You ignore it.”
                            Please provide the data demonstrating the incidence of theses infectious disease were in decline prior to the introduction of vaccines against them. Incidence of the diseases, mind you, and not deaths due to the diseases. Don’t confuse morbidity and mortality.

                        29. Snort!

                        30. You do realise that prior to neonatal hepatitis B vaccination, there were over 12,000 cases of childhood Hep B per year in the USA?
                            And that only half of these cases came from an infected Mom?

                        31. The longevity data is a case of ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ and number-crunching.

                            Comparisons are made with times past when poor hygiene, sanitation and nutrition meant high infant/maternal and child mortality rates and epidemics were common.

                            Ah, yes, the filth of the 1950s. It’s not even worth the effort to bother with the rest of random, unsourced assertions.

                        32. If you are talking about the US you need to remember that you had barely gotten past the remnants of slavery, in fact you had not and would not until the Seventies.

                            You also had massively high levels of poverty and working poor and you still do compared to other developed nations.

                            In addition you have the worst working conditions of any developed nation and poor wages and poor social welfare support networks so more people live with lower levels of nutrition, hygiene and sanitation than in other developed nation.

                            If you are talking Polio I suggest you read the research, first mooted at the time and then pretty much ignored, linking the Polio epidemic to the ignorant and arrogant medical practice, common from the early part of the 20th century of removing tonsils and adenoids on a whim because science did not know what they did and so decided they were useless.

                            You can imagine why when science applies the same principles to things like Homeopathy, the informed ignore it. And I gather, surprise, surprise, science is beginning to realise the appendix is not useless either, fancy that!!!!

            2. There is evidence that doing nothing is slightly better than chemo. At the end of the day people need to make their own choices. Having said that, chemo is a modern version of ‘snake oil’ worth absolute billions and if it was being used by any other medical modality it would have been banned long ago.

               Chemo kills more than it heals and there is a case that those who survive chemo would have survived and healed anyway.

               Chemo is nuclear war against the body. It actually triggers growth of the disease which is why so many are supposedly ‘clear’ for a year or a couple of years and then riddled with tumours.

               And what Allopathic medicine calls cure is surviving five years. The statistics are seriously dodgy. Cooking the chemo books because it is big business.

               To be fair to Allopathic doctors they are trapped in an impossible situation where they have nothing but the knife and the chemicals. This is why Integrative medicine is so crucial to the future of health and healing.

               1. “There is evidence that doing nothing is slightly better than chemo. ”
                  What evidence would that be? Citation needed.

                  “Chemo kills more than it heals and there is a case that those who survive chemo would have survived and healed anyway.”
                  Again: citations needed.

            3. I should clarify then the study state the Chemo improves your 5 year survival rate by 2.1% in the US. Chemo is slighlty better than doing nothing.

               Wow, there’s a moldy oldie.

               1. okay how effect is chemo for breast cancer

                  1. okay [sic] how effect [sic] is chemo for breast cancer

                     What kind of breast cancer? Is immunotherapy “chemo”? Why are you lazily trying to change the subject from your incredibly stupid statement that “the Chemo [sic] improves your 5 year survival rate by 2.1% in the US” rather than giving some sign that you’ve managed to even read and understand the reference that you’re “replying” to?

                     1. my claim was that chemi s about 2% effective for a number of cancers (excluding lukemia and testiclur) Your quackbuster site disputes that. So Ill narrow my claim down to a more specific type of cancer in this case breast cancer. I did get chance to red the link”In cancers such as myeloma and ovarian cancer, in which chemotherapy has been used long before our current era of well-designed RCTs, the lack of RCT comparing chemotherapy to best supportive care should not be misconstrued to dismiss or minimise any survival benefit. In head and neck cancer, the authors erroneously claim the benefit from chemotherapy given concomitantly with radiotherapy in a meta-analysis to be 4%, when 8% was in fact reported ”
                        so if chemo and radiotherapy are used together on head and neck cancers. One can expect 8% benifits 5 year turns into 5 years and 4.8 months.

                        1. The 5 year survival rate for breast cancer in 1975 was 75% and now it is well over 90%. And this does not even include the great improvement seen with herceptin. So i would say chemo is making a huge difference with improvement in chemotherapeutic agents. In addition, with the advent of personalized medicine and chemo treatments, this will improve even further!!! I am happy to provide references for you.

                        2. please do

         2. To be fair to Allopathic doctors they are believing what they are told to believe. I doubt many if any actually research chemo across a spectrum and look at other possible cancer treatments. I imagine they do not have time and given the power pharmaceutical corporations have over medicine, they could lose their jobs or be sued if they tried to deviate from the authorised path.

            http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/salud/salud_defeatcancer164.htm

      3. Is this what naturopathy requires? Removing mercury, drinking juice etc?

         Homeopathic medicine does believe that what we do and what we eat plays a part in our health but beyond as natural and fresh as possible, the only advice would be to enjoy what you eat. Removing fillings, drinking juice, popping supplements is NOT a part of Homeopathy.

         The Homeopathic medicine does the work although sensible dietary and sleep habits would be advised but then most Allopathic doctors would say the same. It is common sense.

         1. No Natropaths tends to chase down anything that may cause cancer. Some feel that a root canal leave a dead body part in your body. Witch is a source of infection and low level inflammation. Im not aware of any uniform natropathic treatment for cancer but there are numerous protocols for treating cancer

4. It would be great to see the evidence of homeopaths’ claims. Show patients confirmed to have a disease. Show the treatment. Show evidence of cure. Otherwise you are just charlatans.

   1. You do realise that you are saying more than two centuries of Homeopathic medicine is fraudulent and that the MD’s, hospitals who practice it; universities and medical schools which teach it and Governments which include it in their State medical systems are charlatans?

      I suspect you know next to nothing about Homeopathy beyond your own prejudice.

      it is farcical that you call for someone to show the treatment, show evidence of cure when all you have to do is access any national or international Homeopathic site to find a wealth of it.

      There is plenty of evidence. May I suggest you commence a reading course into at least a few dozen of the thousands of books written on Homeopathy across more than two centuries.

      I would direct you particularly to three US Homeopaths who are also qualified Allopathic Doctors:

      Dr Larry Malerba, Dr Bill Gray and Dr Stephen Goldsmith, a New York psychiatrist. Perhaps when you have read their books you might send them a note telling them they are deluded charlatans.

      http://www.amazon.com/Green-Medicine-Challenging-Assumptions-Conventional/dp/1556439024 – Malerba.

      http://www.amazon.com/Homeopathy-Science-Myth-Bill-Gray/dp/1556433328

      http://www.amazon.com/The-Healing-Paradox-Revolutionary-Approach-ebook/dp/B00ATLMXO6

      1. I’m looking for peer-reviewed sources, not self-published books.

         1. If you read the books you will find some. Otherwise do a search. It is not hard.

            The point was, that on each count you have Homeopathic doctors who are also qualified in Allopathic medicine. Common sense suggests that they perhaps know more than you do.

            1. Actually, given the lack of any evidence whatsoever demonstrating homeopathy is effective, common sense suggests instead that a small number of physicians are wrong to believe that homeopathy offers any genuine benefits for their patients.

         2. And patently you did not bother accessing the links – they are not self-published books. Although even if they were it does not make them invalid.

            What happened to that objective scientific approach?

            1. I checked them out. I will also wait for the breakthrough that demonstrates homeopathy works, which would make such a “researcher” eligible for the Nobel Prize in medicine, chemistry, physics, and peace. Until then, homeopathy stands as being 0.00000000000000001% plausible.

               1. Thank you so much for demonstrating Taylor what most who reject Homeopathy are about – egregious prejudice and absolute ignorance. It was pretty clear you came from a place of utter ignorance and even worse prejudice. Sadly, for science, you are representative although this is not negative for Homeopathy because it merely makes clear the fact that those who reject Homeopathy have no idea what they are talking about and are incapable of approaching the topic with scientific rigour and objectivity.

                  Your ‘meant to be humorous, post simply says what was pretty clear anyway, that you have never done any credible research into Homeopathy, that you approach it with a severely closed and subjective mind, which is very unscientific and that you represent the very worst of science today – Scientism where science has become akin to religious belief and dogma which betrays the true integrity of the best of science.

                  p.s. you do realise many great scientists including Einstein did not believe quantum mechanics was ‘plausible.’ Gosh they got that wrong. One would think that perhaps science had learned a lesson but I guess not.

                  1. If you told me that magic carpets work because there is a rich literature talking about them from the Middle East, then I would be equally skeptical. Homeopathy is implausible, but it’s placebo effects are measurable, which can be achieved by telling a patient to take yet another sugary pill or walk around barefoot and feel the Earth’s energy.

                     1. If someone demonstrated a magic carpet working it would be foolish to deny the reality because current scientific knowledge considers it impossible.

                        If, as consistently happens, Homeopathy is demonstrated to work and is used by MD’s and in hospitals, it would be foolish to deny the reality because current scientific knowledge considers it impossible.

                        A true sceptic has an open mind. I am a true sceptic, you are not. Your mind is completely closed on this subject just because you have chosen to embrace a set of beliefs which say it is implausible.

                        Yes, placebo effects are measurable it is is also possible to ascertain what cannot be pure placebo. What cannot be pure placebo is what Homeopathy does in demonstrating effect on:

                        1. body tissue and cells
                        2. plants
                        3. unconscious animals and humans
                        4. months after being taken

                        Since walking around barefoot absorbing energy from the earth has nothing to do with Homeopathy, your last comment is irrelevant and misplaced. Not however surprising.

                     2. we can only see/fathom what we can see with our senses or our technology.
                        all have limits because we have.

                        1. Exactly, which is why we should design the best, most objective clinical trials possible given our limited capabilities and finite resources.

                           This is also a good reminder why a handful of more subjective case studies are not nearly as useful a form of evidence

                        2. you missed my/the point.

                  2. p.s. you do realise many great scientists including Einstein did not believe quantum mechanics was ‘plausible.’

                     No, but I do realize that you understand nothing at all about the Bohr–Einstein debates.

                     1. Then you would be as wrong as you have been on Homeopathy. Hardly surprising.

                        1. Then you would be as wrong as you have been on Homeopathy. Hardly surprising.

                           You have omitted two rather important parts to elevate this remark above sticking your tongue out:

                           1. A defense of your claim that “Einstein did not believe quantum mechanics was ‘plausible.'” Taken literally, and after all, you simply put a word in quotation marks and called it day, this is plainly false. Simply stating that I am “wrong” means that you do understand something greater than nothing about the Bohr–Einstein debates. This would be the place to demonstrate that.

                           2. How have I been “wrong … on Homeopathy” [sic]? I’m getting the impression that you’re only sorting comments into piles of “yum” or “ick” and emitting correspondingly mindless “responses” that are devoid of any of the normal contextual markers that one is responding to (as opposed to RESPONDING!).

                        2. Almost witty, I will give you that. Mocking of course
                           because you come from a place of ignorance and egregious prejudice but almost witty.

                           Einstein was stuck in ‘spooky action at a distance’ but I am sure he would see things differently today. He was a man of his age and time and nowhere near as brilliant as has been made out. Clever yes, but not the genius claimed. But I digress, or course he was merely human.

                           I am sure you are well aware that Einstein never fully accepted quantum physics…. Nothing to defend, it is common knowledge, even for non-scientists like me.

                           Quote: Quantum physics describes a universe that is profoundly mysterious. Einstein, arguably the most revolutionary thinker of modern times, struggled
                           greatly with quantum theory. This groundbreaking new perspective, ironically triggered by his own early work, simply didn’t fit his views on physical reality. Would quantum theory not have been as successful as it was, Einstein
                           could have brushed it aside. But from the early days, the theory was immensely successful. And no one around him seemed to have any problems with it. Einstein must have felt lonely at times, but he was convinced enough in the power of his
                           own reasoning to persist in his skepticism towards quantum physics.

                           Einstein was wrong.

                           http://www.science20.com/hammock_physicist/einstein_got_it_wrong_can_you_do_better-85544

                           Einstein was a prisoner of his own limited belief system and that can make the cleverest of people quite foolish. He was also a man of is age. Science has been locked into a materialist reductionist paradigm for a long time and just as necessity pushed quantum physics to the fore, so science will be forced to evolve, destroying dogma, scientific ‘theology’, beliefs, systems, careers, egos in the doing. Such is the way of life.

                           You are wrong on Homeopathy because you consistently demonstrate absolute ignorance and even worse prejudice, the latter, hardly being appropriate for someone supporting scientific rigour.

                           The fact that you have been reduced to mockery means you really lack a substantive case and somewhere you know it. The real ‘ick’ is you cannot destroy the Homeopathic position, wish you could, can’t be bothered doing real research which might actually mean you could make some sort of coherent
                           argument, and are just annoyed.

                           You see, ‘ick’ and ‘yum’ are words children use and your use of them reflects on your lack of maturity, not mine. Children also stick their tongues out. How old are you by the way?

                        3. You can’t escape anyways, we are putting vaccines in chemtrails and soon the US government will have the whole world covered. http://www.zengardner.com/chemtrail-crimes-human-hybridization-aerial-vaccinations/

                        4. Yes, there are some serious nutters in the world. There are people who believe Measles is akin to the Black Death and others who believe in vaccination through chemtrails. Two extremes on a spectrum.

                        5. You do realize that most md in the world would classify you as one of those nutters? I am actually shocked that you believe there is any support from the medical community for your views. Yes I agree you can find a few md that believe in homeopathy but the majority of them are in the community and almost none in academic institutions.
                           I would think that at least we could agree in the following point: there is a large public demand for homeopathy but the majority of the academic institutions and MD in the world feel that homeopathy does not work.

                        6. You seem to consistently make the
                           mistake of assuming that the US represents the world. I am sure your statement
                           is correct if you were talking about US doctors but it is most certainly not
                           true of the world in general, particularly Europe and actually, despite
                           campaigns, not even true of England which has a long history of Homeopathy.

                           Supporting Homeopathy because personal experience has revealed to me it is
                           effective, and continuing study merely adds weight to that position, does not
                           make me or anyone else in the same position a nutter. If I had that experience
                           and rejected it because science cannot yet explain how it works, now, that
                           would make me irrational but probably not a nutter.

                           ‘Nutter’ is a word I apply to people who take extreme positions. Someone who is
                           adamant that this world is purely material and everything in it can be reduced
                           to the material is just as much a nutter as someone who believes their next
                           door neighbour is a transplant from Mars who is spying on them. Nutter equals
                           extremes.

                           I don’t believe there is support in the medical community worldwide, I KNOW
                           there is supports. Academic institutions
                           in Europe are more enlightened and open-minded than perhaps you have
                           experienced. Good on the Europeans.

                           I did not say there was large public demand for Homeopathy per se: I said there
                           was growing demand for non-Allopathic medicine and Homeopathy is a key part of
                           that.

                           And no, I don’t agree that the majority of academic institutions and MD’s in
                           the world believe or feel Homeopathy does not work. I would agree the majority
                           in the US would take this view and possibly a majority in some other countries
                           but as a worldwide position, on percentages, no.

                           And the mere fact that even in the US there is growing criticism of the
                           excesses, costs and harm done by Allopathic medicine and its failures and moves
                           toward Integrative Medicine, indicates my position is more forward-thinking
                           than yours.

                        7. If you look at the top ten medical schools in the world 7 or in the US and 3 or in england. Your university of vienna which you seem fond of is 160?!? Anyways you keep saying I’m biased because i live in the USA? But i do not live in the US…yet another one of your preconceived notions.

                        8. He was a man of his age and time and nowhere near as brilliant as has been made out.

                           Thank the Astral Plane that Hahnemann is has proved immune. Anyway, I see that you have been driven to random cut-and-paste jobs to divert attention from your direct attribution of “implausible.” The Bohr–Einstein debates? Apparently inconvenient to the original posturing.

                           You see, ‘ick’ and ‘yum’ are words children use and your use of them reflects on your lack of maturity, not mine.

                           This deflection, however – given that you previously just pulled a rotting, stock metaphor out of your brain-fridge – is truly impressive, though: you can’t read. Would it help if I redid the whole thing in fractured alchemical “Latin”?

            2. Seems perfectly intact to me. Do you understand what objectivity actually is? Exercising no critical judgment of the validity of a given source doesn’t make a person “objective” or “scientific” it makes them gullible and ignorant.

      2. Here is a court case against negligent parents
         http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3130660/Toddler-dies-untreated-ear-infection-parents-refused-treatment-don-t-believe-modern-medicine.html

         1. Since the story does not go into any detail it is impossible to know how negligent the parents were.

            And since Allopathic medicine is the third biggest killer and rising, you do realise if you applied the same principle to conventional medicine it would be pretty much banned?

            1. You still have not provided a source for this third biggest killer and rising. And I mean a real unbiased source not from the homeopathic times or from one of your self published charlatans. I gave you a list that was from the WHO that did not even have it in the top 10. You must provide data

               1. You are quaintly naieve if you believe that scientific and medical sources of data are unbiased given that ex editors of prestigious medical journals, Richard Horton and Marcia Angell have stated most data cannot be believed and is either just wrong or fraudulent.

                  Funny how it does not make it into the top ten with WHO which is an utterly biased source on every count. Have a look at who fund WHO.

                  Quote:

                  Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death.

                  That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second.

                  http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/09/20/224507654/how-many-die-from-medical-mistakes-in-u-s-hospitals

                  Quote: Summary: Medical error has been reliably identified as among America’s leading causes of death. Yet it never appears in “top ten causes of death” charts that periodically appear in the literature, and this author has never heard medical error mentioned during end-of-life public panels where providers address citizens interested in planning for peaceful demises. Death cause data and medical error incident reporting data seem to exist separately in public records. Accounting for medical error as among the leading causes of death would require these data sets be integrated in a way that would force error to appear in causal compilations.

                  http://www.jopm.org/opinion/commentary/2013/04/24/it%E2%80%99s-time-to-account-for-medical-error-in-%E2%80%9Ctop-ten-causes-of-death-charts/

                  http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/mistakes/common.htm

            2. The point of the article was not that the homeopathic medicine killed. But rather that the burden of evidence shows that vaccines and antibiotics clearly work such that the parents are being charged with homicide for not using them!!

               1. Unless you read the court case data you have no idea what the did or did not do.

                  1. You are correct, I do not know all the details of the case. The point is that the general acceptance is that vaccines and antibiotics work and that the parents were charged with manslaughter for not using them. You do not have to see the court transcript for this fact. I’m not sure why you are arguing this point.D

                     1. You accuse the parents of negligence as did the court. But since the detail in the newspaper story is scanty you cannot make that claim without reading the court data. That was my point.

                        The parents also said they could not afford medical costs and you do have that appalling situation in the US because you are the only developed nation without free medical care.

                        They did take the child to hospital ultimately. Without knowing the full details of the case you have no idea what they did or why they did what they did.

                        And the vaccination would have done nothing for what ultimately killed the child, it might have made it worse. Yes, antibiotics usually work. But if these parents could not afford Allopathic care I would bet they could not afford Homeopathy either and probably self-medicated.

                        It is a tragic story which reflects more on the parlous American health system than anything else perhaps.

   2. You can start here but it also explains why there are inevitable distortions when seeking to study Homeopathic medicine in the same way that Allopathic medicine can be and is studied. If you want to study asthma medication in Allopathy you use the same medication for the group. You cannot study medication in the same way in Homeopathy. You can study treating asthma in say 100 individuals but other symptoms will be taken into account and you might have 100 different remedies for 100 different people.

      Randomised placebo-controlled trials

      The widely accepted method of proving whether or not a medical intervention works is called a randomised controlled trial (RCT). One group of patients, the control group, receive placebo (a “dummy” pill) or standard treatment, and another group of patients receive the medicine being tested. The trial becomes double-blinded when neither the patient nor the practitioner knows which treatment the patient is getting. RCTs are often referred to as the “gold standard” of clinical research.

      Up to the end of 2014, a total of 104 papers reporting good-quality placebo-controlled RCTs in homeopathy (on 61 different medical conditions) have been published in peer-reviewed journals. 41% of these RCTs have reported a balance of positive evidence, 5% a balance of negative evidence, and 54% have not been conclusively positive or negative. For full details of all these RCTs and more in-depth information on the research in general, visit the research section of the Faculty of Homeopathy’s website. Also, see 2-page evidence summary with full references.

      The above figures are strikingly similar to data obtained from an analysis of 1016 systematic reviews of RCTs (and therefore of many more than that number of RCTs) in conventional medicine: 44% of the reviews concluded that the interventions studied were likely to be beneficial (positive); 7% concluded that the interventions were likely to be harmful (negative); and 49% reported that the evidence did not support either benefit or harm (non-conclusive). [El Dib RP, Atallah AN, Andriolo RB (2007). Mapping the Cochrane evidence for decision making in health care. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice; 13:689–692.]

      http://www.britishhomeopathic.org/evidence/the-evidence-for-homeopathy/

      1. ” If you want to study asthma medication in Allopathy you use the same medication for the group. You cannot study medication in the same way in Homeopathy. You can study treating asthma in say 100 individuals but other symptoms will be taken into account and you might have 100 different remedies for 100 different people.”

         In other words, homeopathic products should not be sold and should be made one at a time for an individual. Forgive me for thinking that there are almost no homeopaths that do this. Suddenly, your “governments, hospitals, etc.” have all been practicing homeopathy WRONG. Hm

         1. No, you do not understand. Homeopathic medicines do not have to be made for an individual, simply prescribed individually.

            You have it wrong but then we know you have done no research and have absolutely no understanding of Homeopathic medicine.

            Someone with a basic knowledge can make use of a Homeopathic first aid kit but because Homeopathy is so complex and the individual is treated, not the condition, self-prescribing is likely to fail and over-the-counter is unwise to my mind.

            1. I don’t think you refuted what I said at all

               1. Oh I did absolutely. You might be incapable of understanding it since you have no understanding of Homeopathy, but you misread what I said.

                  You seem to think that the need to prescribe for the individual means a need to make up an individual medicine. It does not. That is not how Homeopathy works but then you know nothing so your error is understandable.

                  The medications available are fine, it is the prescribing which is key in terms of the remedy, the potency, the process.

                  1. This makes the OTC selling of products unethical, does it not?

                     1. No. Ethics are involved where harm may be done. OTC Homeopathic medications do no harm but self-prescribing is less effective.

                        OTC is likely to be ineffective because it runs counter to the optimal nature of Homeopathy.

                        But we live in a commercial world. Far more damage is done by OTC Allopathic medicine than any other.

                        To put it into perspective, I do not believe any medication of any kind should be self-prescribed or sold OTC and that includes Allopthic. So if you want to call it unethical it is all unethical.

                        Herbal medicines and supplements can do harm and should not be self-prescribed but they are.

                        1. “Herbal medicines and supplements can do harm ”

                           Wow, the brain-washing is real

                        2. Any purely material medication can do harm, particularly if self-prescribed.

                        3. Are you admitting that homeopathy is magic? (supernatural)

                        4. Your leaps of fantasy know no bounds. Maybe you should train as a magician – they do magic, trickery.

                           Not being purely material is not magic.

                        5. Not being material means being immaterial which is the same as supernatural. . .

                        6. No, emotions like Love are not material and they are not supernatural. They have material effect but they are not material.

                           Supernatural is just a word scientists use for that which they do not understand because it cannot be reduced to the purely material.

                        7. This sounds like double think.

                           Do you have evidence that love (or any emotion) is not strictly material? Does it originate somewhere other than the brain?

                           Or are you someone who believes in a soul and therefore pretty much anything goes?

                        8. Pack me up a box of love, weigh it and post it to me if you are convinced love or any emotion is strictly material. Off you go.

                           The theory that emotions come from the brain has never been substantiated. It remains pure theory with so many holes in it that it requires high levels of subjectivity to hold to it. Not to mention a sprinkling of delusion.

                           I have no idea what you mean by Soul so cannot respond to your question.

                        9. Ethics are involved where harm may be done.

                           Unfortunately for this “analysis,” fraud is generally considered to be a harm. Now, you’re a fan of Einstein, right? Let’s conduct a Gedankenexperiment.

                           Suppose that the (US) Federal Trade Commission gets the FDA to do its job. Boiron collapses immediately, so where do the homeopaths who don’t have the time to do their own Korsakovian bottle-washings turn? Helios? How much mother tincture do they have left of positronium or Saturn?

                        10. Fraud is harmful but Homeopathy sold OTC is no more fraud than Allopathic medicine sold in the same way. One difference is Allopathic medicine sold this way can do harm or be ineffective and Homeopathy does no harm.
                            Just as Allopathy has different views regarding medical process so does Homeopathy. I take a purist approach and others believe that some OTC for minor situations is okay. I was expressing my view, but I said that.

                            I have never heard of Boiron until now. Most Homeopaths I know in Australia and the UK have excellent medication sources. Some prepare their own no doubt. Fear not, there will be plenty when you need it.

                            Your last comment makes no sense.

                        11. They just re-use the containers, …for ever and ever.

      2. If you want to study asthma medication in Allopathy you use the same medication for the group. You cannot study medication in the same way in Homeopathy. You can study treating asthma in say 100 individuals but other symptoms will be taken into account and you might have 100 different remedies for 100 different people.

         So? Randomization is trivially implemented by dispensing either the “remedy” or a placebo after the “diagnosis.”

         1. Good point. This is so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t think of it :p

         2. I did not say Homeopathic medicine could not be tested adequately. I said the problem with it is that the system is set up to test allopathically and that creates distortions.

            Every Homeopath would fully support a research study which worked with the particularities of the methodology.

            But you still make the mistake that the Homeopathic doctor would diagnose asthma as an Allopathic doctor would. That is not how it works.

            There is no diagnosis of disease in Homeopathy but a diagnosis of the remedy believed best suited to the individual to trigger cure.

            Mental, emotional, physical, psychological, biological, physiological, circumstantial, spiritual, environmental factors and more provide insight into the symptom picture which enables the doctor to find the best Homeopathic remedy.

            Homeopathy does not treat asthma per se: but the individual. A patient may present with a varied symptom picture of which asthma may be a part but the remedy in treating the individual will treat not just the asthma but other presenting symptoms as it treats the individual.

            1. How exactly does homeopathy take into account the “spiritual” state of someone?

               1. Homeopathy does not take into account the spiritual state of someone…. You really consistently misquote, misinterpret – miss the points. I guess you have to.

                  Homeopathy would take into account, if it appeared substantive, feelings, thoughts, emotions associated with spiritual/religious expression. This would be a factor to lesser and greater degrees depending on the individual. For some it would play no part and for others it could be a major part of the symptom
                  picture.

                  1. That sounds more like psychological state

                     1. I said earlier, Homeopathy takes a symptom picture involving everything – mental, emotional, psychological, physical, circumstantial, biological, spiritual etc. etc.

                     2. Psychological states impact the material and our health.

      3. Please at least look at a reputable site such as WHO. Here is a fact sheet just on measles showing the amazing effect of the vaccine.
         http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/

         1. Measles was and is a minor childhood disease which in natural form confers lifelong immunity. Vaccination was never required. When I had kids in the Seventies doctors encouraged measles, mumps, chicken pox parties so kids could get the disease, get over it and have lifelong immunity. Now the medical industry pretends it is the Black Death.

            And since outbreaks are occurring in the vaccinated it clearly does not work either. And since vaccines do not immunize we increasingly see Measles and other minor childhood diseases in adults when they are more serious.

            1. Ros, before the U.S. measles vaccination program started in 1963 about 3-4 million people in the U.S. got measles each year; 400-500 of them died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 4,000 suffered encephalitis (often leading to lasting adverse consequences) due to measles.

               By what rational argument is that characteristic of a minor disease?

               “When I had kids in the Seventies doctors encouraged measles, mumps, chicken pox parties so kids could get the disease, get over it and have lifelong immunity.”
               Nonsense. No qualified physician in the seventies encouraged parents to expose their children to theses infectious diseases deliberately rather than vaccinate against them.

               “And since outbreaks are occurring in the vaccinated it clearly does not work either.”
               Again: nonsense. While vaccinated individuals can become infected their risk of being infected is orders of magnitude lower than the risk of an unvaccinated individual becoming infected. Consider measles again: 97% of individuals who receive both MMR doses develop protective titers, such that of every 100 vaccinated individuals exposed to measles we expect to see 3 become infected while of every hundred unvaccinated individuals who experience the disease we expect to see 90 become infected.

               1. Perhaps if this state of terror regarding measles existed in the US -it did not in Australia by the way – you can explain why in the Seventies, the comedy series The Brady Bunch, used a situation where all of the children came down with Measles as a subject of mirth. How could that happen when Americans in general lived in such terror of measles. Why do you think they did it and why do you think, when they did it, people laughed?

                  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0531101/

                  I had kids in the Seventies. Did you? I can speak from experience. Can you? People knew that it was better for kids to get these diseases and so if one kid got it they organised a get together to spread it around.

                  Quote: Several decades following the vaccine’s introduction, the measles death rate rose, largely because the vaccine made adults, expectant mothers and infants more vulnerable

                  Early in the last century, measles killed millions of people a year. Then, bit by bit in countries of the developed world, the death rate dropped, by the 1960s by 98% or more. In the U.K., it dropped by an astounding 99.96%. And then, the measles vaccine entered the market.

                  After the vaccine’s introduction, the measles death rate continued to drop into the 1970s. Many scientists credit the continued decline entirely to the vaccine. Other scientists believe the vaccine played a minor role, if that, noting that most infectious diseases similarly petered out during the 20th century, including some, like scarlet fever, for which vaccines were never developed.

                  http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/lawrence-solomon-the-untold-story-of-measles

                  Quote:

                  Measles outbreak in a vaccinated school population:

                  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646939/

                  http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/04/measles-outbreak-traced-fully-vaccinated-patient-first-time

                  Quote: Measles in highly immunized societies occurs primarily among those previously immunized

                  The recent outbreaks of measles in Canada and the United States came as a shock to many public health experts but they wouldn’t have to Dr. Gregory Poland, one of the world’s most admired, most advanced thinkers in the field of vaccinology.

                  http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/lawrence-solomon-vaccines-cant-prevent-measles-outbreaks

                  1. Argument from sit-com? You’ve hit a new low.

                     1. I await your explanation as to how and why, given the terror you tell me existed in Americans at this time, a sit-com got away with making people laugh in regard to the horrors of measles.

                        Go for it.

                        1. Infant recently died. Is that good enough for you. I actually specialize in eye disease and have many patients who are blind from childhood measles. Is that good enough for you. I conducted a study in Africa where we had a horrific amount of infants dying from measles. Is that good enouh for you. You sit in your armchair and have never seen the horrific site of a child in ICU on a respirator due to some stupid parent that didn’t immunize against measles. We should bring you into the hospitals so you can see firsthand the horror
                           http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2966713/Young-child-dies-measles-Berlin-1st-death-outbreak.html

                        2. 1 infant with underlying conditions possibly infected by a vaccinated person is certainly no reason to vaccinate.
                           of course children die where they are malnourished and battling waterborne diseases.
                           THAT is the huge difference between 1st and 3rd world countries and why we cite nutrition and sanitation and why that needs improving everywhere.
                           plus; infants used to be protected by maternal antibodies.

                        3. You show your ignorance. Measles is waterborne disease is it?

                        4. She knows better. We’ve been over this many times She thinks if she says it often enough, the vaccine -hesitant parents will believe her.

                        5. oh my giddy! are you telling me that you don’t understand that i am NOT talking about path of infection/ incidence but about negative/positive outcome of a given infection?
                           if i had a euro for every time a defender of the medical-industrial; complex gets this wrong…

                        6. I have a whole cohort of patients blind from childhood measles and rubella. Here in canada. No waterborne disease or malnutrition involved

                        7. I wonder if your patients are indigenous. It sounds exceptional.Then again, it is anecdote.

                        8. you have the whole world in your hands, i get it. but oh so little understanding.
                           i’d like to say doctor, my derriere, but i’ve met quite few less than bright ones.

                        9. And children die following vaccination. It is all tragic and that is why it must be freedom of choice.

                           I know parents struggling to care for vaccine damaged children – I support freedom of choice.

                           I have never met anyone blind from measles but in your profession you would be exposed to more. I do not know anyone out of hundreds of family and friends from my generation, my children’s and my parents who suffered ill effects from measles.

                           But you have more poverty in the US so it is not surprising.

                           Hyperbole does not make a case. I suggest you sit with parents who have buried children damaged through vaccines and explain to them why you believe in medical fascism.

                           The US has a vaccine injury compensation programme for a reason.

                        10. “And children die following vaccination.”

                            Your evidence that the risks (including death) associated with vaccination is greater than the risks associated with remaining vulnerable to the diseases they protect against would be what exactly, Ros? Be specific.

                            I mean, you do have some—right?

                        11. Quotes from Doctors Regarding Vaccination
                            “The greatest lie ever told is that vaccines are safe and effective.” – Leonard G. Horowitz

                            “The chief, if not the sole cause of the monstrous increase in cancer has been vaccination.” – Dr. Robert Bell, once Vice President, International Society for Cancer Research at the British Cancer Hospital

                            “Vaccines are highly dangerous, have never been adequately studied or proven to be effective, and have a poor risk/reward ratio.” – Dr. Allen Greenberg, MD

                            “In my medical career I’ve treated vaccinated and unvaccinated children and the unvaccinated children are far healthier than the vaccinated ones.” – Dr. Philip Incao, MD

                            “I found the whole vaccine business was indeed a gigantic hoax. Most doctors are convinced that they are useful, but if you look at the proper statistics and study the instances of these diseases you will realize that this is not so.” – Dr. Archivides Kalokerinos, MD

                            “The vaccinations are not working and they are dangerous. We should be working with nature.” – Dr. Lendon Smith, MD

                            “There is no scientific evidence that vaccinations are of any benefit, but it is clear that they cause a great deal of harm.” – Dr. Gerhard Buchwald, MD

                            “All vaccines are and have been causing ischemic (impaired blood flow) damages – to all – creating a plethora of chronic illnesses, disease, and in some instances, death. The injury from vaccination is additive; each vaccination further injures.” – Dr. Andrew Moulden MD, PhD

                            “When you impair the brain blood flow by vaccination you can impair the respiration control center which can result in death. We call it SIDS.” – Dr. Andrew Moulden MD, PhD

                            “Vaccination is the most dangerous medical practice in the history of classical medicine.” – Dr. Sladjana Velkov (Macedonia)

                            [With vaccination] “what in reality is prevented is not the disease but the ability of our cellular immune system to manifest, to respond to and to overcome the disease! There is no system of the human being, from mind to muscles to immune system, which gets stronger through avoiding challenges, but only through overcoming challenges.” – Dr. Philip Incao, MD

                            “I have lectured all over the world… I have always had a special interest in newspapers. All of them have one thing in common, there is always some reference made to some epidemic in some part of the world. For instance, two years ago, one paper referred to a polio epidemic in Holland. For the past three years, our newspapers have commented on the diphtheria epidemic in Russia. By these means, the population is constantly threatened with epidemics, they have been made to fear them, and the reports always conclude: “Go and get vaccinated.” – Dr. Gerhard Buchwald, MD

                            “To create fear among parents to strengthen their motivation to vaccinate is an important part of the publicity used to promote vaccinations. A whole branch of research is examining the question: What level of fear needs to be created to appear as convincing as possible?” – Dr. Gerhard Buchwald, MD

                            “In 1866, an English physician described a very strange illness. Children looked like Mongols. His name was Down. That’s why we call it Down’s Syndrome today… I should add that this syndrome is a result of the vaccinations carried throughout England by Jenner in 1796… It (Down’s Syndrome) is probably the first congenital disease caused by vaccinations. In Germany, the first child with evidence of Down’s Syndrome was reported in 1922. Today, one in every 700 newborns has it.” – Dr. Gerhard Buchwald, MD

                            “There is insufficient evidence to support routine vaccination of healthy persons of any age.” – Dr. Paul Frame, MD, Journal of Family Practice

                            “Only after realizing that routine immunizations were dangerous did I achieve a substantial drop in infant death rates.” – Dr. Archivides Kalokerinos, MD

                            “I’ll talk about vaccines. Number one, vaccines make people sick. They don’t work. They don’t protect. The use of vaccines is totally wrong! It’s perfect nonsense based on fear. They are dangerous. One child out of five has overwhelming disabilities from vaccines – neurological problems, seizures. I’ve got a whole list. There are plenty of books on this subject. Doctors don’t even read about this.” – Dr. Guylaine Lanctot, MD

                            “During those 30 years I have run against so many histories of little children who had never seen a sick day until they were vaccinated and who, in the several years that have followed, have never seen a well day since. I couldn’t put my finger on the disease they have. They just weren’t strong. Their resistance was gone. They were perfectly well before they were vaccinated. They have never been well since.” – Dr. William Howard Hay, MD

                            “Nobody needs to be confused but everybody better be darn well frightened about taking any vaccine, under any circumstance, for any reason, at any time in their life.” – Dr. Daniel H. Duffy Sr., DC (retired air force officer – 21 yrs., family doctor – 28 yrs., vaccination researcher – 49 yrs.)

                            “I vaccinated both my children with the MMR jab, but this was before I started my research into the problems associated with it. Knowing what I know now, I would not vaccinate my children and run the risk of them getting diabetes, asthma, eczema, becoming more susceptible to meningitis and ending up chronically disabled.” – Dr. Jayne Donegan, GP, Homeopath

                            “Had my mother and father known that the poliovirus vaccines of the 1950s were heavily contaminated with more than 26 monkey viruses, including the cancer virus SV40, I can say with certainty that they would not have allowed their children and themselves to take those vaccines. Both of my parents might not have developed cancers suspected of being vaccine-related, and might even be alive today.” – Dr. Howard B. Urnovitz, PhD, CEO, CSO and co-founder of Chronix Biomedical

                            “Childhood vaccines are giving us a world of chronic illness: autism, developmental disorders, Asperger’s Syndrome, brain tumors, leukemia, cancers, information processing disorders, impulsive violence, allergies, asthma, diabetes, Crohn’s disease, intestinal disorders, are just some of the vaccine associated disorders.” – Dr. Tedd Koren, DC

                            “I am no longer trying to dig up evidence to prove vaccines cause autism. There is already abundant evidence. This debate is not scientific but is political.” Dr. David Ayoub, MD

                            “There are at least seven laboratory studies, clinical studies, of blood, cerebral, spinal fluid, biopsies of autistic children which show huge differences between autistic children and normal children in terms of the presence of things like measles vaccine virus in their intestinal tract, for example, or their neurons. So, there’s one line of evidence. Another, of course, is that we have data from thousands of parents who testify, often with videotapes and photographs and eyewitness reports, that their kid was perfectly normal. And they can demonstrate it, as I say, very conclusively with tapes, until after the vaccine. The kid retreated into autism. There’s just converging evidence from many, many directions.” – Dr. Bernard Rimland, PhD, Founder and Former Director of the Autism Research Institute

                            “When the link between the use of unsafe, mercury-laden vaccine and autism, ADHD, asthma, allergies and diabetes becomes undeniable, mainstream medicine will be sporting a huge, self-inflicted and well-deserved black eye. Then will come the billion-dollar awards, by enraged juries, to the children and their families.” – Dr. Bernard Rimland, PhD, founder and former director of the Autism Research Institute

                            “The greatest threat to our health today is the medical community, and one of their most dangerous tools is vaccination – particularly the horrific procedure of injecting foreign protein into newborn infants!” – Dr. Daniel H. Duffy, DC

                            The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunization… There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease.” – Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, MD

                            “We are taught by the authorities that vaccines protect us against eventual aggressive viruses and microbes, and, therefore, prevent contagious illnesses and epidemics. This lie has been perpetuated for 150 years despite the ineffectiveness of vaccines in protecting against illnesses.” – Dr. Guylaine Lanctot, MD

                            “My suspicion, which is shared by others in my profession, is that the nearly 10,000 SIDS deaths that occur in the United States each year are related to one or more of the vaccines that are routinely given children. The pertussis vaccine is the most likely villain, but it could also be one or more of the others.” – Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, MD

                            “Many here voice a silent view that the Salk and Sabin Polio Vaccines, being made from monkey kidney tissue, have been directly responsible for the major increase in leukaemia in this country.” – Dr. F. Klenner, MD

                            “As a clinician, my current belief which guides my practice with these children is that any child given the Hep B vaccination at birth and subsequent boosters along with DPT has received unacceptable levels of neurotoxin in the form of the ethyl mercury in the thimerosal preservative used in the vaccine. In any child with a genetic immune susceptibility (probably about one in six) this sets off a series of events that injure the brain-gut-immune system. By the time they are ready to receive the MMR vaccination, their immune system is so impaired in a great number of these children that the triple vaccine cannot be handled by the now dysfunctional immune system and they begin their obvious descent into the autistic spectrum disorder.” – Dr. Jaquelyn McCandless, MD

                            “In 1976 I was working in the Gulf Country around Cape York, in an aboriginal community of about 300 people. The Health Department sent around a team and vaccinated about 100 of them against flu. Six were dead within 24 hours or so and they weren’t all old people, one man being in his early twenties. They threw the bodies in trucks to take to the coast where autopsies were done. It appeared they had died from heart attacks.” – Dr. Archie Kalokerinos, MD

                            “As a retired physician, I can honestly say that unless you are in a serious accident, your best chance of living to a ripe old age is to avoid doctors and hospitals and learn nutrition, herbal medicine and other forms of natural medicine unless you are fortunate enough to have a naturopathic physician available. Almost all drugs are toxic and are designed only to treat symptoms and not to cure anyone.” – Dr. Alan Greenberg, MD

                            “According to the records of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, from 1911 to 1935 the four leading causes of childhood deaths from infectious diseases in the U.S.A. were diptheria, pertussis, scarlet fever, and measles. However, by 1945 the combined death rates from these causes had declined by 95% before the implementation of mass vaccine programs.” – Dr. Harold Buttram, MD

                            “I would consider the risks associated with measles vaccination unacceptable even if there were convincing evidence that the vaccine works. There isn’t. …. In 1900 there were 13.3 measles deaths per 100,000 population. By 1955, before the first measles shot, the death rate had declined 97.7 percent to only 0.03 deaths per 100,000.” – Dr. Mendelsohn, MD

                            “Up to 90% of the total decline in the death rate of children between 1860 and1965, because of whooping cough, scarlet fever, diptheria, and measles, occurred before the introduction of immunizations and antibiotics.” – Dr Archie Kalokerinos, MD

                            “What the vaccinators don’t tell you is that communicable diseases have been declining at a steady rate for 150 years and that there is no relationship between the various diseases and the onset of immunization. Without exception, the vaccine program for each of the childhood diseases was inaugurated after that paticular diseases had begun to disappear. Contrary to what you have been told, this includes polio. What the vaccines have done is cause the various childhood diseases to become adulthood diseases – with far more serious implications, mumps in men and rubella in women for example.” -Dr. William Douglass, MD

                            “For thirty years kids died from smallpox vaccinations even though no longer threatened by the disease.” – Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, MD

                            “I am and have been for years a confirmed anti-vaccinationist. Anti-vaccination has no backing from the orthodox medical opinion. A medical man who expresses himself against vaccination loses caste. Tremendous pecuniary interests too have grown around vaccination.” – Mahatma Gandhi

                            “I have no faith in vaccination; I look upon it with the greatest possible disgust, and firmly believe that it is often the medium of conveying many filthy and loathsome diseases from one child to another, and no protection whatever against smallpox. Indeed, I consider we are now living in the Jennerian epoch for the slaughter of innocents, and the unthinking portion of the adult population.” – Dr. W.J. Collins, MD, BS, BSc, MRCS

                            “What people don’t know about vaccines –what most doctors don’t know– but well demonstrated in medical literature, is that vaccines shift your immune system to an immune suppression type of state called the “TH2 shift.” That’s what most vaccines do. They shift your immune system to a weaker, antibody type immune system… If you’re injecting people with so many vaccines that your keeping them in this constant state –that now your switching everyone to this TH2 immune suppression– then everyone becomes more susceptible [to infectious diseases]… and no one is talking about that. Now, a lot of scientists know that, but they are afraid to speak out because their careers would be ruined.” – Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD

                            “Using kids as guinea pigs in potentially harmful vaccine experiments is every parents’ worst nightmare. This actually happened in 1989-1991 when Kaiser Permanente of Southern California and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) jointly conducted a measles vaccine experiment. Without proper parental disclosure, the Yugoslavian-made “high titre” Edmonston-Zagreb measles vaccine was tested on 1,500 poor, primarily black and Latino, inner city children in Los Angeles. Highly recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), the high-potency experimental vaccine was previously injected into infants in Mexico, Haiti, and Africa. It was discontinued in these countries when it was discovered that the children were dying in large numbers.” – Dr. Alan Cantwell MD

                            “There is no evidence that any influenza vaccine thus far developed is effective in preventing or mitigating any attack of influenza. The producers of these vaccines know that they are worthless, but they go on selling them anyway.” –Dr. J. Anthony Morris, Former Chief Vaccine Control Officer, US FDA

                            “My own personal view is that vaccines are unsafe and worthless. I will not allow myself to be vaccinated again. Vaccines may be profitable but in my view, they are neither safe nor effective.” – Dr. Vernon Coleman, MB, ChB, DSc (Hon)

                            “I once believed in Jenner; I once believed in Pasteur. I believed in vaccination. I believed in vivisection. But I changed my views as the result of hard thinking.” – Dr. Walter Hadwen, MD, LSA, MRCS, LRCP, MB

                            “Cancer was practically unknown until compulsory vaccination with cowpox vaccine began to be introduced. I have had to deal with at least two hundred cases of cancer, and I never saw a case of cancer in an unvaccinated person.” – Dr. W. B. Clarke

                            “No long-term safety testing for the influenza vaccine has ever been done. They are experimenting on our lives and our children. Influenza vaccine is an experimental vaccine. ” – Dr. Mark Geier, MD, PhD

                            “There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunization of children does more harm than good.” – Dr. J. Anthony Morris, Former Chief Vaccine Control Officer, US FDA

                            “The only safe vaccine is one that is never used.” – Dr. James A. Shannon, MD, Former Director, National Institutes of Health (1955-1968)

                            “Belief in immunization is a form of delusional insanity.” – Dr Herbert Shelton, MD

                            “I don’t think measles poses any risk to a healthy child.” – Dr Jay Gordon, MD

                            “I sincerely believe that vaccines cause more harm to the health of the individual than the “protection” and “benefit” they are proclaimed to provide. Staying healthy without vaccines is not only possible, but being vaccine-free is the only way to maintain a lifetime of real health.” – Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, DO

                            “Nothing but the natural ignorance of the public, countenanced by the inoculated erroneousness of the ordinary general medical practitioners, makes such a barbarism as vaccination possible. Recent developments have shown that an inoculation made in the usual general practitioner’s light-hearted way, without previous highly skilled examination of the state of the patient’s blood, is just as likely to be a simple manslaughter as a cure or preventive. But vaccination is nothing short of attempted murder. A skilled bacteriologist would just as soon think of cutting his child’s arm and rubbing the contents of the dustpan into the wound, as vaccinating.” – George Bernard Shaw

                            “The more it (vaccination) is supported by public authorities, the more will its dangers and disadvantages be concealed or denied.” – M. Beddow Bayly

                            “One vaccine decreases cell-mediated immunity by 50%, two vaccines by 70%… all triple vaccines (MMR, DTaP) markedly impair cell-mediated immunity, which predisposes to recurrent viral infections, especially otitis media, as well as yeast and fungi infections.” – Dr H.H. Fudenberg, Immunologist

                            “There are unanswered questions about vaccine safety… No one should be threatened by the pursuit of this knowledge.” “I think public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational without sufficient studies of causation.” – Dr Bernadine Healy, MD (Former Director, National Institute of Health and Former President, American Red Cross)

                            “There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunization of children does more harm than good.” “The manufacturers of these vaccines know they are worthless but they go on selling them anyway.” – Dr J Anthony Morris, PhD (Former Chief Vaccine Control Officer and Research Virologist, US FDA)

                            “Crib death was so infrequent in the pre-vaccination era that it was not even mentioned in the statistics, but it started to climb in the 1950s with the spread of mass vaccination.” – Dr Harris L Coulter, PhD

                            “Vaccination is the single most prevalent and most preventable cause of infant deaths.”- Dr Viera Scheibner, PhD

                            “The only safe vaccine is one that is never used.” – Dr James A Shannon, MD (Former Director, National Institutes of Health)

                            “We are setting up the younger generation for a potential calamity. Vaccines build up only one line of your immune system (the antibody system) but put the main immune system (cellular immunity) to sleep. You need both for fully developed immunity.” – Dr Robert Rowen, MD

                        12. Rhetorical fallacy alert: just more arguments from authority
                            (if anti-vax loons like Schreibner could be mistaken for an authorities on vaccine safety and efficacy)

                        13. Where did I say there was terror? What I actually said (and which the statistics regarding incidence, hospitalization, deaths and long term adverse consequences demonstrate) is that measles doesn’t qualify as a minor childhood disease.

                        14. Heightened fear can be interpreted as terror. You suggested these diseases were so dangerous, i.e. creating enormous fear, that vaccines were needed to save people from them.

                            I pointed out that with measles a topic for mirth in a television programme your position is not validated by the evidence.

                        15. No, Ros: I didn’t. I instead provided statistics demonstrating that measles cannot rationally be considered a minor childhood disease rather than a serious one.

                  2. it sure didn’t in germany.

                     1. So on your behalf we will tell the infants parents that I wasn’t the measles she was just a sickly child. You know what, why don’t you go to university…study epidemiology, conduct studies to prove that immunizations are wrong…until then every country in the world is going to continue with their vaccination programs and inc them as new vaccines like the HPV and hopefully soon the HIV vaccine arrived. If you haven’t noticed the tide is turning further in the favour of vaccines with the recent non exclusion law placed in the state of California

                        1. Your fascist laws in California will just fuel those of intelligence and common sense to question why there is such an insane practice of injecting our children with disease and toxic chemicals.

                           It will have the opposite effect.

                           More and more parents are questioning vaccination because the entire methodology has been, like the use of antibiotics, abused in the name of greed.

                           I don’t need to prove anything. I don’t have vaccinations despite having lived in the Third World for decades and I don’t actually care if people have them or inject their children – that is their choice.

                           I object to medical fascism where procedures are forced on people.

                        2. SB277 in California does not force any medical procedure on anyone, though, does it? People are still free to elect not to be vaccinated themselves or have their children vaccinated according to the recommended schedule if they desire. No one is going to forcibly vaccinate them or their children against their wishes.

                        3. it’s already known that she had an underlying condition. i’m sure that they don’t need YOU to tell them.
                           what do you know about what i did and didn’t study?

                  3. From the abstract of the ncbi paper you cite:
                     “Persons who were unimmunized or immunized at less than 12 months of age had substantially higher attack rates compared to those immunized on or after 12 months of age.”

                     I’ll also call your attention to table 3 of the publication:

                     Measles attack rate in unvaccinated students? 22.9
                     Measles attack rate in students who had received both MMR before 12 months? 15.3
                     Measles attack rate in students who had received both MMR vaccinations? 0.5

                     Thank you for providing clear evidence of the efficacy of the MMR vaccine.

                     1. She is at a clear disadvantage. She doesn’t know how to read papers, she just regurgitates what the anti vaccine websites tout

                        1. Whoops, wrong again. It was an ncbi source. !!!

                     2. Here is the link to which I posted and the point was and remains the outbreak occurred with 98% vaccination rates. Tinkering with other factors is fine but it was not the point.

                        Measles outbreak in a vaccinated school population: epidemiology, chains of transmission and the role of vaccine failures.

                        B M Nkowane, S W Bart, W A Orenstein, and M Baltier

                        An outbreak of measles occurred in a high school with a documented vaccination level of 98 per cent. Nineteen (70 per cent) of the cases were students who had histories of measles vaccination at 12 months of age or older and are therefore considered vaccine failures. Persons who were unimmunized or immunized at less than 12 months of age had substantially higher attack rates compared to those immunized on or after 12 months of age. Vaccine failures among apparently adequately vaccinated individuals were sources of infection for at least 48 per cent of the cases in the outbreak. There was no evidence to suggest that waning immunity was a contributing factor among the vaccine failures. Close contact with cases of measles in the high school, source or provider of vaccine, sharing common activities or classes with cases, and verification of the vaccination history were not significant risk factors in the outbreak. The outbreak subsided spontaneously after four generations of illness in the school and demonstrates that when measles is introduced in a highly vaccinated population, vaccine failures may play some role in transmission but that such transmission is not usually sustained.

                        http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646939/

                        1. Ros, I don’t understand what arugment you beleive you’re supporting by posting the text of this citation as the data the paper presents supports the conclusion that MMR vaccination significantly reduces vaccinated individuals the risk of measles infection.

                  4. This is what Poland said, and since you describe him as one of the world’s most admired and advanced thinkers in vaccinology, he must be right:

                     “On the one hand, we have the most transmissible disease known in humans, and on the other hand we have an excellent vaccine – which is not a perfect vaccine – and we don’t induce immunity in somewhere between 2 to 5 percent of the people who receive it. When everybody is vaccinated, the only cases you’ll see are those in cases who are immunized, though you’ll see very few cases compared to a population that doesn’t have high levels of herd immunity. This is counterintuitive, and people misunderstand it.”

                     The type of person he says “misunderstands” the science is YOU, Roslyn.
                     http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/02/05/on-measles-and-the-mmr-vaccine-a-conversation-with-vaccine-researcher-gregory-poland/

                     1. I did not describe him as that. More misquoting.

                        The point was the rest that he said as someone who promotes vaccines. But never let facts get in the way of propaganda. I am prepared to post across a spectrum.

                  5. Perhaps if this state of terror regarding measles existed in the US –it did not in Australia by the way – you can explain why in the Seventies, the comedy series The Brady Bunch….

                     This is a truly amazing demonstration of lack of self-awareness.

                     1. Why? We all know that when humour is misplaced there is hysteria. In the Seventies people thought a bunch of kids getting measles was funny.

                        How is that demonstrating lack of self-awareness. Were you alive in the Seventies?

                        My kids had measles and the rest, I had them, my parents had them, our friends had them, our relatives had them and as I recall there was no hysteria just tucked up in bed for a few days and that was it.

               2. and one of the inventors admitted himself that there was no reason for a measles vaccine. they did it because they could, playing fast and lose with people’s health.

                  1. Ctiation needed, sabelmouse

            2. The h*ll your doctor encouraged you to expose your kids to the first two via parties, no less! There were vaccines for them by then.

               Most of the patients in the Disney outbreak were unimmunized or had no record of immunization.

               1. The point, Katia, is that prior to the max-vax age neither parents or doctors lived in terror of such childhood diseases and trust me, doctors did take the view that it was better for the child to get the disease as a child since most are more serious in adults, and to get lifelong immunity.

                  And doctors did encourage exposure – ‘parties’ to encourage the spread so as many kids as possible got the disease and got the immunity.

                  The point remains, these are not dangerous diseases per se: Anything can be dangerous even the common cold, particularly where you have inferior nutrition, sanitation and hygiene but on a disease scale, these are not, and never were, dangerous.

                  China has 99% vax rates and has outbreaks. The US is the most heavily vaccinated developed country and has outbreaks. Vaccination does not immunize.

                  1. You know this how? I’m older than you, I’d bet. I’ve had most of these”usual childhood diseases” as it was written in the medical history. I didn’t have polio, that was NOT considered a”UCD”, despite what crazy anti-vaxers think.

                     Doctors did think measles, in particular, was serious. People used to have to post a quarantine sign on their front doors when someone in the household had measles. Parents and doctors were more resigned to the diseases than anything else.

                     My husband nor I ever heard of these parties, let alone attended one, gave one, or were invited to one, growing up 1000 miles apart. We are both sure our mothers would not have let us go to one. I think they’re 99% urban legend.

                     China’s statistics are not reliable. If you believe that 99%shtick, I have some beach front property to sell you in Colorado.

                     Cite that the US is the most vaxed country.

         2. I would just add, where this is dishonest is that it is done worldwide where Third World malnutrition, lack of hygiene and sanitation are what make Measles and such childhood diseases dangerous, just as they once did everywhere. This skews results to support the vaccination industry.

            If you looked at individual data for different countries it would paint a very different picture.

            By this criteria we should have longevity rates at 42 because that is the age many people die in Third World countries because of poor nutrition, sanitation and hygiene.

            1. It is easy for you to respond to things that you say are difficult. I have done a search on you and you have been repeating the same things for a long time. Many of your posts here you have just cut and pasted from other posts you have done on other sites. So don’t pretend it is a lot of work for you to reply when people ask you to cite evidence. Because you have replied on other sites. The fact is that you don’t have much evidence so you are reluctant

               1. OH dear, that is so sad David. You cannot muster substantive arguments and so you resort to ad hominem.

                  I have no idea who you are and I don’t care. I take your word you are a something in science/medicine and beyond that, I care about what you say, not who you are.

                  And nope, all fresh material although I may well have accessed earlier sources.

                  Just a warning though, there are two other Roslyn Ross’s who comment on health issues. Make sure you have the right one.

         3. In terms of dodgy data pushed by the vaccine industry, this is worth reading.

            Quote: Flu results in “about 250,000 to 500,000 yearly deaths” worldwide, Wikipedia tells us. “The typical estimate is 36,000 [deaths] a year in the United States,” reports NBC, citing the Centers for Disease Control. “Somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 Canadians a year die of influenza and its related complications”, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada, adding that “Those numbers are controversial because they are estimates.”

            “Controversial” is an understatement, and not just in Canada, and not just because the numbers are estimates. The numbers differ wildly from the sober tallies recorded on death certificates — by law every certificate must show a cause — and reported by the official agencies that collect and keep vital statistics.

            According to the National Vital Statistics System in the U.S., for example, annual flu deaths in 2010 amounted to just 500 per year — fewer than deaths from ulcers (2,977), hernias (1,832) and pregnancy and childbirth (825), and a far cry from the big killers such as heart disease (597,689) and cancers (574,743). The story is similar in Canada, where unlikely killers likewise dwarf Statistics Canada’s count of flu deaths.- See more at: http://www.asrn.org/journal-advanced-practice-nursing/1212-do-not-believe-everything-you-read-about-flu-deaths.html#sthash.vKrnZtUH.dpuf

            1. You dismiss every source of data on vaccines or infectious diseases as being from “the vaccine industry”?

               1. No, I do not. There is some objective data. All information comes across a spectrum. And there is a vaccine industry. Why else would we have gone from two or three vaccinations for children to more than fifty! There is certainly no need for them. Big money is the answer for an industry seeking bigger profits.

                  1. “Why else would we have gone from two or three vaccinations for children to more than fifty!”

                     Because over time we’ve been able to develop new vaccines which protect those vaccinated from additional serious infectious diseases.

   3. It will be great to see scientific research judged as credible. Otherwise they are just a bunch of incompetents.

      The Trouble With ‘Scientific’ Research Today: A Lot That’s Published Is Junk

      http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2014/01/08/the-trouble-with-scientific-research-today-a-lot-thats-published-is-junk/

      Science publication is hopelessly compromised, say journal editors.

      http://acsh.org/2015/05/science-publication-is-hopelessly-compromised-say-journal-editors/

      1. satisfy my curiosity rosross…where do you see the current state of affairs. In your estimation what percentage of the world’s MD support homeopathy, and what percentage of the worlds academic institutions support homeopathy

         1. If you take use of Homeopathy by MD’s and the public the percentage figures would differ depending upon country. The Europeans have always been high in terms of Homeopathic use and so have the English. Homeopathy as become extremely popular in India and is growing in use in China. Use is growing worldwide for a variety of reasons including the fact that Allopathy has not only failed to make and keep people healthy or to provide cure on many counts, but it has a rising injure and death rate.

            Homeopathy is economical and less complex in terms of use and use-by dates so it has appeal in poor countries.

            Quote: Homeopathy is particularly popular in France, where it is the leading alternative therapy. In 1982, 16 percent of the population used homeopathic medicine, rising to 29 percent in 1987, and to 36 percent in 1992 (8). In 2004, 62 percent of French mothers used homeopathic medicines in the previous 12 months (9).May 3, 2010

            http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathic-medicine-euro_b_402490.html

            So if the French are on the high side and Americans are on
            the very low and you ‘split the difference’ one could say around 40% worldwide use. A substantial minority of the population. It might even be more because in most of the world, including populous China and India and South America and
            throughout Asia, Homeopathy is increasingly used.

            And with the growing movement toward non-Allopathic medicine and the impetus for Integrative Medicine, I see the percentage as providing an excellent foundation for the future.

            There is no doubt that science will continue to evolve and be pushed out of the prison of its materialist reductionism and it will in time be able to understand how Homeopathy works, but, as it stands, even without knowing, we are seeing a world which is growing ever more critical, and rightly so, with
            the failures and harm done by Allopathic medicine and we are seeing increasing numbers of medical and scientific whistle-blowers articulating what is wrong with science and medicine.

            This would not matter except for the fact that it ‘fits’ with people’s experience of a general failure by Allopathic medicine to cure and to facilitate robust health. Medication for life is neither cure nor robust health and having parts of your body regularly removed is merely maintaining poor health in a very primitive fashion.

            Acceptance of non-Allopathic medical modalities like Homeopathy would increase much more quickly should the failure of antibiotics become a sudden reality and alternatives were required. Also, if the movement to question vaccination
            brings into serious question the practice and process, you will also see people moving toward prophylactic but harmless ‘immunization’ as provided with
            Homeopathy.

            No doubt time will tell but, in the meantime, Homeopathy continues to heal and to cure as it has done for more than two centuries.

            1. I would say 95 percent of both the worlds md and academic institutions do not believe in homeopathy The public I agree is a different story.

               1. Well you would be wrong. But we both know you have done no credible research.

                  1. Why is it everytime homeopathy comes up most md in the world, academic institutions etc get so upset and reiterate again that it does not work. If the preponderance if md believe in homeopathy where are they? Why do they never comment, speak out in public etc. why do they not get upset when their medical association that represent them or the institutions they work for condemn homeopathy. I think you are highly delusional if you think the majority or even more than a minority of md believe in homeopathy. I was actually being generous with the 95 percent and would actually say 99 percebt. Homeopathy goes against everything md believe in. For example, when someone at university of Toronto did a questionable study on homeopathy….right away 90 of the world most famous scientists wrote a letter of protest ( including two noble prize winners). If the preponderance of academic institutions and md believe in homeopathy, why didn’t they come out of the woodwork and write a letter of support.
                     Where are all the md clamouring to your support.

                     1. You have just made a major ambit claim without
                        substantiating it.

                        “Why is it everytime homeopathy comes up most md in the world, academic
                        institutions etc get so upset and reiterate again that it does not work.”

                        Many would be a better word, most is inaccurate. Most might apply in the US but
                        neither most or many would apply in many parts of Europe and elsewhere. Your
                        generalisation is hardly scientifically rigorous.

                        Why do many not speak out? Many have no interest so why would they bother. Many
                        don’t speak out against the power of the pharmaceutical industry in medicine.
                        Many do not speak out when they disagree with conventional medical practice.

                        As I made the point many times earlier, science/medicine and academia are
                        terrified of being sued or looking foolish so they stay quiet. Which is why the
                        use of Homeopathy in academia, medicine and by Government is a clear indication
                        it does work and it is not fraudulent.

                        I never said a majority of MD’s supported Homeopathy. I hope your tendency to
                        misquote here does not carry over into your work preparing material for peer
                        review.

                        And yes, there is particularly in the US and UK a concerted drive by vested
                        agendas to discredit Homeopathy. It is failing but it is active.

                        I never said most academic institutions or MD’s supported Homeopathy. You
                        misquote yet again.

                        I said, if you were right and Homeopathy was no more than pure placebo then its
                        use by academia, medicine and government would be fraudulent. The fact that
                        many around the world, hold that thought, around the world, not just the US,
                        embrace it means that patently it is not fraudulent, it does work and it is
                        more than placebo.

                        1. Ironic that you say france is one if the countries most supportive of homeopathy yet it is also the country where you can be jailed for 2 years for not vaccinating your children.
                           Where are all the australian md coming out to defend their homeopathic beliefs in the face of the damning report there.
                           I can guarantee if there was a a national report like that saying that there is not a single instance where chemotherapy has been proven to work, every md in australian would be up in arms. But homeopathy, not so much

                        2. France has had strict laws on vaccination although the public mood is changing. Human beings have a unique capacity to hold two or more conflicting views at one and the same time. The French are no different.

                           It is also a nation with high levels of Homeopathic use. The French want what is best and no doubt when the draconian vaccination laws were brought in they believed it was for the best. But times change. Science/medicine changed its mind on smoking, Thalidomide and many other things.

                           I suspect many Australian MD’s also remain quiet because they are embarrassed, perhaps ashamed at how flawed and ‘dodgy’ that report was.

                           as I said to you, I suspect enough of them are intelligent enough t know they would reject a study into oncology where no oncologist was on the panel, none were consulted not all research data was considered.

                        3. Oh so the australian docs are ashamed of the study and that is why they are not speaking out? C’mon. You can do better than that.

                        4. Since I have not done a study on Australian doctors and the report, and neither have you, comments are no more than opinion.

                           I don’t see why you are so desperate to discredit Homeopathy. It helps people. It is cheap. It does no harm. It is a part of Integrative Medicine – your position is irrational.

                        5. Actually I have reached out to academic institutions in France, Nepal, India, Thailand and Italy. And all of them had the same answer. None of them believe in homeopathy. Some say that there are seperate homeopathic schools in their community. So I need your help in identifying onr of these institutions

                        6. I have no doubt that the academic institutions with which you are acquainted would say that.

                           A list would be good though. Substantiate.

                        7. The open letter from 90 of the worlds most notable scientists condemning homeopathy included 2 noble laureates and many scientist from Hopkins, Harvard and Oxford, including deans of medical schools. Now why would they go to the trouble to do this. Because they see no point in funding research in homeopathy that has been shown over and over again to be nothing more than placebo. Every single metanalysis has come to the same conclusion. Show me a meta-analysis that has not.
                           http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-march-5-2015-1.2982500/scientists-question-research-on-homeopathic-treatment-for-adhd-1.2982505

                        8. Meanwhile, around the world, hospitals, MD’s, universities, medical schools and governments ignore Joe Schwartz and his agendas and silly scams like the open letter.

                           And so do millions of people worldwide as Homeopathy grows in use.

                           You see, propaganda like this does not work against something which is effective.

                           You may rant and wail all you like but the fact remains, if your 90 ‘notable scientists’ were right, or if enough people actually cared what they had to say, not one university, medical school, MD, hospital or Government would touch Homeopathy.

                           Ergo, you and your 90 scientists are wrong and irrelevant.

                        9. My sense is you are playing games, but, to impute the best motives as I seek always to do. Work through this site.

                           Quote:

                           Homeopathy at universities

                           Familiarisation courses about homeopathic medicine are provided in the medical undergraduate curriculum as a part of a course on Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Hungary (one university), Italy and the Netherlands; as a separate subject in Bulgaria, Germany and Romania. These familiarisation courses are optional for medical students in Germany, Hungary (one university), Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland (some universities) the United Kingdom (some universities), obligatory in Latvia and Romania.

                           Postgraduate training courses in homeopathic medicine for doctors are provided at universities in Bulgaria, France, Italy, Lithuania and Spain, in other countries at private teaching centres.

                           Homeopathic medicine is an official part of the Continuous Education Programme for doctors in Hungary and Romania.

                           A professorial chair of CAM including homeopathic medicine exists in Hungary (Pécs) and Switzerland (Bern).

                           http://www.homeopathyeurope.org/about-ech

                           About ECH

                           The ECH represents all medical doctors specialized in homeopathy, organized in 40 associations in 25 European countries. It is aimed at

                           promoting the scientific development of homeopathy;

                           ensuring high standards in the education, training and practice of homeopathy by medical doctors;

                           harmonising professional standards in homeopathic practice across Europe;

                           providing high-quality homeopathic care in a medical context;

                           integrating high-quality homeopathy into European healthcare.

                           The ECH has several subcommittees involving delegates from affiliated associations and teaching centres as well as other professionals such as researchers, documentalists and pharmacists whose expert input helps to enhance the scientific basis of homeopathy.

                           The ECH is directed by the Council that is elected by the General Assembly for four years. The Officers are elected from the Council members also for a period of four years.

                        10. Wow. No wonder I couldn’t find anything. I contacted people at the major medical schools. The schools are hardly endorsing homeopathy by providing familiarization courses.

                        11. List your major medical schools. I suspect the Vienna University would be horrified to learn that you, David, some sort of expert, do not consider them to be major.

                        12. Actually Vienna is not on the list
                            But the schools I went to rank 4, 5, 22 and 26. I will happily send you copied of my diplomas if you don’t believe jt

                        13. I am sure you are very well qualified. I am sure you are no doubt excellent in your field but none of that qualifies you to pass judgement on Homeopathy since you have never researched it in any sort of rigorous, objective way.

                        14. Have you researched homeopathy in a rigorous, objective way then, Roslyn?
                            Where did you publish your studies?

                        15. I know one thing for sure, I have read studies by people who have and I have done research into Homeopathy and you have done none. Would you like to answer the same question?

                            Or is it common in science to pronounce judgement based on egregious ignorance and high levels of prejudice?

                        16. You do realize that this is hardly an endorsement from the worlds medical schools. I thought you were going to say that in universities in France they do 2 month rotation in homeopathy like we would do say in psychiatry. But they take an optional course at a handful of universities in the world. We also give a measly one hour lecture on homeopathy thrown in with Chinese medicine to our medical students so they are familiar. Do you take that as an endorsement. Wow?!? And then you go on to say that academic institutions governments etc endorse blah blah blah. Again. Wow!

                        17. I have colleagues and have visited and worked at many academic institutions in both Europe and Asia. Please give me the name of one of these academic institutions that is highly supportive of homeopathy and I will contact the dean or medical school.

                        18. Do some research. Find them yourself. Europe is probably a good place to begin.

                        19. Ros, why is it that every time someone asks you for evidence in support of claims you’ve made you respond “Find it yourself”?

                        20. Because, as I have explained before, when I post links, and I have done to support claims it gets ignored. It becomes very, very clear that some posters really have no interest. I have better things to do than dig up the data they want.

                            Type in European universities teaching Homeopathy. Bingo, Sift through it yourself. Type in European hospitals using Homeopathy. same thing. Easy peasy.

                            If they had any real interest they could and would do it themselves. I have no intention or desire to prove anything to anyone. I merely post the facts I have and let others make of it what they will.

                            And I correct the worst of distortions.

                        21. Ros, one more time: the fact that European Universities teach homeopathy does not constitute evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any non-self limiting illness or injury, any more than the fact every major European and American University offers doctoral programs in theology is proof that god exists.

                        22. It is evidence because academia has an absolute horror of being sued or looking stupid.

                            And do you seriously believe that Homeopathy would have survived and thrived for more than two centuries if it was only used for self-limiting illness? Are you seriously saying an MD would spend more than two years studying to qualify as a Homeopath to treat self-limiting conditions?

                            Ridiculous. What beggars belief is that you could posit something so ridiculous.

                        23. Yes, I seriously believe that homeopathy could have survived and thrived for more than two centuries even if it was only used for self-limiting illness. Unless the users of homeopathy ran controlled trials comparing how quickly people who used and did not use homeopathy recovered and found the time was the same, their perception would be only “I took the homeopathic preparation and then got better”.
                            Human cognitive biases being what they are they’d likely percieve a cause and effect situation where none existed.

                        24. The only reason you can believe that is because you have zero knowledge of Homeopathic history, methodology and process.

                            There really is no point discussing this with someone who knows nothing. What beggars belief is that you claim scientific credentials and don’t even bother doing basic research so you can at least sound as if you know what you are talking about.

                            Selective rigour no doubt.

                        25. That isn’t true, Ros: I’ve done the basic research. I have considerable knowledge of hoempathy’s history and methodology, it’s fundamental principles-the principle of miasma (psora, syphilis and sycosis), laws of Similarity and Infinitessimals, homepathic proving, succcussion, etc.) as well as clearly a greater knowledge of the existing scientific studies and evidence addressing it’s presumed efficacy than you’ve shown evidence you possess. Basic research, doesn’t share identity with accepting claims made by homeopaths and their supporters at face value, or confusing anecdotal accounts with evidence.

                            I get that you find it easier to fall back on “You just don’t understand it” than actually mount a credible defense of your claims, but the only person you’re fooling by doing so is yourself.

                        26. It hasn’t thrived in the UK.
                            Of the 5 homeopathic “hospitals” there were 20 years ago there is only one left, and that has had to broaden its remit just to survive.

                        27. It has thrived in the UK. In recent years a concerted campaign to discredit Homeopathy has brought changes. The London Homeopathic Hospital has had its name changed to a hospital for Integrative Medicine where Homeopathy is still used, and some universities no longer include courses, but 42% of doctors in the UK still refer people for Homeopathic treatment.

                            Then again, UK includes northern Ireland and Scotland, neither of which have succumbed to the negative campaign and the Brits can still pop across the channel for treatment in ever-sensible Europe if required.

                            The UK and UK has been most affected by the pharmaceutical driven campaign against Homeopathy and Canada and Australia to lesser degrees. The rest of the world sensibly pretty much ignores the blackmail and Homeopathy continues to grow in use worldwide.

                        28. Because she doesn’t have any.

                        29. here is a study from your beloved European researchers where again they condemn homeopathy and say there is no point in doing further research

                            http://www.dw.com/en/study-homeopathy-no-better-than-placebo/a-1692210

                        30. Regarding France, where I live : the fact that homeopathy is widely used is hardly surprising given that one the biggest homeopathy labs, Boiron, is french. However, the “Conseil national de l’ordre des médecins”, which regulates medical practice, has clearly stated recently that homeopathy’s efficacy is not proven. A pretty official non-endorsement.
                            http://www.conseil-national.medecin.fr/sites/default/files/cn_webzine/2015-07/www/index.php#/page-4

                        31. oh that is not possible..roslyn says france’s doctors and hospitals teach it, and the french government includes it in their medical system so this is some aberrant conseil that means nothing or they would listen and stop using homeopathy

                  2. And for credible research I have published many articles in peer reviewed journals. And you?

                     1. You misinterpret again. You have done no credible research into Homeopathy. The fact that you have done credible research into other things is meaningless.

                        You may have done credible research into the mating habits of the dung beetle but that only qualifies you in terms of dung beetles, nothing else.

                        1. “You may have done credible research into the mating habits of the dung
                           beetle but that only qualifies you in terms of dung beetles, nothing
                           else”
                           You seem to have dismissed the “expertise” of just about every so called “scientist” who argues against vaccination with that statement.

                        2. You seem to have misread and misquoted. Common here it seems.

                           The discussion, which clearly you did not understand, was in regard to David’s expertise in research. I merely made the point that since I did not know what his research speciality was, and if it was for instance dung beetles, that did not give him the qualifications or knowledge to pass scientific judgement on other areas.

                           For instance, no-one expects an oncologist to pass professional scientific judgement on cosmology. If however the oncologist is an amateur cosmologist with high levels of research, reading and knowledge that is a different matter.

                           And there are scientists and medical professionals who argue against vaccination with no “…” involved.

                           International Medical Council on Vaccination was founded by medical professionals…. no “….” involved.

                           You might be interested in the thoughts of an immunologist….
                           http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2012/06/13/interview-with-phd-immunologist-dr-tetyana-obukhanych-by-catherine-frompovich/

                           Or midwives and health professionals against vaccination.

                           http://www.vaccineriskawareness.com/Midwives-And-Health-Professionals-Against-Vaccination

      2. Here is a list of the top 50 medical schools in the world.
         http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2015/medicine#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=
         Not one of these schools endorsed homeopathy. So are that many of the greatest minds in the world wrong. I will happily contact the dean of medicine at any one of these schools for their opinion on homeopathy if you do not believe me

         1. I don’t have time to do more but I started on your list and while you wriggle with the word endorsed, which is not what we were talking about, it did not take long to find that these erstwhile academic institutions are not as adamantly opposed to Homeopathy as you are.

            Quelle Horreur, this is what Johns Hopkins says:

            Quote: The available research on homeopathy has been conflicting. Most research has concluded that there is little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment. Although some studies have reported positive findings. The dilutions used in homeopathy leave very little active ingredient in the medicines that a person receives. This makes it very difficult to study.
            http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/conditions/complementary_and_alternative_medicine/homeopathy_85,P00182/

            Not exactly blanket rejection.

            Oxford University journal publishes a study on Homeopathic treatment of depression.

            http://www.homeopathyhome.com/forums/forum/homeopathy/homeopathy-list-discussion/10994-oxford-university-journal-publishes-new-study-on-thehomeopathic-treatment-of-depression

            And here we have Harvard discussing complementary therapies including Homeopathy.

            http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/panel-discusses-history-future-of-alternative-therapies/

            And they are just from the top of your list.

            1. I went to Hopkins and still collaborate with them. They adamantly speak out against homeopathy and they definitely do not suggest anyone use it.

               1. Not according to what you find on their site. Perhaps you were there too long ago to know what they are doing now.

                  And your academic rigour is about as rigorous as a lot of science these days:

                  Failure to provide honest information regarding conflict of interest…. is this what Harvard supports? A professor pushing GMO’s when he has connections with Monsanto?

                  Little wonder that the public has increasingly less faith in science, medicine, academia and prefer to do their own research and make up their own minds.

                  http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/10/01/harvard-professor-failed-disclose-monsanto-connection-paper-touting-gmos/lLJipJQmI5WKS6RAgQbnrN/story.html?event=event25

            2. And of course these are discussed at these institutions because that is what we do is debate and study the merits of various treatments. However the consensus is that homeopathy simply is placebo and no further research is necessary

               1. Nice try but you cannot wriggle out of it. These instutions only discuss things which are considered to possibly have potential. Ergo, discussing Homeopathy means that it is not as you say and there is blanket rejection because no-one believes in it or is even prepared to give it the time of day.

                  The consensus if any, is don’t know. It has already been demonstrated Homeopathy is not pure placebo because if it were, or had been irrevocably proven as such, then not one medical school or MD, university or hospital or Government would touch it.

                  You know that, if you are, as you say, so involved with academia and science and that my friend is why your case has no legs and why you are simply wrong on this. But you also know that which is why your posts have been increasingly desperate.

                  1. Scientific rigour as you like to continuous quote is to look at everything no matter how outlandish and analyze it as to scientific plausibility and conduct trials to see if it is possible. The world consensus is that homeopathy is water!. No matter how much you want to repeat it is not the case. The scientific community disagrees with you.
                     All 5 meta analyses performed have shown that there is no more effect than placebo. 90 of the worlds top scientists representing most of the top universities and two noble laureates said there is no point in studying this further…it has been debunked.
                     So unless you can supply me a letter from 90 of the worlds top scientists saying the contrary, you are just blowing hot air.

                  2. I find it funny that if you find a university mentioning homeopathy you say that is an endorsement. A university has a familiarization course as you say and that means that it must have merit. At my university, we spend an hour on each one of the alternative forms of quackery so our students understand the concepts. Even medical students do not know that homeopathy is multiple dilutions, they think it is just different herbs. The site on hopkins is just defining what homeopathy is, it does not say it works??!
                     Yet when 90 of the worlds scientists outright say it doesn’t work, when the australian medical association says it doesn’t work, you ignore these black and white statements. Who is wriggling?

                     1. Let’s be clear about the basis of this discussion. You use the word endorsement.

                        You claim Homeopathy is pure placebo. I point out if that were the case it would be fraudulent for universities, medical schools, hospitals, doctors, governments to touch it. They do, so patently you are wrong.

                        I also made the point that there are, around the world, academic and medical institutions which make use of Homeopathy.

                        And then you use the word ‘quackery.’ Your egregious subjectivity and lack of objective rigour makes your scientific claims a joke.

                        If 90 scientists say it does not work and a study, not the AMA mind you, but you have that wrong as well – rigour is not your strong suit – done in flawed fashion decides it does not work, the simple reality is that not enough people around the world believe them, or, not one university, medical school, government, doctor, hospital would touch it and they do.

                        Ergo, your claims are just wrong and even if there were 90 of the world’s scientists, I notice you don’t cite, it would be really pretty irrelevant since patently there is other data available and that is why many hospitals, doctors, universities, medical schools, governments just ignore your claims.

                     2. Your medical students must be poorly taught if they think Homeopathy is herbs. That is a reflection on them, not Homeopathy.

      3. Those are opinion pieces and Forbes is not a science journal.

   4. lab evidence you mean because else it’s just anecdotal, right?

5. For any open-minded sceptics, this dissertation gives a reasonable overview.

   Quote: In summary, this dissertation has shown that while the science behind homeopathy is still being
   defined, the homeopathic response has been demonstrated to conform to scientific laws and the
   standards expected for an evidence-based medicine. The challenge for those that may have adopted
   a particular view without investigating the veracity of this stand is to re-examine the evidence and
   science supporting homeopathy. It is timely to reflect that even in science and EBM we are called on
   to make judgements and interpretations which are drawn from our inner realities and beliefs, our
   social customs, norms and mores. Changing what we believe as individual scientists and practitioners
   to be true has huge ramifications for the future of science, scientific thought, research and also for
   homeopathy.
   For those that have not kept up with modern scientific advances of the twentieth century,
   Homeopathy still remains implausible. The association with homeopathic principles, even remotely
   has lead to ridicule and devaluation for some valid areas of research, such as hormesis, leading to
   plea by their followers that hormesis is not to be confused with homeopathy. Both hormesis and
   homeopathy share the principles of Arndt-Schultz law that Schultz claimed supported homeopathy.
   This prejudice and criticism influences reasonable people to remain quiet about supporting
   homeopathy. If in the future there is a place for homeopathy in the scientific research arena surely it
   is in the world of sub-molecular activity and digital bio-communication. Homeopathy research should
   be funded adequately so that independent scientifically research of the highest rigor can be
   evaluated and explored.
   Kuhn quotes Planck saying, “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
   making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation
   grows up that is familiar with it” (Kuhn T. , 1962, p. 151

   Quote: One of the common criticisms levelled at homeopathy by its antagonists is that homeopathy lacks
   both scientific evidence and an evidence-based medicine approach to practice. These two concerns
   are more of a latter day problem, homeopathic treatment having being used successfully to treat
   medical illnesses since Dr Samuel Hahnemann, homeopathy’s founder, first used this form of
   treatment in the mid nineteenth century.
   To-day, one hundred million Europeans have had homeopathic treatment
   (http://www.homeopathy-ecch.org/, 2010) and in 2005 €930 million was spent on homeopathic and
   anthroposophical medicine (Ullman, 2010). In India, 100 million people use homeopathic medicine
   and according to the newspaper ‘India Post’, homeopathy supports a growing profession of 400,000
   homeopaths (India Post, 2009).

   Homeopathy is currently the second most popular system of
   healthcare in the world (Medhurst, 2009) and a large number of people from all manner of
   backgrounds and educational levels have tried and experienced its benefits and accept that it works.
   Some scientists see homeopathy as being implausible and dismiss it as ‘bad science’ (Goldacre,
   2007)however, for 200 years it has had a strong following of people who have felt its benefits and so
   2
   what better time than now – in this era of quantum mechanics, nano-technology, particle
   accelerators and accelerator mass spectroscopy – to try to discover homeopathy’s scientific basis.
   This dissertation will discuss why some commentators feel it is necessary to describe homeopathy in
   terms such as pseudo-science and bad scienc;. it will also discuss the difference in meaning between
   these terms.

   http://www.meganporterhomeopathy.com/uploads/2/5/1/1/25114203/homeopathy_science_and_ebm.pdf

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