BBC News - Sceptics stage homeopathy 'overdose' to discredit drugs | Hacker News Reader

BBC News - Sceptics stage homeopathy 'overdose' to discredit drugs

news.bbc.co.uk

22 pointsalexandros27 comments

What gets me is that this BBC article portrays this as an even debate with two reasoned sides where it's obvious that they're just bloody sugar pills. Shame on you BBC.

Pseudoscience like this can cause people to delay seeking real treatment until their ailments are severe. This increases the risk to the patient, the cost of treatment and even some deaths where treatment is not sought until too late.

Yes. Although on the other hand, well-accepted placebos can cure people.

Sure. The placebo effect is incredibly strong in quite a few cases.

But placebos aren't supported treatment by the NHS. You also don't see sugar pills for sale in your pharmacy (except where labelled as homeopathic drugs).

The placebo effect is overstated and misunderstood by many. Further, using the placebo effect to treat sick people is unethical and ineffective. It should not be available through pharmacies.

For a greater and more educated discussion on the placebo effect (by a respected neurologist) please see:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=24

"There is no compelling evidence that the mind can create healing simply through will or belief."

IIRC Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence cites studies showing that if you swap out a person's medicine with a placebo, their body will actually keep producing the same antibodies or whatever.

I think the same book also cites studies showing that how many calories a person's body absorbs depends as much on the taste of the food as it does on the caloric content. So, for example, if you put steak and mashed potatoes in a blender then the person drinking that will gain less weight than they would if they ate the same caloric amount in normal form.

What's more, just recently there was an article showing that hotel maids actually start losing weight if you tell them that their jobs count as exercise, even though they weren't actually exercising any more than they were before:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1779251...

But the placebo effect is not what homeopathy is claiming to be is it?

Well, you have to believe in a placebo. Who would believe in a cheap sugar pill?

You can also get homeopathics diluted with alcohol instead of sugar.

Reposting awesome comment from Astro Zombie on the Metafilter thread about this:

"This experiment was already attempted by the daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, who downed a handful of sleeping pills in a suicide attempt in December. However, the pills were homoepathic, so not only did she not manage to kill herself, but she didn't even manage to get a good night's sleep."

http://www.metafilter.com/88593/Dont-drink-the-extremely-dil...

The protesters are trusting that the process by which the pills are prepared doesn't introduce some other substance which is toxic when consumed in relatively large quantities.

In the inverted homeopathic world, wouldn't it be even more bold to take 1/100th of a pill?

Or none at all. BTW I have some homeopathic whiskey, it's really strong, 0% alcohol!

Homeopathy is just medical charlatanry. The NHS spending on it is wasted public money.

If it keeps people from abusing antibiotics then I'd say it's money well spent. Unless you'd prefer getting MRSA.

The only people getting these 'drugs' are the ones who seek them out. And if it makes them feel better, then why give them real medicine with real side effects? Side effects which, in aggregate, would cost billions to deal with.

Dollar for dollar homeopathic medicine is probably the single best use of NHS money.

> If it keeps people from abusing antibiotics then I'd say it's money well spent. Unless you'd prefer getting MRSA.

It's the healthcare professionals that should be stopping people from taking antibiotics like candy. It's everyone else that should understand that having an unhealthy sense of entitlement to whatever drugs they can get is a bad thing.

> And if it makes them feel better, then why give them real medicine with real side effects? Side effects which, in aggregate, would cost billions to deal with.

Because people have suffered needlessly and even died as a result of ignoring good advice from their doctors in lieu of this quack medicine. How much extra is being spent because they waited forever for whatever they had to go away with homeopathy but it didn't and maybe even got worse? If it was only something as trivial as a case of the common cold or something I don't think people would be arguing too much with you. But there are people out there seeking these out as a substitute for things as serious as cancer treatment.

I don't disagree with anything you're saying. My assumption was that if the NHS was paying for it, then it was probably because doctors were recommending it on a case-by-case basis. But I haven't seen the data on how specifically it's being used.

"Homeopathy never works any better than a placebo."

Which is still pretty good - provided you have some belief in the placebo.

And it's getting better.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo...

What is more: More expensive placebo works better than cheaper one so price of homeopathic remedies is in some way justified.

Unless you get ill after taking the placebo. This is called the nocebo effect.

Not quite. Placebo response: "I think this will make me better, so I get (or feel) better" Nocebo response: "I think this will make me sick, so I get sick"

Interesting (if somewhat anecdotal) article on the nocebo response in relation to voodoo hexes, etc: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227081.100-the-scien...

I thought I discovered this article via a comment thread on HN last month, but can't seem to find it, now.

Since homeopathy is a form of sympathetic magic, you're perfectly justified in calling homeopaths "witch doctors". Which is awesome, because I've always wanted to call a quack a witch doctor and be correct.

I don't see how this "discredits" homeopathy. From the homeopathy viewpoint, the remedies themselves are not considered (i.e. by homeopaths) to be drugs, or even equivalent to drugs, and taking large doses wouldn't be expected to have any particular effect. It's a bit of a straw man argument like saying "Your cheese isn't really chalk because I can't write on the blackboard." But I never said it was chalk or that it's purpose was to write on blackboards. What have you really proved except that it's not a drug, which was never in question.

Well, it is sold as a drug, in the sense that on the package it says that it cures a sickness, which is the point of a drug. I'm not saying that it doesn't work (sometimes the placebo effect is everything you want, for example when a child hurts himself, he'll be happy as soon as he has taken a pill, no matter which one), but I think it's a bit strange to sell a bit of sugar with a very small quantity of active substance for 1000 times the production cost.

>>it's a bit strange to sell a bit of sugar with a very small quantity of active substance for 1000 times the production cost.

Hey, it works for Coca Cola.

> [...] for 1000 times the production cost.

Somebody has to pay for the marketing.

Third verse of this song tells all about the homeopathy that is to know:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBUc_kATGgg

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