"It's a miracle! Take physics and bin it! Water has memory! And whilst its memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is infinite, it somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it."
While I think that "real" placebos would be better for this than de facto placebos with bullshit pseudoscience attached to them, it's still not completely stupid to reimburse them if they do provide the same level of relief as active medicine through placebo effect.
Of course they're not effective at killing bacteria, but there are some domains in which placebos have their place.
Edit - to be clear, the reason given for reimbursing them is explicitely that they are good as placebos, they are not claimed by the French social security to be useful as active medicine.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/dec/22/placebo-effec... [1 alternate] http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/placebos-w...
The research I've heard about basically says "placebos only have subjective effects". The classic study was on asthma. Participants receiving the placebo reported feeling better, but had no measurable improvement in lung function.
So relying on a placebo for a subjective feeling of improvement could be dangerous whenever what's needed is an actual, objective improvement -- ie, "whenever something is actually wrong".
Would you go to a doctor who you knew dispensed ineffective sugar pills to the sick?
Would it be ethical for a doctor to dispense ineffective sugar pills to the sick and conceal this fact?
Here's the official opinion of the American Medical Association: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-...?
It depends a little on what else they could dispense. I would rather they give out homeopathic medicines then give out antibiotics, in the face of unreasonable demands from their patients. I'd more rather they successfully educate their patients. I'm not sure the degree to which that's typically possible.
I myself take homeopathic medicines for various ailments (small or big) and have seen improvement in my physical condition every time. Also a lot of people I know rely on homeopathy and not one has ever said that it did not give the desired results. The only factor is that the doctor should be able to diagnose the patient properly and have enough knowledge to understand how each chemical interacts with the body and with other chemical to be able to make a compound that will help the body in overcoming the disease. Homeopathy is as much about the medicines as it is about the knowledge and experience of the doctor.
Homeopathic "medicines" contain no chemicals that interact with the body or form compounds, which is exactly why anyone who isn't a complete idiot should immediately understand that it's all a bunch of bullshit.
Your homeopath peddler (who does not deserve to be called "doctor") understands absolutely nothing about your body, he has merely memorized a bunch of arbitrary meaningless rules.
That's exactly the Placebo effect that you are describing.
So read up on them. Here's a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy it is very well researched and you can review the papers yourself.
Also:
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6860/has-most-pe...
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1915/has-there-e...
>I have doubts that these studies are really done by independent personnel and not by those who get directly/indirectly paid by companies like Merck, J&J, etc.
Oh come on!! Do you really think the National Science Foundation[1] is a Merck shill? or the scientific journal Bioethics?[2]
[1] http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind02/c7/c7s5.htm#c7s5l2
[2] http://www.dcscience.net/Smith-response.pdf
>have seen improvement in my physical condition every time
Please note, the types of things homeopathy is prescribed for are self limiting. Your body will heal over time without intervention, so yes! You will feel an improvement! The remedy you took has nothing to do with it though.
Not exactly. The medicine course brought the illness down to a level where i could really not make out if I still have the problem or not. The problem again surfaced to a very lesser extent after 3 years of finishing the course. What I am talking about is Sinusitis and there is no treatment of it in allopathy apart from operation and the allopathic doctors themselves say that after operation it will again return in 1-2 years.
Why I said that I do not believe the tests that are done by US agencies because most of the tests that are done by US agencies come out to be heavily influenced by the private sector companies who have their business interest in those studies incase the result come out that go against what they claim after few years when skeletons tumble out. I do not reside in US so my opinions are based on what I read in major newspapers.
So you can downvote me to any extent but I have experienced the results on myself and have seen the difference and hence highly doubt those studies. And when I say the doctor really matters that is because you can go for the same illness to many doctors and the medicines that some will give you will show less/no effect at all. So the experience level and understanding of different chemicals and their bonding really does matter.
> What I am talking about is Sinusitis and there is no treatment of it in allopathy apart from operation and the allopathic doctors themselves say that after operation it will again return in 1-2 years.
Completely and totally incorrect.
http://consults.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/the-best-treatm...
>The best treatment, first line, is nasal irrigation with saline solution to just move the stuff along. If you took all the people in the world who say they have chronic sinusitis, and you put them all on nasal saline irrigations, a big proportion would not have any symptoms anymore.
>After that would be medications, like steroids, which are anti-inflammatory drugs. And if you can actually culture bacteria from a patient’s sinuses and know what you’re treating, antibiotics are appropriate. Decongestants, when appropriately used for a limited duration, are incredibly effective at relieving the obstruction and letting the sinuses drain.
>The sinusitis patients who do well are the ones who really abide by using the neti pot or the saline irrigation bottles. And whether we add additional medications or not to the saline, it’s that mechanical flushing and lavage that really has a tremendous effect. Because it’s getting rid of the mucus, getting rid of all the inflammatory cells and whatever bacteria are there.
The vast majority of sinusitis cases resolve on their own within 10 days. The cause of most cases is a viral infection.
Chronic sinusitis can be caused by asthma or allergies, which are known to spontaneously reverse with age. Or pollutants, etc, which can be removed from your living environment, even on accident.
Sinusitis surgery is far from the first line of treatment.
Sinusitis surgery isn't just one surgery, it is tailored to the individual patient and their causes and symptoms. for example, removal of infected, swollen, or damaged tissue if that is what is causing it. Can remove some bone if the sinuses are unusually small, or polyps if that is what is causing it. While it is true that sinusitis can reoccur after surgery, it is far from guaranteed. "Will again return in 1-2 years" is absolutely stupid and false. It depends a lot on the patient, their immune system, the type of surgery, the cause, and importantly, post-op care. Not to mention luck!
I had a chronic cough for years, caused by post nasal drip. No medications helped at all, I tried all of them. Nobody could figure out what was even causing it. One day though, it resolved completely by itself. I still do get mild flareups once in a great while for a week or two though. People have even been known to spontaneously recover from cancer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_remission
The other interesting thing is in the case of cervical cancer. The Human papillomavirus virus (HPV) can cause precancerous changes in the cervix. Mostly, these changes just reverse themselves. When you get an abnormal pap test, as long as the changes aren't very advanced, the course of action is "wait and see" to see if your body fixes the problem. In the vast majority of the cases it does, only a few with abnormal pap test will go on to develop cervical cancer. I had an abnormal pap with "low grade changes" several years ago. My heart skipped a beat when I heard the news. Guess what? We just retested me in a year and I was good to go. My body fixed itself.
>I have experienced the results on myself and have seen the difference and hence highly doubt those studies.
That is extremely flawed reasoning. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
For example, if everytime I had a cold I did 25 situps in the morning. My cold always went away. I can not then conclude that 25 situps in the morning is a cure for the cold.
Please review the cited studies (See the GP) for bias.
And you mean to say that just because my mind thought that what I am taking is real medicine hence my body developed the immunity to fight back the bacterial growth by itself? It is not necessary that what people do not understand now does not mean that it is wrong/flawed/fake. We are not so advanced to know each and everything about chemistry and biology and human body.
I have seen multiple results and have also tested myself by stopping the medication and again starting it and seeing the results for numerous other ailments, hence my belief stands.
Yes, and this is called chronic sinusitis, which is what I posted about.
>It wasn't that one day I woke up and found that I am cured
Real medicine is the same way.
>We are not so advanced to know each and everything about chemistry and biology and human body.
Correct, however we know enough to know that homeopathy is bull-fucking-shit.
>I have seen multiple results and have also tested myself by stopping the medication and again starting it and seeing the results for numerous other ailments, hence my belief stands.
As I said before, this is false reasoning. See my GP.
A lot of health plans in the US cover chiropractors and acupuncture.
[1]http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11655-011-0665-7
People report relief from chronic pain after taking placaebo. Cancer patients have relief from pain after cognitive behaviour therapy - a psychological intervention.
I have no problem accepting that someone feels pain, has acupuncture, and then no longer feels that pain. I do have a problem with the bullshit mechanisms that acupuncture suggests.
Since acupuncture has reasonable few side effects and long term pain medication has some scary side effects it's not so easy ro just dismiss it out of hand even though we know it is nonsense.
Correct. No arguments from me on that. However, as noted in the Wikipedia article, few modern day acupuncture therapist actually incorporate the original concepts of qi and meridians in their practice.
What I was saying was the actual insertion of needles can release endorphins and that's a plausible explanation for reduced pain besides just the placebo effect.
Despite the recommendations of friends, I DIDN'T go to a chiropractor and within a month I was much much better. Today my back has never felt better. I'm not sure that this proves that one shouldn't go to chiropractors, and I'm just a random guy on the internet so what does this prove?
I've also had tinnitus, and it too subsided WITHOUT chiropracty. I'm glad that not going to a chiropractor cured me.
The efficacy of any kind of treatment is hard to determine, and the subjective interpretation of our own experiences is always hard to keep in perspective. Anyway, I'm glad that you're ailments abated (with the chiropractor's help).
There is no need to be afraid of the idea that a chiropractic procedure might have possibly worked. If an alt-med procedure works, and there are rigorous scientific studies to back it up, congratulations, it is now science-based medicine. Science-based medicine is not particularly picky, and if physical manipulations or sticking people with needles is shown to work as a treatment for a particular condition, it's no worse a modality than any other.
The reason to reject chiropracty and acupuncture as fields despite their occasional successes because of their lack of rigor, and tendency to keep using treatments after they have been shown to be ineffective or dangerous or both. Some practitioners still adhere to the original, discredited foundations of their fields (sublaxations, nonallopathic lesions, qi), some practitioners will happily treat for conditions for which their methods have been proven completely ineffective, and some practitioners will happily injure patient after patient with fractured vertebrae and punctured lungs. And their professional organizations have shown no ability or desire to regulate their practitioners.
Rigor, not modality, is the problem.
Quackery runs amok in their industry, as evidenced by their major trade groups' stance on vaccination,[1] and genetically modified plants.[2] Ironically, while also supporting "alternative elective course of action" in lieu of vaccination they also support "enforcement efforts against quack medicines...that endanger the public health..."[3]
[1] http://www.acatoday.org/level2_css.cfm?T1ID=10&T2ID=117&ID=1...
[2] http://www.acatoday.org/level2_css.cfm?ID=10&T1ID=10&T2ID=11...
[3] http://www.acatoday.org/level2_css.cfm?T1ID=10&T2ID=117&ID=1...
Hey, how typical. Let's not imagine a kind of collusion between politicians and homeopathic drugs makers, let's not.
I'm not sure if that's true or just a clever excuse to keep homeopathy reimbursed though. An other element to consider is that Boiron, the largest homeopathic manufacturer in the world is a french company.
Then we are really reimbursing a very expensive form of sugar. I'm not sure who we are kidding but there is no science behind that kind of policy - and if placebo can make such claims, then it should be Open-bar for products making health claims all across the board, from supplements to food items. Yet these are actually controlled, while the regulations on homeopathics benefit from special provisions. No need to prove anything.
Yeah, and they have actually moved their site to my home town in France, and they have detestable practices. They grab all the land around them to expand their operations (even though it used to be land reserved for agriculture) by threatening the mayor to leave the city if they don't get everything that they want. They're just a bunch of bullies and I wouldn't be surprised there's some shady thing going on with them and politicians at the national level.
There have been double blind vs placebo tests for homeopathy. It doesn't work. It's no better than a placebo.
Absence of evidence where you should expect evidence is evidence of absence.
They submitted one. It was two dozen blank sheets of paper that "remembered" the data showing homeopathy works.
Regular medicine.
Let homeopathy go through trials. Let it fail & put these discussions to bed.
You gotta be kidding me! Do you really believe that?
Traditional Chinese Medicine is based on an incorrect understanding of the body and an incorrect disease model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_medicine
>With an eye to the enormous Chinese market, pharmaceutical companies have explored the potential for creating new drugs from traditional remedies.[126] Successful results have however been scarce: a 2007 editorial in Nature said that while this may simply be because TCM is largely irrational pseudoscience, advocates have argued that it is because research had missed some key features of TCM, such as the subtle interrelationships between ingredients.[126]
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/acu.html
I am not saying there might be merit in some of the practices, however to say "usually fares relatively well when put in clinical trials" is incorrect.
Mercury sulfide, asbestos ore and lead oxide might give you an erection thanks to the placebo effect, but pornography has been proven to be much more effective with fewer side effects, and can be delivered efficiently over the internet.