-
-
The Story of the Delivery
March 19, 2011 // 56 Comments -
Guardian Article
November 14, 2009 // 36 Comments -
What's God's plan for May?
November 25, 2011 // 35 Comments -
Milestone for May! Her first steps! (VIDEO)
July 18, 2012 // 27 Comments -
The Amazing Half-Brained Baby blog has been taken over. ...
January 30, 2011 // 24 Comments -
May made me cry today. My amazing half-brained baby.
September 19, 2011 // 24 Comments
-
Why I'm grateful for socialized medicine
June 13, 2013 // 5 Comments -
Scenes from the hospital
June 7, 2013 // 4 Comments -
How is May post-op?
June 5, 2013 // 13 Comments -
Tomorrow is the day I've been dreading
June 2, 2013 // 12 Comments -
The one good thing that happened between all the puking ...
May 30, 2013 // 1 Comment
-
Great post - well said! The potential implications ...
June 19, 2013 -
You have been in my thoughts over the last two wee ...
June 16, 2013 -
I can't believe how much older May looks in that p ...
June 16, 2013 -
It is nice with all the NHS bashing going on out t ...
June 15, 2013 -
Stacie, Very happy to know that the surgery was s ...
June 14, 2013
-
Thanks for entering!
Homeopathy and other quack therapies
Let’s say you have $1,000 to spend on your disabled child. You aren’t a doctor. You didn’t study neuroscience or physiotherapy or the billion of other therapies on offer for cerebral palsy. But, you are desperate to help her.
You saved $1,000. Or, her grandparents did. Or, you raised it through donations. It may seem a small amount of money to some people, but it’s all you have.
This is the problem I have with practitioners of homeopathy and other quack therapies: they steal money and valuable time away from desperate parents and their children. No harm done? How about all the hours a child spends in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber when they could be doing any number of useful therapies? Or, just having fun?
On the BabyCentre Blog, one of the bloggers wrote a defense of homeopathy. BabyCentre is a popular web site used by parents who visit because they are concerned about their child or their pregnancy. I asked to write a response so that the science of the matter could come to the forefront. I hope I did the issue justice.
This is the opening of the piece. You can read it in full here.
This week Elsie Button gave an impassioned defense of homeopathy. She believes that it works, as do over 100,000,000 people worldwide. Homeopathy supporters are often ridiculed; Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary was lambasted in the press for supporting it. And Elsie’s post quoted England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, calling homeopaths ‘peddlers’.
Could England’s Chief Medical Officer be wrong and the country’s Health Secretary, right?
Homeopathy works on two principals. The first is to treat like with like. In other words, curing hayfever with an onion extract, as onions make the eyes water and nose run. (Allium cepa, a homoeopathic remedy, is derived from onions for just this purpose.) The second that by diluting the remedy, it is made more potent. The theory behind this is that water can “remember” the ingredient. (This theory has been disproved several times.)
As a Popular Science Magazine article explains, “[This idea] is troubling, but it doesn’t totally kill homeopathy’s plausibility. The fatal flaw lies in just how much homeopathy says to dilute things.” They point out that the dilution is often “at 30x – a common and relatively low dilution for homeopathic remedies, the chances that a dose of medicine contains one molecule of the active ingredient is one in 100,000,000.”
And, that is where the implausibility lies.
Click here to read the post in full.
What has your experience been, if any, with homeopathy?
I agree 100% that homeopathy works. I use both eastern and western. Interesting that you used hyperbaric chamber as an example. When I had a very bad wound from surgery this treatment worked so well to close the wound. My insurance covered it all as they considered it good therapy. I have used laser light therapy and acupuncture as well. Also Chinese herbs. The way I look at it as long as it doesn't hurt the process it can only help. History proves that this are very viable therapies when used by a licensed practitioner. Yes, there are some unscrupulous people out there but if you do your research it can be money well spent.
Sorry Madge, but history doesn't "prove" anything. Only science can prove something. I can't speak for your herbal remedies or acupuncture, as I think - though I haven't researched it - that sometimes they do work. But, for the rest, I'm afraid what you experienced was probably a placebo type effect. And I would never encourage anyone to do it. For good or ill, the treatments these people are promoting are shams.
Where to start? Of all the ridiculous things out there, homeopathy is one of the most ridiculous.
I think the problem is that we're not robust enough in dismissing the people who practice and believe in it. Yes, they're free to believe in whatever old rubbish they like - but when it causes actual harm, when it fleeces people, when taxpayers contribute to its use in the NHS we should say enough is enough.
But then, you just know they're not going anywhere. If all of the (overwhelming) evidence isn't enough to dissuade them, what is?
I'm so glad you wrote a BabyCentre response to the pro-homeopathy blog. I was deeply worried by that blog post but did not want to get embroiled in the craziness of such a large public forum. Homeopathy exploits the placebo effect & knowingly sells it as something more, making a profit from vulnerable people who are desperate for a 'cure'. The idea that water can have 'memory' is utter jibberish (if that were the case, why does water not hold the 'memory' of being mixed with coffee or sewage or anything else that is part of the normal water cycle).
This Guardian science blog gives a clear and calm response to the homeopathy fraud http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/apr/03/homeopathy-why-i-changed-my-mind
Maybe the most significant point outlined in that article is that "the consultation not the remedy is the element that improves clinical outcomes of patients after seeing a homeopath." This is an important finding and something all medics could learn from - that carefully handled, sympathetic consultations significantly improve clinical outcomes. I'd much prefer the NHS concentrated on offering good quality consultations across the range of its services rather than offering homeopathy.
Thank you for writing me here if you felt the pits of the BabyCentre comment section might get too heated. I was relieved that the editors allowed me to write a response given the nature of the topic. I agree with you that perhaps the reason why people think it does work is the personal attention they receive. Certainly, in the original post I was responding to, the author described exactly this and is convinced it resulted in her pregnancy.
I'm an acupuncturist, so maybe I'm a quack. My patients certainly don't think so. I don't know enough about homeopathy to offer a scientific reason why it can work, as its not in my scope of practice so I never learned about it. I also do not have a disabled child, so I've never used it for anything serious. All I know is that when my son had a urinary issue (later found to be caused by internal yeast due to a round of antibiotics) and all our Ped could come up with was it was either behavioral or we needed a urology specialist at Stanford, we tried homeopathy on the recommendation of a friend who is a pediatric acupuncturist. In less than 24 hours my son was 80% better. When he has had a flare over the years and we redo the treatment, symptoms go away. No, this is not proof it works, and it could very well be placebo, which is fine with me since many people consider what I do placebo affect. But its been impressive enough to have me have an open mind. After all, many consider what I do quackery, right?
Actually, I didn't include acupuncture in the piece, on purpose, because unlike homeopathy there is research to show that it works on some conditions. So I wasn't implying that acupuncturists were quacks. Homeopathy is different. There is no proof it works.
Hi,
Myself Alice olga jose,
I went through your blog 3 months back. My sister got a baby girl and due to delay in delivery she was severely damaged . My sister was in Boston and the best children s hospital in US said that there is no cure for her and can do some therapies to reduce her disabilities. By God's grace now she is 3 months and covered all her mile stones of her age. Hope she will be fine.(She didn't do any treatment rather some 'tummy time' exercise)We are originally from India (specifically from Kerala - southernmost state in India).Now my sister and niece went to India and undergoing acupuncture and homeopathic treatment.(head circumference is not perfect for her.That's the one problem for her now)
Thanks
Alice.
sorry my English is not so perfect and my comment may seems annoying to you(after reading it I feel so .Really I didn't mean it sorry).
Thanks again
Alice
I didn't find your comment annoying, but I did remove the link because I do not ask my readers to contribute money to cures that are unscientifically proven. Best of luck to your sister and her baby.