I came across this pro homeopathy web site today promoting homeopathy for eczema. After recommending some lifestyle changes to avoid things that may trigger the condition, they recommend homeopathy as a treatment:
Homeopathic remedies frequently relieve or eradicate eczema – not only for people but animals as well. They are safe to use with babies through to the elderly. Many different remedies can be used depending on the symptoms of the sufferer but some of the main ones are listed below.
It is important to note that while these remedies can be used by yourself at home to safely treat numerous acute problems, eczema is a chronic complaint that should have the careful management of a trained homeopath. If you are not sure of what you are doing, too strong a dose, or too many doses of even the best matching remedy can cause a temporary aggravation of your eczema. While this will not be harmful, it is best avoided.
For good results in the treatment of your eczema, please use the services of a fully qualified homeopath.
The “remedies listed” that they mention are Arsenicum Album, Calcarea Carbonica, Graphites, Medorrhinum, Natrum Muriaticum, Sulphur, and Psorinum all in homeopathic dilutions. Considering how dilute homeopathic preparations are, what they are actually recommending is water, water, water, water, water, water, and yet more water. Let me explain. Homeopathy is a pre-scientific magical system of diluting ingredients (such as those listed above) which cause similar symptoms to whatever ails you, in vast quantities of water. For example since caffeine normally keeps you awake, homeopaths believe that their highly diluted caffeine will help you get to sleep. I wish I was making that up, but I’m not. It’s that stupid. But wait it gets even more stupid! If you actually take their magic caffeine, you’re not actually going to get any caffeine because it is so diluted that there is no chance that even one molecule of the original substance remains.
When you look at a package of a homeopathic preparation, (I won’t actually call them remedies) you might see something like 10X or 10C. That does not mean one part in 10 or one part in 100. “X” means the roman numeral 10 and “C” means the roman numeral 100, but the first number means the number of zeros in scientific notation. So a 30X preparation is one followed by 30 zeros. That is a ridiculously huge number, and it is already way past the amount for which there is no chance of even having one molecule of the already crazy “active” ingredient. I looked at all of the concentrations sold on that website of the ingredients recommended for the eczema treatments and most used the “C” scale, 30C to be exact. 30C is one followed by 60 zeros. How big is that number? It’s almost as many atoms as are in the entire milky way galaxy. Many homeopaths offer the explanation that the water maintains some kind of spiritual memory of the so called active ingredient. But wouldn’t that mean that the water would still have the memory of all the other stuff it had ever been in contact with? Urine for example? According to the homeopaths, when we drink a glass of water, we are all drinking homeopathic pee. Nice.
Okay so what if these deluded people want to use their diluted magic pee pee water treatments? Why am I bothering to write about it, what is the harm if it is just water? Look at the quote above, in it do they recommend their homeopathic items and tell you to go see a real doctor too? Nope, it says: “eczema is a chronic complaint that should have the careful management of a trained homeopath.” Let’s take a look at what can happen if you try to treat a chronic condition like eczema with magic water without being under the care of a real physician. Gloria Thomas died at the age of nine months. She spent the last few months of her short life crying and suffering from severe eczema. Her father, a trained homeopath, refused to treat her with conventional medicine. So that is what being under the care of a “trained homeopath” will do for your eczema. I feel so sorry for that poor kid. It was not her fault that she was born into a family that believed in magic, but it was she who had to suffer the consequences. Her parents are now in jail, where they belong.
That is why I am writing about this. That is what the harm is, that and so many more stories like it. That is why skeptics organizations worldwide are fighting to do something about this, and to get the public informed about the danger of “treatments” that do nothing. Of course we are being criticized for it, being called the “evil closed minded skeptics” as usual. But I ask you, who here is truly closed minded, us or the idiotic homeopath parents who watched their little baby suffer and die? They saw what was happening but were so far into their belief, so closed minded, that they never took the baby in for some real science based medicine that would have saved her. Is it skeptics that are closed minded, or homeopaths who still rely on a 200 year old magical system invented by one man at a time when pretty much nothing useful or valid was known about medicine? Science works, science changes with new information, science is not closed minded, science saves lives. It looks like we are finally making an impact, I hope we can so more people will not have to suffer Gloria’s fate.
