Homeopaths: Be careful when you recommend nothing as a treatment, you might kill someone.
Posted by skeptologic on February 26, 2010
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.
Satish said
Skeptologic has its beauty to explain ‘science’. If his version was true Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry etc. which are well known the branches of science should be regarded as obsolete as homoeopathy. The law of gravitation since its evolution never changed. The atomic weight of various elements remained the same for centuries. It is only and only Allopathic medicine that change DAILY. We do not get desired results with Chloromycetin, Tetramycin and many other ‘cins’ [actually should be called Sins] as we used to get some decades back. New antibiotics appear to replace the older one But WITH THE SAME FATE. If allopathy is so change loving change the physiology, embryology, anatomy and other branches – why only medicines and that too antibiotics – the worst ever killers on the earth after vaccinations.
What allopaths boaast of surgery? Who for the the first time operated on brain? Do you know? It was an Indian. It was Shushrata who operated successfully on the brain and that too without any operation theatre.
Homoeopathy is scientific therefore IT NEVER CHANGES. Like the true rule of earth revolves around the sun – it can never change. Homoeopathy has a strong and true base in its inception. Since more than 200 yrs. the same medicine is producinmg the same set of symptoms if taken according to a homoeopath. It is curing the same fashion it is designed to cure the diseases some 200 yrs. back. It is the science that failed to really find how it effects while being actually immaterial.
Homoeopaths are not closed to the new scientific research, they still are able to find results. Science is in doing not in speech only. The result itself speaks. The taste of poridge is in eating and not in theorizing the prepration. So, please learn how to practise the right way and find results through homoeopathy.
Still one more great fact about homoeopathy is – its effectiveness in epidemics – genus epidemicus cures all sufferers, may it asian cholera, eye flu, japanese eencephlitis or else, homoeopaths do not look towards the so-called new medicine and new research to start with the cure.
skeptologic said
Did you even read my post? It seems as though you read the headline about homeopathy being bad, and then went on an incoherent rant filled with non-sequiturs: An Indian performed the first surgery. Good for him, so what? What in the world does that have to do with homeopathy? And if you think that homeopathy is scientific because it never changes then you have no concept of what science is. At the time of its invention homeopathy was designed to do what we believed (at the time) was the treatment for all disease, to “balance the four bodily humours.” The humoral theory of medicine was abandoned when new information showed that it was useless, hence we no longer use bloodletting as a treatment. You seem to be a little behind the times, you see we discovered these little microbes a long time ago, they are called germs. We now know that germs cause disease and we have developed some great defenses against them (vaccines and antibiotics) which you claim are the “worst ever killers on the earth.” You have no idea how out of touch with reality you are. Antibiotics alone have saved hundreds of millions of lives because they do one simple thing, kill bacteria. And by the way, you might want to check your facts before you say something like “the law of gravitation since its evolution never changed.” Ever heard of this guy named Albert Eisenstein? He is so revered in science not just for his contributions to it, but because he found something that Issac Newton missed.
Nescio said
You may be aware of the fact that homeopathy is the modern spelling of placebo: http://contusio-cordis.blogspot.com/2010/03/homeopathy-placebo.html
Paul said
First, an apology for my English, for it is not my mother tongue…
The Finlay Institute, a med lab that produces vaccines, decided in year 2008 to prepare 4,8 million doses of the leptospirosis vaccines in very high homeopathic potency (200CH). There is no more of the original «substance» in those potencies as Skeptologic explained very well.
The doses were given to 2,4 million Cuban, just after the big floods in Fall. Following those floods, there are inevitably leptospirosis epidemics and that year, the contamination had already started. People are contaminated by the urines of animal that mixes with the rising waters. That year, the Institute had to operate very fast. So that’s why the homeopathic approach was taken. They had not enough time to produce enough vaccines.
In the two weeks that followed the administration of the homeopathic dilutions, the morbidity of the epidemics dropped drastically and the mortality of the already hospitalized people dropped to zero.
Here is an excerpt from an article published on a web site :
«The epidemiology surveillance after the intervention showed a dramatic decrease of morbidity two weeks after and a reduction to zero mortality of hospitalized patients. The number of confirmed leptospirosis cases remained at low levels and below the expected levels according with the trends and rain regimens. The usual expectancy of infection even with allopathic vaccination would have been around a few thousand, with some deaths included.
(…)
What is remarkable is their application to such a large population, and its dramatic success, with full scientific verification. This experience could be extended to other diseases and other countries. The Finlay Institute is offering their facilities and specialists to spread this alternative to all regions needing emergent alternatives for epidemic control and prevention.»
To read the entire article :
http://www.homeopathyeurope.org/news-and-press/news/stunning-cuban-experiences-on-leptospirosis
A world Congress was held by the Institute in 2009 to share those results with the scientific community. There were doctors, epidemiologist and homeopaths from all around the world who gathered in Cuba for a whole week.
The Finlay Institute is currently working on prevention and treatment of other large spread diseases, such as Tuberculosis and Malaria. Homeopathic nosodes are going to be produced in their lab, under the supervision and guidance of a Canadian Homeopath who has extensive knowledge and experience on preparation of such nosodes, having treated herds of animals in her career. She is the one who taught the lab workers of Finlay, how to produce the homeopathic Leptospirosis vaccine.
Unfortunately, a stubborn trained homeopath refused to give correct health care to his child. It is a very sad story because a human life was lost, out of stupidity, and because those stories just give rise to more ignorance on some tools that can be very effective when they are wisely used (as for any tools).
skeptologic said
Thanks for your comment. Why has this not been published in a reputable scientific journal? I don’t think it ever will be, because this like many homeopathic “studies” won’t be able to pass peer review. They always have gross methodological errors. Was there a control group? How do we know that the low rates of infection were not caused by something else? You failed to mention that the Cuban government has already taken other measures to control leptospirosis before all those people were given the homeopathic preparation. They had been vaccinating people with a real vaccine called Vax-Spiral. They had also begun an extensive rodent control program. There could be many factors year by year that could result in different rates of infection in the population, and without proper controls in place we won’t have an idea of what the actual cause/effect is. Homeopathy lacks even the slightest amount of plausibility because it is simply water. If there is no active ingredient how can it work? We don’t inject people with water as a treatment for anything (unless maybe they are dehydrated!) because it won’t do anything. There is no evidence that it maintains some kind of magical spiritual imprint of some active ingredient that it came in contact with in the past. Vaccines work by provoking an immune response so the body will develop antibodies against an expected pathogen. Water does not have anything in it that will do this. If those results are ever published in a real peer reviewed scientific journal let me know. I am not holding my breath though.
Paul said
Bonjour Skeptologic,
I read your post with great interest.
I realized that Finlay Institute produced the Homeopathic vaccine in 2007 and not 2008. Doctor Bracho, who works at the Institute, was involved in this decision of producing Homeopathic vaccines instead of the Vax-Spiral produced by the same company because the situation was an urgent one.
Of course, there were no control group. It wasn’t a study, it was an emergency situation that needed to be dealt with the fastest possible mean.
I quote :
«You failed to mention that the Cuban government has already taken other measures to control leptospirosis before all those people were given the homeopathic preparation. They had been vaccinating people with a real vaccine called Vax-Spiral.»
Could you lead me to that information, please. I would be very much interested in inquiring this. If they had already been vaccinating the population with the real vaccine, then, why would the same lab decided to produced the 4,8 doses of Homeopathic vaccine instead. There is something that i miss here, so i would really appreciate that you give me the lead on this.
Nevertheless, what is most interesting, is that this vaccine producing laboratory seems now to be willing to extend this to other epidemics. I gather that the analysis made from the scientific working for the lab must have been relevant enough to go further ahead with what might be an other mean of effective prophylaxis.
Thanks again for this.
You might be interested in this news. I copied it from a site called cancer decisions.
Sunday, 21 February 2010
A landmark paper on homeopathy and cancer has appeared in the February 2010 issue of the International Journal of Oncology. Scientists at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDA), led by Moshe Frenkel, MD, have confirmed the ability of four homeopathic remedies to induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) in breast cancer cell lines in the laboratory. The scientists in question were from the Integrative Medicine Program, the Department of Molecular Pathology, and the Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology of MDA. Their two Indian collaborators were from the Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation, Kolkata, India, where these same remedies are employed clinically with apparent success. The four ultra-dilute remedies in question were Carcinosin, Phytolacca, Conium and Thuja.
“The remedies exerted preferential cytotoxic effects against the two breast cancer cell lines, causing cell cycle delay/arrest and apoptosis” the authors wrote.
It was particularly interesting that the cell-killing effects of two of the remedies investigated in this study, Carcinosin and Phytolacca, appeared similar to the activity of paclitaxel (Taxol), the most commonly used chemotherapeutic drug for breast cancer, when it was tested in the same two adenocarcinoma cell lines investigated in this study.
Phytolacca is better known as pokeweed root, which grows as a towering weed in the US and elsewhere. Conium maculatum is poison hemlock, while Thuja occidentalis comes from the Eastern Arborvitae tree. Carcinosin is the only non-botanical in the group. It is made from a highly diluted extract of breast cancer tissue. These are typically used at the Banerjis’ clinic in India to treat breast cancer. The use of poisonous plants to treat cancer, while unusual, is not necessarily controversial. Madagascar periwinkle, for instance, yields the familiar vinca alkaloids–vincristine and vinblastine. The aforementioned paclitaxel (Taxol) is derived from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree.
Even the use of a cancer tissue extract might be explained in immunological terms. No, what makes these remedies highly unusual is the degree to which they have been diluted. These are given in the Frenkel article as follows: Carcinosin, 30C; Conium maculatum, 3C; Phytolacca decandra, 200C and Thuja occidentalis, 30C.
The “C” Number
What exactly does this “C” number mean? It is indication of the dilution of the active ingredient in an inert medium such as water. Thus, a “3C” dilution means that there is one molecule of an herb like Conicum maculatum in one million molecules of inert medium. It is theoretically possible that a medicine could consist of just one part of a chemical in a million molecules of inert liquid. For instance, we know that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has set a limit of 2 ppm for polychlorinated biphenols (PCBs) in fish (two parts of PCBs per million parts of fish tissue, per Maxim, 1984).
But as the “C” number rises, so does the dilution. Samuel Hahnemann, MD, the 19th century inventor of homeopathy, used 30C dilutions for many diseases. This means that there is 1 molecule in “10 to the minus sixty” molecules of inert solvent. On average, this means you would have to give two billion doses of a 30C remedy per second to 6 billion people for 4 billion years in order to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient!
TO BE CONCLUDED, WITH REFERENCES, NEXT WEEK.
–Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.
skeptologic said
Here is the link:
http://www.periodico26.cu/english/health/jun_sep2008/hurricane-measures091908.html
I am having trouble finding anything on the Finlay Institute web site about this homeopathic vaccine program. Where is it? I can only find claims about it on other websites.
And thanks for pointing out the breast cancer study. It serves to illustrate my point about homeopathy and other alternative medicine: the higher the quality of the study, the less of an effect it has, and the best performed studies show no effect at all. That study has serious problems:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/a_homeopathic_bit_of_breast_cancer_scien.php
http://scepticsbook.com/2010/02/14/a-giant-leap-in-logic-from-a-piece-of-bad-science/
Paul said
Bonjour Skep,
I’ve check the Finlay’s web site too, and i can’t find anything either, i don’t know why. But i pertinently know that they performed that homeopathic prophylaxia campaign because i know people from my milieu that were involved in this.
For the breast cancer research, well, I was prettty sure that you would be able to find something that breaks down the research methodology, given that you are very much dedicated on living and acting by your own values and beliefs and that you gave yourself a way to share those in order, maybe, to convince, or to serve as a watchdog for the profession of homeopathy or any other alternative medecine. Or maybe it’s just a hobby of yours! J
As you say in your blog’s description, it is important to keep an open mind. That’s what you’re doing in your very own way, by seeking misleading practices that fool the public. There are so many! People like you are important in that way.
I try to keep an opened mind too when it’s time to evaluate the costs vs benefits of allopathic treatments. It’s not an easy thing to do because it is so easy to become completely polarized in our view; so easy to go about with a narrow mind. Unfortunately, there are narrow minds in every domain be it traditionnal or alternative. When i see myself wanting so much to convince others with the benefits of homeopathy, for example, i know that there is something wrong. I know that my sense of confidence is waning. When we exactly know what we do, when we trust ourselves, be it our knowledge, our heart or intuition, we don’t need so much to convince others or to go about putting down what doesn’t fits our values or beliefs.
I’ve seen myself suggesting people to seek allopathic treatments lately! And i’m very happy about it. I feel completely peaceful with that. I would have never thought that from me a few years ago! When i see the very limits of the homeopathic treatments, i don’t make a fuss about i and i try to suggest what seems to be most suited.
In other situations, in fact, in many of them; i see the benefits of homeopathic treatments and i experiment the results which are way above placebo effect.
But i know that this is far too anecdoctical (non-scientific) for you and i respect that completely. Consquently, I won’t go any further in that view.
Deepest regards
zev said
Static sciences and dynamic sciences with few variables always result in reproducible outcomes. Physics, chemistry and such.
Take a dynamic science with thousands, millions, or billions / trillions of variables, and we cannot yet quantify the possibilites.
Our level of “knowing” is about an inch (25.4 mm) off the floor; the things we don’t know extent outward to infinity.
Epigenetics postulates that our genes can “express” in tens of thousands of ways, and get this, our thoughts and our environment contribute greatly.
High-profile physicists are coming out of the closet and acknowleging that our thoughts control particles, as in quantum physics. A particle’s probable position is controlled by observation, and this observation has nothing to do with eyesight, but rather with thought. So, exactly who’s thoughts control the operation of the universe?
So, it could be that results of homeopathy, placebos, and the like.. are related to the thoughts of those involved with these.
Whether you’re a scientist and proclaiming that you’re an atheist, or, a Christian and proclaiming that there’s a devil and a God, you’re each taking a position. You each have a belief system. Everyone has a belief system, and it doesn’t apply to religious matters ( to me, religion is simply commercialized & politicized spirituality ). It’s far better to be open to the possibilities, remember, there are a lot of variables involved. That’s MY belief system.
Usually it’s ego which gives people the “I’m right” complex. So.. how does it feel to state “Hey ! maybe I’m JUST WRONG or JUST DON’T KNOW”. If you have a problem admitting this to yourself, then, your belief system and your ego are holding you hostage!
Paul said
Zev,
The Buddhist, that I chose to be, coudn’t agree more!
Cheers!
zev said
CORRECTION & addition to my earlier entry:
Everyone has a belief system, and it doesn’t apply ONLY to religious matters ( to me, religion is simply commercialized & politicized spirituality ).
Belief systems extend to all disciplines and areas of life which involve SUBJECTIVITY.
For examples, we usually inherit our belief systems about religion, social interaction, and money management from our parents and close friends. We usually get our belief systems about history from school (and thank God for the History Channel).
…and we usually get our belief systems about the subjective sciences (those with many variables that are analogue) from those who taught us. It’s whatever the professors believed in.
Homeopathy may eventually be shown that it is RIGHT but for the WRONG REASON. It’s not what’s in the medicine (99.9999% water) that does it. It’s about our powerful mind, and that’s why “placebo” works. Epigentics research is showing us all this, the ability of our genes to express themselves in thousands of ways.. depending on our environment and our thoughts and feelings.
..But what do I really know, anyway ??
datheism said
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?t=280780
Einstein puts the final nail in the coffin of atheism…
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atheists deny their own life element…
add some comment moderation to your blog of blasphemy…idiot…
skeptologic said
I am trying to decide if this is either a joke, or spam, neither or both. Since you called me an idiot, I am going to assume you are serious. You linked to a video of a Discovery Channel documentary about relativity. How exactly does that say anything about atheism? And my post has nothing to do with atheism, it is about homeopathy. I don’t get it.
Nescio said
Asking for comment moderation while calling somebody an idiot is a clear sign of a poe.
Nescio said
“You linked to a video of a Discovery Channel documentary about relativity. How exactly does that say anything about atheism? And my post has nothing to do with atheism, it is about homeopathy. I don’t get it.”
It is because of crank magnetism: http://contusio-cordis.blogspot.com/2009/11/crank-magnetism.html