{"id":1137,"date":"2008-10-11T08:46:14","date_gmt":"2008-10-11T07:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1137"},"modified":"2008-10-11T08:46:14","modified_gmt":"2008-10-11T07:46:14","slug":"does-homeopathy-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1137","title":{"rendered":"Does homeopathy work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have blogged before on the subject of homeopathy here<\/a>. On that occasion, I had two comments: one opponent and one supporter.
\nI return to the subject this week because I have been contacted by e-mail from someone with whom I was at university but with whom I have not been in contact for the intervening four decades (he found me via my web site). He is now a Registered Homeopath and wanted to challenge my opposition to homeopathy as expressed in one of the essays<\/a> on my web site.
\nWe have exchanged e-mails setting out our respective views and I thought that I would share an edited version of this exchange with you so that you can express a view.<\/p>\n

\nHomeopathist<\/b>
\nIn the early 90’s I saw an advert for Homeopathy evening classes – so my wife and I decided we should attend and learn what was all about. Well fairly soon a knee problem that had bothered Celia was cured quickly and fast with one pill! My chronic headaches of some 30 years went away and so on.
\nHaving seen the EVIDENCE for my self I then went and studied the subject at professional level in one of the London colleges and I am now a licensed and registered Homeopath.
\nYou say that “I believe in reason and I believe in evidence”. If you study homeopathy you soon find that it is all based on EVIDENCE and REASON. What other evidence does one require when some who is sick is cured literally before your eyes? The Materia Medica – properties of materials – used in Homeopathy is all based on the experience of volunteers and patients.
\nThe principle of homeopathy is based on the trial of substances which having produced a set of symptoms in volunteers, cured a similar set of symptoms in the sick. Some many years afterwards it was only perhaps by chance that it was discovered that when you dilute the substance it still continues to work – but reduces the unwanted effects. How this happens we still do not know exactly. But just because we cannot explain something, it does not mean that the effect is not there, when we see it ourselves.
\nDid Radio waves not exist before Marconi discovered them? Do we know how all things work? When we think we know the theory of something, how long does it take before that theory is replaced by another? Have you had any personal experience of Homeopathy? Or was the comments that included homeopathy purely based on personal
\nthought and reason?
\nMe<\/b>
\nOf course, I accept that homeopathy ‘works’ in the sense that people feel better, BUT I question whether:
\n1) It works better than a placebo
\n2) It works differently than a placebo.
\nAll the evidence is that the answer to both questions is ‘No’ See this large-scale examination<\/a> of 110 trials for instance.
\nHomeopathist<\/b>
\n1- Almost anything can act as a placebo – the more complicated the greater the effect! However, there are two groups that you cannot fool with placebo:
\nA- Infants
\nB- Animals
\nAnd Homoeopathy works on both.
\nIn fact BBC 2’s QED Prog Circa 1991-2 ran a programme on it showing how a herd of dairy cows with mastitis was cured with one dose of a homoeopathic remedy! In fact so far as I was concerned it was QED for Homeopathy.
\n2- The article in the Lancet was discredited as it was proved to be extremely biased and unsubstantiated. The Society of Homeopaths replied to the Lancet article – please see here<\/a>.
\nMe<\/b>
\nNeither infants or animals are in a position to give objective information to researchers, so the results of tests on infants and animals are interpreted by people who believe in the efficacy of homeopathy so that they are simply influenced by the placebo effect again.
\nShow me a large-scale double blind experiment that has demonstrated that homeopathy has a greater benefit than a placebo.
\nHomeopathist<\/b>
\nOK I give you the QED’s work. You may still be able to get a copy from BBC 2.
\nA large dairy herd was divided in two. Each had half of segregated field and own trough. In each a small vial of liquid was poured – one was marked A, the other B. The code as to which was the remedy and which was distilled water was in a sealed envelope and was give to the producer for safe keeping. After some weeks (6?) the QED team came back and asked the farmer of the result. One field has some 19 cases of mastitis and the other only 1. When they opened the envelope, the first field had had distilled water and the other with only one incidence had received the homeopathic remedy.
\nSo in fairness, please explain how one could deduct that the herd with one case of mastitis was due to the effect of placebo. Could the cows understand what was happening? And this is not a unique case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"