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s/o funny vaccine post
Can anyone tell me more about homeopathy and what the controversy is/ why some are skeptical of it? DH believes in it. I don't know enough to have an opinion, but our ped isn't a fan.
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Re: s/o funny vaccine post
People are skeptical of it because there's absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever to support it. And the idea itself is kind of BSC - that illness is just a disturbance in your life force, not caused by, say, viruses or bacteria.
To me, the idea that a tiny, tiny quantity of duck liver will cure the flu is belongs in the 18th century, at the very latest.
Because it doesn't work.
There are some homeopathic remedies that can work, don't get me wrong but it is in no way an alternative to modern medicine. After all, were homeopathy a legitimate treatment for most medical ailments, we wouldn't have needed the evolution of modern medicine.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say that homeopathy often prolongs illness because the necessary treatments are avoided for so long.
Click me, click me!
ooo oo oo...I know this one. Homeopathy asserts that 'like cures like'. So given the symptoms of a sick person, whatever substance would create those symptoms in a healthy person will cure the sick person.
In order to determine the correct 'dosage' (and I'm using that word veeeery loosely), you dilute the ingredient until it can no longer be found in the compound.
Yes, you read that right.
'How can this possibly work?', you might ask. Supposedly, water has memory.
Yes, you read that right too.
The 'active ingredient' of a homeopathic remedy has been completely removed from the remedy.
Trust your pedi. Smack DH upside the head.
Homeopathy is the idea that "like cures like." This was theorized in something like 1800 by some German guy. ie, pre-germ theory. As an example, if you want to cure your allergy suffering watery eyes, what else causes eyes to water? Onions. So, you prepare a homeopathic treatment of onions. But, wait, it gets better!
Onions would obviously make the situation worse, so you need to dilute the solution. In homeopathic theory, this makes the treatment stronger, the more dilute the original ingredient. The water "remembers" the curative part of the onion but gets rid of the harmful. There's more to the dilution, though. At each diluting step, you must shake the solution. This is called potentization, b/c it makes the solution more potent. A 30C (1C is 1:100, then that's diluted by 100 for 2C, etc) solution literally contains not a single molecule of the original treatment (whether onion or duck liver, or whatever). In fact, at that dilution, it would take a container the size of the earth to contain one molecule.
I'm seriously not exaggerating this bullshits.
Take the duck liver flu treatment, oscicillium (or something) that's it's own bizarre story. I can't remember why it's supposed to be "like" but I think it had to do with really bad microscopes. The liver cells appeared to wiggle similar to some disease cell, ergo, it must be a good treatment. I'll see if I can find a link b/c, honestly, my paraphrasing isn't nearly as insane as reading what homeopaths actually claim.
Good lord, I didn't realize there was more to it than just yanno, herbs and shiit.
Uhm eww.
Click me, click me!
Also, to protest this stuff, and how much money these companies make by making false claims, also, to protest NHS support of homeopathy, there have been a few mass overdoses.
People get together and take a whole box of homeopathic sleeping remedies. Guess what happens. Nothing! THe only flaw in that plan is that, by being completely unregulated, it's possible there are actually active ingredients in a homeopathic treatment that aren't listed. This happened with Zicam and zinc. Oh, and people lost their sense of smell, sometimes permanently, b/c of that.
Read this!
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/homeopathy-overdose-befuddles-homeopaths/
Herbs and shits is naturopathy, and I guess you can argue that homeopathy falls under that umbrella.
I don't think you can equate them, actually. I mean, the very point of homeopathy is that there is no ingredient. There was certainly a distinction drawn at the lecture I was at, but it wasn't defined. If you'll allow me to bore you with yet another story from the con last month....
Every year, there's a panel called "Science, Pseudoscience, and Outright Crap". I finally made it there this year. Samuel Conway, a scientist who works for some drug company runs it (I missed his intro). He was tremendously entertaining (and he's the chair of Anthrocon, a furry convention).
Anyway, he did his bit on homeopathy. Then he got to naturopathy. At this point he stopped, and said that the con organizers had invited a leading naturopath to be a guest. Out of deference to the con, its organizers, and professional courtesy, he was eliminating this segment. I suspect it will be back next year, in spades.