Hi

Please excuse the cross-posting. But I recall a rather long and
VITRIOLIC discussion about homeopathy that I started in these
newsgroups back in 2003.

I presented the case that there is hard scientific evidence that
Homeopathy can and sometimes unambiguously does work. The universe is a
mysterious place, and we need to have humility about our theories and
accept good quality counter evidence if and when it occurs.

And several hard-core orthodox medics/scientists flamed me SERERELY.
Their killer argument essentially being we know of known mechanisms as
to how Homeopathy could possibly work (because there is 'nothing' in it
according to our chemistry friends) THEREFORE it doesn't work.
Therefore any study you put before me MUST be of poor quality. Even if
it isn't.

Recently The Lancet had a go at Homeopathy too. With a headline of "The
End of Homeopathy".

But sometimes The Establishment is simply lies to us.

There is so much intellectual capital built up and so many professional
reputations at stake, not to mention the multi-trillion dollar pharma
industry itself...  that, surprise, surprise, the truth is crucified.

Yes it seems that the medics sometimes have been lying again. Or maybe
not.

Please read what follows *carefully* from beginning to end.
And let's see if we can have a half intelligent conversation without
everyone seeing red and behaving like arrogant, bigotted little school
children.

Here goes: [deep breath]

THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT HOMEOPATHY AND THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT

Research discovers doctors are not telling the truth to patients

You probably use homeopathic remedies for you and your family, and so
you know they work.  Despite this, doctors keep repeating the mantra:
'There's no evidence for it'.

The most recent attack came from a group of 13 scientists and doctors,
led by Prof Michael Baum, who urged the National Health Service to stop
wasting money on 'an implausible' therapy that had never worked in any
trial.

So how come it works for you, and for thousands of others?  Most
doctors put it down to the 'placebo effect' - you think it is going
to do you good.  But the real reason is far simpler, as researchers at
What Doctors Don't Tell You (WDDTY) have uncovered - doctors just
aren't telling us the truth about homeopathy.

In a special research project, WDDTY investigators have uncovered
scores of major studies into homeopathy that all prove just how
effective homeopathy can be, research that was ignored by Baum and
colleagues.

THE WAR AGAINST HOMEOPATHY

Worse, the WDDTY research team discovered that evidence had been
tampered with or rejected to such an extent that it ceased to be
science, and instead smacks of an agenda to finally kill off homeopathy
as a genuine alternative to mainstream medicine.

Last autumn the prestigious medical journal The Lancet published a
study that was so damning of homeopathy that the cover read 'The End of
Homeopathy'.  Beneath it, it told doctors that they 'need to be bold
and honest with their patients about homeopathy's lack of benefit'.

Of course, this made national news - and no doubt many people were
influenced by it.  Sadly, the journalists, as always, took the story on
face value, but there was another story to tell.

The Lancet's strident headline was based on a meta-analysis that
reviewed 110 clinical trials in homeopathy.  All the trials were of a
high quality and were scientific, the researchers agreed.  The majority
of trials found that homeopathy worked or had 'a beneficial effect', as
the research team put it.

PREJUDICE DRESSED UP AS SCIENCE

However, the researchers decided to reject 102 of these trials from
their final analysis.  Eight of the 'rejects' were trials on patients
with upper respiratory tract infection that had such positive results
in favour of homeopathy that they could not be 'trusted'.

So, the researchers were already convinced that homeopathy didn't work,
and so rejected trials that proved otherwise.  In fact, they said so.
When they set out to research homeopathy, they viewed it as
'implausible'.

After weeding out all the positive studies, they were left with just
eight trials - and all of them  'proved' homeopathy didn't work.

It's strange that the press and doctors have latched on to The Lancet
study, and ignored the many other major studies that had found in
favour of homeopathy.  The first major study took place 16 years ago at
Limburg University in Holland.  It was a two-year study that analysed
the findings of 105 clinical trials - and, of these, 81 found
homeopathy worked.

Eight years later, researchers from Munich University analysed 89
trials into homeopathy and concluded that it was more than 'twice as
good' as placebo, which makes it as effective as any pharmaceutical
drug.

HOMEOPATHY IS 'EXTREMELY SIGNIFICANT', SAYS EU STUDY EVERYONE IGNORED

The European Commission carried out its own research programme in 2000,
and with even more rigorous standards.  In the end they found just 17
out of 118 clinical trials that they felt were properly scientific -
and, from those 17 trials, concluded that homeopathy had an 'extremely
significant' effect.

Perhaps the most impressive trial in terms of size was carried out by
the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital in Bristol, England.  They studied the
progress of 23,000 patients between 1997 and 2003, and found that 70
per cent reported 'clinical improvement'.  More impressive still, most
patients had tried homeopathy only after conventional medicine had
failed them.  In other words, these were people with the most
difficult, intractable health issues.  The biggest effect was among
children, 80 per cent of whom reported a positive improvement from
conditions such as asthma, eczema, and depression.

THE TWO BIG ARGUMENTS AGAINST HOMEOPATHY

Homeopathy's critics always cite two arguments:  that the science
behind it is 'implausible', and so therefore it's impossible for it to
work, and any good effects are all in the mind.  Taking the second
argument first, homeopathy is very effective when given to animals, as
studies have demonstrated, which demonstrates that the placebo effect
is not an issue after all.

In one, pregnant pigs were given a homeopathic remedy to stop
stillbirths.  In the homeopathic group, the rate of stillbirths fell to
30 per cent compared to an 80 per cent rate in the control group that
was not given homeopathy.

In another study of mastitis in cows, those who had a homeopathic
remedy added to their water had a 3 per cent rate of mastitis compared
with 48 per cent in those not given the remedy.

The first argument is subtler still.  Effectively it states: 'It's
impossible for homeopathy to work, so therefore it doesn't'.  Prof
Colin Blakemore of the UK's Medical Research Council has stated: "If we
were to accept the principles of homeopathy we would have to overturn
the whole of physics and chemistry."

Precisely.  As you may know, science works according to 'paradigms'.
Anything that adds to, or supports, an existing paradigm is accepted as
science; that which refutes it is rejected as 'unscientific'.  In
other words, science is a self-defining system.

It was implausible that the Earth should revolve around the Sun, as
Galileo claimed, or that time was not an absolute, as Einstein
demonstrated.  In medicine, it was 'implausible' that a bug called
helicobacter pylori could cause ulcers, or that folic acid could
prevent neural-tube defects, but they did, and eventually the paradigm
shifted.

But there's a much bigger game at stake if we are to accept
homeopathy as an effective therapy.  It would mean that the way we
treat people is wrong, that we do not truly understand disease, and
indeed that human beings are not the mechanical pieces of flesh and
bone that doctors and drug companies believe us to be.

Source: WDDTY. July 2006

Thanks for reading this far

Ship
Shiperton Henethe

"The truth is out there - and it shall set you free"