Here’s some news that is not surprising—it’s of the “dog bites man” variety. But it’s still worth highlighting because it shows the persistence of faith-based woo in our world: not woo of the religious variety, but still woo that is based on faith (i.e., belief without evidence). Indeed, the evidence for the phenomenon at issue—homeopathic medicine—is nonexistent. That is, homeopathy doesn’t work.
I presume most of you know what homeopathy is: a form of treatment that relies on a reverse kind of psychology: if something gives a healthy person certain symptoms, then to cure a sick person with those symptoms, you simply give them the substance that makes a healthy person symptomatic. If ground up toad-skin gives you a fever, for instance, than to cure someone of a fever you give them ground-up toadskin. Not only that, but you give it in such a dilute solution that not a single molecule of toad-skin remains! But that can’t work even in theory, for no curative substance remains in the “medicine.” Homeopaths argue that the solvent (water, usually) retains a “memory” of the substance, but there’s no evidence for that, either.
Nevertheless, homeopathy is used and respected all over the world, even in places where you’d expect people to know better. When I lived in France, for instance, I saw homeopathic pharmacies everywhere, and one of my friends tried to treat his salivary-gland cancer homeopathically. Fortunately, he came to his senses and got effective scientific treatment, and appears to be cured.
Despite the complete lack of evidence for the efficacy of homeopathic treatment, it’s still not only considered useful by many European nations (I don’t know much about other places), and, indeed, is covered by public medical insurance! From Wikipedia (I have put the offending nations in bold):
Regulations vary in Europe depending on the country. In Austria and Germany, no specific regulations exist, while France and Denmark mandate licenses to diagnose any illness or dispense of any product whose purpose is to treat any illness. Some homeopathic treatment is covered by the national insurance of several European countries, including France, some parts of the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Luxembourg. In other countries, such as Belgium and the Czech Republic, homeopathy is not covered. In Austria, public insurance requires scientific proof of effectiveness in order to reimburse medical treatments, but exceptions are made for homeopathy. In 2004, Germany which formerly offered homeopathy under its public health insurance scheme withdrew this privilege, with a few exceptions. In June 2005, the Swiss Government, after a 5-year trial, withdrew insurance coverage for homeopathy and four other alternative treatments, stating that they did not meet efficacy and cost-effectiveness criteria. However, following the result of a referendum in 2009 the five therapies were reinstated for a further 6-year trial period from 2012.
The Swiss! Jebus, what is up with them? The sensible Swiss voted to reinstate insurance coverage for homeopathy? And what’s with the UK, Denmark, Austria, and France?
Homeopathy should be banned in all sane countries as a useless form of quackery, and no country should ever cover it with public medical insurance. That just takes money out of people’s pockets to fund the useless faith of others, and deprives people of efficacious medical care. How can Britain’s National Health fund homeopathic treatment?
All this is by way of reporting that, according to today’s Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian government study shows that homeopathy doesn’t work.
The findings, released by the National Health and Medical Research Council on Wednesday, are based on an assessment of more than 1800 scientific papers.
. . . The Australian Homeopathic Association says homeopathy can be used to treat a wide range of conditions including colds, food poisoning, hangovers, travel sickness, skin conditions, hormone imbalances, mood swings, headaches, behavioural problems, digestive problems and arthritis.
But the NHMRC review found no good quality, well-designed studies with enough participants to support the idea that homeopathy works any better than a placebo, or that it is effective as another treatment.
While some studies reported that homeopathy was effective, the NHMRC said these were too small or too poorly conducted to confidently draw conclusions.
NHMRC chief executive Warwick Anderson said people who were considering using homeopathy should first get advice from a registered health practitioner and, in the meantime, keep up any prescribed treatments.
That should be the end of the story unless new evidence emerges showing that homeopathy works. But it seems as if the Australian government not only covers such treatment, but is considering having homeopathy taught as a valid form of medicine:
The finding comes as the federal government prepares to extend funding to private colleges teaching unproven therapies such as homeopathy, and as it considers whether it should continue to pay the private health insurance rebate on policies which pay for such alternative therapies.
According to the Private Health Insurance Administration Council, benefits paid by insurers for natural therapies grew by 345 per cent in the decade to 2012-13, significantly above the growth rate for any other category of general treatment.
Okay, Aussies, you’re paying for this stuff, and that means that some people (including those who go to homeopaths) don’t get proper medical treatment. Make it illegal, and don’t subsidize its teaching.
Of course, the Australian homeopathic quacks have responded—in the only way they can:
The Australian Homeopathic Association wrote to Professor Anderson on Wednesday accusing the council of being biased against homeopathy.
The association said homoeopathy had a two hundred-year history and was widely practised in Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent.
Yes, and prayer has an even longer history and is practiced throughout the world, but that doesn’t work, either.
I’ve long written about the dangers of religious faith-based healing, particularly when given to children who can’t make an informed decision. As you know if you’ve been a regular reader, hundreds of kids have died from their parents’ practice of Christian faith healing. Well, homeopathy is no different except that it instantiates secular rather than religious faith. It still does damage to those who use it, and it does damage to everyone in those countries where it’s subsidized by the government. Europe and Australia—stop it NOW!
h/t: Natalie
“The Australian Homeopathic Association wrote to Professor Anderson on Wednesday accusing the council of being biased against homeopathy.”
If I were Professor Anderson, I might reply “Of course, the evidence makes me so.” But that might not be understood by the quacks.
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I think these governments may include homeopathic ‘treatments’ on their formularies because they are less expensive then pharmaceutical medicines. Possibly they help keep hypochondriacs from clogging up medical offices?
I’m guessing it’s not just about hypochondriacs, but about things like the common cold too. Or hangovers, as the article mentions. Any condition real medicine can’t “cure” is going to be a rich field for con artists.
I am fairly sure that this is the case (at least here in Germany). I am sure that the insurance companies know that they are useless. But since homeopathy is a common superstition and probably a lot cheaper than real medicines it is a win-win for them. They can attract more customers and simultaneously cut the average expenses per customer.
And typically I would not care: If people want to take useless drugs and I my insurance premiums go down (or at least don’t rise as fast as usual), I am all for it. However, there are two things I do care about: Parents treating their kids with useless medicines. And the other problem is that is creates some sort of legitimacy that the woo peddlers can exploit.
I used to work with children with special needs at a local public school. Our health insurance covered visits to the chiropractor, but not visits to mental health professionals, excepting an initial visit. The chiropractor would even come to the school on a staff in-service day to offer free shoulder/back massages and brought some type of free bribes, er, I mean, food. I found it disturbing, the validation from both the insurance and the school authorities. But, I was the odd man out. I also found it sad that so many families with children who have disabilities were extremely religious and of course, victims of all sorts of quackery (gluten fears, vaccine fears, etc.)
To be fair, homeopathy does have some potential for treatment of dehydration…though you’d need dosages much larger than the single-ounce bottles offer to be truly effective.
b&
In my country homeopathy is not covered by basic healthcare insurance package, but some insurance companies offer additional packages (for additional costs ofcourse) that do include homeopathy.
My favorite comment to people that think this actually works is:
“All the diluted shit in toilet water that gets recycled back out must be curing pink eye all over the world”
You’ll no doubt get a “but it isn’t succussed!” back from that. Silly, but what can you do?
I don’t know about you, but, when the shit flushes and don’t come back up, I call that a success!
b&
Spoke to a woman at work recently who feels fantastic for the first time in years. She has been going to her doctor for lymphatic draining. I thought this was actual drainage of actual lymph nodes. But no. Her doctor is a healer who traces the paths of lymph on her skin. My friend can feel the lymph moving around under the healers fingernail until it all goes into her stomach and is dissolved by acid! Then she goes home with diarrhea for two days to pass all the lymph. I got so far as telling her that the stomach doesn’t process lymph before her eyes glazed over with that ‘your facts don’t mean a thing stacked against my feelings’ look.
Yes, she knows her own experience.
This is one of the hardest ideas to get across. Yes, sometimes the person with the problem understands it better than anyone else. But not always. The first person perspective can be unreliable and it takes an outsider to see the whole picture. There’s often a step from experience to inference which needs checking.
My favorite go-to example is that only you can know for sure if your head hurts, but this doesn’t mean you can confidently assert that you know from personal experience that you have a brain tumor. Many things cause headaches. If someone says “you don’t have a brain tumor” they are not denying your experience. They’re not saying you’re not in pain when you know you are. They might simply be in a better position to see the ice pick sticking out the back of your head.
This blurring of the subjective with the objective is I think one of the many reasons alternative medicine resembles spirituality. Sometimes they come right out and tell you it IS spirituality. And many times it is.
There’s a lobby group in Europe campaigning for homeopathy to be granted full medical status across the EU, combined with an exemption from all testing. The campaign is called the “It Works For Me Campaign”.
Whenever homeopaths claim that it’s been “proven by 150 randomized controlled trials” I tell them, don’t me, try convincing those lobbyists they can stop campaigning for exemptions.
Wasn’t there another group trying to educate people about what homeopathy really was called “Homeopathy: there’s nothing to it!” or something like that?
Yes, the 10;23 campaign in the UK.
http://www.1023.org.uk/
They’d be strangled with organically farmed silk scarves if they tried it in Germany.
And of course, there was the Serbian war criminal, Radovan Karadžić, who evaded arrest for a long time by disguising himself as a homeopath.
http://www.dcscience.net/2008/07/24/alternative-therapy-for-evil-homeopaths-by-robert-shrimsley/
They did – try it in Germany, I mean. They actually did it, in Hamburg, in Cologne and elsewhere. Search youtube for “Köln Homöopathie-“Überdosis” 2011″. As far as I know, no one was strangled :).
Don’t forget that the “sensible Swiss” only allowed women to vote in 1971 (with the final canton being forced to accept it in 1990). Their acceptance of homeopathy is therefore far from surprising.
and that they had enforced child labor, where children from poor families were removed from their homes and forced to work on the unmechanized farms, basically as slaves, according to a BBC report last year.
Well, yes, we Swiss do have some nasty bits of history. So I wouldn’t call us any more (or less) sensible than any other country in Europe. But the homeopathy thing is sadly true. When my wife and I had our first child this year, all the midwifes we got suggested to use it for one thing or the other.
Here is a study for someone to make: Why does basically EVERY midwife (and quite some doctors) believe in homeopathy? And what can be done to remedy that?
Strange thing is they make such bloody good watches.
‘And what’s with the UK’?
The Royal Family.
The Queen uses homeopathy. I don’t know which, if any, other members do.
I don’t think Liz does; the real villain and a lover of woo is Charles
Right, many members of the Royal Family are adherents of homoeopathy.
Homeopathy survives in part because of its cargo science that fools the ignorant public and lazy organisations – and I say this as member of staff of NHS Scotland that spends £3 million a year on a homeopathetic hospital in Glasgow. Even the Health Board I work for spends money on this worthless trash. I have tried to raise it officially as being in contravention of the principles of Evidence Based Medicine, which we are supposed to be adhering to, but with zero success (and, in fact, being told officially that my complaints won’t be entertained).
A typical piece of ‘research’ published in the ‘peer reviewed’ journal Homeopathy looked at the treatment of mouth ulcers. Despite being a seemingly well produced RCT, it does have one fatal flaw – the arithmetic in the results is wrong! The intervention (homeopathy) and control groups both had n=50. For the first outcome measure, ulcer size, the authors found that 96% of the intervention group got better as opposed to 72% (36/50) of the control group. Unfortunately, if you add numbers in the control group, you only get n=40 so in fact 90% (36/40) of them get better. This could just be an unfortunate printing error (that wasn’t picked up at peer review) except … For the second outcome measure, pain index, 96% of the intervention group got better as opposed to 70% in the control group. This time n=50 but the number of participants getting better is 20+10+15=45, to give 90% (45/50). So two outcome tables, both wrong in different ways.
I use this as an example when teaching NHS staff how to read research papers to see if they are worth implementing. I explain that although this is an alternative medicine topic, the principle that the arithemtic must add up holds for proper medicine too. The reason I use it (in addition to mocking homeopathy) is because I had to find an paper with some mistakes in it. Knowing that our library stocked this journal I went to have a look at it – this was the very first article I read!
The paper is behind a paywall but it is: Mousavi, F, et al. 2009. Homeopathic treatment of minor aphthous ulcer: a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Homeopathy, 98, 137-141. [Table 2 Efficacy index: ulcer size, and Table 3 Efficacy index: pain]
“How can Britain’s National Health fund homeopathic treatment?”
Because the flap-eared Prince Charles, Head of The Foundation for Integrated Health, trolls Government ministers advocating NHS funding of homeopathy. Prof. of Complementary Medicine (You’re looking well!) Edzard Ernst of Exeter University called out HRH, the CEO of Duchy Originals, producers of complementary medicinal products, and (I think) my landlord, for “outright quackery”.
This man will one day be Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. I wonder if the RAF staff currently air-lifting back from West Africa a British nurse who has suspected Ebola would be happy for her to be treated homoeopathically on the flight. x
Long live the Queen!
An issue for public health policy is whether MDs should be held accountable for science or evidence based care while alternative providers get payed for woo for which there is no evidence of efficacy.
For those interested in a light-hearted look at homeopathy, YouTube has Cool Hard Logic’s 3-part series:
“Testing Homeopathy – Part 1: Plausibility” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dFYfeADX7g
“Testing Homeopathy – Part 2” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbtyNaxDE8
“Testing Homeopathy – Part 3: Research Evidence?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6yqd_qr3Xk
And for fans of Richard Dawkins:
“Homeopathy – Con or Cure / Enemies of Reason (Richard Dawkins)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0-NalmRSl8
I haven’t watched the Dawkins video, but the Cool Hard Logic ones are fun.
You want YouTube videos? Try Homeopathic Emergency Department.
Indeed, another good one.
And, there’s always Tim Minchin’s “Storm” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtYkyB35zkk
And for those who think that homeopathy is “batsh*t”, I refer you to http://abchomeopathy.com/r.php/Guano for “Guano australis”, for which the indication is “Violent headache as from a band around head. Itching of nostrils, back, thighs, genitals. Symptoms like hay-fever”.
(Actually, this is apparently Patagonian birdsh*t and not batsh*t, but who cares.)
One of Mitchell & Webb’s best!
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I may have to list you as a co-instructor of my Biology and Society class, as I find I am using many of your essays to illustrate various points about what science is, and isn’t. This fits well with my upcoming section on Science, Pseudoscience and Junk Science, and I have passed it on to the class to read. Thanks, and I look forward to more!
There’s a Neil de Grasse Tyson quote that goes something like, “Junk Science? Let’s leave science out of it – it’s just junk”.
In a similar vein, I’ve read “The is is no ‘alternative medicine’, there’s only medicine and stuff that hasn’t been demonstrated to work.”
Yes and no. Homeopathy is not like an overinflated confidence in some herbal medicine — which is at least plausible inside the dreaded secular “materialist paradigm” of the world. I think that when the specific details of homeopathy are examined there’s a whole system which relies on magical principles, belief in immaterial essences, and the naturalistic fallacy. In other words, it’s more spiritual than secular. And its proponents treat it that way.
For example, what the hell is up with the “the more you dilute it the stronger it gets” rule? Most forms of pop pseudoscience seem to have some common experience analogy run amok behind them — but what is this particular idea based on? When does anything get more powerful when there’s less of it?
I read a possible explanation somewhere which gave me pause. Essences. Platonic essences — or something like it.
It goes like this. The True Form of an idea/thing is the strongest, best, most pure version from which all physical things are derived or instantiated (like God being so much better than His lowly creations.) They are less Perfect than the original Essence because the material world is less perfect than the Spiritual realm. So — if you perform the dilutions with the right approach (taking care that when you shake it you impart your Intention so it knows what you need) — the less of the accidental properties (material substance) there is, the closer the tincture gets to the strong powerful Essential nature (essential substance.) It’s warmed over Aristotle by way of Christian Theology. A common belief of then and now.
The closer I look the more homeopathy looks like the supernatural.
It’s based on the economic principle that selling potable water for $5/ounce turns a big profit.
“what the hell is up with the “the more you dilute it the stronger it gets” rule? Most forms of pop pseudoscience seem to have some common experience analogy run amok behind them — but what is this particular idea based on?”
Not sure, but the same principle seems to be at work with the sophisticated theology approach to the narrowing god gap.
“The less reasonable evidence for God the more important He becomes?” Heh.
Historical – Hahnemann noticed that less reaction to his stuff occurred if there was less of it.
I don’t know where the “succuss” comes in.
Sure, but why do so many people seem to think this makes sense and fall for it?
The only other analogy I can come up with is “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and that’s not all that connected. I think folks are drawing on their common wisdom re essences.
When a medicine is prepared in water, it is generally diluted 1:100 and then shaken. This is called ‘percussion’. Supposedly the molecular structure of the medicine is imprinted into the water so now it has memory of the molecular structure. This is repeated. Many of the remedies are diluted 1:100 and shaken 6 times in succession (!). So that is like super concentrated medicine in the water.
Contact magic, iow.
Perhaps they’re also drawing from their familiarity with printing?
Or maybe I’m overthinking it a bit. The Law of Dilution may seem plausible at least partly because someone with authority tells it to you in a confident voice, like when you were a child and just accepted what you couldn’t understand.
Which is also a major aspect of the religious mindset.
“You atheists are so arrogant, you’ll only believe what you can understand!”
In fairness, homeopathy does have a superficial semblance to one of the cornerstone lynchpins of modern medicine…
…that being, of course, vaccines. A very, very small amount of what makes you sick in this case does actually prevent and sometimes even cure disease.
The big irony here is the number of people who swallow homeopathy wholesale but won’t touch a vaccine with a ten-centimeter needle….
b&
Also, if you look at the ingredients you will see opacity. Things like ‘Bryonia’, ‘Colocynthis’, ‘Chamomilla’ (that one is familiar-ish), ‘Hepar sulf.’, ‘Allium’ (that one is onion juice). They often use a substance from a medicinal plant and name it after the genus name to make it sound fancy. One of their drugs to alleviate pain is bee venom (which causes pain), so they call it ‘Apis’ which is the genus of the honey bee.
The 1:100 dilution is just the first step.
After it’s diluted to 1%, the remainder gets diluted to 1% of its strength.
And that process of diluting diluted dilutions to 1% gets repeated for a total of, often, 30 times.
The end result is a dilution on the order of one drop in a sphere that encompasses the farthest naked-eye-visible stars.
b&
It’s succussion (shaking) and serial dilution equals potentisation (not percussion).
Not that it matters even slightly but new words for the well known BBB method of sounding like something is special and the homeopaths are smart.
Radio 4 News, 2 minutes ago. He died with his cat on his bed. How poignant. x
Oh, don’t get me started. Besides ‘treating’ relatively mild conditions, homeopathic medicines are also employed to treat cancer, and other serious conditions.
here is a slick web site for various quack medicines. Click on the link to their ‘Services’, and see the wooweewoowee woowoowoo.
This is going to be all over the news in NZ today. Homeopathy has been lobbying hard to get recognized as a medicine and the government has been denying them based on scientific studies, most recently awaiting the outcome of this one. We’re going to have fools telling us they won’t let this setback stop them and will keep fighting the government’s prejudice against complementary medicine. It’s going to annoy me to bits.
They talk about “prejudice” against alternative medicine as if it were a matter of one’s core identity, as opposed to a scientific question or consumer protection issue.
They need to cut that out.
It’s partly driven by alt med’s connection to religion and spirituality, which is also supposed to be treated as a matter of core identity. Attack the claim and you’re attacking “who they are!” They need to cut that out, too.
Another thing they need to cut out in the media is presenting two sides of a story as if they are equal as in climate change, vaccines etc.
As indeed it is with one of main online news sites -“Stuff”- having an article by one Gwyneth Evans, media spokesperson for the New Zealand Council of Homeopaths and chair of the International Council for Homeopathy telling scientists they “Haven’t Experienced Homeopathy” The good news is that most of the comments seem fairly antagonistic to homeopathy and the comments supporting it get a very substantial number of thumbs down/dislike clicks.
Yes, reverting to seriousness for a moment, this will be important.
For those interested in looking at the original documents, the “NHMRC Statement on Homeopathy and NHMRC Information Paper – Evidence on the effectiveness of homeopathy for treating health conditions” website http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines-publications/cam02 has 11 documents on their study, the Overview Report alone is over 300 pages, with another 300 pages of Appendices on the actual clinical trial reports they reviewed; but there are shorter summaries, FAQs, etc.
Unfortunately, here in Germany things are as bad as they seem to be in France. Sadly, the new meta-study will just be ignored – like all studies disproving homeopathy.
I personally do not know any pharmacy that does not sell homeopathic “medicine” – many of them even advertise their services by using the language of homeopathy: “Homeopathy – Allopathy”. They even try to sell you homeopathy when you are not specifically asking for it – especially when you ask about a medicine for your child. More than once, I actually got into arguments with pharmacists because I insisted on real medicine.
And homeopaths are the number one source spreading lies about vaccination and antibiotics.
Measles? Is good for you. Tetanus, Polio? No need to vaccinate your child. Some are promoting “homeopathic vaccinations” instead. Inflammation of the middle ear? Scarlet fever? Antibiotics supposedly make it worse. My husband nearly died as a child, because his homeopathic pediatrician thought she could treat his appendicitis with sugar pills. These people are dangerous.
Contrary to Wikipedia, the law in Germany is still rather complicated. I still haven’t found a medical insurer that doesn’t pay for it. Both H- and Anthroposophical medicine are exempted from the usual testing required for funding status.
And it’s difficult to find a doctor here who *doesn’t* practice it.
Meanwhile there’s a measles outbreak here that’s gaining momentum. That’s the cost of legitimizing it.
Incidentally, the Nazis were interested in using to replace the “Jew-infested” medical profession with a good Germanic form of medicine. They tested it rigorously in a large scale study over many years, including testing the malaria “treatment” on POWs suffering from malaria. Unlike homeopaths today who still promote and sell their malaria treatment, the Nazis realized it doesn’t work. (All the data and papers were mysteriously lost after the war, but were written up from memory by a guy called Fritz Donner.)
Does not ticking the box make the subscription stronger?
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Here’s some homeopathic humor…
Get it?
ROFLO…
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Maybe I’ll be forgiven a link to my own site here — a thought experiment on what would happen if homeopathy started returning clearly positive results.
In short, it would lead to the vast majority of preparations being instantly banned.
If it were found that “succussion” and dilution really made the ingredients active after all, then substances like d*g shit or wolf’s milk or the other crazy things they use would have to be banned until the mechanisms — chemical and physiological — could be found and understood.
Worse for homeopaths, diagnosis would cease to be “intuitive” and suddenly become either right or wrong. Only those homeopaths with basic reading and comprehension skills would succeed…
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
We must always follow the evidence where it leads and I have to say that homeopathic whiskey is just the thing to aid with the dehydration associated with a hangover.
Sort of nice to know that our (US) government isn’t the only one given to looniness.