Admittedly, the no effects/no side effects was probably an advantage in the patent medicine era.
I am surprised that my top medical research organisation doesn’t have anything better to do.
The problem with CVS is that in the USA the word Homeopathic is used for a lot of things. Not only the worthless dilution…but also for natural remidies. Which can be effective and even dangerous.
For example Zicam is listed as “homopathic” but it’s far from being homopathic…it contains large amount of zinc, applied directly to the nose…the original delivery method of using a swab on the nose was far from harmless. Many people lost their sense of smell and sued. It’s now available only in spray form.
Homeopathic at US drug stores can mean many things, some effective, some worthless, some dangerous.
This isn’t to say that real homeopathic stuff has merit…it’s to say that you can’t trust the word to mean homeopathic in US packaging and marketing.
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OMG, so funny!
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Newsflash: Latest research finds that indeed, after decades of rigorous and systematic testing, homeopathy still doesn’t do shit. Just like the last several meta reviews showed.
I guess they’re going to keep doing meta reviews on thoroughly debunked pseudo medicine until the money runs out?
They could be spending their research grants on actually testing drugs that have promise. Instead of retreading the well-worn path showing magic isn’t real. We already have plenty of research showing homeopathy is an elaborate placebo. We don’t need to even dignify it with a cursory glance anymore.
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I agree that the term ‘homeopathic’ is often confused with ‘natural’ or ‘alternative’ medicines, but I’m talking about stuff labeled ‘homeopathic’ that list dilution levels (30x or 10c, etc.) of the active ingredients. I don’t recall anything mislabeled as homeopathic, but I don’t go looking for it.
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I believe, part of the reason they did this was because of a similar study in the UK. Whether or not it is connected they saw a reduction of people relying on homeopathic treatments after the report was released. They are hoping that restating the fact will dissuade people on the fence from drinking the heavily diluted kool aid…
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http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/fda-warns-homeopathic-product-is-not-just-water/
There’s a good article. Some of these things are labeled homeopathic with a 1C dilution…or 1%, Such as the Zicam. Which is pretty strong for some things…like the Zinc…which is usually measured in Miligrams or micro grams in vitamins.
It’s not a only a matter of confusing at the consumer level…it’s a matter of that a company can legally carry the label “Homeopathic” in the USA with an active ingredient like a 1C solution (which is 1percent) and still slap a ‘homeopathic’ label on the product.
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Now if we could convince the anti-vaxxers that vaccines were just very dilute solutions, that, according to said metastudy, don’t do a darn thing. No wait, then they’d use it as an excuse not to vaccinate. Darn, I thought I had something there . . .
Well, among those who like homeopathy there are probably a mixture of hardcore believers, people who emotionally identify with being into homeopathy and people who are just genuinely misinformed. I think having a major national health organization report that it does nothing through major media outlets is probably helpful. Of course I’m not sure if they need to do much study to do that at this point.
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It does seem a bit wasteful that they had to do these studies, but you’ve got to get the media interested some how. Also, with meta analysis it probably took a researcher a month or so to write. Which is pretty cheap when you consider the economics of treatment and deaths…
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It’s essentially a lit review so they probably got some poor masters or PhD students to do it.
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And also serving, simultaneously, as a cure for anyone at all as well as being a bespoke solution for a particular individual with a personal ideopathy. Win-win-win.
Interesting. Your data seems to correlate perfectly with existing data for the placebo effect.
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I can imagine diluting water with water, but how do you dilute lack of water with water?
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Some homeopathic dilutions use alcohol. Especially dilutions of flower extracts. Maybe you could use neutral grain spirits for the purposes of dilution. Although it would hurt my fundamental being to see such vast quantities of good alcohol go to such waste.
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Did they try drinking their own urine? Reingesting weakened and/or dead white blood cells to bolster your immune system. Use sparingly.
As well, aren’t vaccines, technically speaking, homeopathy?
I’m careful to believe this finding knowing the power of suggestion is strong enough to overcome most pharmaceuticals. They proved this when one group was given sedatives and another group, stimulants. They told them they gave them the opposite. The majority of participants felt what they were told to feel. This kind of testing is now illegal. Go figure.
Vaccines work by biochemical and genetic engineering, and are proven to work regardless of the placebo effects, with high signal-to-noise ratios in adequately powered double blinded studies and epidemiology.
Notice how those things aren’t sympathetic knowledge, but actually reverse engineering the pathogens themselves, and using their biological features to train the immune system.
The resemblance is only superficial.
Take for instance the popular homeopathic flu remedy “oscillococcinum”. The reasoning for choosing to dilute a culture of bacteria found in a duck, is because while the homeopaths know that the flu originates in birds, they believe it’s caused by a bacteria when it demonstrably is viral. So they find a bacteria in a duck that looks “fluish” and use that in their magical potion.
Also note the dilution: Vaccines actually have viral components in them for the immune system to train on. Homeopathic remedies have nothing but water. After 12C dilution, there is literally not a single molecule of the original solution in the remedy. Thinking that kind of dilution can have a biological effect flies in the face of established chemistry, physics and basic arithmetic.
In conclusion, homeopathic remedies have been not only shown to be absolutely implausible, but also shown to have no effect beyond placebo. And administering placebos to people as if it’s medicine in clinical settings is extremely unethical.
ETA: The stomach is exquisitely optimized by evolution to breakdown anything you ingest. That’s why your poop looks different than your food. If you ingest your urine, the cell matter it contains would be broken down into it’s basic sugars lipids and amino acids before it would ever have a chance to enter your bloodstream and come into contact with your immune system.
Organisms that live within the digestive tract have evolved some very interesting and robust mechanisms to withstand the caustic environment. White bloodcells that live in the circulatory system their whole lives don’t have such protection. Especially not dead ones.
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The magnitude of that elusive placebo effect might be a bit lower in future studies…
I saw a reference to interest in performing tests on subjects to screen out folks who have the met met polymorphism of the gene that codes COMT…
Genetic biomarkers of placebo response: what could it mean for future trial design?
Subjects with COMT met/met polymorphism have predisposition for significantly higher placebo response. Approximately 25% of the population is of the met/met type. Subjects can be easily tested for this polymorphism.
So… Gullibility is a genetic trait?
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