So you have heard Homeopathy does not work! It is too bad for anyone who believes that.

Whenever I write about the effectiveness and safety of homeopathy in this blog, on social media, or in one of my free E-Books, I often receive one of these routine response.

• Homeopathy does not work.
• Homeopathy is bogus.
  
• Homeopathy is just placebo.
  
• Medical science has proven that it does not work.

These statements are so often made that many people believe them, or have a vested interested in promoting conventional medicine, and as a result, do not use homeopathy for their health care.

My response to people who make these remarks is simple - so much the worse for you! They believe that conventional medical treatment is honest and scientific, and that any other form of treatment cannot work, and cannot be effective. I presume, when they are ill, they will resort to pharmaceutical drug treatment, and all its inherent dangers.

For everyone else, especially those who believe such completely unsupported (and often abusive) statements, is that it is unfortunate, not least when they become sick or unwell. What it means is that they overlook, or refusing to consider a natural medical therapy that is both more effective, and much safer, in treating all forms of illness and disease, than conventional medicine. They are not making an informed decision about their health.

A Health Debate?

Any discussion about health has become a big problem around the world. There is no discussion within the mainstream media (MSM) which has given the floor exclusively to conventional medicine, and the naysayers of natural medicine. One journalist has recently explained the situation he is in, regarding the reporting of health information, blowing away any idea that we have a 'Free Media". The social media is going down the same road, censoring and banning information that is in any way critical of pharmaceutical medicine; or that suggests homeopathy, and other forms of natural medicine, is an alternative way of maintaining our health, and regaining it when we are sick.

The MSM, and the advertising industry, is even constructing rules that deny natural therapists the right to talk about what they do. We must not talk about treating illness and disease; we must not suggest that we can do so successfully; we cannot even provide the public with case examples of successfully treated patients.

George Orwell's 1984 has arrived! And just as with the society Orwell imagined, too many people have not yet realised what is happening to them. We are living in a medical version of Airstrip One. The 'Thought Police' are controlling what we can and cannot hear. Big Brother is the corporate world, representing the interests of Big Pharma. There a lots of 'Winston Smiths', democrats, opposing what is happening, in favour of informed choice in health treatment. Over 1 million people demonstrated recently in London - and event not mentioned by the MSM. But we remain a minority at the moment, there are not enough of us.

Yet as the incidence of chronic disease gets progressively worse, as it has done for decades now; as more people are being harmed by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines; as national health services fail to meet our health needs (and we have to protect health services by losing our freedoms); as we watch conventional medicine's damaging, hopeless and often ridiculous responses to Covid-19; and as we recognise that we are getting progressively sicker the more drugs and vaccines we take, more Winston Smiths' will gradually emerge.

In 20, 50, 100 years time we will be able look back at these times more dispassionately, we will be more able to see what a great disaster the dominance of conventional/pharmaceutical medicine has been to the human race. We will be able to see what a failure this dominant system of medicine has been. We will want to return to the days when people acted on the basis that "an apple a day kept the doctor away". In the meantime we are going to have to fight hard to preserve patient choice, and health freedom.

Placebo. Homeopathy and other natural therapies are often dismissed as being "no better than placebo". So what is wrong with that?

Homeopathy is often dismissed as being "no better than placebo". So exactly does this mean? Is it important to patients? Why has the concept of a 'placebo' become such a problem in recent years? And why do so many people want to disassociate themselves from it?

A placebo is usually defined as a substance ‘containing no medication’ or ‘an inactive substance’ that is given to patients to help him/her get well. Or a placebo is a substance that has ‘no intrinsic value’ but manages to trick someone into feeling they are better.

Most standard definitions explain placebo using the concepts highlighted above, or similar. It is used in the context of medicine, drugs, active substances that make sick people better. It is supposed to help us distinguish between substances that ‘work’ and substances that don’t ‘work’.

So the value of the term ‘placebo’ should become clearer. It has become a weapon used by those who claim to make people well through ‘active substances’ and ‘medication’ - by conventional, or 'scientific' medicine. Everything else is of ‘no intrinsic value’, merely a confidence trick. The term has been hijacked by the pharmaceutical companies and their supporters, to attack natural medical therapies, to dismiss them as worthless, as being ‘no more, no better than placebo’.

So why is placebo a problem?

It is a problem because most natural therapies utilise methods that are designed to stimulate the body’s own healing mechanisms, not necessarily through 'active substances'. This may be through essential oils, or homeopathic remedies, or the needles of the acupuncturist, or the hands of the reflexologist. So for this reason such therapists can be routinely dismissed and discounted as users of ‘placebo’. Their patients don't really get well. They just think they get well (and presumably they are too stupid the recognise the difference)!

So is this a problem for the patient?

People who are genuinely sick have one main, over-riding priority - to get better. I have never treated a patient, and made them better, who then asked

* “how did you do that?”
* “I hope there was an active ingredient in what you gave me!”
* “I hope what you did had some ‘intrinsic value’!”
* “If it’s just a placebo I will be unhappy”.

Patients want to get better, and largely that is all they want. They don’t ask about the number of randomised double blind trials the treatment has been subjected to. If the treatment does not hold, if the illness returns, the patient will not use the therapy again. Therapies that don’t work for patients don’t survive, especially when they do not have government subsidy! Essential oils, homeopathy, acupuncture have all been around a long time. Patients use them to get better, and they do so because they know that it does make them better.

Conventional medicine may not like this, and no doubt they will continue to rail against us, and dismiss natural therapies for being “no more than placebo”.

But as far as most patients are concerned, they don’t give a damn! 

Edzard Ernst - why he changed his mind!

BBC Radio 4 gave Professor Edzard Ernst a 15 minute slot to explain "Why I Changed My Mind' on Wednesday 4th May 2016. It was repeated on 12th May 2016. He was interviewed by Dominic Lawson. The programme demonstrates the lengths to which the BBC is prepared to go in order under undermine Alternative Medicine, and Homeopathy, in particular.

Lawson set the tone. Ernst, he stated, is hated by alternative health practitioners, the Prince of Wales tried to get him sacked, and he eventually lost his academic post because of the criticism he attracted for his work. Ernst was left to agree with this dreadfully unfair and unreasonable treatment. So Ernst was then led to explain his 'change of mind' about homeopathy. As a friend and colleague of mine said,

          "Ernst (says) that as a German, he was raised on Homeopathy, and later treated his patients with homeopathy. And it worked! But when he approached it 'scientifically', he concluded that it's merely placebo."

So let's be clear. Ernst's experience of homeopathy has  been that it does work, but that the science he has looked at does not demonstrate that it works. (Even this is wrong, but leave that for now!) So people do get better as the result of homeopathic treatment, but 'science', or at least Ernst's science, does not understand why it should. Ernst also said that he was convinced, at the time, that he was 'helping patients'.

Lawson then asked his most difficult question (sic). If he knew that homeopathy worked, why did it work? Ernst's response was that it was charlatanism and quackery, and was "quite puzzling' really. So as homeopathy worked, but science said it should not work, he went on to study this in his post at Exeter University.

Lawson, in the great tradition of BBC impartiality, (sic), continued to lead him on. "When did you decide that homeopathy was useless, delusional?"

Ernst said that when he 'did the science' it became clear that homeopathy is placebo.

Now, lets look at this word, placebo. The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'the placebo effects' as"

          "A beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment"

So by using the term 'placebo' Ernst is once again saying the homeopathy has a 'beneficial effect' on patients who are ill. Lawson did ask Ernst whether there was anything wrong using placebo if this brought positive benefits to patients. Ernst said that people got better anyway! (Is it really is a simple as this?)

Lawson, now thoroughly convinced of Ernst's arguments, asked him whether he thought homeopaths were lying. With some apparent grace, Ernst said that lying was a strong term, but they were 'deluded', and 'treated homeopathy as a religion'.

Lawson came back, asking why there were lots of qualified doctors who believe in homeopathy, and whether they should be struck off, or stopped from practising? No, said Ernst, they were just not thinking critically, and needed to be educated out of their delusions.

Presumably, for both Lawson and Ernst, using a medical therapy that worked and brought benefit to patients, but which science could not explain, should be restricted, if not banned altogether.

Lawson's final question clearly demonstrated his partiality. "Can we justify homeopathy, or any other kind of quackery? (My emphasis). "No", said Ernst, predictably!

The BBC regularly broadcasts these kind of anti-homeopathy, anti-alternative-medicine programmes, with never an attempt to redress the balance. They will never broadcast a programme that provides an alternative medical view. The BBC appears to be firmly in the camp of the conventional medical establishment, and committed to providing time to anti-homeopaths without any 'right of reply'.

Why, for example, was there no question about the quality of the 'science' Ernst is associated with?  Certainly, his science has come under serious scrutiny. For instance, I blogged about "The contribution of Professor Edzard Ernst to disinformation about Homeopathy" in September 2015. This followed an assessment made by Professor Robert Kahn about the quality of Ernst's science. This was his conclusion.

          "I have never seen a science writer so blatantly biased as Edzard Ernst: his work should not be considered of any worth at all, and discarded."

Kahn's paper shows, in his view, how 'science' has been taken over by ideology, (or as I suggested the financial interests of Big Corporations like Big Pharma). He revealed that in order to demonstrate homeopathy is ineffective over 95% of scientific research into homeopathy has to be discarded or removed!

There was, of course, no mention of this in the BBC programme!

So if Ernst's change of mind was 'scientific', it was based on bad science, the kind of science much discussed in this blog, bought science, cheque book science, the kind of science based on university faculties funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Ernst's funding dried up when his academic position had become untenable, and he lost the support of his financial backers. As my friends and colleague said, in response to the programme:

          "Ernst's religion is Science, not the well being of the patients. I wonder how many listeners will
be influenced by him as he does come across as an experienced and rational man?" 

I agree with her assessment. Anyone can come over as an 'experience and rational man' when given an uncritical platform, such as this BBC programme proved to be. Certainly, Peter Fisher, the Queen's homeopath, was one of his main critics. Why, Lawson asked Ernst, did homeopathy have 'such a grip' on the Royal Family? Ernst did not know, but he did know that "when they get really ill they do not go to a homeopathy, otherwise they would not get so old!"

At this point I began to wonder on what knowledge Ernst used to know how the Royal Family were being treated, and scientific basis his belief that their longevity was nothing to do with homeopathy? The question was never asked, so we will, I fear, never know!

Pharmaceutical drugs. 85% of them are useless!

Many previous blogs have pointed to the fact that ConMed drugs are dangerous. Now there is a new study that has found that 85% of drugs are also useless!

What a combination! And the drugs industry can sell us drugs that are both useless and dangerous for exorbitant amounts of money.

http://www.naturalnews.com/029535_drugs_Big_Pharma.html

"Corruption and fraud in the drug industry is nothing new, but a new report to be presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association reveals that most new pharmaceutical drugs offer practically no benefits and a whole lot of negative side effects".

And homeophobes and homeopathy denialists say that homeopathy is nothing more than placebo, and that ConMed is 'evidence based'!

But worse still. It is now clear that only 8% of conventional drugs and vaccines have ever been proven to work.

It would appear that the ‘success’ of medicine has been achieved through the spin and the data manipulation that the pharmaceutical industry has been involved in now for over a century, and by the ability of governments, the conventional medical establishment, supported by our mainstream media organisations, to continue ignoring the failure of drugs and vaccines over the years.

Conventional, drug-based medicine is failing, and failing rapidly and ignominiously.

Can piglets tell lies?

Millions of homeopathic patients know how effective homeopathy is because it worked for them. I am one of them. But denialists deny this evidence before their eyes. It is just placebo. It is anecdotal. It is unscientific. They can't explain how homeopathy works (their problem), so it does not work.

So what happens when 500 piglets benefit from homeopathy? Are they telling porkies? Have they been subject to the power of the placebo effect? The issue under research was e-coli diarrhoea, apparently a major problem for pig farmers. This randomised, double-blind trial (beloved of denialists) showed quite clear results. The farmer, on whose farm the research was conducted, was skeptical at first, but after the trial, he (like a growing band of farmers) is now embracing homeopathy for all his animals. So homeopathy marches on! There is a rather a long URL for this research - but you can find it by clicking here.

The study showed a significant reduction in E Coli diarrhoea, with the control group having over 6 times more diarrhoea that the homeopathy group. So not only homeopathy provide effective treatment of a major problem, the treatment is safe, and less expensive than conventional treatment.

Placebo in homeopathy no larger than in ConMed

Nuhn et al (2010) have found that the placebo effect in homeopathy is not larger than in conventional medicine when comparing classical homeopathy to conventional medicine. The lengthy case-taking process and empathy shown by the practitioner does not account for an increased placebo effect (as is claimed by critics of homeopathy).

Nuhn T, Lüdtke R, Geraedts M (2010). Placebo effect sizes in homeopathic compared to conventional drugs – a systematic review of randomised controlled trials. Homeopathy, 99: 76–82.

Let's see how quick the denialists tell us that this research is no good!
See also http://homeopathicnew.wordpress.com