Myth No. 6 – homeopathic hospitals are a waste of money
There are 5 homeopathic hospitals in the UK – in London, Liverpool, Tunbridge Wells, Bristol and Glasgow. They cost the NHS around £6 million a year. Compare that to the £100 billion for the total 2008 annual NHS budget!! These homeopathic hospitals SAVE money for the NHS as the Smallwood report commissioned by Prince Charles has demonstrated.
At one of the earliest debates on the NHS Act 1948 the Government pledged that homoeopathy would continue to be available on the health service as long as there were “patients wishing to receive it and doctors willing to provide it”. Many people who depend upon it are alarmed at the possibility that Homeopathy may no longer be available on the NHS. Since the passing of the NHS Act in 1948, a provision has always been made for people to be treated at homeopathic hospitals in the UK and until PCTs began to stop referring patients, there had indeed been long waiting lists, some 6 months or more.
See this letter sent out to all Primary Care Trusts in 2006 signed by a group of professors hostile to homeopathy and putting pressure on PCTs not to refer patients to the 5 homeopathic hospitals in the UK. They wrote the letter on NHS headed paper!
Myth No. 7 – Cure with homeopathy is simply the Placebo Effect.
When Prince Charles treats his farm animals at Highgrove with homeopathic medicines do they know that a remedy has been put in the water they drink? Farmers successfully use homeopathic medicines for their cows suffering from mastitis. Does a tiny baby know when their fever drops dramatically using Belladonna or Aconite, that they have been given a homeopathic medicine?! As anyone who has treated animals and babies with homoepathic medicines will tell you, homeopathy works even better on animals and babies than it does on adults! If proof were needed, this is it. Not placebo.
Perhaps the most striking research on homeopathy that goes some way to debunking the placebo argument is when homeopathic remedies are tested on live tissue in a petri dish or studies involving animals (mice in this case) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3208528.stm
Myth No. 8 – homeopathic medicines contain no molecules
Any remedy under a 12c or a 24x potency still contains the original molecules of the substance and this is known as Avogadro’s number. These low potencies are most suitable for physical illness of long duration as well as to heal specific organs that are not functioning properly.
Myth No. 9 – ‘Anecdotal Evidence’ does not constitute scientific evidence!
Most medical, surgical procedures and drug usage are not backed by studies – only by anecdotal evidence. According to the US Government’s Office of Technology Assessment (Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment: Assessing the efficacy and safety of medical technologies. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1978), only 10-20% of all medical procedures and off-label drug usage are backed by clinical studies.
Strong anecdotal evidence among informed professionals is actually quite reliable – at least as reliable as clinical testing.
Many clinical tests come to diametrically opposed conclusions. You could say that the problem was discovered through anecdotal evidence – and merely confirmed through a peer reviewed study.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/peerReviewUnderTheSpotlight.php
The problem isn’t with the use of anecdotal evidence. It’s with the double standard applied by the establishment (medical and regulatory) that holds complementary medicine to an absurdly higher standard, allowing medical doctors to do pretty much whatever they want. If informed anecdotal evidence is allowable for 85% of all medical procedure and drug usage, why is alternative health held to an impossible 0% standard?
Millions of people worldwide testify that homeopathy cures their illnesses yet apparently that cannot be construed as ‘evidence’.
If a person were to walk out of their house to the town centre and witness someone having their bag snatched or witness a car accident, then when they relay this information to the Police or to their friends and family, it is anecdotal evidence.
If someone go on holiday, stays at a nice hotel, eats delicious food, comes back home and relates the holiday to their friends, that is anecdotal evidence.
Does that mean that the above never happened? According to the detractors of complementary or alternative medicine, yes it does!
Millions of people have been cured of their diseases or afflictions using homeopathy, herbs, healing, vitamin supplements, special diets and on and on. Yet according to orthodox medicine all of these cures are anecdotal evidence and as such do not merit any further investigation, study, or validity. As far as orthodox medicine is concerned, these cures never happened.
Yet what if someone witnessed a car accident and the Police wanted them to make a statement? Would the statement in court be dismissed as anecdotal evidence? Would the police, even if they arrived at the scene of the accident to find the person still there comforting the passengers or trying to help, say they had not been there and their evidence is non existent? I don’t think so.
So how for so long have we put up with the top dogs in the medical establishment dismissing our cures as total nonsense, figments of our imagination, placebo cures, or outright lies?
How when millions are cured around the world using homeopathic medicines, can these cures be dismissed as unworthy of attention, simply ‘anecdotal evidence’.
Orthodox medicine implies through this that all cures with alternative medicine are untrue or simply imagined.Even when all the evidence is put before them, they become angry and even aggressive, simply refusing to see or to listen.
All the case notes in the surgery show that Mr. A had arthritis for 5 years, had been on anti-flammatory medicines, yet after homeopathic treatment for 6 months, the arthritis is cured. The reaction of the doctor is either disbelief or an attitude where they will not talk about it and do not want to know.
Of course there are some orthodox doctors who practise acupuncture, homeopathy or herbs themselves and who do believe that these therapies cured the patient but they are in the small minority.
It is always the top cancer specialists and professors whose lives and vested interests are the most challenged by the idea that anything other than pharmaceutical drugs or surgical interventions can cure the patient.
Very often the doctor’s prognosis can create enormous fear in a patient making them much worse, striking terror in their hearts and creating a mental block to healing when told by ‘experts’ they will never get better.
Yet pharmaceutical drugs cure nothing. They merely SUPPRESS the symptoms driving them deeper into the body of the patient. Believe it or not, the disappearance of symptoms does not equal cure! Very often a new and deeper set of symptoms are created which are even more serious. Pharma drugs work through the Law of Opposites, eg. antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, anti-convulsants, anti-hypertensives, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, etc. etc.
Hence the eczema patient whose skin symptoms have been suppressed, goes on to develop asthma. The arthritic patient whose joint pains are suppressed, eventually will go on to develop heart disease.
The doctor makes no connection whatsoever that their drugs have created these deeper illnesses but just goes on to give the patient more and more powerful drugs, making the patient sicker still. Then when they die, they say, ‘We did everything we could’. Yes and you killed the patient!
So in conclusion, there is no question that dismissing cures as Anecdotal Evidence through the use of natural medicine, is nothing more than a whitewash and a desperate means of suppressing the knowledge of those cures to the public as a whole.
Samuel Hahnemann
Hahnemann was a doctor but gave up his practice because he was appalled at the poisonous side effects of most available medicine. He started experimenting and did something rather novel – he took some quinine, while perfectly healthy. He observed that the effect on him was identical to a malarial attack: alternating fever with heat and chills. This is where homeopathy started: a substance, given to a healthy individual, causes symptoms. If given to someone who suffers those symptoms, it will thus neutralise the sickness.
After his observations on quinine, Hahnemann went on to test hundreds of substances on himself and willing, healthy volunteers, used the tested substances for matching symptoms in his patients and all the while kept accounts of detailed observations.
Of course, Hahnemann had an antecedent, still well-known today because all doctors still swear an oath to him to promise best medical practice: Hippocrates. Hippocrates stated that there were two laws of healing – the law of opposites (allopathy) and the law of similars (homeopathy). A Greek physician called Galen had laid these rules down in about 150 AD. Homeopathic theories are based on fixed principles of the Laws of Nature which do not change – unlike medical theories which are constantly changing! Homeopathy is both a science and an art.
Far from being ideas-based, this is completely evidence-based, empirical medicine an almost unique concept at the time. After some years of practicing like this, Hahnemann was still not satisfied. The substances he was using, while more effective than normal medical practice, were still having side effects. Or, if he reduced dosage too far, there was no effect. This is when he developed the concept of potentisation, the serial dilution that opponents of homeopathy deride.