There certainly is a connection to homeopathy and the wider context of alternative spiritual beliefs, some of which were invented and/or have deep roots in Germany.
But there is a recent study (German only, sorry) [1] which investigated precisely this hypothesis and came up with a more nuanced view:
- There is a synergy between valuing opposition for opposition's sake and alternative spiritual beliefs
- Those beliefs include fringe christian sects, radical anthroposophic believers, oppositional well-off citizens and traditional political opposition
So there is an amalgam of all of these, and they're currently linked by a shared opposition against a perceived over-bearing state.
Ah Homeopathy its like vaccination but without the science:
"A popular homeopathic treatment for the flu is a 200C dilution of duck liver, marketed under the name Oscillococcinum. As there are only about 10^80 atoms in the entire observable universe, a dilution of one molecule in the observable universe would be about 40C. Oscillococcinum would thus require 10320 times more atoms to simply have one molecule in the final substance."
> Modern advocates of homeopathy have proposed a concept of "water memory", according to which water "remembers" the substances mixed in it, and transmits the effect of those substances when consumed.
It are not the homeopaths but the wp editors who insist that there must be ingredients left(!)
> The concept is pseudoscience because, at commonly used dilutions, no molecules of the original material are likely to remain.[2]
Source 2, in reality, says this:
> Through the laws of physics, homeopathic medicines appear to have zero chance of containing any biologically active component. Evidence from physical chemistry also rules out the plausibility of mechanisms such as water memory.
Which is, in contrast with the wikipedia article, completely sensible and logical. The presence of active components (which is not claimed by anyone) needs to be ruled out so that the claim of water memory can be specifically addressed.
The vaccination rate isn’t “low”. Portugal is an exception in this regard and can’t be used as an example since most countries in Europe are similar, give or take 10%.
When one looks at the rate by age, we see that 60+ is at almost 87% and 18-59 is at almost 78%. 12-17 is dragging the average down and for good reason: it was only recommended by the vaccine commission since August and the kids have to have a discussion with the doctor about risks/benefits for their particular case. Biontech is to be used exclusively and there were issues with availability, as the new health minister was complaining last month.
One has to also consider that in Germany people who were sick have the same rights as the vaccinated because of the natural protection they got from the disease and there was no strong incentive for them to get the vaccine.
I don’t get this obsession with hitting some arbitrary numbers. Herd immunity’s been off the table since Delta. The vaccines don’t protect well from infection with Omicron. And getting those 20% vaccinated (which is not going to happen) will be too late to make a difference.
This obsession with the unvaccinated has caused more harm than good in European societies. If you want to see what low vaccination rates look like, watch Eastern Europe. Interestingly enough, they’re also surviving and haven’t gone extinct. Food for thought…
> When one looks at the rate by age, we see that 60+ is at almost 87%
This... isn't great, tho. It's high 90s in Ireland and Spain, say. Unvaccinated over-60s drive a lot of hospitalisation; this really needs to be as high as possible.
> I don’t get this obsession with hitting some arbitrary numbers. Herd immunity’s been off the table since Delta. The vaccines don’t protect well from infection with Omicron.
The vaccines provide considerable protection against hospitalisation and death. Right now, really, no-one is worrying that much about infection; that ship has largely sailed. The key to getting through the current wave in Europe will be protecting the hospital system, and the best remaining way to do that is to get people, particularly older people, vaccinated and boosted.
I found one sympathetic use of homeopathy. My mother in law had cancer and had several years of treatment (really excellent treatment in a variety of hospitals and clinics around Germany over the years) but eventually they ran out of things that might work and sent her home for good. I noticed that she was quite diligent with her homeopathic medication, and as she became more disabled, her kids and the Diakonie nurse continued this right up to the end.
Why would they bother? Why would the insurance continue paying for this (she certainly couldn't have afforded it)? I think they did this because it gave her a sense of agency, and therefore increased the quality of her life at the end. She was sent home to die, but she remained a human being up to the end.
This radically changed my view of homeopathy, mainly because I think it provided (IMHO) good value to her. Before that I considered it an unmitigated scam.
However if this article's thesis is correct, it's worse than merely a scam.
Homeopathic practitioners sell false hope. They do their own tests, their own diagnoses, sell their own preparations, and then review their client’s progress. There is no check, no balance. But “big pharma gives medical doctors kick backs” and that’s bad!!
They don’t see a lack of progress as them not being effective, but as an opportunity to sell more. If you aren’t progressing, then it’s you, the client, that is not doing something right.
But they are stuck in a scam too. They’ve paid for expensive training and materials. Some buy expensive equipment. Some of that equipment is legitimate, but they aren’t trained how to use it properly. Given that they have been convinced to invest so much, they in turn need to get an income from clients. They are victims too, at least in the short term.
But long term homeopaths and their ilk prey on our fears and hopelessness purely for profit.
I do believe that many start out believing, and that it is the recruiters and trainers that are even worse, but they can’t honestly keep practicing without realising it’s wrong. That would require them to admit that they have been scammed, have lost a sizeable investment and ripped off a number of people that they probably care about.
It’s scams all the way down.
If it worked, there would be no poor homeopaths. None would be struggling paying back loans for training and equipment. They’d be working for hospitals and command wages like medical doctors.
While true, the example of GP is convincing, in the same way that placebos are effective: homeopathy gets some people something in certain situations. I don't think homeopathy should be part of regular medical treatment, but I don't see the harm if it's used (on peoples own dime, which is how it works in my country) alongside or after regular medicine.
It's a bit like religion perhaps, I don't want it to replace science, but if it helps some people get through dark times, maybe we should let them.
saw the same with my father but wouldn't have said it was a good thing. he actively avoided doctors and refused their treatments and recommendations, yet continually kept going to alternative medicine clinics and following up on their treatments. Might have helped them mentally and psychologically, but definitely didn't treat the cause.
And it might not do much harm for a lot of people but do we.think it's fair to accept it next to medicine if we know that there are also people who will not try cancer treatment or delayed do to some healer who thinks that can also heal cancer?
I don't accept this and the current vaccine crisis shows how bad it can be to accept bullshit as medicine.
I'm also lost on what you think this shared added to your mothers life? Taking homeopathic things did what? Gave her positive memories?
I really don't get it. A nice walk in the park probably gave her real joy.
She was my mother in law and she turned to these after scientific medicine (which pretty clearly extended her life for many years) could do nothing more for her.
TBH I am not sure she really had a good grasp of the difference, but she definitely went for the standard of care and diligently followed their recommendations and advice while she could.
Obviously, I can’t speak for this person or their mother, but there is a desire to find a miracle cure, or even a way to provide a feeling of control in an otherwise hopeless situation.
I think there are ways to do this that aren’t exploitative like homeopathy is.
It’s evil to prey on the sick and the dying for profit. Homeopathy should be illegal.
I suspect I would have felt differently had she jumped there first à la Steve Jobs.
She only ended up down the homeopathic pathway when other alternatives had been exhausted and on that basis I am glad it was available to her and consider it a good thing.
Steve Jobs found out about his cancer in 2003. During a CT scan for kidney stones. He was seeing a doctor. He died in 2011. He was one of the few people to have his genome fully sequenced and got gene targeted therapy from Switzerland in 2009.
He only refused surgery and not modern medicine. He even had an under the radar liver transplant(probably jumped the queue and hence the article mentions ‘under the radar’ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-j... )I doubt if he opted for homeopathy(and homeopathy doesn’t claim to cure cancer or congenital issues that require surgery. It only treats symptoms.)
[..] Jobs’ cancer had been discovered by chance during a CT scan in 2003 to look for kidney stones, during which doctors saw a “shadow” on his pancreas. Isaacson told CBS’ 60 Minutes last night that while the news was not good, the upside was that the form of pancreatic cancer from which Jobs suffered (a neuroendocrine islet tumor) was one of the 5% or so that are slow growing and most likely to be cured.[..]
The article also said that he waited 9 months for the surgery instead of immediately as it was thought to be a slow growing cancer and he was reluctant to be ‘cut open’. How many people with pancreatic cancer like Steve Jobs had survived as long as he did..now that’s a data point.
Does medical malpractice makes homeopathy better? I don't think so.
I saw and wrote with plenty of people online telling me that they take vitamins and homeopathy and that this enough against COVID.
A family member did not get vaccination because of her homeopathy person.
There have been numerous stories over the last 20 years of people getting scammed out of there Money.
Homeopathy is so good that no one was ever able to proof that it works. This fact should be enough for a modern society to not believe in it. Still plenty of people do.
Funny enough in Esoteric cycles if it worked it was them but if it did not work it was your fault. Not a nice bunch of people they are...
COVID and the previous US Presidential cycle have fundamentally changed my view of almost everything: populism, reason, public welfare, media.
And now Germans ... who could otherwise be relied upon to do the fairly rational thing.
It just doesn't stop.
That said, here is the provincial breakdown [1]
Germany is mostly not very urban, they are a big more spread out. Even Munich proper is not very big, people live in surrounding regions.
The urban and denser areas are vaccinated at higher rates.
It could be this 'not a lot of urban core' type living where people are a bit more spread out that puts them at ease.
I know that my colleagues who live out of town where COVID rates are lower are less often vaccinated, they just don't feel the pressure, perhaps this is the same in Germany.
The US has Special Circumstances; antivaxism has become associated with political identity (or, with a mainstream political identity; this has happened to some extent in other countries but generally with far more niche political movements).
I took homeopathic Byronia Alba for three weeks as a loading dose before the vaccines were available. I also formulated my own constitutional homeopathic remedy 12 years ago from a specific snake venom after trying various other snake remedies.
I have used it on my animals too. Not just pets like cats and dogs but also horses. I have saved dozens of animals while the vets insisted that euthanasia was the only option. In India, without resources while volunteering at an animal shelter, I learnt it to help street animals and feral cats. I mix and match homeopathic and allopathic modalities all the time.
I am not willing to cut off my nose to spite my face in the name of ‘scientific thinking’. So I don’t reject any healing modality that works.
There is literally no science that proves homeopathy doesn’t work. A lot of anti alt medicine rants is just as unscientific as medicinal quackery(this also exists). YMMV.
I was also willing to participate in the mass experimentation of covid vaccines even though I didn’t know much about it..none of us did..we all acted on the basis of faith. I was under no illusion about the alleged effectiveness of the vaccines. It was a crapshoot. It is the same attitude that I had when I first adopted homeopathy. In balance, I have had more success with homeopathy than with allopathic (or even herbal/Ayurvedic) modalities and I tend to favour homeopathy over all else.
Also: let’s not forget that it’s cheap and somewhat open source. Anyone with time and effort can learn it. So it’s not a profit gusher. If anything, it diverts profits from Big Pharma. I adore Big Pharma, but I am not going to shell out thousands of dollars and hours of my life in waiting rooms for a headache or flu or a broken arm or asthma or migraines if I can figure it out myself. I can. Many can’t. I am glad that they have other options. Just don’t want others to diss mine. Especially by those who don’t want to educate themselves about other healing modalities and would simply parrot others in the name of ‘science’.
I have literally never met a scientist who disagrees at once with someone who carries a different point of view. Scientific temperament is one that is ever searching. I have known intelligent, thoughtful and highly educated scholars who would at the most crinkle their foreheads with not so much as a smirk ..and they’d very politely ask for reasons why..this is how I filter scientists from non scientists. Not by the degree they earn from books and parroting lecturing professors. The trademark of science is curiosity and a questioning attitude. When that dies, science dies. IMO..even within my relatively short lifetime..scientific temperament has dimmed considerably and I expect it to die soon..with only the gatekeepers managing the flow and direction of new discoveries and science.
Edited to add: that is an idiotic article. Equating homeopathy to ‘nazi medicine’ and an anti Semitic motive is just bad journalism. I find it repulsive that this author is published.
As others have mentioned, the idea that there is no evidence that it doesn’t work is completely invalid.
The onus of proof is on the person making the claim. It’s on the homeopaths to provide evidence that it does work. Many millions of dollars have been wasted trying to create this proof, but it has never stood up to basic scrutiny.
So it is therefore logical to assert that homeopathy doesn’t do what it claims to be able to do.
Further, many of the arguments used to justify the use of homeopathy aren’t internally consistent and are based on concepts that have no scientific validity.
The common distrust of conventional medicine and the assumption of Doctors and Big Pharma colluding to supply pharmaceuticals is patently ridiculous. This is in a system where Drs, pathology specimen collectors, pathologists, pharmacists, and pharmaceutical manufacturers are seperate entities with minimal contact between them.
However, the homeopathy practitioner is uncritically allowed to be the sole specimen collector and analyst, the only diagnoser, and the only prescriber and dispenser of “treatments”. They are also the only person that reviews the “treatment”. A homeopath is allowed and in fact encouraged to mark their own homework, while a network of specialists at arm’s length is treated with deep suspicion. Does this make sense? No.
[..] According to the National Institute of Health, more than 6 million people in the United States use homeopathy to treat specific health conditions, and over 200 million people use homeopathy on regular basis worldwide.[..]
So yes, millions of people. If you really want to have a proper discussion, I can participate. I don’t want this to be a random slinging match. Let’s use the time we spend here wisely.
Millions of people are being placebo'd by literally nothing except water. Homeopathic remedies are water, nothing more. Supporters claim there is some kind of special "structure" that water remembers. A phenomenon with no plausible basis whatsoever. A phenomenon which cannot be studied, observed, or falsified, yet one which can coincidentally be controlled to perfection by companies who make lots of money on their special bottled water.
Homeopathy is exactly equivalent to magic, which also works on millions of people! Tarot cards, psychic readings, crystal energy, aura repair, etc. All of these things are very successful in making millions of people FEEL better every year. The placebo effect is legitimate and powerful.
Sometimes not even water - I saw lozenges marketed as homeopathic. Maybe the water remembers (it doesn't), but we're supposed to believe that it then passes that memory to the sugar crystals in a way that's pharmaceutically useful and conveniently manufacturable? What an astonishing happenstance!
Tens of millions or more pray to each of several clearly distinct and purportedly unique dirties - millions must be wrong about something despite earnest belief.
Indeed I do. I have deep knowledge of the process in two markets. I also have a very good knowledge of the homeopathic industry.
There have been thousands of homeopathy clinical trials. None has ever proven any effectiveness beyond placebo. So, I asked not for pharmaceutical industry level studies, but for academic level - that’s a much lower bar.
Homeopathy will never met the requirements of pharmaceutical testing, which, for other readers, is why they are sold as as supplements. They pose minimal risk as their are no active ingredients. That does not mean that they do anything. It means they do nothing or nothing harmful.
The reason that you’re resorting to ad hominem attack and twisting my statements is that you can’t demonstrate any effectiveness. You have faith in the idea of homeopathy and no amount of proof will ever dissuade you. You didn’t need fact or proof to believe it works, so no fact or proof will change your mind.
While I really don’t care what you believe, but don’t position your opinions and insubstantial faith as fact. It isn’t based on any fact.
You might also like to consider holding your fellows to the same standard as your foes. Why do you let homeopathy practitioners operate in an extreme version of what you falsely criticise conventional medicine? Why not do some reading on the opposite perspective and learn why we challenge homeopathy? Don’t be stuck in an echo chamber.
I sincerely hope that you don’t need to rely solely on homeopathy to cure a serious illness. I don’t care if you use it along side other conventional treatments because it does nothing and it is impossible for it to do so.
You said you’d have to be foolish. I said that you probably shouldn’t think of yourself as foolish. It’s not ad hominem.
I am not going to address your personal comments.
Having said that..you said
[..] Indeed I do. I have deep knowledge of the process in two markets. I also have a very good knowledge of the homeopathic industry.
There have been thousands of homeopathy clinical trials. None has ever proven any effectiveness beyond placebo. So, I asked not for pharmaceutical industry level studies, but for academic level - that’s a much lower bar.[..]
There is not enough information. Can you elaborate about your ‘deep knowledge’ and what is your ‘good knowledge of the homeopathic industry’?
[..] Clinical trials that support FDA approvals of new drugs have a median cost of $19 million, according to a new study by a team including researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.[..]
[..] How much does a clinical trial cost?
The average cost of phase 1, 2, and 3 clinical trials across therapeutic areas is around $4, 13, and 20 million respectively. Pivotal (phase 3) studies for new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States cost a median of $41,117 per patient.
The above-mentioned cost estimates across therapeutic areas were reported by Aylin Sertkaya et al., in a report submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, containing Table 1 below.[..]
Isn’t that a simplistic way of looking at a problem?
We know homeopathy works. Millions of people around the world have been healed by homeopathy. We don’t know HOW it works as it doesn’t pass the current scientific method scrutiny.(pseudoscience acc to Popperian method)
I know it works because I have cured(not ‘healed’ in a hippy dippy happy sense)acute and chronic conditions for humans, animals and birds. To me, that is evidence.
Evidence Based Medicine is aggregation of a limited population based sample size. Homeopathy is symptom based treatment of an individual. They are entirely different concepts.
We actually don't know that, and have pretty strong reason to suspect that it can’t compared to whatever the diluent used is, because homeopathy literally involves no treatment at all.
> Millions of people around the world have been healed by homeopathy
That's, at best, unproven.
(If you are confusing homeopathy with the broader category of holistic/traditional/alternative medicine, that may explain part of the error; some of that stuff, despite the absence of scientific basis, clearly works, and discovering how is an important aspect of modern medical science.)
Provide a double blinded study with a statistically valid sample size that demonstrates the homeopathy works.
What we knows is that at the dilutions proposed there is none of the original chemicals present.
even if they were present, we know that the chemicals involved have at best minimal involvement with human biology.
And we also know, through many many double blinded studies that people are bad at correlating events.
If you have a cold and you apply your homeopathic mix, and get better, that means literally nothing. It doesn’t matter how “immediate” the effect is. Because you don’t know if you were already getting better.
Even better is that this human behavior reinforces itself: after day 1 it doesn’t work, so you take it the next, and then the next,etc until you’re better. Homeopaths will claim that the homeopathy therefore worked.
Here is the very simple thing you have to do. Find an illness you can treat with homeopathy. Get 10 thousand people with that illness into your study. Have one half of them use plain water, the other use the homeopathy.
If homeopathy works, you will see a difference.
Saying people “know” homeopathy works is like doctors “knew” you had to keep pus in the body. Like people knew you didn’t need to wash your hands before surgery. Then someone actually studied outcomes, and behold the outcomes match we now know. Those outcomes also match our understanding of basic biology and physics.
Every homeopath knows that proving homeopathy works is a trivial exercise. That is why they don’t do any studies. Because it would show that they’re snake oil preying on desperate people.
> Here is the very simple thing you have to do. Find an illness you can treat with homeopathy. Get 10 thousand people with that illness into your study. Have one half of them use plain water, the other use the homeopathy.
But homeopathy is plain water, unless the notional process isn't followed correctly.
most replies against homeopathy are just expressions of childish bullying. no one is engaging in a straight forward respectful debate or discussion. demanding the million dollar clinical trials and studies controlled by gatekeepers while peppering the whole mess with condescending comments is petty and intellectually lazy. but it's still funny to read the same old repeated lines again and again for years and years while millions continue to benefit from pennies worth of healing medicine. to each their own. good health to all. thanks for the engagement.
> demanding the million dollar clinical trials and studies controlled by gatekeepers
Studies, including by friendly investigators have been done, fairly extensively. Not only is it clear why homeopathy shouldn't be able to work, it's also clear that it doesn't beyond placebo effect; not only do most studies show this, but meta-analysis shows that contrary findings and their apparent strength are directly tied to weaknesses of the studies involved.
> millions continue to benefit from pennies worth of healing medicine.
> Studies, including by friendly investigators have been done, fairly extensively. Not only is it clear why homeopathy shouldn't be able to work, it's also clear that it doesn't beyond placebo effect; not only do most studies show this, but meta-analysis shows that contrary findings and their apparent strength are directly tied to weaknesses of the studies involved.
Etc. I don’t have to dig up stuff to reply to lazy responses when those interested can do so themselves. The quality of the discussion here on HN on this topic has been very disheartening to me and it’s simply mud slinging. I had hoped for a more rigorous and scientific discussion. The hostility..I find that interesting. I think we are done here. Have a nice day.
"Perhaps this is best discussed amongst a subset of people who have undergone some kind of homeopathic treatment and can compare it with allopathic treatment for the same condition they sought treatment for..o"
Yes, we have done that over and over, and we've found that Homeopathy doesn't work.
There certainly is a connection to homeopathy and the wider context of alternative spiritual beliefs, some of which were invented and/or have deep roots in Germany.
But there is a recent study (German only, sorry) [1] which investigated precisely this hypothesis and came up with a more nuanced view:
- There is a synergy between valuing opposition for opposition's sake and alternative spiritual beliefs
- Those beliefs include fringe christian sects, radical anthroposophic believers, oppositional well-off citizens and traditional political opposition
So there is an amalgam of all of these, and they're currently linked by a shared opposition against a perceived over-bearing state.
[1] https://boell-bw.de/sites/default/files/2021-11/Studie_Quell...