CBC Marketplace on Homeopathy

[s5260205]

Cure or Con?

 

Erica Johnson investigates one of the country's fastest growing alternative health treatments: homeopathy. Ontario homeopaths are about to become the first province in Canada to regulate homeopathy — lending credibility to this unproven practice.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2011/cureorcon/

[EBDOC15]

It's hard to be optimistic about the future of health care/humanity in general, when you read the comments posted on there :-(. You'd think we're heading for the Dark Ages all over again.

 

I especially like this one: She noted: “Here are the facts: You cannot scientifically prove that homeopathy does or does

not work.” .... you sure about that?

[thehumanmacbook]

Dawkins would have a fit.

[Erk]

Homeopathy is a lot like a religion for its users. Once they have put their faith in it, it represents a great sacrifice for them to admit that they've been scammed. Thus the fiercely loyal defenders.

[tooty]

lol there's a woman in there who treats her son with homeopathic meds exclusively while denying him vaccines.

 

sigh

[EBDOC15]

WTF... The Habs just signed a deal with a homepathic cold treatment?! :-(

[Mourning Cloak]

Homeopathy is a lot like a religion for its users. Once they have put their faith in it, it represents a great sacrifice for them to admit that they've been scammed. Thus the fiercely loyal defenders.

 

This is spot-on.

 

lol there's a woman in there who treats her son with homeopathic meds exclusively while denying him vaccines.

 

This is criminal. Also possibly modern Darwinisn at work.

[s5260205]

It's hard to be optimistic about the future of health care/humanity in general, when you read the comments posted on there :-(. You'd think we're heading for the Dark Ages all over again.

 

I especially like this one: She noted: “Here are the facts: You cannot scientifically prove that homeopathy does or does

not work.” .... you sure about that?

 

http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2011/cureorcon/online.html

 

Controversy dogged the "Cure or Con?" episode before it aired. Homeopaths and its proponents were none too pleased with word of our upcoming investigation, and an online campaign was launched to "derail the merits" of our story by sending "positive feedback" to the CBC via email and comment boards.

[astrogirl]

It's just magic water until someone forgets to dilute the magic water and babies get sick:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20020623-10391704.html

[Pantaloons]

What a joke.

Maybe it's a good time to re-post these two links:

1. James Randi discusses homeopathy (good summary with historical context)

2.

(funny)

[larva]

What a joke.

Maybe it's a good time to re-post these two links:

1. James Randi discusses homeopathy (good summary with historical context)

2.

(funny)

 

Love the James Randi talk, thanks!

[s5260205]

Just to extend our discussion on alternative medicine, what are people's thoughts on traditional Chinese medicine?

 

Coming from a Chinese family, I can say from my personal experiences that traditional Chinese medicine is deemed a "comfortable" substitute for Western medicine, at times even more preferential. While I don't know much about the practice, I believe traditional Chinese medicine has a drastically different description/explanation of the causes of diseases. There is only a meager of research done on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine, possibly due to the difficulty in scientifically examining the various medicine used by the practitioners.

 

Now, if you were a health policy planner (or anything similar) and found that a noticeable percent of population prefer alternative medicine over conventional medicine, what would your course of action be? (education? regulation?)

[rmorelan]

Now, if you were a health policy planner (or anything similar) and found that a noticeable percent of population prefer alternative medicine over conventional medicine, what would your course of action be? (education? regulation?)

 

First I would want to know if it was actually effective Then go from there.

[s5260205]

First I would want to know if it was actually effective Then go from there.

 

Examining the effectiveness of all treatments may be too costly and time consuming but is certainly a necessity.

 

I was thinking to approach from educating different age groups starting from elementary school students.

[Mithril]

"Research has shown that so-and-so types of alternative medicine have not been more effective than a placebo. Other remedies have not been tested thoroughly and may or may not have any therapeutic effect. However, these so-and-so treatments found in conventional, evidence-based medicine, have been shown in many peer-reviewed articles to be effective and should be the treatment options one should consider."

 

It would be unwise to say that all things found in alternative medicine are bad; some simply haven't been tested thoroughly. However, that should not be an avenue for recommendation of alternative therapies over evidence-based ones.

[rmorelan]

Examining the effectiveness of all treatments may be too costly and time consuming but is certainly a necessity.

 

I was thinking to approach from educating different age groups starting from elementary school students.

 

trouble is what are you going to education with? All you can really say is treatment X is unproven to do anything (assuming no study has been done), and that we have other treatments that have been shown to be generally effective. All it seems to take is one person screaming at the top of their lungs that it worked for them to defeat that approach

[astrogirl]

It would be unwise to say that all things found in alternative medicine are bad; some simply haven't been tested thoroughly. However, that should not be an avenue for recommendation of alternative therapies over evidence-based ones.

 

This basically how I feel. If a bunch of people are saying that an alternative treatment works, then we need to study it and see if it does. If it works, then great. I don't even care if we don't yet understand the mechanism behind it. If it doesn't work, then at least the information is available and we can attempt to educate people so they don't waste their money. That being said, there are certain things that we probably won't ever be able to test to the extent we would like to. For instance, you could never do a double blind trial of acupuncture. But if someone with chronic back pain (let's say as the result of a car accident and not a potentially fatal disease) goes and gets acupuncture and their pain improves, then I don't think we need to worry too much about it being an unproven therapy. But if someone is getting acupuncture for their cancer rather than evidence-based treatment, that's a problem if they aren't fully informed of the risk they are taking.