Putting homeopathy into perspective

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Reproduce the results in a properly-conducted double-blind study and you will have wealth and fame.

That is the test of science: Put up or shut up. If you're right, then the facts will be on your side. So, get the facts, and your detractors will be forced to concede.

I really don't think that of you, sorry if you got that impression from me. I am very skeptical of alternative medicine, its nothing personal. If it works for you, I'm very happy for you. I happen to think you seem like a very nice person and your style of writing is highly original



"In spite of being in Quebec" I like it

The deviationist and insane was not at all taken from or put in your mouth - I find you reasonable and stimulating and the son [I almost wrote "sum", which could also be true] of two Classicists who narrowly escaped into Linguistics has to appreciate a good Latin tag, even though I opted for Greek.

But I am a deviationist, the Universal Heretic, wrong-headed in Linguistics, Science, Education, Religion, Politics. And this has bothered many in my past life and bothers certain ones here. And having been in rapid succession labeled insane and silly, by certain ones on whom I could unleash not a few barbed descriptors who are capable of civilized discourse but will not when faced with the deviationist limit themselves to it, a certain bitterness was very fresh and close to the surface.

Philologos has a point. Homeopathy is not competing with science, but with Catholicism. Catholics eat bread and drink wine that they claim has turned into the body and blood of Christ. That claim is a lie, of course, but it doesn't matter because they're not being veridical.

Homeopathy is the same kind of ritual. It's not veridical, and that's what the skeptics don't get. Alternative medicine methodologies make veridical claims that often turn out to be false, and those who knowingly sell false techniques to people in need of real treatment for an illness are indeed evildoers.

Homeopathy, however, is not alternative medicine. It's communion with a deity. The question is, who is this deity the homeopaths are praying to and forcing you to pray to without your informed consent? Whose blood is in those pills they give you?

Well, we all have sulphur constitutions, btw. That's what samuel hahnemann described asperger's with. Asperger's and lactose intolerance, to be precise.
To be treated with sulphur d3- based on the fact that people with lactose intolerance tend to develop quite the body odor after ingesting milk (I do), the disease is logically to be treated with sulfur, as sulfur has an unpleasant smell.
Mind you, Hahnemann did a great job describing both Asperger's and lactose intolerance roughly 120 years earlier than scientific medicine did ... Which did not exist at all at the time. Medicine back then was bloodletting and amputation without anesthetics.
Hahnemann's "like cures like" is based on the observation that some tree bark, used to cure malaria, could cause a slight fever in himself, when he tried some. That it was not the fever inducing property itself that cures malaria, i.e.the mechanism of action, elluded him.

Anyway, I enjoyed this article, pointing out that paying extra for the religious ceremony adminstered is the problem with having homeopathy -as a great example of placebo, that works to relieve overburdened healthcare systems- covered by the NHS:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/15/the-guardian-view-on-homeopathy-the-nhs-shouldnt-pay

The process of divination, btw. Is strict and complicated, i.e. dogmatic, which is the reason why tap water is not plumbum c4 - because it wasn't diluted following the steps, and not shaken and hit against a leather pouch 3 times. In Modern manufacturing processes, hundreds of vials of diluted water are put on a rack, the rack is put on a cart, and the cart is being shoved against a man-sized leather pouch. 3 times. I kid you not. Industrial scale transsubstantiation.

But there are many conditions that are unlikely to respond to placebo in the long run.

"Harmless" isn't harmless. If someone with a medical condition that requires care is instead diverted to sugar pills and watered down vodka, it is likely that when their symptoms worsen that they will need care that is more urgent, more invasive, and more expensive.

It is scandalous that the NHS will pay for such nonsense.

The only thing that homeopathic elixirs "cure" is dehydration.