talkmagic.co.uk

In the spirit of friendly banter :

Mr_Grue wrote:It's that it does harm that's the problem

Does it? I thought it was sugar?

Mr_Grue wrote: there's the view that Boots oughtn't be selling stuff that does no better than placebo simply on the basis that some people want to buy it.

But should it not be selling things that may make some people feel better via the placebo effect? It may not work for you, but if it helps other people, why not? I do not feel this is particulalry unethical.

Mr_Grue wrote: By failing to speak out against taking pills containing nothing for the treatment of the doldrums or head colds, you create the groundwork for the more deluded to go off to Africa to try and cure AIDS with pills containing nothing.

No, I don't think so. You create a situation where someone suffering from a headcold will get cured from it in seven days with sugar pills, and someone taking aspirin and vitamin C in 1 week.

As for the AIDS argument you put forward, I find it a little far fetched. I'm not saying it has not /cannot happen, but it is no different in my view to all the unfortunate stories we've heard about counterfeit drugs on that continent.

Mr_Grue wrote: To say that homeopathy is harmless ignores the cases where people have chosen (or have had chosen for them) homeopathy over conventional treatment for life-threatening but preventable illnesses. it's not harmless; people die.

I don't know anyone, or of anyone, in a critical condition who has ever chosen exclusively alternative over mainstream medicine. Again, not saying it cannot / has not happened, just that it has never come to my attention. I presume this has been studied?

Sure it would be harmful to take sugar pills instead of chemo. I'm just not sure that it happens that often, or often enough to outlaw the potential benefits of a placebo. You can't stop people ignoring doctor's recommendations, at the end of the day everyone is free to choose to live /die whichever way they please.

Mr_Grue wrote: The skepticism movement is about encouraging people to question what they are told, and to provide a firm counter to those who mistakenly think that their beliefs allow them to behave badly.

Fair enough, we have a brain at birth and may as well make use of it, but questioning everything for questioning's sake, without a formal education in a specific domain may occasionaly make people sound like dumbasses.

There have been a hell of a lot of people who have chosen homeopathy over conventional medicine and have died as a direct result of stopping their treatment. There was a source on the previous homeopathy thread

http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html

http://www.onlinehomeopath.com/aids.shtml

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/01/jeremy_sherr_using_homeopathy_for_aids.php

I think these say all that is necessary.

I had a bit of an argument the other day with someone about Homeopathy. I likened it to putting a drop of orange squash in a glass, then adding water. The more water i added, i pointed out, made it stronger - yes?

No. Of course not.

I didn't convince him. You'd be surprised how many people jumped to his aid in the argument.

Tsk. Its hard work being a skeptic these days.

Grimshaw wrote:Tsk. Its hard work being a skeptic these days.

Don't you mean being correct?

The placebo effect is over-rated. The problem with promoting pseudo-science on the basis that if it's just a placebo it does no harm ignores the wider issue, which is that people believe the pseudo-science and then apply it inappropriately. It is not that alternative medicine is an adjunct to conventional medicine; the culture in which alternative medicine is taught is anti-conventional medicine. The University of Leicester recently abandoned their Bachelor of Science (!) degree in homeopathy. They recently were forced to relinquish details of what that course contained. You can read about that here. You needn't even check any of this, though. Enough encounters with practicing homeopaths will be enough to instruct you that much of the faith they put into homeopathy stems from a disenchantment with the pharmaceutical industry - as if issues with the effectiveness of big pharma would have any impact at all on the effectiveness of alternative treatment.

Fundamentally you are right. People should be free to believe what they like, but if their behaviour in that belief is harmful, as it can clearly be in the case of alternative medicine, then it is wrong for those beliefs to be ignored or even humoured. Any intervention should be taken with informed consent - little CAM changes hands with informed consent - benefits are overstated, risks are understated.

And the ethics of unwittingly taking a placebo is difficult, because it cannot happen with informed consent. You may view this as killing the goose that laid the golden egg, but not everyone shares that view.

See post below

Le Petit Bateleur wrote:I don't know anyone, or of anyone, in a critical condition who has ever chosen exclusively alternative over mainstream medicine. Again, not saying it cannot / has not happened, just that it has never come to my attention. I presume this has been studied?

An Irish homeopath, Mineke Kamper, has twice taken cancer patients off their medication and switched them to her bogus homeopathic pills, with fatal consequences. In both cases she refused to attend the inquest, and is free to continue killing people.
49 year old Paul Howie, of Ballinrobe, died in 2003. Google it. Here is a summery of the inquest, taken from one of the court reporters attending:

Paul Howie died at his home in Lakelands, Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, on April 22, 2003, after he was suffocated as a result of the tumour obstructing his airway. He had been attending Mineke Kamper (72), a self-styled natural health therapist living at Mulrany, Co Mayo.

In a tearful address to her husband's inquest in Castlebar yesterday, Michelle Howie (3 said she had felt terrorised and manipulated by Ms Kamper and had lived in fear and terror while her husband attended her.

A laboratory analysis of tablets provided by Ms Kamper for Mr Howie revealed that they contained no controlled drugs and had no detectable active ingredient.

Ms Kamper indicated that the lump would be fine within a fortnight. When it began to bleed, they were informed this was part of the healing.

But Ms Howie was now frightened and spoke of contacting a doctor. "We were afraid to make the phone call because of Mineke's advice that Paul would die with conventional medicine," she said.

Ms Kamper reassured them. But her husband's condition worsened and on subsequent phone calls she was chastised by Ms Kamper who repeated that she was lucky to be alive.

In April 2003, Mr Howie had great difficulty swallowing and a fearful Mrs Howie drove him to Ms Kamper in Mulrany. He was there for more than two hours and had to be helped from the house. On April 21, Mrs Howie was instructed to give him drinks of Complan, Bovril, milk and apple juice.

As her husband's condition deteriorated, Mrs Howie became frightened and eventually rang a doctor. But her husband stopped breathing and died shortly after midnight.

Mrs Howie recalled that a short time before his death, Ms Kamper had told her that her husband was holding up his own healing and was not trying hard enough.

She said: "Mineke Kamper said that if we got conventional medical attention, Paul would die and she could and would cure him . . . I realise now he was dying in front of me . . . we felt we had no choice."

Mrs Howie added: "I believe this woman should not be allowed continue operating in the manner she does.

"She hasn't the decency or courtesy to attend this inquest. Something needs to be done about this woman. I'd beg anyone attending her to get another opinion and not let another family suffer as we are suffering."

Paul Howie was one of two patients known to have been killed by Kamper. That's where the harm lies.

Also, I have a major ethical problem with chemists such as Boots selling products they know have no beneficial effects. Thats fraud, plain and simple.

Beardy wrote:

Grimshaw wrote:Tsk. Its hard work being a skeptic these days.

Don't you mean being correct?

I don't know Beardy, I'm an anthropogenic global warming skeptic, and look at the grief i got for that. Being skeptical isn't about being correct of course, it's about asking questions and making sure the answers fit. Which is what science is about. And as Dara O'Briain says, if science didn't ask questions, it'd just stop.

Anyway, TonyB, i found your post absolutely terrifying in so many ways. The ignorance, the lack of any kind of justice, the arrogance of that homeopath too. I dont want to get all Daily Mail about it but it is shocking.

This is the point where it isn't funny or light hearted anymore.

As with all such things, there are different concepts of homeopathy. I agree that the sugar pills and quack potions brigade ought to be put out of business and preferably into jail for what they do but where does the line get drawn between quack and natural remedies? There are lots of Chinese medicine shops around the UK and the strange potions on display would be more at home in Museum or even a Chamber of Horrors exhibit so are they any good or not? Back in 2008 Mrs.M and I went to Namibia and for 3 weeks did a safari of the deserts, reserves and many off the beaten track places. We visited the village of the San people who (for a fee, of course!) put on a display of crafts, hunting techniques and other traditional activities. One aspect covered was how they take roots and herbs to make their own medicines. One item they were very proud of was a root which when sliced and applied to aching muscles etc relieved the strain and assisted healing. One sniff of the root was enough to show it’s what we in the western world used to call Wintergreen – that nice old strongly scented ointment for chilblains and so on. The San people have been digging it up and using it for centuries. They also have their own herbal version of Viagra which, understandably, they declined to demonstrate for us!

As for Boots selling placebos etc, sadly they stopped being the reliable corner chemist/pharmacy many years ago and are really just another chain store. Even places like Lloyds Chemists are selling stuff out of their usual range – pet remedies being a recent departure.

A lot of traditional herbal medicines are beneficial, hence the interest in them as a potential source for pharmacological research.

"Beneficial", of course, only means "has some effect on the body", so they can also turn out to be harmful. One problem with traditional medicine is that it tends to make rather sweeping diagnoses on the basis of superficial symptoms. You only need to look at a pre-19th-century medical book to see how the pick of the medical profession were floundering in terms of both diagnosis and prescription.

I've had one experience with Chinese herbal medicines. The general diagnosis was what the western world would call stress, and the prescription was Xiao Yao Wan ("free and easy wanderer") -- or rather, its variation Jia Wei Xiao Yao Wan. I have to say, they did me the world of good, relieving the excessive stress and anxiety without making me feel doped-up. In similar circumstances I'd go for them again.

Grimshaw wrote:

Beardy wrote:

Grimshaw wrote:Tsk. Its hard work being a skeptic these days.

Don't you mean being correct?

I don't know Beardy, I'm an anthropogenic global warming skeptic, and look at the grief i got for that.

I meant with relation to homeopathy. With global warming, there is evidence both for and against it. I am a skeptic of global warming, but I am not 100% sure either way.

Homeopathy however, is plain and simply wrong. There is 0% evidence that shows that it works, and 100% evidence that shows that not only does it not work, but it can indirectly kill people. There is no good that can come of it. I spit at the homepathy shop down where i live in Uplands, Swansea, everytime I walk past it.

I don't know anything else we can do to stop it? I sometimes feel that some homeopaths (like the one mentioned previously) deserve to go to prison more than some serial killers we know of

On a side note, since when is somebody allowed to refuse to attend and inquest?

"I think that you murdered 15 people in the last month, attend the inquest"

"No"

"Oh ok, well in that case don't worry, just carry on killing people. Sorry to bother you"

Inquests aren't about assigning guilt to individuals, just to establish cause of death.

Mr_Grue wrote:Inquests aren't about assigning guilt to individuals, just to establish cause of death.

Luckily, the cause of death can result in a criminal investigation, so fingers crossed.

If we're chastising Boots et al for stocking homeopathy, we might as well wipe the whole branded over the counter drugs shelf too... certainly, paracetamol and ibuprofen work, but the rest of the cr@p they give as a reason for charging £3.00 for something that costs 3p is, in most cases, totally baseless.