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Another nail in the coffin of Medicine's own Zombie reveals
Professor Paul Glasziou, a leading academic in evidence based medicine at Bond University, was the chair of a working party by the National Health and Medical Research Council which was tasked with reviewing the evidence of 176 trials of homeopathy to establish if the treatment is valid.
A total of 57 systematic reviews, containing the 176 individual studies, focused on 68 different health conditions - and found there to be no evidence homeopathy was more effective than placebo on any.
Still it persists, not only in the UK but also in the US. And a simple google search about health insurance payments for homeopathy will reveal that the homeopathy industry is very busy writing long winded explanations of how to con your insurance company into covering homeopathy.
(Key trick: have your homeopath recommend a Nurse Practitioner which have prescription authority in many states, and who will write you a prescription for homeopathy along with a statement of medical necessity).
Professor Glasziou writes in his BMJ Blog:
One surprise to me was the range of conditions that homeopathy had been evaluated in, including rheumatoid arthritis, radiodermatitis, stomatitis (inflammation of the mouth) due to chemotherapy, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. What subsequently shocked me more was that organizations promote homeopathy for infectious conditions, such as AIDS in Africa or malaria.
One wag posted to the Blog comments:
Prof Glaziou, I've been washing a homeopathy bottle every day for the last month, but the residue just keeps on getting stronger. Any advice?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 21 2016, @10:08AM
There's one condition where I think homoeopathy might actually help: Hypochondria. After all, if the illness is imaginary, I don't see why an equally imaginary cure shouldn't help.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2016, @11:26AM
And the side effects of placebo (obviously including homeopathy) are the best in class. Not something to overlook.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2016, @02:02PM
For some the idea of homeopathy means they are helping themselves independent of a Dr. This gives them a feeling of being in control of their own treatment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2016, @11:07PM
For some the idea of homeopathy means they are helping themselves independent of a Dr. This gives them a feeling of being in control of their own treatment.
So kind of like self harming then. Where people injure themselves deliberately so they can wrestle a little bit of control back into their lives. Quite accurate really. Taking water to cure a treatable illness is indeed self harm.
(Score: 2) by shrewdsheep on Sunday February 21 2016, @09:22PM
It might help, but it is not effective. The definition of effectiveness (efficacy) is superiority against placebo. Placebo is as effective as homeopathy in this case. As a matter of fact homeopathy is identical to placebo as you dilute a substance until it only contains the dilutor when placebo is the dilutor to begin with, qed.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Monday February 22 2016, @06:38AM
If you are not actually ill, a real medicine may actually make you worse (through its side effects). A medicine that does nothing is more effective than one that makes you worse.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by DannyB on Monday February 22 2016, @10:51PM
Why, oh why didn't they think to test homoeopathy's effectiveness at treating dehydration?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.