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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: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday February 21 2016, @10:09AM
I am so happy for the homeos! This is a great advance! I can remember only a few years ago that homeopathy was ineffective for a lot more than 68 conditions! Pretty so they will have it down to one or two things that homeopathic remedies are not effective for, probably gullibility and healthcare fraud.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Sunday February 21 2016, @01:28PM
I am so happy for the homeos!
This sounds like a lead in to a gay marriage joke. As a homeopathic couple the bad news is some cake bakers give em a hard time, but the good news is they can now get married everywheres and their contraception is 100% effective despite merely being distilled water.
If you don't find this joke humorous, thats OK because its a homeopathic joke and the dilution factor of the humor is really high, which is supposed to make it really powerfully humorous. If you just believe its humorous, then it actually will be more effective than a placebo joke. Just don't tell the NHMRC because they made their conclusion that this joke isn't funny before they even read the actual joke, and any reports of laughter were spiked as being unreliable reports. Which makes perfect sense at this ridiculously early time of morning.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday February 21 2016, @03:32PM
Right, stop it. This jokes got silly. Started off with a nice little idea about grannies attacking young men, but now it's got silly. This man's hair is too long for a vicar too. These signs are pretty badly made. Right, now for a complete change of mood.
(Cut to man in dirty raincoat.)
Man In Dirty Raincoat: I've heard of unisex but I've never had it.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2016, @09:46PM
Help me out here, world citizens:
Is there anywhere around the globe (outside UK's Nation Health Service) where this nonsense is accepted as legit?
...and do UK private insurers cover this?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Monday February 22 2016, @01:26AM
I live in New Zealand, which has a similar health system to the UK.
My wife used to use a lot of Homeopathic treatments, and would complain to her Dr. when she had to pay full price, (most drugs are heavily subsidized here).
Then she got sick. I mean a real illness that actually affected her life, not just a cold, or "stress".
After that she accepted the prescriptions for proper, tested drugs. These were subsidized however and cost us something like $10 a month.
They also work.
(Score: 1) by J.J. Dane on Thursday February 25 2016, @05:58PM
I'm at a loss as to why anybody would sell homeopatic medicine. Surely the profit margins would be greater if they simply sold it as bottled water?