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posted by CoolHand on Sunday February 21 2016, @09:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the whatever-works-or-doesn't dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday February 22 2016, @02:22AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Monday February 22 2016, @02:22AM (#307960)

    Actually I admit they might need to be able to keep it as a fancy placebo for exactly the 'can't fix stupid' reason you mention. Some people just ain't going to be happy until you give them something. If they have to use a placebo and the patient is ignorant enough to fall for homeopathy there really isn't a safer placebo to use. Problem is if they use that trick they give credibility to it and slightly less ignorant people start believing it since "Doctors prescribe it!"

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 22 2016, @02:35AM

    by frojack (1554) on Monday February 22 2016, @02:35AM (#307966) Journal

    Well, since water is free essentially free, they can at lease limit the Medicaid/Medicare approved billing rate to the price of an 8 oz bottled water so we don't all have to fund stupid.

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