Professor savages homeopathy

[emad]

'You might as well take a glass of water,' fumes complementary medicine expert in university funding battle

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday December 18, 2005
The Observer


Millions of people use it to deal with illnesses ranging from asthma to migraine. Prince Charles believes it is the answer to many of the evils of modern life. But now Britain's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst of Exeter University, has denounced homeopathy as ineffective.
'Homeopathic remedies don't work,' he told The Observer. 'Study after study has shown it is simply the purest form of placebo. You may as well take a glass of water than a homeopathic medicine.' Nor is Ernst's disdain confined to homeopathy. Chiropractic, which involves spine manipulation to treat illnesses, and the laying on of hands to 'cure' patients, are equally invalid, he says.

Not surprisingly, his views and his studies have provoked furious reactions. Chiropractors and homeopaths have written in droves to Exeter to denounce him. But now the scourge of alternative medicine says he is going to have to quit because Exeter will no longer support him or his department. 'They have never provided me with the money they originally promised me. Now we have been told in no uncertain terms that this department is going to close.' The university denied the charge. 'Professor Ernst's department has enough money to go on for a couple of more years,' said a spokesman. 'We are still trying to raise cash. It is premature to talk of closure.'

Ernst's department was created in 1993 when Exeter was given £1.5 million by construction magnate Maurice Laing. When accepting these funds, Ernst said the university promised to raise the same amount again. 'They never did,' he added. Ernst, then a professor of rehabilitation medicine in Vienna, took the job to bring scientific rigour to the study of alternative medicines, an approach that has made him a highly controversial figure in the field. An example is provided by Ernst's study of arnica, given as a standard homeopathic treatment for bruising.

'We arranged for patients after surgery to be given arnica or a placebo,' he said. 'They didn't know which they were getting. It made no difference. They got better at the same rate, whether they got arnica or the placebo. And arnica is a classic homeopathic remedy. It doesn't work, however.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1669982,00.html

[SmokingJacket]

1. Hallelujah!

Homeopathy makes no scientific sense.

[benburch]

2. None. nt

[RedOnce]

3. Interesting dilution phenomena -

I ran across this article referring to some interesting research:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1532

"...Conventional wisdom says that the dissolved molecules simply
spread further and further apart as a solution is diluted. But two
chemists have found that some do the opposite: they clump together,
first as clusters of molecules, then as bigger aggregates of those
clusters. Far from drifting apart from their neighbours, they got
closer together.

The discovery has stunned chemists, and could provide the first
scientific insight into how some homeopathic remedies work..."

The phenomena occurs only in polar solvents like water, in which one end
of the molecule has a pronounced positive charge while the other end is
negative.

[greyl]

12. Newscientist has a tendency to be kookie.

At times, they appear to be trying to appeal to people who have pseudo-scientific beliefs that are searching desperately for scientific validation. (Those same people are the first to ridicule science and scientists)
That article from 2001 is an example.

[Celebration]

14. Kooky for one person

Is cutting edge for another.

[SOS]

4. Guardian in 2003

"Ernst's first post was in a homeopathic hospital in Munich, where he was greatly impressed. "If you study medicine and pharmacology, you know homeopathy can't work," he says. "Then you start working in a homeopathic hospital and people get better. Is that a miracle?

"Looking back, I wonder if a lot was a placebo effect." Placebo to him, however, is not a negative. He would never assume people who get better on placebos were not ill in the first place. "I would like to have an institute of placebo research, but the funding would be even worse. You would get placebo money!...He treats his French wife with homeopathy, he says."

Both articles mention funding complaints. Maybe it's just time to stick it to the school and pack it in?

[StClone]

5. People should never get sick

If dilution were the key and almost every homeopathic remedy is already in the environment we should never get sick.

[Celebration]

15. But logically speaking

That doesn't account for dosage, does it? People may not need every homeopathic remedy at once. They may need ONE homeopathic remedy. That is how a homeopath would answer this. The extension to your logis would be that we could go to Walgreens and dump out everything behind the couter, mix it together and treat all ills. The pharmaceutical companies would like that but it makes no sense.

[Lithos]

6. I disagree with his absolutism

Yes, while there are many items which are not-effective that are touted by homeopathy as being "effective", there are items which do have some basis in their claims.

Willow bark used to treat minor aches and pains contains salicylic acid, a form of aspirin. Garlic has known anti-bacterial properties, and the more effective uses of it have been in this capacity, Echinacea does increase the number of white blood cells used to fight against viral infections, Saw Palemetto does help in the treatment of some prostate inflammations, Gingko does help with short term memory retention (it's a blood thinner and gets more oxygen to the brain) and in issues of dementia caused by poor blood circulation.

Man does utilize many natural elements in his modern pharmacoepia. Chemistry is chemistry, doesn't matter that it was found accidentally by a shamen or thru trial and error by a chemist.

L-

[Codeine]

8. But that's not homeopathy.

Homeopathy is the hyper-dilution in water of substances to the point where the original substance disappears. Herbal and natural medicines are a different ball of wax.

[Lithos]

9. The article is sloppy in it's commentary

Or rather in it's use of definitions.

1) Homeopathy is as you describe and is about as effective as drinking water. (Though there are diseases caused by dehydration - such as some migraines) so there could be some positive effects. But that is really pushing the topic here).
2) Chiropractry (sp?) is lumped in with this by the article/author though it is a completely different subject. However, it's effectiveness is also probably like homeopathy though that is a different topic.
3) However, he discussed the use of arnica and lumped it in with homeopathy. I think this is wrong as this type of discussion (arnica's effectiveness) is in the field of herbology and natural medicines which is where my commentary was focused. But I do agree that there is much hype here as well, though I do think it is ill-served to the confusion by some of the more "extremist" practioners and the members of the medical community.



L-

[greyl]

11. "Nor is Ernst's disdain confined to homeopathy. ...."

That was a quote of Ernst from the article. Ernst is a Complementary Medicine "expert".

Also, Arnica is sold as a homeopathic remedy, and that's what he tested.
http://www.arnica.com/homeo/homeopath3.html

[greyl]

10. Did you finish reading the article?

"Nevertheless, Ernst insists that he is a supporter of complementary medicines. 'No other centre in the world has produced more positive results than we have to support complementary medicine,' he said. 'Herbal medicine, for instance, can do good."

Given that, I don't why you would bring up Willow bark.

Search this forum for Ernst.

[Lithos]

18. Yes

But when it came to a specific example to differentiate homeopathy from herbal medicine, they picked an example, arnica, and did nothing to demonstrate why it was different.

L-

[mainegreen]

7. If someone thinks x will make them feel better,

and they take x, and psych themselves into feeling better, didn't they get better? :P
While western medicine is best, proscribing drugs for everything isn't the right course.

Of course, anything that gets rid of quackopracters is good in my opinion.

[greyl]

13. The placebo effect is recognized by scientists for what it is.

Roughly 30% of the positive effect of drugs during testing is thought to be from the placebo effect.

An infomercial that sells an over-priced fake cure to 3 million people can be very profitable with only a 30% returning customer ratio.

Wouldn't it be better if "patients" knew how to take control of the placebo effect? We can't expect people like Kevin Trudeau to sell that idea anytime soon. :)

[Celebration]

16. Placebo effect

Think about it--why is there a so called placebo effect? Let's see--someone has a real headache, takes a "placebo" and the headache goes away. Why does that happen? People give the answer "the placebo effect" or "it was all in his head." But I want DETAILS. There must be something happening on the cellular level that causes the headache to go away. Everyone acknowledges that the pain was "real" and the "real" pain went away with the headache. Let's figure out EXACTLY what happens and not just reference the words that define the phenomena. Homeopaths acknowledget the power of the placebo, and consider it one of the most effective treatments. Their other treatments most likely enhance the very "real" effects of the placebo--though very little is understood from a scientific perspective about this (which is why this topic has been labeled "pseudoscience" here.) All of this is energetic stuff, and elusive. I happen to love chasing elusive ideas and have them slip away. It's like chasing rainbows. And face it, rainbows are real--just elusive.

[Celebration]

17. think there is a $$ war in England on this subject

Let's face it--homeopathy is more accepted there. Here is why one person feels that the results of homeopathy cannot be readily shown in randomly controlled trials--

"Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have yet to deliver unequivocal results demonstrating the efficacy (or otherwise) of homeopathic remedies and individualized homeopathic prescribing. This could be caused by an implicit assumption inherent in RCT methodology that specific effects of a remedy and any nonspecific effects of consultation are independent of each other. Reported here is a theoretical investigation of the consequences arising from this assumption proving to be false. Methods: A previously developed theoretical model of entanglement in homeopathy between patient, practitioner, and remedy (called PPR entanglement) was used in this investigation. Results: The adherence to RCT methodology could result in such trials completely disrupting the formation or survival of any three-way PPR entangled state. Conclusions: Assuming the PPR entangled state is a necessary condition for therapeutic interaction, alternatives to RCTs are urgently required that can take into account possible entangled specific and nonspecific effects during trials of homeopathy. That RCTs sometimes deliver positive results for the use of homeopathic remedies may be caused by residual entanglement arising from homeopathic remedy manufacture."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16296916&query_hl=2

This was written by Lionel Milgrom,a porphyrin and light researcher at Department of Chemistry, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, United Kingdom.

[Lithos]

19. Locking

While it would be good to discuss why homeopathy has become big business despite the lack of any scientific bona-fide's (and quite a few suggesting the opposite), such a discussion is technically outside the scope of this forum.

Lithos
DU Moderator