Protected: Undeniable

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Welsh lessons

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: The Silent Articulation of a Face

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Voice

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Circle

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Proper Attire

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Pushed

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Divided, Part II

It’s just about to become Homeopathy Awareness week, internationally, so I thought I’d post this list of quick facts about Homeopathic medicine. I thought I’d post it because I know the facts are largely unknown among Homeopaths–in particular, the homeopaths who practice here in Canada. They’re basic, they’re well documented, they should be something we know our way around, but we don’t (most Canadian homeopaths aren’t aware of the political realities of our practice in the context of conventional medical hegemony anyway–and here in Canada that power structure’s in place with far more pull than it is in the UK, where these facts have been collected).

So here goes. With full credit and many thanks to Louise Mclean, LCCH MHMA, who compiled the data below (and I’ve added to it with elaborations relevant to Canadian and American practitioners).

45 QUICK FACTS ABOUT HOMEOPATHY

How Homeopathy Works

FACT 1: Hippocrates ‘The Father of Medicine’ of Ancient Greece, wrote that there were two Laws of Healing: The Law of Opposites and the Law of Similars. Homeopathy treats the patient with medicines using the Law of Similars; orthodox Medicine uses the Law of Opposites, e.g. antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, anti-convulsants, anti-hypertensives, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics.

FACT 2: Homeopathic theories are based on fixed principles of the Laws of Nature which do not change – unlike medical theories which are constantly outdated or disproved, and are therefore always changing.

FACT 3: Homeopathy is an evidence-based, empirical medicine.

FACT 4: Homeopathy is both an art and a science.

FACT 5: The Homeopathic “Provings” of medicines are a more scientific method of testing the effects of medicines on the human body than the orthodox model.

FACT 6: Homeopathic medicine awakens and stimulates the body’s own curative powers. The potentised remedy acts as a catalyst to set healing into motion.

FACT 7: Homeopathy treats the whole person. Homeopathic medicines work by communicating a current/pattern/frequency of energy via the whole human body to jump start the body’s own inherent healing mechanisms.

FACT 8: Homeopathy assists the body to heal itself, to overcome an illness which brings the patient to a higher level of health. Orthodox medicine suppresses the illness, bringing the patient to a lower level of health.

FACT 9: The homeopathic practitioner endeavours to search for and treat the cause of the dis-ease in order to heal the effect.

Homeopathic Medicines

FACT 10: Homeopathic remedies are cheap. Cheap to produce, environmentally economical (one plant can make enough medicine for billions of people, for a long time, with no destroyed rainforests or plundered cultural materia medica for the sake of patents in Homeopathy’s wake)

FACT 11: Pharmaceutical medicines are expensive. And their production can and does include all the expense and devastation cited above.

FACT 12: There are more than 4,000 homeopathic medicines.

FACT 13. Homeopathic medicines have no toxic side effects and cause no dependencies.

FACT 14: Every true homeopathic medicine is made using one substance – whether plant, mineral, animal, etc. We know the exact substance it was made from, unlike most modern drugs where we are rarely informed of the ingredients.

FACT 15: Any remedy up to 12c or 24x potency still contains molecules of the original substance in a measurable quantity; and this is known as Avogadro’s number (or, the estimated number of particles in a mole, in chemistry; approximately 6.02214×10²³).

FACT 16: Every patient is unique, therefore homeopathic medical treatment must be individualised.

FACT 17: Homeopaths treat congenital illness, tracing its origins to 6 main genetic causes: Tuberculosis, Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, Psora (scabies), Cancer, Leprosy.

FACT 18: There are hundreds of thousands of homeopathic books, available at specialist outlets, not sold in the high street.

Homeopathy on the NHS

FACT 19: There are 5 homeopathic hospitals in the UK – in London, Tunbridge Wells, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow. They cost the NHS under £10 million a year compared to the £100 billion for the total annual NHS budget for 2008.

FACT 20: At one of the earliest debates on the NHS Act of 1948 the Government pledged that Homeopathy would continue to be available on the NHS, as long as there were “patients wishing to receive it and doctors willing to provide it”.

FACT 21: There is a campaign by certain UK professors to oust homeopathy completely from the NHS after they wrote an NHS headed paper to all Primary Care Trusts in 2006 telling managers not to refer patients to the Homeopathic hospitals.

FACT 22: The Homeopathic hospitals are clean, with friendly, well informed staff. The patients are generally pleased with their treatment, unlike many orthodox National Health Service hospitals.

FACT 23: The chances of contracting MRSA or C. Difficile at a Homeopathic Hospital are extremely rare.

FACT 24: Unlike orthodox medicine where two thirds of all conventional hospital admissions are due to the side effects of pharmaceutical medicines, the bill for negligence claims soaring into billions, one UK leading insurance company reported only ‘a couple’ of claims against homeopaths in a ten year period.

Orthodox Medicine Opposing Homeopathy

FACT 25: In the United States in the early 1900s there were 22 homeopathic medical schools and over 100 homeopathic hospitals, 60 orphanages and old people’s homes, and 1,000+ homeopathic pharmacies. You can read all about them in Julian Winston’s book, Faces of Homeopathy

FACT 26: Members of the American Medical Association had great animosity towards homeopathy after its formation in 1847 and it was decided to purge all local medical societies of physicians who were homeopaths. To read more about this, read Harris L. Coulter’s books, Divided Legacy Volumes I to IV.

FACT 27: Big Pharma does not want the public to find out how well homeopathy works!

Scientific Studies

FACT 28: In 2005 the World Health Organisation brought out a draft report which showed Homeopathy was beneficial, causing Big Pharma to panic and the Lancet to bring out an editorial entitled ‘The End of Homeopathy’.

FACT 29: In 2005 the Lancet tried to destroy Homeopathy with a meta-analysis which only looked at 8 inconclusive trials out of 110, of which 102 were positive. This was a fraudulent analysis.

“The meta-analysis at the centre of the controversy is based on 110 placebo-controlled clinical trials of homeopathy and 110 clinical trials of allopathy (conventional medicine), which are said to be matched. These were reduced to 21 trials of homeopathy and 9 of conventional medicine of ‘higher quality’ and further reduced to 8 and 6 trials, respectively, which were ‘larger, higher quality’. The final analysis which concluded that ‘the clinical effects of
Homoeopathy are placebo effects’ was based on just the eight ‘larger, higher quality’ clinical
trials of homeopathy. The Lancet’s press release did not mention this, instead giving the
impression that the conclusions were based on all 110 trials.”

Find Peter Fisher’s rebuttal article here.
Find links to the Lancet’s original 27 August 2005 issue, with its cluster of articles condemning both homeopathy and the suppressed WHO report promoting homeopathy, here (you need a subscription and a credit card).

FACT 30: There have been many clinical trials that prove homeopathy works. In the past 24 years there have been more than 180 controlled, and 118 randomized, trials into homeopathy, which were analysed by four separate meta-analyses. In each case, the researchers concluded that the benefits of homeopathy went far beyond that which could be explained purely by the placebo effect.

That’s lovely. But I’m sick of maligning the effect of Placebo. I think we ought to study the damned placebo effect already, since it cures far more ailments than the vast amount of conventional medical treatments. There’s something to it, evidently. We should find out what it is.

FACT 31: The Bristol Homeopathic Hospital carried out a study published in November 2005 of 6500 patients receiving homeopathic treatment. There was an overall improvement in health of 70% of them.

FACT 32: Homeopathy can never be properly tested through “double blind” randomised trials because
each prescription is individualised as every patient is unique. Therefore 10 people with arthritis, for example, may all need a different homeopathic medicine.

FACT 33: Homeopathic medicines are not tested on animals.

FACT 34: Homeopathic medicines work even better on animals and babies than on adults, proving this cannot be placebo.

FACT 35: Scientists agree that if and when homeopathy is accepted by the scientific community it will turn established science on its head.

Homeopathic Practitioners

FACT 36: In the UK, Homeopathic Practitioners train for 4 years in Anatomy and Physiology, as well as Pathology and Disease, Materia Medica, Homeopathic Philosophy and study of the Homeopathic Repertory. (In Canada, the minimum training is 3 years of basic medical sciences (A & P, Pathophysiology, physical examination; training will often include things like counseling skills and holistic nutrition; the core focus is on Homeopathic medical philosophy, Materia Medica, the Homeopathic Repertory and supervised clinical training. A further two years of clinical training is typical; continuous study and training is expected of each practitioner).

FACT 37: Most homeopaths treat patients who have been referred to them by word of mouth. Most patients seek out homeopathy because conventional treatment has not benefited them or because it poses too great a risk of side effects.

FACT 38: The homeopathic community has thousands, even millions, of written case notes that demonstrate the positive benefits of their treatment. Some homeopaths have video proof of their patients before and after treatment.

FACT 39: Homeopaths charge patients an average of £50 an hour. Specialist Doctors can charge up to £200 or more. (We charge more here in Canada–on average about $120/hour; Americans tend to charge even more than Canadians. Public health insurance varies by province in Canada but in Ontario–the most populated province–conventional medical doctors charge an average of $200 per patient seen. The average visit with an MD takes 8 minutes; you do the math. Physical examinations, health statement letters, and diagnostic tests are all billed as “extra”, which increase the per-visit rate of pay if applied).

Popularity of Homeopathy

FACT 40: The popularity of homeopathy has grown in the past 30 years, its revival entirely through word of mouth and estimated to be growing at more than 20% a year the world over.

FACT 41: Hundreds of famous people throughout the past 200 years have enjoyed the benefits of Homeopathic medicine.

FACT 42: The aristocratic patronage of homeopathy in the UK extended well into the 1940s and beyond can be easily demonstrated. In the Homeopathic Medical Directories there are lists of patrons of the dispensaries and hospitals. They read like an extract from Burke’s or Debrett’s.

FACT 43: Homeopathy is practised nowadays in countries all over the world. In India (where it’s been practised without interruption for 200 years) there are 100 Homeopathic medical schools and around 250,000 homeopathic doctors.

FACT 44: In a recent Global TGI survey where people were asked whether they trust homeopathy the following percentages of people living in urban areas said yes: 62% in India, 58% Brazil, 53% Saudi Arabia, Chile 49%, United Arab Emirates 49%, France 40%, South Africa 35%, Russia 28%, Germany 27%, Argentina 25%, Hungary 25%, USA 18%, UK 15%.

FACT 45: The media as a whole has been unwilling to air a defense of the efficacy of homeopathy
and the validity of this 250-year-old profession.

Aren’t we at all curious why, especially since the media’s never reticent when given the opportunity to publish attacks against it? In writing this up, I had no trouble finding media articles in major “news” publications which parrotted the conclusions in the Lancet–all without publishing links to the original source, and all without any journalistic history of concern for complementary or alternative medicine in general. Time.com published a brief article encouraging “literate” doctors to slam homeopathy just like the Lancet did, without so much as a link or quote from the original meta-analysis, something a “literate” doctor might like to examine for him or herself. There’s something else a “literate” doctor might wonder about, given the Lancet’s very long history of publishing numerous successful studies proving homeopathy’s efficacy over the course of it’s own history (The Lancet even published the WHO’s own supportive report on Homeopathic medicine in the same issue as the cluster of anti-homeopathy articles and the damning Meta-Analysis). Why all the “buy-in” from powerful media all over the world? Why is such poor journalism suddenly the norm, along with contempt for reader intelligence and curiosity? And why were so many mainstream media “sources” (such as MSN.com, for example–which specializes on celebrity gossip and on-line advertisements) suddenly interested in summarizing anything The Lancet has to say?

It should give us some idea about the way media can work to affect what we do, no matter how successful we are as practitioners.

Protected: Yes

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Are you reading me?

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: