Homeopathy?????

[sanctus]

I always have been a skeptic of homeopathy and said it only works through placebo effect. But lately a frind of my girlfriend who is "help-veterinary" (sorry no idea of what it is in english) told me that they use homeopathy on animals and that it works, but animals can't have placebo effect.

What do you think is this a proof of homeopathy working?

[CraigD]

I always have been a skeptic of homeopathy and said it only works through placebo effect. But lately a frind of my girlfriend who is "help-veterinary" (sorry no idea of what it is in english) told me that they use homeopathy on animals and that it works, but animals can't have placebo effect.

What do you think is this a proof of homeopathy working?

I think your skepticism is well-founded.

 

My vet (I have 2 elderly cats, and see more of her than I wish) recommends a lot of homeopathic and other alternative meds, too.

 

Given the lack of any peer-reviewed (or even just statistically sound, adequately controlled) research, I don’t believe a case has been made that homeopathic meds work any more in animals than in human, which is to say, that they do not work at all. And while it may be true that animals are not cognitively capable of experiencing a placebo effect, the human beings who observe them and report their condition to veterinaries certainly are.

 

I’ve seen people distraught with what they perceive as the terrible condition of a pet, only to be told later that by the vet that a diagnosis is in error, and the pet is fine. The pet changes its behavior very little (other than in reaction to changes in interaction with its owners). It is the perception of the owners that experiences a “placebo effect.”

 

I believe the more wide-spread acceptance of alternative medicine in veterinary medicine is due to its promotion by veterinary pharmaceutical companies, which, unlike their human counterparts, are subject to little regulation requiring scientific proof of their claims.

[sanctus]

Wjen , I see her the next time I'll ask her if she thinks that it is possible that she may be or her clients under placebo effect.

But I guess it's ver possible, I never looked at it from that perspective.

[Tormod]

I wonder what the ethics are of this. Is it really ethical to use treatments on animals when we don't know if they work at all?

[sanctus]

Well, if you are convinced that it works it's very ethic. Besides the experiments made in laboratories are much worse...

[Tormod]

Well, if you are convinced that it works it's very ethic.

 

How so? They have no scientific data to back them up, so in practice they are doing animal testing that may be harmful. An animal doesn't respond different to treatment depending on what the homeopath believes to work or not AFAIK - unless there is some evidence to show that they do I think they are violating the ethics of the medical profession.

[sanctus]

But they believe they have proof and they don't do it for the purposeof experimenting, so it is ethic. We may find un-ethic just because we don't think that those proofs are actually real proofs

[Qfwfq]

I certainly think the stuff such as "magnetic memory of water" and the like is plain BS but I have heard that some products may have preventive effects by mildly stimulating the immune system. I also heard about a guy I haven't seen for years, that always had terrible allergy trouble, other friends of mine say he finally cured it with a homeopathic product. That of course has a lot to do with the immune system.

 

I do however continue to find it wrong that producers these so called alternative meds are allowed to fill the general public up with crap and false advertising and that it has even been creeping into medical faculties. There is big money behind it.

[CraigD]

In case all our readers aren’t familiar with modern theories of homeopathic medicine, here’s a brief summary:

 

All homeopathic medicine involves the administering of dilute quantities of a (usually) physiologically active ingredient, typically something similar to the suspected cause of the illness being treated. In this sense, it is much like the conventional, and very successful, medical practice of inoculation, where a controlled amount of live or dead pathogen is administered, causing a mild infection, which results in ones body’s immune system becoming “trained” to combat a later infection of that pathogen.

 

Where homeopathy diverges from the medical mainstream is in how extremely dilute the active ingredients in its remedies are, usually “30C+”, or less than 100^30 parts inactive to 1 part active. The theory holds that the more dilute the active ingredient, the more effective the treatment.

 

To my mind, there are 2 major modern variants of homeopathic theory. The first holds that the solution must contain at least a little bit – perhaps just a single molecule of the active ingredient, or it will have no effect

 

The later holds that even if the solution is so dilute that a dose of it contains not one bit of the active ingredient, it will still have a powerful effect. These theories hold that the inert ingredient – almost always water – retains a “memory” of its contact with the active ingredient, and that it is this that actually produces the therapeutic effect.

 

There’s been no compelling scientific evidence that these techniques work.

 

In terms of safety, though, homeopathic remedies are typically more pure of any potentially dangerous substance than tap water, so they’re very unlikely to do any harm to a patient. The main danger cited by opponents is that a patient undergoing homeopathic medical treatment may chose to forgo conventional treatment, allowing an otherwise treatable illness to progress to a dangerous or fatal stage, or that practitioners of homeopathic medicine may overcharge for their remedies, bilking desperate people out of money they need for basic sustinance or conventional treatment.

[HydrogenBond]

Homeopahtic medicine may have some direct scientific basis, but it better expresses the power of a proper state of mind for healing. Faith healing tries to create that state of mind to help the body heal itself. For example, when someone is happy and forfilled they are less likely to need as much sleep, because the body is able to recover easier when one is happy. Animal medicine beyond cancer, bone breaks, etc., is partially connected to human psychology. Much of the treatment is as much for the owner as it is for the pet. If the owner is worried about the pet's eye goo, the pet will react to these emotions. If the owner feels secure, the pet will feel that and may make a miraculus recovery. My little niece who loves animals summed it up best, there are no stupid animals just stupid owners. If one treats an animal like an animal you are doing it a service because it can be what nature intended to be. If you treat it like a child it will have to act unnaturally to forfill the needs of the owner, thereby creating unnatural stresses that may assist in sickness thereby forfilling the nurturing needs of the owner.

[Michaelangelica]

4 Belfast homeopathy results

 

MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.

 

In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.

 

So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.

 

You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon."

If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.

13 things that do not make sense - space - 19 March 2005 - New Scientist Space

[Ahmabeliever]

The thing I like best about homeopathy was that it was thoroughly tested on strange humans before being used for the treatment of animals.

 

I think there is an unknown something in this. Something else important to consider, not all homeopaths are created equal, some may indeed be in it for the money and completely full of s***, others are doing their best in their way to try and help, much like science.

 

An extreme dilution could be likened to an innoculation, only taken to the extreme...

 

The compounds could be catalysts for signalling brain activity that creates production of a wide range of things.

 

Mock it, yes you may, study it, why not?

[Dr. Nancy Malik]

I always have been a skeptic of homeopathy and said it only works through placebo effect. But lately a frind of my girlfriend who is "help-veterinary" (sorry no idea of what it is in english) told me that they use homeopathy on animals and that it works, but animals can't have placebo effect.

What do you think is this a proof of homeopathy working?

 

Additional support comes from the fact that animals and infants also benefit form homeopathic treatment and it is unlikely that they will react psychologically to a medicine they often do not know they are being given

 

Infants: Homeopathic remedies and treatments are successfully used by parents for common infant ailments such as colic, teething pain and some infections.

 

Animals: There are many veterinarians using homeopathic medicines to treat domestic pets such as cats, dogs and birds, as well as barnyard animals like goats, horses and cows. Is it possible to have a placebo effect with animals?

[Dr. Nancy Malik]

I certainly think the stuff such as "magnetic memory of water" and the like is plain BS but I have heard that some products may have preventive effects by mildly stimulating the immune system. I also heard about a guy I haven't seen for years, that always had terrible allergy trouble, other friends of mine say he finally cured it with a homeopathic product. That of course has a lot to do with the immune system.

 

I do however continue to find it wrong that producers these so called alternative meds are allowed to fill the general public up with crap and false advertising and that it has even been creeping into medical faculties. There is big money behind it.

 

Homeopathy allows avoiding diseases before they start. Medicines remove the biological tendency to develop the disease.

Homeopathy strengthens the immune system bybuilding resistance to sickness.

[Dr. Nancy Malik]

 

I do however continue to find it wrong that producers these so called alternative meds are allowed to fill the general public up with crap and false advertising and that it has even been creeping into medical faculties. There is big money behind it.

 

General Public demands alternative medicines. That's why they are there.

[Dr. Nancy Malik]

The thing I like best about homeopathy was that it was thoroughly tested on strange humans before being used for the treatment of animals. :hyper:

 

I think there is an unknown something in this. Something else important to consider, not all homeopaths are created equal, some may indeed be in it for the money and completely full of s***, others are doing their best in their way to try and help, much like science.

 

An extreme dilution could be likened to an innoculation, only taken to the extreme...

 

The compounds could be catalysts for signalling brain activity that creates production of a wide range of things.

 

Mock it, yes you may, study it, why not?

 

Homeopathy always tests its medicine on healthy human beings before thier use on animals.

 

Conventional medicine mostly (not always) tests its medicines on animals (rats) before thier use on humans.

[Michaelangelica]

Is it possible to have a placebo effect with animals? [/font]

Anything is possible.

 

The animal who is sick is likely to get extra care and attention

 

Doing nothing is probably the best cure for many minor complaints.