More Fun with Homeopath Dana Ullman, MPH(!)

[Dana Ullman]

Who is James Gully?

Linda...In ALL due respect, your reference to "isopathy" as distinct from "homeopathy" stands on sand. The bottomline "problem" that skeptics have with homeopathy is the "potentized dose" (please note that I do not consider the "potentized dose" to be a small or microdose, any more than an atomic bomb is a small bomb just because the very tiny atoms are smashing into each other).

It is interesting how you haven't acknowledged that the "isopathic medicine" used in these trials was sub-Avogadro's number. And why oh why, have these studies been published in the LANCET and the BMJ?

By the way...I am still waiting for SOMEONE to defend Wayne Turnbull and the BBC' Horizon programme or ABC's 20/20. Stand up and call it "good" science or "junk" science!"

I have provided evidence of severe serious and highly respected physicists, chemists, and material scientists that verify that homeopathic medicines are not the same as diluted water or plain water. Further, I have provided evidence (DBPC) that there is a clinical effect from these medicines.

I am getting ready to drop the big big bomb on you folks, and I predict that many of you will be singing another tune. Some of you have suggested that 99.9% of scientists don't believe in homeopathy, as though this is proof of something because it wasn't too long ago that 99.9% of physicians believed in bloodletting and mercury and on and on and on (and "scientists" have been not only the biggest promoters of allopathic medicine but also their best "PR" persons).

No one yet has figured out who is James Gully...and I'm not referring to Dana Ullman. I am not talking about who it is that is writing this. I am asking you: WHO is the real James Gully? Come on...there has got to be someone knowledgeable enough to know WHO he was.

 

[anor277]

........................
No one yet has figured out who is James Gully...and I'm not referring to Dana Ullman. I am not talking about who it is that is writing this. I am asking you: WHO is the real James Gully? Come on...there has got to be someone knowledgeable enough to know WHO he was.

Hey, I think I know this. Wasn't he the physician (19th century?) who popularized taking the waters? He was also a suspect in the infamous murder (by poison) of the lover (?) of his (JG's) wife?

I have provided evidence of severe serious and highly respected physicists, chemists, and material scientists that verify that homeopathic medicines are not the same as diluted water or plain water. Further, I have provided evidence (DBPC) that there is a clinical effect from these medicines.

What you have provided (if you mean Roy's paper) is his speculation that they are not the same. Roy has advanced several methods for determining whether they are or not. I wish him luck in his research. The solution structure of water is a fiendishly difficult area to tackle.

 

[fls]

Linda...In ALL due respect, your reference to "isopathy" as distinct from "homeopathy" stands on sand. The bottomline "problem" that skeptics have with homeopathy is the "potentized dose".

It has been pointed out to you several times now that the idea behind the "law of similars" is equally problematic.

It is interesting how you haven't acknowledged that the "isopathic medicine" used in these trials was sub-Avogadro's number.

Simply because it wasn't relevant. The results, if positive, do not prove homeopathy anyway. And the results weren't even really positive. They were only presented as though they were.

And why oh why, have these studies been published in the LANCET and the BMJ?

My guess would be because the studies were of reasonable quality on a topic of interest. What should be understood is that evidence-based medicine teaches one how to evaluate research findings independently, so it is the results of the study that are of interest, not the conclusions of the authors.

Further, I have provided evidence (DBPC) that there is a clinical effect from these medicines.

That you can say that with a straight face means you cannot have understood anything that I said.

Linda

 

[Pipirr]

No one yet has figured out who is James Gully...and I'm not referring to Dana Ullman. I am not talking about who it is that is writing this. I am asking you: WHO is the real James Gully? Come on...there has got to be someone knowledgeable enough to know WHO he was.

Who cares?

But if you insist, and via Wikipedia:

James Gully was a Victorian quack who practiced water cures. He treated Charles Darwin, but that's not anything to shout about. He also treated "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce, too. It was, I suppose, ironic, that the man who articulated the theory of evolution, and the man that denied the truth of it, both bathed in the same waters of unreason.

James Gully aborted his own child, and later became a suspect in his lover's poisoning. Still, we can be confident that it was not death by homeopathy, as you couldn't kill anybody with that, no matter how much ill will you wished them.

Or perhaps you had another "James Gully" in mind?

 

[Dana Ullman]

Is that the best ya got? Quoting Benveniste!? If you're going to believe him now, then believe his research too. OR better, blind or not, you try doing Rey's work and see if you can create a different result just by thinking about it. Words, words, words, you got 'em. Now all you need is intelligence.

As for "profits," that's a great one. The entire sales of homeopathic medicines in the US is under $300 in retail sales...or $120-$150 in wholesales sales (to the manufacturers). The largest homeopathic company grosses maybe, what, $20-$30 million...that's gross, not net. Heck, that's a pimple on a rat's arss.

As for Big Pharma, in 2002 alone, the profits from the 10 largest Big Pharma companies out of the Fortune 500 were LARGER than the profits of the remaining 490 companies in the Fortune 500 combined! I got that fact from Marcia Angell, MD (former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine)(from her book "The Truth about Drug Companies").

If you want to talk about profits, get real. Get perspective...and once again, get intelligence.

Back to homeopathy...respond with intelligence.

 

[Chris Haynes]

...

If you want to talk about profits, get real. Get perspective...and once again, get intelligence.

Back to homeopathy...respond with intelligence.

You first!!!

Of course, pharmaceutical companies actually spend money on research, materials and insurance.

You just have to pay for double distilled water.

Now answer some questions:

1) One of the "miasms" Hahnemann was claiming to cure was syphilis. What was his success in curing syphilis two hundred years ago? What is the standard of care for treating the actual bacterial disease known as syphilis? How effective would modern homeopathy be with actual syphilis?

2) Cardiac conditions are another big killer of Americans... so your magic potions should work great for them also. My oldest son as a genetic condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with obstruction. He presently takes the beta-blockers (Atenolol) to reduce the pressure on his already damaged mitral valve. My question is how would your homeopathic treatment be better for him than Atenolol?

3) Also, how does your Masters in Public Health (MPH) give any credibility? Does this mean you have actually learned the value of sewage disposal, clean water supplies, pest control in food preparation areas, and vaccines? Are you the one who shows up in a disaster area (flood, hurricane, earthquake, etc) giving out homeopathic remedies instead of clean water, toilet facilities and vaccines for tetanus?

4) In what way does duck bits diluted to something impossible to do on this planet actually supposed to work?

5) What is Avogadro's Number and why would it be important in a discussion on homeopathy?

6) Who, where and when have Rey's thermoluminescence study ever been replicated?

7) What does 10^-9 mean, and does it have anything to do with homeopathy?

8) Why is this sentence in FDA regulations pertaining to homeopathy: "Homeopathic products intended solely for self-limiting disease conditions amenable to self-diagnosis (of symptoms) and treatment may be marketed OTC. Homeopathic products offered for conditions not amenable to OTC use must be marketed as prescription products. "

9) Which leads to this question: Do you have prescribing privileges? Can you actually practice medicine with your vaulted Masters in Public Health?

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Is that the best ya got? Quoting Benveniste!? If you're going to believe him now, then believe his research too. OR better, blind or not, you try doing Rey's work and see if you can create a different result just by thinking about it.

You perennially confuse quoting an authority and discussing the actual concepts.

The fact that Beneviste was the source of those criticisms of Rey is merely an amusing irony. It is the lack of blinding that renders Rey's work not worth discussing.

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I've already answer Mr. Monkey's questions about which I care...re-read my previous emails.

That's just pathetic. You have not answered the questions and you have flatly refused to answer the tricky ones.

You have been told why Rey's experiments are an irrelevance, please move on from this. The reason why you do not make any progress is that you keep hanging on to ideas that have been defeated or shown to be inadmissible.

Let's concentrate on just one;

4. Can you tell us whether either of these machines works?

http://www.bio-resonance.com/elybra.htm

http://www.remedydevices.com/voice.htm

Bear in mind that the users of these machines rely on exactly the same anecdotal experience and fallacious post hoc reasoning that every other homeopath does. Are the homeopaths who use these machines right or wrong in thinking they work?

It's a very simple question and capable of a single-word answer.

 

[kieran]

Since some of you claim to be literate on homeopathy, I challenge you to answer one of the most basic questions about homeopathy: HOW DOES A HOMEOPATH DETERMINE WHAT A MEDICINE IS EFFECTIVE IN TREATING?

Several years ago, I debated Saul Green, PhD, a chemist and skeptic of homeopathy. He thoroughy embarrassed himself and fellow skeptics by answering this question by saying that it was "folk wisdom." Needless to say, that is not the right answer.

What do YOU think is the right answer?

Oh I see ... how "embarrassing" for Sean to have come out with such an idiotic remark ...

... of course the glaringly obvious answer is .... folk stupidity!

 

[kieran]

I have provided evidence of severe serious and highly respected physicists, chemists, and material scientists that verify that homeopathic medicines are not the same as diluted water or plain water.

Evidence ... verify ...

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." [Inigo Montoya, 1987]

There are as many "severe(???) serious and highly respected physicists, chemists, and material scientists" that can "verify" the exact opposite. Neither is proven, but the weight of evidence is strongly against the homoeopathic claims as (1) they are require extreme statistical sommersaults and (2) they cannot be reproduced unless the required magic wands are waved.

Further, I have provided evidence (DBPC) that there is a clinical effect from these medicines.

This is from the same paragraph as the above sentence, are you trying to connect them by association? No one here will argue that there is no clinical effect when homoeopathic "medicines" are used ... however, this effect is completely indistinguishable from the placebo effect, thus indicating that the medicine is not the cause. It is much more likely to be either the "pampering" that surrounds the "medicine" or the patients susceptibility.

 

[Cuddles]

Awww, homeopaths can be so cute when they pretend they're winning an argument.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

JamesGully has made claims for homeopathy that would be able to be tested against conventional ideas about disease which would require no blinding, but careful oversight.

Simply hop on a plane to Africa and treat two similar groups of people, one with homeopathy and the other with conventional drugs, who have confirmed cases of Cholera or Syphilis. Whichever group has the most survivors after the trial period is determined to be operating on the correct theory.

I wonder if Channel 4 would be interested in this as a concept for a new TV show?

 

[fls]

Is that the best ya got?

I don't think anyone here is pulling out their best - it hasn't been necessary (which is disappointing).

Back to homeopathy...respond with intelligence.

As a strategy (or is it a tactic?), responding with intelligence to homeopaths, seems to have little effect. Any other suggestions?

Linda

 

[Mojo]

Mojo says that I haven't answered the question "Does homeopathy work?" My references to the randomized double-blind and placebo controlled trials on influenza don't count? How about my references to the work by Dr David Reilly and team on allergy and asthma? And how about the high quality studies on basophils by Ennis and a 4 university laboratories.

Linda has already addressed the Reilly study you referenced, but perhaps you could elaborate on how the basophil studies show that homoeopathy works.

Please give the figures showing that the patients treated with homoeopathy in these studies had better outcomes than patients in the control group. Do you have the figures for that?

You do understand that demonstrating that something odd may possibly happen at high dilutions (or, for that matter, proposing a mechanism for how this may occur) does not show that homoeopathy works, don't you?

 

[Pipirr]

As for "profits," that's a great one. The entire sales of homeopathic medicines in the US is under $300 in retail sales...or $120-$150 in wholesales sales (to the manufacturers). The largest homeopathic company grosses maybe, what, $20-$30 million...that's gross, not net. Heck, that's a pimple on a rat's arss.

As for Big Pharma, in 2002 alone, the profits from the 10 largest Big Pharma companies out of the Fortune 500 were LARGER than the profits of the remaining 490 companies in the Fortune 500 combined! I got that fact from Marcia Angell, MD (former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine)(from her book "The Truth about Drug Companies").

If you want to talk about profits, get real. Get perspective...and once again, get intelligence.

Back to homeopathy...respond with intelligence.

What are the profit margins from selling water? If the homeopathic industry is as business-savvy as it's products are useless, surely they have some money left over. Money that could be put to good use replicating the studies that it is so fond of quoting.

I found this comment on the 'Homeopathic' website:

[NOTE: The ABC's producer says that he doesn't have a "snowball's chance in you know where of getting the folks around here to pick up the tab" for a good study and that he plans to try to get a lab to do it for gratis. However, he was not successful in doing so. Instead, he approached Guys Hospital in London and paid them close to $5,000.

It cost just $5,000 dollars to get Guy's Hospital to do the assay? Boiron can't even stump that? Look, you complain endlessly about how the Horizon and 20/20 programs failed to follow the Ennis protocol. How about passing a hat around, getting the cash and getting it done again.

Build up your evidence base, Dana, with replicated and well-conducted studies. Instead, after 200 years, all you've got is vague speculations about water structure, and unreplicable or unblinded experiments.

 

[Crispy Duck]

I started reading Dana Ullman's response to an ABC 20/20 program on homeopathy. I stopped when I got to this bit, under "What Stossel got wrong":

ABC's 20/20 provided misinformation about the small doses used in homeopathy. Stossel asserted on air that the "6C" potency of a homeopathic medicine is equivalent to one drop in 50 swimming pools, that the 12C potency is like one drop in the entire Atlantic Ocean, and that the 16C potency is like one drop in a million earths. In actual fact, the total amount of water used to make a 6C potency is around six test tubes (or around 6 ounces of water). A 12C potency requires around 12 ounces of water. Because 20/20 had a London hospital make up the 16C of Histamine, they knew that this pharmaceutical process only required less than a quart of water (16 test tubes worth!). 20/20 seemingly and incorrectly assumed that each dilution required "exponential" (100-fold) increases the size, when, in fact, it only required repeated dilutions in a small test tube. (It seems that 20/20 is already so embarrassed by the statistics they gave, they have already omitted reference in their transcripts of the 20/20 show to the 16C potency.)

No need to read any further than that, really, but if you feel the need, it's at http://homeopathic.com/articles/media/2020_response_critique.php

It seems like genuine ignorance of the maths involved, rather than a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the extreme nature of the dilutions. What do you think, Mr Gully?

 

[kieran]

Crispy Duck, I think you should have emphasised the "like" and "equivalent" in your quote as follows for full effect ... " is like one drop" and "is equivalent to one drop". This must be the most obvious strawman I've seen for a long time.

Anyway, wo wrote this ridiculous pile of twaddle. How desperate are they to cling onto their fantasy world? Apparently the web-site is the "Homeopathic Educational Services", I suppose the question is, have they been applying homoeopathic dilution to their own education?

 

[Dana Ullman]

I could not help but notice that NO ONE (!) has asserted that Wayne Turnbull's experiment on basophils for Horizon or 20/20 was good science (mind you, anyone who does must or should also have some expertise in working with basophils...but sure, you are welcome and even encouraged to ask other experts).

As for paying Wayne Turnbull $5,000...garbage in, garbage out.

I will be the first to acknowledge that not all of the research on homeopathy is a high standard, and I recommend ignoring the seriously flawed research. However, there IS a body of high quality research, and I have made some references to this research, but few of you read it, or read only the abstract, or still don't get it.

I am still waiting for James Randi to publically acknowledge that neither the Horizon or the 20/20 "test" were really good tests of homeopathy. Until he shows THAT integrity, how can any serious scientist take him seriously? How can anyone take his $1 million challenge seriously. Get real.

It is more than tad ironic that I make reference to good research, as in the allergy/asthma studies, and then show how homeopathic medicine influence basophils (which increase in numbers during allergic disorders), but no one here is even knowledgeable of this connection. Whooops.

I really expected more intelligence from this group of skeptics.

As for Big Pharma putting money into research...they actually put more money into salaries and advertisement than research (in order to convince us that they are helping us)...read Marcia Angell's book to enlighten yourself on the "science" of modern drugs.

 

[Michael C]

Provings are either single- or double-blind trials that homeopaths or researchers conduct to determine the symptoms that a substance causes.

If a double-blind proving using 30c potencies (this seems to be standard, see http://www.homeopathycourses.com/html/hmcProvings.html) can determine the symptoms that a substance causes, it should be easy to use the proving process to provide undeniable evidence that homeopathic dilutions actually have an effect. A group of homeopaths could determine the composition of a certain number of samples of different remedies (which would be labelled simply with randomly assigned code numbers) using the technique of proving.

It would be possible to construct a test of this nature with conditions that are totally satisfying to the homeopaths. The homeopaths would choose the substances to be use in the test: these would be substances that are considered to produce clearly-defined and easily distinguishable symptoms. The homeopaths would choose the people to do the provings: they could choose people that they know well, so that they would be able to predict how these people would react to the different substances. They could do as many provings as they deem necessary.

Would this test work? Could the homeopaths determine which remedy was in which sample?

 

[Pipirr]

I could not help but notice that NO ONE (!) has asserted that Wayne Turnbull's experiment on basophils for Horizon or 20/20 was good science (mind you, anyone who does must or should also have some expertise in working with basophils...but sure, you are welcome and even encouraged to ask other experts).

Okay, here are a few more quotes with which I am sure that you are familiar.

In response to complaints about the way the procedures were carried out, Wayne Turnbull said:

"John runs a highly respected homeopathic pharmacy and I am absolutely certain that such inaccuracies in potency would never pass muster in his establishment. So why were they allowed in yours?" Unfortunately the answer to this question is because you allowed it to happen. Francis, John and yourself were actively encouraged to express any comments, reservations or objections that you had at the time. We were more than willing to listen. I believe we went out of our way to express this position.

In other words, you were there, you said nothing, things came out against you, therefore you have no cause for complaint.

Dropped the ball on that one, no?

As for the BBC Horizon program, James Randi presciently wrote the following words.

As powerful, comprehensive, and evidential as the BBC "Horizon" program was... history tells us that the homeopathic community will rally, regroup, and begin obfuscating wildly to neutralize this damning research. They certainly cannot deny those behind it: top-notch medical, biophysical, and biochemical authorities, using the very best experimental standards, and adopting a firm statistical conclusion. But they will squirm and mumble, wriggle and grumble, complaining that it just had to be something wrong with the experimental procedure, not the theory itself.

And here you are, complaining at length in your website about procedures not being followed, while the theory is still sound.

In the end, the results from two tv shows will not be enough evidence against homeopathy. Of course, if the results had been favourable, you'd be singing a different song. What matters, in the end, is that Benveniste's work was unrepeatable. Madeline Ennis' work was unrepeatable. Louis Rey's work was poorly conducted, and (after 3-4 years) has not yet been repeated.

Where is the body of evidence? Where are the sound, repeated, peer-reviewed studies? 200 years, and still just experimental noise.