More Fun with Homeopath Dana Ullman, MPH(!)

[MRC_Hans]

For a few moments, I had hopes for this one, but ...

Were' deep into hand-wawing and anecdotes.

I'll give you one more chance:

Manioberoi, we have now discussed possible protocols to some lenght, and you seem interested in protocol design. Please, taking into account our inputs, post your suggestion for a trial protocol. Especially, you, as the homeopath, should suggest the target complaint, and you should address what confounders you shink should be guarded against (you already mentioned coffee and smoking).

Also mention any demographical constraints that you think apply, and finally, suggest a timeline for the study.

Hans

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Will you answer the lady's actual question, for pity's sake??!!!

Rolfe.

Hear, hear!

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

From your recent posts you still seem not to want to answer the most simple question about the basic testability of homeopathy

Which do you want to admit, either homeopathy is scientifically testable or your entire clincal case record must be ignored? There is no third option. Which do you want to choose?

I think it is time you answered that simple question with a simple answer not yet more reams of anecdote pulled from your sacred texts.

 

[SYLVESTER1592]

Originally Posted by MRC_Hans :
Now you are contradicting your self. You earlier said, twice for emphasis, even, that a proving cannot be replicated.

Now, either there is a finite set of symptoms associated with a given remedy, in which case a proving can obviously be replicated,

or,

a proving cannot be replicated, in which case there cannot be a finite set of symptoms associated with a given remedy.

Please make up you mind, which is it? You can't have both.

Hans

Reply:
"at any point in time""at any point in time"

So the proving is dependent on the time in which the proving is done. Now this means that you have to do a proving regularly in order to get a decent treatment and a case description won't help you then, because it is in the past and you are using a current remedy, or not...

SYL

 

[fls]

Ya gotta love it.

Manioberoi posts a series of cases that describe exactly what you'd expect to see as you pass through the primary, secondary and tertiary stages of syphillis, in the absence of treatment. It is unusual for the signs and symptoms of primary and secondary syphillis not to disappear in absence of treatment. And the majority of untreated patients never go on to develop signs and symptoms of tertiary disease.

Just how stupid do you think we are? Next you're going to be claiming that homeopathic treatment leads to growth in children by listing a series of cases of seven-year-olds that gained a foot in height over three years.

Linda

 

[manioberoi]

I think we are all wondering why there doesn't seem to be a single shred of credible evidence over that time scale. I think 200 years gives you the maximum period over which to present your evidence, but you can limit yourself to recent studies if you want to keep the scope more manageable.



None of us give two hoots about whether you think there is a place for "conventional" medicine in treating illnesses - we are all wondering why you don't appear to realize that there is no proof what so ever that there is a place for homoeopathic medicine there ...


So a homoeopath has conducted a study on the efficacy of conventional medicine ...

• Did he apply the same loose protocols that get applied to homoeopathic research by homoeopaths?
• Has he conducted any properly controlled trials (see our previous posts to remind yourself what that actually involves) on the effect of homoeopathy on the percentage of T. pallidum and compared it with a placebo group?

If he hasn't done the latter then why did you add this to your list of pointless references?

The homeopath was only quoting from the learned journals. In any case there is a lot of uncertainty in ascertaining syphilitic status and in efficacy of treatment using conventional antibiotics;

Sex Transm Dis. 2005 Jan;32(1):1-6.
The overall cure rate was 61%.


Sexually Transmitted Diseases Treatment Guidelines 2006 (CDC)

Treatment failure can occur with any regimen. However, assessing response to treatment frequently is difficult, and definitive criteria for cure or failure have not been established. Nontreponemal test titers might decline more slowly for persons who previously had syphilis. Patients should be reexamined clinically and serologically 6 months and 12 months after treatment; more frequent evaluation might be prudent if follow-up is uncertain.
Patients who have signs or symptoms that persist or recur or who have a sustained fourfold increase in nontreponemal test titer (i.e., compared with the maximum or baseline titer at the time of treatment) probably failed treatment or were reinfected. These patients should be retreated and reevaluated for HIV infection. Because treatment failure usually cannot be reliably distinguished from reinfection with T. pallidum, a CSF analysis also should be performed.

Clinical trial data have demonstrated that 15% of patients with early syphilis treated with the recommended therapy will not achieve a two dilution decline in nontreponemal titer used to define response at 1 year after treatment (100).
[100. Rolfs RT, Joesoef MR, Hendershot EF, et al. A randomized trial of enhanced therapy for early syphilis in patients with and without human immunodeficiency virus infection: the Syphilis and HIV Study Group. N Engl J Med 1997;337:307--14. ]

 

[kieran]

The homeopath was only quoting from the learned journals.

Does that translate into "The homeopath was only re-gurgitating hear-say because he wasn't interested in any kind of objective knowledge." ???

In any case there is a lot of uncertainty in ascertaining syphilitic status and in efficacy of treatment using conventional antibiotics;

Sex Transm Dis. 2005 Jan;32(1):1-6.
The overall cure rate was 61%.
...
[snip]
...
[100. Rolfs RT, Joesoef MR, Hendershot EF, et al. A randomized trial of enhanced therapy for early syphilis in patients with and without human immunodeficiency virus infection: the Syphilis and HIV Study Group. N Engl J Med 1997;337:307--14. ]

Welcome to the real world - it is difficult (note - not impossible) to measure the effect of any treatment on some conditions - but at least some people try ...

Were you trying to make a point in your own favour with those references or are you admitting that you finally understand the deficiencies of "case studies" presented in the homoeopathic literature???

 

[manioberoi]

This answer makes no sense at all... Try again:
Please make your mind up - can the effects of homoeopathy be tested or not?

Explain why or why not...

Quote: "The rest of the physical world is certainly applicable".
What does that mean?
1) the rest of the world is applicable: you choose to apply the world???
2) There are non-physical influences? What are they? Do you have evidence of them?

Quote:"physical ONLY as in "chemical composition" of the diluted remedy beyond 12C or 24X.

1)What non-physical evidence proves homeopathy works?
2) So only the diluted remedy can be tested, but not the dilution itself (which is the actual treatment)?

Being mysterious is being wrong. Be correct, precise and clear and above all honest. A non-straight forward reply does not constitute an answer

SYL

PS. You still haven't answered my previous post

The remedy at 12C is diluted to 100 to the power 12 ie 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (is also equal to 24X which is 10 to the power 24). This scale of dilution (Avogadro's Number) is such that the probability of even a single molecule of the original substance being present in the remedy is for all practical purposes ZERO.

So the only trials that can be done are trials to verify the effectiveness of remedies against placebo(?). You cannot ask to chemically test the remedy as it would only show placebo(?)

Incidentally even Sac lac (the homeopathic equivalent of placebo has been known to cure - and I personally know a lady who gets the most terrible aggravation from Sac lac.

So I would take care to see that only water potencies (prepared from globules and not alcohol - as that could be smelt by the homeopath) are given in any trial and the placebo given to the control would be pure water(reverse osmosis purified) if I were to design any kind of homeopathic trial as is being suggested by this forum.

 

[manioberoi]

This is kind of like playing craps. You change the enchantment on the dice, ... You just keep throwing the dice 'till you get a seven. When you do... the therapy worked. When the patient gets impatient or starts to doubt the "therapy", you get rid of them by sending them to us. Is this how it works? Just curious...
If this still is a personalized optimalization of the remedy... Have there been tests of the difference in effect of the manufacturer or the batch used?

SYL

I can undertand your frustration.

The conventional medicines are tagged with severe side effects and each causes some new disease, cancer, genetic damage, liver dysfunction, blood disorders, immue suppression and the like. EVERY prescription has a high cost of cure - one that the patient bears for the rest of her life.

In homeopathy, provided a lower 'balancing' potency in the range of 6X to 6C (water) is used the effects are slow in coming up (for the first month) but the cure thereafter is increasingly perceptible and entirely without the kind of side effects stated above.

So even if the homeopath throws the dice successfully the seventh time (most good homeopaths manage it on the first or second throw) the patient will still be benefited more by homeopathy than by conventional medicne in a chronic disease.

 

[manioberoi]

Does that translate into "The homeopath was only re-gurgitating hear-say because he wasn't interested in any kind of objective knowledge." ???



Welcome to the real world - it is difficult (note - not impossible) to measure the effect of any treatment on some conditions - but at least some people try ...

Were you trying to make a point in your own favour with those references or are you admitting that you finally understand the deficiencies of "case studies" presented in the homoeopathic literature???

I am learning.

 

[SYLVESTER1592]

The remedy at 12C is diluted to 100 to the power 12 ie 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (is also equal to 24X which is 10 to the power 24). This scale of dilution (Avogadro's Number) is such that the probability of even a single molecule of the original substance being present in the remedy is for all practical purposes ZERO.

So the only trials that can be done are trials to verify the effectiveness of remedies against placebo(?). You cannot ask to chemically test the remedy as it would only show placebo(?)
<SNIP>...

Thank you, that's one

So if all the evidence is questionable, the objective results are lacking in the performed trials, you acknowledge that the chemical difference can not be shown, that the homeopathic solution would only show placebo...
Why pursue the idea that the effect would be different.
If there is an effect on the water even after the diluted chemical substance is gone, why can't you show it?
If the effect is the same as placebo in well-designed trials, if the chemical analysis is the same as placebo, if you can't show the mechanism of action, if you can not produce a reason for it to work... Why can't you draw the conclusion that it is a placebo?

How about those other comments...

SYL

 

[manioberoi]

I also agree that the trials briefly described by the others here seem pretty sound, but i would also add that one single trial like this with a significant result would not be enough on its own. It needs to be reproducable. You need to demonstate the effect several times in order to rule out fluke results.

Would you agree that 6 out of 9 sequential trials where remedies are significantly (the level of significance can be set) more effective than placebo would meet the requirement?

 

[Mojo]

The remedy at 12C is diluted to 100 to the power 12 ie 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (is also equal to 24X which is 10 to the power 24). This scale of dilution (Avogadro's Number) is such that the probability of even a single molecule of the original substance being present in the remedy is for all practical purposes ZERO.

So the only trials that can be done are trials to verify the effectiveness of remedies against placebo(?). You cannot ask to chemically test the remedy as it would only show placebo(?)

Nobody (apart from you in your attempt to introduce this strawman) has suggested "chemically testing" the remedy. You claim that the remedy has an effect; it has been suggested that the remedy should be tested by trying to detect this effect.

Incidentally even Sac lac (the homeopathic equivalent of placebo has been known to cure

In other words, people have been known to improve after taking it.

...and I personally know a lady who gets the most terrible aggravation from Sac lac.

Some people are intolerant to lactose.

 

[SYLVESTER1592]

I can undertand your frustration.

The conventional medicines are tagged with severe side effects and each causes some new disease, cancer, genetic damage, liver dysfunction, blood disorders, immue suppression and the like. EVERY prescription has a high cost of cure - one that the patient bears for the rest of her life.

In homeopathy, provided a lower 'balancing' potency in the range of 6X to 6C (water) is used the effects are slow in coming up (for the first month) but the cure thereafter is increasingly perceptible and entirely without the kind of side effects stated above.

So even if the homeopath throws the dice successfully the seventh time (most good homeopaths manage it on the first or second throw) the patient will still be benefited more by homeopathy than by conventional medicne in a chronic disease.

No, you repeat the same supposed treatment over and over again. When it fails, you let conventional medicine fix the problem. When you succeed by chance, you say the new medication did the trick. If there is a chance of the problem clearing up without any help, you take the credit.

You have to show the benefit of what you offer, objectively, controllable, not make believe. If you can not do that, conventional medicine will not accept it. The effect of the physician is always there and plays a big part in the perception of the patient, but the real reason they get better is because they are offered a cure. Demonstrate in a controlled trial, that homeopathy can objectively offer that cure. Repeat it, make it reproducable, so other doctors can be certain they have a cure they can trust. So far homeopathy has failed on all fronts in basic science and in clinical trials.

Why doesn't this worry you...
Trying homeopathy first is not safe because it has no side-effects, it is potentially dangerous because it offers no real benifits to conventional medicine thereby postponing treatment and aggravating the patients condition.

Can you subscribe to that?

SYL

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Would you agree that 6 out of 9 sequential trials where remedies are significantly (the level of significance can be set) more effective than placebo would meet the requirement?

It would need to be a test of treatment of the same condition in each case. Trials would need to be sufficiently large (I'm sure someone else with more expertise will tell us how large they should be), and I'm afraid you couldn't do all the replications yourself. They would need independent replication by someone unconnected with you. Oh, and they would all need to be published...

If all those conditions were met, I would be well on the way to being convinced that there was indeed something in it (even though there is nothing in it...).

 

[krazyKemist]

The remedy at 12C is diluted to 100 to the power 12 ie 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (is also equal to 24X which is 10 to the power 24). This scale of dilution (Avogadro's Number) is such that the probability of even a single molecule of the original substance being present in the remedy is for all practical purposes ZERO.

So the only trials that can be done are trials to verify the effectiveness of remedies against placebo(?). You cannot ask to chemically test the remedy as it would only show placebo(?)

Incidentally even Sac lac (the homeopathic equivalent of placebo has been known to cure - and I personally know a lady who gets the most terrible aggravation from Sac lac.

So I would take care to see that only water potencies (prepared from globules and not alcohol - as that could be smelt by the homeopath) are given in any trial and the placebo given to the control would be pure water(reverse osmosis purified) if I were to design any kind of homeopathic trial as is being suggested by this forum.

To the risk of repeating myself (and other people here), there is no need for a chemical analysis at this time. If you can prove that it works, using a double blind experiment with a placebo, then we can begin to work on what could be happening physically in the dilution ! Working the other way around is a loss of time and money, especially as we would have to look at an unknown piece of physics/chemistry !

An acceptable placebo would have to be unidentifiable by both the tester and patient as such. Plain, double-distilled, or reverse-osmosed water, the very same that is used for the dilutions without succussion, would be all right for me. Would it be for you ?

the Kemist

 

[Chris Haynes]

....
Now here is a question I would like answered:

One of the miasms that Hahnemann identified was syphilis. We can assume that he treated persons with syphilis, and there is most likely historical data to show how homeopaths have treated syphilis over the last two centuries.

I want to know how effective homeopaths have been in treating syphilis versus the use of antibiotics for primary stage syphilis.

.... snip of a bunch of stuff that showed them using lots of different remedies... sometimes they worked, sometimes they did not work (Loved the one where the "darkey" was treated then he went away and what happened to him was unknown), HCN

I'll take this as an answer meaning that you do NOT know. There is no compiling of data, no review... and not even a consistent idea of if it is a real diagnosis of syphilis.

Though in reality, the diagnosis of syphilis has been confused with other rashes. It sometimes takes more time to get a real diagnosis, see:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/176/1/33

Now not all cases of syphilis are resolved with antibiotics, but at least it was recognized, and possibly due to antibiotic resistence:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=9421706

Syphilis is considered an old disease, but is now coming back, so it is being studied again. Here is a document with clinical photos that are not safe for work (well, it is a sexually transmitted disease):
http://sti.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/81/6/448?ijkey=7430c73a863a791d1682a1e55265121c227f6825

One of the new problems is that often syphilis is found in combination with HIV. Not a good thing... especially since India alone has several million people infected with HIV: http://www.who.int/hiv/HIVCP_IND.pdf

So you should get your act together, and figure out quickly which is real medicine versus a 200 year old fairy tale. Oh, and there are Indian HIV patients who are uniting against fake AIDS cures.

Here is something very disturbing, in researching this I found a Dana Ullman paper where he promotes treating HIV/AIDS with homeopathy. He seems to have munged up all the statitistics though: Controlled clinical trials evaluating the homeopathic treatment of people with human immunodeficiency virus or acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Even dangerously ill cases where ALL conventional medicine has failed have been cured by homeopathy.

However current ethical and legal standards demand that a homeopath direct ALL critically ill persons to a conventional medical facility. Not to do so would invite strictest action from the authorities as also the (in India) the CCH(Central Council for Homeopathy).

Not if he actually CURED them.

 

[SYLVESTER1592]

The remedy at 12C is diluted to 100 to the power 12 ie 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (is also equal to 24X which is 10 to the power 24). This scale of dilution (Avogadro's Number) is such that the probability of even a single molecule of the original substance being present in the remedy is for all practical purposes ZERO.

So the only trials that can be done are trials to verify the effectiveness of remedies against placebo(?). You cannot ask to chemically test the remedy as it would only show placebo(?)

Incidentally even Sac lac (the homeopathic equivalent of placebo has been known to cure - and I personally know a lady who gets the most terrible aggravation from Sac lac.

So I would take care to see that only water potencies (prepared from globules and not alcohol - as that could be smelt by the homeopath) are given in any trial and the placebo given to the control would be pure water(reverse osmosis purified) if I were to design any kind of homeopathic trial as is being suggested by this forum.

Since this still isn't an answer to the question, I will ask again:

Quote: "The rest of the physical world is certainly applicable".
What does that mean?
1) the rest of the world is applicable: you choose to apply the world??? I recon this qoute was ment in a different way. Please correct it or explain.
2) There are non-physical influences? What are they? Do you have evidence of them?
Quote:"physical ONLY as in "chemical composition" of the diluted remedy beyond 12C or 24X.
1)What non-physical evidence proves homeopathy works?

can the effects of homoeopathy be tested or not?

Straight forward answer please. Explain why or why not...

SYL

 

[manioberoi]

I see ... you have now moved on to the "defence by conspiracy theory" approach.

You are implying that "published materia medica" has deliberately with-held "all" studies that use accepted protocols and conclusively prove that homoeopathy works ... that is such obvious b@ll@cks of a smokescreen that I hope you are already embarassed by it - Did I denounce your long-winded and pathetic list because of where its contents were published? NO - I denounced the lack of proper protocols in those studies.

We have already described simple ways that you could convince us - these involve proper controls, not just rambling anecdotes. Homoeopaths are free to publish the results of properly controlled studies in the homoeopathic literature - yet no-one has done so ... I think even you can make the next logical step ...

You don't appear to be listening to, or understanding, the points being made to you by posters on this board ... if homoeopathy works - great - lets prove it and all move on to bigger and better things ... otherwise ...

Your latest invented obstacle .. the conspriacy theory ... should be consigned to the dustbin without further ado. I know you'll have another excuse coming ... shall we move on to it?

You have not considered the fact that in conventional medicine, the drug companies research the new drug and independent doctors at research facilities carry out the trials (in the ideal world the drug companies carry no influence on the trial even if they pay for them) with proper double blind controls & c.

Who pays for the trials - the drug companies - who then recover the cost (and more) from the sale of the drug.

As for homeopathic remedies the proving is done by any homeopath or homeopathic organisation.

Manufacture of homeopathic remedies is a relatively routine process requiring no excessive costs of safety trials & c. Once the proving is done no homeopath feels the necessity to carry out trials of effectiveness of the remedy. Even if he were to feel like carrying out a trial, such as has been suggested here the costs(in the region of 5 to 10 million dollars) would dissuade the richest homeopath from attempting this.

No homeopathic remedy manufacturer would agree to bear the cost since all single homeopathic remedies are FREE to manufacture and there are over 1000 manufacturers of homeopathic remedies worldwide.

So if this forum were to be serious about a long series of homeopathic trials, a little thought needs to be given on how to share out the costs among all the homeopaths and all the homeopathic remedy manufacturers worldwide - and set up an organisation to carry out such a series of trials.