Homeopaths and malaria (again)

From http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2125.2007.03007.x

Perhaps one should ask the proponents of homeopathy and the best minds in medical research to design a comprehensive but finite research programme to determine the truth. As long as both camps agree at the outset to accept the results, this might be a feasible way of ending a 200 year old dispute. Most readers and even many homeopaths will be surprised to learn that that has already happened! During the Third Reich the (mostly prohomeopathy) Nazi leadership wanted to solve the homeopathy question once and for all.The research programme was carefully planned and rigorously executed. A report was written and it even survived the war. But it disappeared nevertheless – apparently in the hands of German homeopaths. Why? According to a very detailed eyewitness report [9–12], they were wholly and devastatingly negative.
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Homeoproofer said:
What do you want to do if you have to expect to have malaria but hesitate to believe in Homeopathy?
Run then in a circle - then turn around and around and jump up and up and down to hope that this Magic will help you!
Good trick or what?
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Uhh... no... I'd take an antimalarial drug. And maybe buy myself some mosquito nets.

Homeoproofer said:
There is just nothing else better than this- and when you read the package of "Malarone" which you can find suggested mostly in the Internet and by the Tropical institutes in the coutries all over the world, you can see also: "Homeopathic remedy" !!!
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Cite? I've found no references at all to Malarone being homeopathic. According to Wikipedia,

A "standard" tablet of Malarone contains 100 mg of proguanil hydrochloride and 250 mg of atovaquone. A "pediatric" tablet of Malarone contains 25 mg of proguanil hydrochloride and 62.5 mg of atovaquone.

Doesn't sound very homeopathic to me.
 
Homeoproofer said:
What do you want to do if you have to expect to have malaria but hesitate to believe in Homeopathy?
Run then in a circle - then turn around and around and jump up and up and down to hope that this Magic will help you!
Good trick or what?
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No- we DON'T believe in magic, including homeopathy.
 
borealys said:
Cite? I've found no references at all to Malarone being homeopathic. According to Wikipedia,

A "standard" tablet of Malarone contains 100 mg of proguanil hydrochloride and 250 mg of atovaquone. A "pediatric" tablet of Malarone contains 25 mg of proguanil hydrochloride and 62.5 mg of atovaquone.

Doesn't sound very homeopathic to me.
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Well spotted - I'd just assumed he was talking about an actual homoeopathic medicine and not bothered Googling it.

:hb:
 
Dragon said:
Looks like the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Trading Standards have stepped in -

BBC

Quackometer

One thing that puzzles me about this homoeopathic malaria business - what is Malaria Officinalis 30c actually made from? (I know 30c means it's way past the point of having any mother tincture left) - if it's the Plasmodium parasite then how does that square with all the 'vital force' guff? I thought that homoeopaths didn't go with the Germ Theory of disease. Shouldn't they be using a diluted-to-death remedy made from cinchona bark? After all, if it was good enough Hahnemann ...
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From the BBC link above:
Neal's' Yard said in a statement: "We know there have been no clinical trials for the use of homeopathy in the prevention of malaria but homeopathy does have a good track record in preventing and treating other epidemic diseases."
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Which other epidemic diseases would those be?
Why would the BBC print a quote like that without questioning it.
Seems to leave an air of credibility.
 
Dragon said:
One thing that puzzles me about this homoeopathic malaria business - what is Malaria Officinalis 30c actually made from? (I know 30c means it's way past the point of having any mother tincture left) - if it's the Plasmodium parasite then how does that square with all the 'vital force' guff? I thought that homoeopaths didn't go with the Germ Theory of disease. Shouldn't they be using a diluted-to-death remedy made from cinchona bark? After all, if it was good enough Hahnemann ...
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According to http://www.homeoint.org/seror/patho1900/malaria.htm it's actually "bad air".
 
I agree that no evidence exists that any homeopathy medicine works for preventing Malaria.
Even homeopaths say their medicine is individualized so how could one remedy work to prevent or treat malaria according to them. Some trials on treating homeopathy with malaria have been done that prove to be successful but the study was small. More research would need to done. The successful trial did individualize the remedies and there was no basis for prevention according to the trial.
 
Malaria and Homeopathic Remedies in Ghana is the trial name. It compares individualized remedies to chloroquine.
 
ssarkarnetip said:
I agree that no evidence exists that any homeopathy medicine works for preventing Malaria.
Even homeopaths say their medicine is individualized so how could one remedy work to prevent or treat malaria according to them.
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They don't usually let contradictions like that bother them.

The whole individualisation thing is generally just used as a post-hoc excuse. A patient has a self-limiting or chronic condition? It will eventually improve of its own accord. If it doesn't improve after the first consultation, just say the remedy wasn't properly individualised, and prescribe another. Keep doing this until the patient shows some improvement. Then claim success.

It's also used as an excuse for DBPC trials that don't show any effect: many of these test a single remedy for a single condition, so homoeopaths can simply shrug off any failures as "not proper homoeopathy". Of course, if the results can be interpreted as positive, then they'll get plastered all over the web by various homoeopaths, regardless of the lack of individualisation.

Homoeopaths will routinely claim that particular remedies cure particular conditions; arnica for bruising, for example. When this is tested and found not to work, they just fall back on good old individualisation as an excuse.

I've yet to see a homoeopath objecting to the sale of over-the-counter homoeopathic nostrums intended to treat a single condition. these will, obviously, not be individualised. They will also lack the consultation that many homoeopaths claim is an essential part of the treatment (for an extreme example, see Milgrom's flapdoodle about "Patient-Practitioner-Remedy Entanglement").

And, as you say, they also claim that homoeopathy can prevent conditions that are yet to develop and which therefore do not even have any symptoms to which to match a remedy.
 
ddt said:
Worse: 1 in 1x1^60. The 'C' means to dilute with a factor 100. The '30' means to repeat that dilution 30 times...
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1 in 1 is pretty strong, and I think you might get an effect with that.

(I think you meant 1 in 1x10^60. ;))
 
ddt said:
Worse: 1 in 1x1^60. The 'C' means to dilute with a factor 100. The '30' means to repeat that dilution 30 times...
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Goodness! Have you got a handy metaphor to describe this, like one drop in a container the size of Jupiter, or something?
 
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