Homeopathy. Mixing a diluted ingredient with the same undiluted ingredient.lu

[blutoski]

I continue to track the "progress" toward the establishment of the College of Homeopathy in Ontario (currently it is "Transitional"). Once it is in business, I will file one or more complaints with the College that one or more (or many, many) of its members violate its "professional" standards. For a start, the quack websites tend to claim that Homeocrapy works because the treatments are individualized to the patient while at the same time selling bottles of distilled water over the Internet for self cure. Logically (ha) you can't have it both ways.

Yeah, good luck with that. I'm sure they won't care.

My experience with woo Colleges is that the only thing that triggers disciplinary action is if a member publicly criticizes another member. ie: if you were a member and you complained about that homeopath's website claims, you would be disciplined for 'unprofessional conduct'.

They're not Colleges in the same sense as College of Physicians and Surgeons. They're basically marketing boards and lobbying groups that have agreed to play the role of a professional College to fulfill the political theater.

 

[Donn]

The really hard core homeoheads would complain about the stuff not being diluted enough.

The sniffer dogs can detect those dilutions because the BigPharmaCops, and this will blow your mind, actually use homeopathic science! They take ground white pepper, which causes sneezing, and they potentize it for the dogs! It makes their noses like 80 to 160X.

 

[pgwenthold]

On the flip side, it's hardly just to call someone acting on the best of their knowledge a fraud. It also would be a legal demand of omniscience--or at least that one know, at the time of acting, everything that would be learned during the statute of limitations. Placing impossible demands on someone is rather counter to the concept of justice.

Omniscience? Not really. Due diligence? For sure.

What I would say is, what would happen if a pharmaceutical company acted this way?

They absolutely do not get away with being ignorant, or even selective in their knowledge. They are held to strict guidelines in terms of they are required to check out before they can sell something, and how they interpret the results. They have to show their math and how they came to their conclusions.

But we have no problems holding them to that standard.

 

[Dinwar]

Omniscience? Not really. Due diligence? For sure.

A fine line between demands for due diligence and demands for omniscience. There are a LOT of medical journals out there right now, and a LOT of papers being published. No one has time to read them all, even in a sub-dicipline of a sub-dicipline. Anyone who's published a paper knows that the editors will inevitably come back with "Why didn't you include this paper?"

But we have no problems holding them to that standard.

I've often heard quite a different tune!

That said, if homeopaths believe their products are medicine I have no problem treating them as pharmaceutical companies. I just want to be very careful about prosecuting someone for something they honestly believed, erroniously, was right. It's a slippery slope. Prosecuting them for failure to conduct sufficient research to support their claims is another issue entirely; that's punishing them for what they did, not for drawing a wrong conclusion.

 

[blutoski]

On the flip side, it's hardly just to call someone acting on the best of their knowledge a fraud. It also would be a legal demand of omniscience--or at least that one know, at the time of acting, everything that would be learned during the statute of limitations. Placing impossible demands on someone is rather counter to the concept of justice.

There's a fine line there, I will grant you.

Yes, that's why generally when health fraud charges are laid, they're about bypassing the process entirely. DSHEA is pretty clear that there's a list of medical conditions and symptoms that, if you want to advertise you treat, you go through the FDA's process and get approval. They are outside the scope of dietary supplements.

If you haven't done that, you can't claim to cure/treat them, full stop. You're limited to function/structure statements, and you only have to have minimal support for them anyway, so 'belief' is not very important if the advertising is limited to this domain.

What's been happening is that the dietary supplement industry has double-crossed the regulators. They want it both ways: they want to bypass the FDA approval process for testing their claims about medical conditions and symptom management, but they don't want to be restricted from making claims about medical conditions and symptom management.

It's come down to a game of "I dare you to prosecute us. Are you going to prosecute all of us? A fifty billion dollar industry? How far do you think you'll get politically when our patients chain themselves naked to the courthouses saying your murdering their families by withholding Magic Cure (TM)?"

 

[pgwenthold]

That said, if homeopaths believe their products are medicine I have no problem treating them as pharmaceutical companies.

You tell me. Here's from the link in the OP

Quick view
Patented Homeopathic Nasal Spray
No Side Effects!

Target the Sources of Sinus Discomfort!
Non-Addictive
No Drug Interactions
Promotes Sinus Drainage
Cool Mint Solution

Eases Discomfort From:

Congestion
Sinus Pain & Pressure
Sinus Headache

How is that not a medicine?

 

[blutoski]

That said, if homeopaths believe their products are medicine I have no problem treating them as pharmaceutical companies.

They've flat out lobbied to not be treated as pharmaceutical companies. This is the opposite of what they've strived for for generations.

The reason: pharmaceutical companies have to prove their products work and are safe through a clinical trial process, and they are held accountable for making claims about treating medical conditions and symptoms that have not gone through this procedure.

 

[Dinwar]

My grandfather always said I should thank the folks who use drugs. They're weeding themselves out of the pool of workers, making my life easier. I think this falls under the same heading: anyone stupid enough to fall for something that the practitioners have admitted is ineffective deserves what they get.

The only ones I feel any sympathy for are the children too small to know any better. I hesitate to call it abuse--again, the parents may honestly believe they're doing what's best, so it's hard to bring government into the equation for me--but it's always horrible when innocent people are harmed by the stupidity of others.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Yeah, good luck with that. I'm sure they won't care.

My experience with woo Colleges is that the only thing that triggers disciplinary action is if a member publicly criticizes another member. ie: if you were a member and you complained about that homeopath's website claims, you would be disciplined for 'unprofessional conduct'.

They're not Colleges in the same sense as College of Physicians and Surgeons. They're basically marketing boards and lobbying groups that have agreed to play the role of a professional College to fulfill the political theater.

The Ontario Government claims that, once established, the new colleges of alternative medicines will act the same as the existing medical colleges. This presumes that there will be a complaint mechanism. I would like to expose homeopathy to just a modicum of common sense. Just the response to the contradictory claims would be amusing to see.

I don't know whether the alternative-alternative Chinese Traditional Medicine Doctors have given up fighting with their college as to who is the true Scotsman. They seem to have lost the court case that would have prevented TCM practitioners from being able to practice without the ability to speaking English or French. The proposed regulations now grandfather an exception.

 

[casebro]

The Ontario Government claims that, once established, the new colleges of alternative medicines will act the same as the existing medical colleges. This presumes that there will be a complaint mechanism. I would like to expose homeopathy to just a modicum of common sense. Just the response to the contradictory claims would be amusing to see. ......

Isn't "Modicum of Common Sense" a homeopathic remedy already? But I think they must dilute it 80x, so it never shows in lab tests.

 

[blutoski]

The Ontario Government claims that, once established, the new colleges of alternative medicines will act the same as the existing medical colleges. This presumes that there will be a complaint mechanism. I would like to expose homeopathy to just a modicum of common sense. Just the response to the contradictory claims would be amusing to see.

Oh, absolutely! There will be a complaint mechanism. What I was saying was don't expect them to agree with you about what exactly constitutes an actionable complaint. This type of complaint usually goes straight to the 'closed - no action required' bin.

This comes from personal experience attempting to complain, and the experience of colleages.

I can give you a concrete example: Paul Ingraham. He complained to the BC College of Massage Therapists that his peers were claiming to cure AIDS and cancer. They decided this was not a violation of their code of conduct. Furthermore, they ruled that his complaining about a peer was 'unprofessional behavior' and he received a disciplinary warning. When he turned his complaints to the province, they suspended his license under the same grounds (unprofessional conduct).

He eventually concluded that the concept of alternative medicine colleges is a farce and had to decide if he wanted to collude with the College by being silent about the quacks that were overselling the medical benefits of massage OR stop being a massage therapist and be free to speak. He chose the latter path and created PainScience.com.

I don't know whether the alternative-alternative Chinese Traditional Medicine Doctors have given up fighting with their college as to who is the true Scotsman. They seem to have lost the court case that would have prevented TCM practitioners from being able to practice without the ability to speaking English or French. The proposed regulations now grandfather an exception.

 

[marplots]

Banning won't stop it--all it'll do is drive it underground. We've banned all kinds of drugs; has that stopped their use?

Yeah, it kinda has. Methaqualone comes to mind - although maybe one bust in 2010 (and none since that I could find on the DEA website) might mean "stopped" is too restrictive.

Others that come to mind: Baycol, Duract, Darvon... many more.

 

[marplots]

I continue to track the "progress" toward the establishment of the College of Homeopathy in Ontario (currently it is "Transitional").

That's not impossibly far from me, and I thought about going to earn my homeopathic doctorate. But then I realized that just by having the thought, I was already 30 times more potent than someone who actually attended.

You may call me Dr. Blathicus Stundolio. And yes, I can cure you by pouring a remedy on my lawn and allowing the power of natural dilution to get it to you. It's how I kept Ebola in check in the US.

 

[blutoski]

Yeah, it kinda has. Methaqualone comes to mind - although maybe one bust in 2010 (and none since that I could find on the DEA website) might mean "stopped" is too restrictive.

Others that come to mind: Baycol, Duract, Darvon... many more.

I think there's a material difference between the success of suppressing drugs that have genuine effects versus suppressing quack offerings whose success is somewhere between imaginary and placebo. Particularly because the latter have easily accessible substitutes.

The demand for homeopathy is entirely a product of their marketing. If their marketing is suppressed, interest will evaporate.

There was a time when there were <50 homeopaths in the entire USA.

 

[marplots]

I think there's a material difference between the success of suppressing drugs that have genuine effects versus suppressing quack offerings whose success is somewhere between imaginary and placebo. Particularly because the latter have easily accessible substitutes.

The demand for homeopathy is entirely a product of their marketing. If their marketing is suppressed, interest will evaporate.

There was a time when there were <50 homeopaths in the entire USA.

You know what might work? Give the stuff away for free.

 

[arthwollipot]

Hmm, yes. I don't usually bother to argue against it too much. Some herbal remedies do actually work; aspirin is the processed form of willow bark, after all... and St. John's Wort is well known to actually have effects - it's specifically called out for drug interactions on several prescriptions. But at the same time, not everything works, and snake oil is snake oil. If people are too silly to do reasonable homework and use some common sense, then oh well. As long as it's not actually harmful, I don't really care if someone makes money off of it.

There's a common argument against homoeopathy that I refer to as "The Poo Argument". It was best articulated by Tim Minchin in Storm:

It's a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And while it's memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is Infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it!

Unfortunately this argument is refuted by the most basic of homoeopathic principles: In order to work, a remedy has to be potentized by banging it repeatedly against a hard surface (ie, succussion). The poo hasn't been succussed, and therefore hasn't been potentized, and therefore there is no memory of it in the water.

There's plenty wrong with homoeopathy without making things up about it. We should certainly argue against it, but we should understand what it is that we're arguing against.

If someone takes the Poo Argument to an actual homoeopath, the homoeopath will calmly explain why they're wrong, and that casts doubt on whatever other skeptical arguments we might bring to bear. The skeptic was wrong, the homoeopath was right. We need to take care that we aren't wrong when we argue.

 

[marplots]

Unfortunately this argument is refuted by the most basic of homoeopathic principles: In order to work, a remedy has to be potentized by banging it repeatedly against a hard surface (ie, succussion). The poo hasn't been succussed, and therefore hasn't been potentized, and therefore there is no memory of it in the water.

Without detailing my toilet routine, I can assure you that some poo is handled in a properly violent manner.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Oh, absolutely! There will be a complaint mechanism. What I was saying was don't expect them to agree with you about what exactly constitutes an actionable complaint. This type of complaint usually goes straight to the 'closed - no action required' bin.

This comes from personal experience attempting to complain, and the experience of colleages.

I can give you a concrete example: Paul Ingraham. He complained to the BC College of Massage Therapists that his peers were claiming to cure AIDS and cancer. They decided this was not a violation of their code of conduct. Furthermore, they ruled that his complaining about a peer was 'unprofessional behavior' and he received a disciplinary warning. When he turned his complaints to the province, they suspended his license under the same grounds (unprofessional conduct).

He eventually concluded that the concept of alternative medicine colleges is a farce and had to decide if he wanted to collude with the College by being silent about the quacks that were overselling the medical benefits of massage OR stop being a massage therapist and be free to speak. He chose the latter path and created PainScience.com.

That's all very well but I intend to copy the Toronto Star at the same time.

 

[arthwollipot]

Without detailing my toilet routine, I can assure you that some poo is handled in a properly violent manner.

The methods of succussion are very specific. Random shaking won't do it.

 

[Hellbound]

The methods of succussion are very specific. Random shaking won't do it.

Not exactly.

Sometimes they are, such as when homeopaths are defending against this type of argument.

Other times they aren't, such as when the entire process is automated in large factories that pour out vials of water and sugar pills to sell at a 10000000000% markup (note, that might be a slightly exaggerated number).

The goal posts on what "real" succession is are what inspired the time travel scene in that Superman movie.