More Fun with Homeopath Dana Ullman, MPH(!)

[krazyKemist]

Whereas, you have not found time to discuss Elia's papers having been so insistent that we take them seriously. I have taken them seriously and have paid good money to obtain a copy of the first of them. I have then asked a couple of specific questions to open the discussion of the content and one to allow you to demonstrate that you have indeed read the whole paper and have a copy to hand.

You have answered none.

[/b]

I doubt you will receive an answer to that. BTW, THIS paper relates the entire experiment:

V. Elia, L. Elia, P. Cacace, E. Napoli, M. Niccoli, F. Savarese. (2006) ‘Extremely diluted solutions’ as multi-variable systems. Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry 84:2, 317

The paper he cited does not contain the entire procedure.

One personnal question I would have is : how do we define "pure" water, or "pure" alcohol ? If water was distilled (even if it was distilled twice) in a glass apparatus, it does contain trace glass components (borates and silicates, and probably more of those than of the "diluted" substance). "Pure alcohol" is habitually only 95% pure. Anhydrous alcohol is only 98%, and cannot be used for medicines because it contains benzene.

Another would be : is the water used for homeopathic treatment up to the same standard of purity ? I somehow doubt it. Nature abhorres purity, for entropy reasons. So high purity does not come cheap.

the Kemist

 

[fls]

I think that it is touching that several of you miss me. It is ironic that some of you were worried that I was scared off. Heck, yesterday was Father's Day. I have a life (every heard of having one?).

That said...I'm leaving the country for a couple of weeks and will probably not do much internet stuff. That said...I am reiterating part of my old posting to this list (and adding to it) because all of these issues below remained unanswered by skeptics...

Sadly, I've grown tired of you, primarily due to your intellectual dishonesty. You claim that the homeopathic doses are too small to have any effect, and yet, you ignore the various basic science and clinical studies that I have referenced, only critiquing a small number of them, and even these critiques are usually inadequate.

Perhaps it is the company that I keep, but I find your dishonesty astonishing. To paraphrase Jon Stewart....don't you know that this stuff is recorded?

I'm not going to repeat the criticisms that I made, or refer you to those of others, which you have been unable to address. This is new.

I previously referenced 3 clinical trials in the treatment of children with diarrhea, including a meta-analysis of the 3 combined trials with a P-value=0.008. While one person on this list showed that 2 of the 3 studies had barely missed significance (P=0.06 and 0.07), intellectual dishonest again pervaded because s/he didn't acknowledge that combined statistically analysis (this is good science, especially when the clinical trial design was alike)...but the weasels come out and do what you can to look ONLY at data that serves your needs (and to hell with good science?).

I was simply correcting your error. You stated that all three trials showed significant results. And you have managed to make another error. The significance levels for the other two trials were p=0.06 and 0.23 (not 0.07).

And then (speaking of looking ONLY at data that serves your needs) I provided a link to another, much larger study that showed no effect from homeopathic therapy in childhood diarrhea, which you neglected to include.

Linda

 

[Chris Haynes]

An awful lot of shouting from someone who has yet to answer some simple questions, including mine.

I won't copy them all (again)... I'll just ask one simple one:

What is the success rate for syphilis with Hahnemann's homeopathic methods versus antibiotics? (knowing that one of the miasms that Hahnemann thought that existed was "syphilis").

That was the question...

Hey HC...
....snip...Hahnemann was respected enough that he was voted as an honorary member of the NY medical society in 1832, though he was voted out in 1843 just one week after his death because the medical society said that homeopathy was too much of an ideological and "economic" threat.
Although many people who were uninformed about homeopathy make fun of Hahnemann's concept of miasms, this concept were some of the earliest sophisticated insights about genetic disease. Hahnemann determined that people with syphilis, gonorrhea, and TB didn't die immediately, but during their disease process they gave birth (or sperm), and this new human being's health was influenced by the diseases of the mother and father. ... snip a bunch of stuff.

What you responded with was a fractured version of history, with some silly stuff about "genetic disease". Syphilis, gonorrhea and TB are not genetic diseases. Though tertiary syphilis will cause bone lesions, and it would seem children who get it at birth this would seem to be genetic in origin (but it is not).

Now try again, answer the question: What is the success rate for syphilis with Hahnemann's homeopathic methods versus antibiotics?

And with the term "rate" I want an actual number. For instance xx% of patients with syphilis had successful treatment using Hahnemann's homoepathy versus xx% of those who received antibiotics. Also, please cite your sources for the information. You have enough posts to use links, so I expect at least one link to be from here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/ .

 

[Deetee]

So Charles Darwin, who was not afraid to shock the world by asserting that humans and apes descended from a common ancestor, would have been afraid to admit that he did something as daring as using a homeopathic treatment?

Soory to derail momentarily, but is it not true that Darwin was so troubled by the implications of On the Origin of Species that he essentially shelved it for a few years, only being prompted into publication by the fear of being beaten to the tape by Wallace?

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Soory to derail momentarily, but is it not true that Darwin was so troubled by the implications of On the Origin of Species that he essentially shelved it for a few years, only being prompted into publication by the fear of being beaten to the tape by Wallace?

This explanation has been called into question recently:

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2007032703

 

[Dana Ullman]

Well...I actually leave tomorrow for 2 weeks. I had a little time yesterday and was able to simply cut and paste my biographical info about Hahnemann (skeptics need to know the intellectual giant that he was, whether you agree with him or not).

I can eke out a little time right now.

Syl...thanx for explaining how to do the quoting...a little bit of kindness always goes a long way.

I'm glad that some of you understand the dissolving power of bidistilled water and that my previous statements that this water has been shown to led to increased "silicate fragments" (aka silica chips) that fall off the glass walls and into the water. Perhaps these silica chips change the structure of the water and/or provide a means by which the medicinal substance that is diluted in the water imparts its information or fractal pattern into the chip (we do not know exactly what is happening...but perhaps Hahnemann and homeopaths have stumbled onto an important method of reducing a drug's toxicity but maintaining its therapeutic abilities, AS LONG AS the syndrome of symptoms of the substance's toxicity are SIMILAR to the syndrome of symptoms of the sick person.

What homeopaths have called the "law of similars" may be some type of resonance and/or hypersensitivity. Rather than trying to "fight" homeopathy, I hope that some of you with good working brains can help us figure out what is going on.

As for Elia's paper, his article goes from page 241-248. Mr Monkey's question about page 823 is unanswerable by me because it is not what I have of Elia's writings.

When you answer your own question on this issue, I also suggest that you answer the question: why was this study published in one of the most respected scientific journals in the US, especially in the light of its very controversial topic? And why did the statistical methods used by Elia cut mustards with their reviewers?

Finally, Rustum Roy has had 700 or so papers published in peer-review journals. As I went down their list, I saw 13 of them as articles published in NATURE. The fact that you found 15 such papers simply makes my case for Roy's hyper-respectability stronger. Thank you.

I have never said that these papers published in NATURE were on homeopathy. I simply said that Roy was a leading scientist, that he is not a "homeopathic researcher," and that his work should be taken very seriously. Wake up and smell the Coffea 30C.

 

[Mojo]

Finally, Rustum Roy has had 700 or so papers published in peer-review journals. As I went down their list, I saw 13 of them as articles published in NATURE. The fact that you found 15 such papers simply makes my case for Roy's hyper-respectability stronger. Thank you.

The fact that 15 of his papers were published by Nature speaks to the quality of those 15 papers.

I have never said that these papers published in NATURE were on homeopathy. I simply said that Roy was a leading scientist, that he is not a "homeopathic researcher," and that his work should be taken very seriously.

You complained that people here had dismissed the papers Roy published in Nature as meaningless:

Some of you even went off the deep-end by saying that the 13 papers that Dr. Roy got published in NATURE are meaningless.

If the papers were not to do with homoeopathy, then as far as the subject matter of this thread is concerned they are meaningless.

Wake up and smell the Coffea 30C.

Can you provide any evidence that Coffea 30C has a detectable odour?

 

[Madalch]

I'm glad that some of you understand the dissolving power of bidistilled water and that my previous statements that this water has been shown to led to increased "silicate fragments" (aka silica chips) that fall off the glass walls and into the water. Perhaps these silica chips change the structure of the water and/or provide a means by which the medicinal substance that is diluted in the water imparts its information or fractal pattern into the chip.

No, they don't. If a microscopic chunk of glass is sitting in water, there will be a cluster of water molecules around the water, but it's not going to create any overall structure to the water, and anythign that used to be dissolved in the water is not going to affect the silicates.

Rather than trying to "fight" homeopathy, I hope that some of you with good working brains can help us figure out what is going on.

You first have to show that something -is- going on, other than placebo.

 

[Dana Ullman]

First...as a big appreciator of Jon Stewart, I do know that this is being "recorded," and my question to this list, do you know that because in the near future when homeopathy will have achieved great acceptance, we will look back at your responses as evidence of the fact that dinosaurs yell and scream the loudest before their fall. Timber.

A couple more notes about the "acute diarrhea" experiments. Why, oh, why do people still ignore the entire body of statistics from these experiments? The p value was in the substantial range...beyond significant! P=0.008. Take off your blinders.

As for why there was no significant difference at day 5 is that acute diarrhea resolves on its own in most cases...but THIS trial showed that children given homeopathic treatment (and ORT) got over it substantially faster than those just given ORT. End of story. Saying anything else is simply not supported for the data.

 

[krazyKemist]

I'm glad that some of you understand the dissolving power of bidistilled water and that my previous statements that this water has been shown to led to increased "silicate fragments" (aka silica chips) that fall off the glass walls and into the water. Perhaps these silica chips change the structure of the water and/or provide a means by which the medicinal substance that is diluted in the water imparts its information or fractal pattern into the chip (we do not know exactly what is happening...but perhaps Hahnemann and homeopaths have stumbled onto an important method of reducing a drug's toxicity but maintaining its therapeutic abilities, AS LONG AS the syndrome of symptoms of the substance's toxicity are SIMILAR to the syndrome of symptoms of the sick person.

hmmm... Wouldn't go THAT far. And ultrapure water, the 18 MOhm standard (pure water does not conduct electricity by the way), is NOT obtained by distillation, but by a filtration process. Distillation (even done twice) does not produce water of that purity. And dissolved substances do not maintain a cristalline structure is solution. That would rather be a suspension. The ability of a liquid to form a suspension is determined by viscosity not purity.

The problem is that chemistry as we know it does not allow for a liquid (or gas) to maintain a 'structure' on its own once the substance affecting it is gone, thanks to brownian movement (entropy). There will be a time of reorganisation, but that will be quite short (less than a second).

BTW, something that would mean that much for the understanding of chemistry (particularly of thermodynamics) should at least have been submitted to JACS (Journal of the american chemical society). Anyway, that's what I would have done, if I wanted to convince chemists.

the Kemist

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

WAs for Elia's paper, his article goes from page 241-248. Mr Monkey's question about page 823 is unanswerable by me because it is not what I have of Elia's writings.

That's a shame. We seem tobe referring to different papers. Sdly the one to which you referred from Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1999 is not available for online download from the British Library.

I will get that 1999 paper. There will be a short delay.

But, your refusal to answer the other simple questions, that we could easily have dealt with by now, is becoming both rude and tedious.

They include;

A. What bearing do you think it (Elia's paper) has on the issue of homeopathy?

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.

9. I set a p-value for significance of 0.05 and run 100 trials. In no trial is the test substance distinguishable from the control. How many trials can I expect to show an apparent "effect" from my test substance?

 

[manioberoi]

No-one seems to have addressed this one directly so I'll have a go ... I think that manioberoi was proposing a tweak to the proposed conceptual test protocols.

• Manioberoi seems reluctant to buy into the protocols proposed so far because there is some kind of sequence of steps that homoeopathic practioners go through with the patients wherein they use a sequence of "medicines" and modify the next "prescription" based on the outcome of the previous administration.
• The test protocols proposed so far randomly (and blindly) substitute each prescription with a placebo. This will make the analysis of the results hard to interpret (unless we are only interested in the final administration of the sequence).
• To keep with manioberoi's description of homoeopathic practices, the randomization should be applied to a particular homoeopath-patient link instead ... so that all remedies provided to a particular (randomly and blindly chosen) patient are substituted. I think that this is what manioberoi is proposing above - I'll leave it to him to correct me if I have misinterpreted his meaning.

The direct answer to his follow up question is YES!!! (Sorry for shouting.) If such a simple test was conducted properly (large enough sample, proper blinding, no data mining, no meta-analysis with less well conducted studies, etc) then it would be the start of a beautiful relationship between homoeopathy and the real world.

If there is a significant difference between homoeopathy and placebo, and this can be consistently reproduced, then we have something very, very interesting to consider.

What is there to be afraid of in seeing the results of such simple studies? Why come up with blocking tactics and resort to obscure and poorly conducted work? I think I know why there is not a mountain of good evidence (note - not hear-say) for homoeopathic effectiveness in respected peer-reviewed literature ... do you have any ideas that do not involve a persecution complex???

Agree entirely. There are over 6000 homeopathic remedies (no good homeopath would restrict herself to 30 remedies - as proposed elsewhere by Hans to make his proposal for double blinding workable).

The homeopath is required to CURE the whole person - body and mind - keeping in view the pathology & c. At times conventional intervention is required to be advised.

So is the homeopath treating for, say, a kidney stone? Yes & No.

-Yes, because it is entirely possible ( but only as a fire fighting measure)

- No, because the homeopath is required to look beyond the kidney stone to the maintaining cause which can be many, (psychosomatic, hormonal imbalance, blood disorders, excess intake of protein leading to excess urea, oxalates, urinary tract infections and the like)

- further the homeopath is not to treat for the kidney stone alone

- the state of health of the person has to be brought as close to normal as is possible

- the homeopath selects first one remedy to achieve one of two alternate goals

- one, immediate treatment for an emergency (which may also be curative for the whole person i.e. cure) - suppression or cure but usually it turns out to be suppression - there is no way to know which it will be in advance.

-alternate, if there is no emergency (or after the emergency has subsided - till the next emergency, if any) the homeopath repertorises the CASE (visible)to find the one remedy that can cover the maximum spread of the CASE (visible) (person having diseases whether visible or hidden- not the disease); once this has been taken for a certain duration which is decided as it were on the fly by observing the progression of the case and hidden (CASE)becoming visible - the homeopath retakes the CASE (newly visible - moving the goal posts as it were in mid stream) and re-repertorises AND SO ON.

This can take months or years - the aim is to keep the person on an improving scale of health till the person decides that she is cured and the homeopath based on pathology is able to concur.

How could this be fitted to the concept of short and specific double blind trials (suited only for conventional medicine which treats only a narrow domain for one or two specifics ) as suggested by Hans is the conundrum before us.

 

[Madalch]

One personnal question I would have is : how do we define "pure" water, or "pure" alcohol ? If water was distilled (even if it was distilled twice) in a glass apparatus, it does contain trace glass components (borates and silicates, and probably more of those than of the "diluted" substance). "Pure alcohol" is habitually only 95% pure. Anhydrous alcohol is only 98%, and cannot be used for medicines because it contains benzene.

The 95% ethanol can be dried with magnesium during distillation, giving fairly pure stuff. It's won't be ultrapure (it will still have traces of glassware in it, etc.), but it's an improvement.

 

[manioberoi]

Ehr, and you believe THAT? Then I can inform you that, for instance in China, PepsiCo is still using old-fashioned soda cans with the opener ring that comes off, which is dangerous, but cheaper. "One Quality Worldwide", my foot.



GMP does not ensure efficacy.



Yeah, nice effort. Which requirements does the Indian government impose on homeopathy for documenting efficacy, and where is it published?



I'm sure they are making a honest effort, but as this is common knowledge, I don't suppose I insult you too much by pointing out that the initial platform for healthcare in India has enourmous room for improvement. So much that useless, but also harmless medicines (like we claim homeopathic remedies are) will be an improvment in many areas.

... Just like Hahnemann's practices were in the early 19th century in Europe where part of mainstream medicine actually made more harm than good.



Which part of Apollo's services are homeopathic? We all know that for those who can pay, India can offer excellent conventional medical treatment.

Hans

The Apollo Hospitals seem to have naturopathy, ayurveda - however there is a homeopath at their Apollo clinic and she can be contacted at:
"Consultant Homeopath
Indraprastha Apollo Cliniq
Building No.1 Nelson Mandela Marg,
Sector - B, LSC,Vasant Kunj,
New Delhi - 110070
Phone No: +91-011-26134810, 6134825, 6131218, 6124980
Fax no: +91-011-6134792
Email : [email protected]"

 

[manioberoi]

A while ago I asked a precise question, but didn't get a reply. Please, could Mr. Ullman/Gully (or anybody else who deems that they are qualified to answer), give me a precise reply:

A test using homeopathic proving:

- A homeopath chooses three homeopathic remedies that will produce different, easily-distinguishable symptoms. We'll call them substance A, B and C.

- A reputed homeopathic laboratory produces samples of the three remedies, plus a placebo sample.

- The homeopath is given a sample, and his task is to ascertain if the sample is substance A, B, C or a placebo. He may choose provers whom he already knows (himself included), so he should have a clear idea of how they react to the three different substances.

- How many provers would the homeopath need in order to find the answer?

Any competent homeopath would be able to tell you that you are asking for nothing less than the moon!

How on earth would we find three perfectly healthy persons to carry out the proving, and even if we found them how would we prove that they are in perfect health - and does science as it stands today really know how to define perfect health? We are still learning new facts about DNA - just the other day we learnt that the so called "junk DNA" is no longer junk.!!

Further out of the over 6000 remedies some proved, most others not even proved, the millions of symptoms ( large numbers common to many remedies) would preclude such an exercise being conducted by anyone but a "cyborg"!!!

 

[JJM]

{snip} How on earth would we find three perfectly healthy persons to carry out the proving {snip}

How on earth were provings carried out in the first place, if they can't be replicated now?

 

[Michael C]

Any competent homeopath would be able to tell you that you are asking for nothing less than the moon!

How on earth would we find three perfectly healthy persons to carry out the proving, and even if we found them how would we prove that they are in perfect health - and does science as it stands today really know how to define perfect health? We are still learning new facts about DNA - just the other day we learnt that the so called "junk DNA" is no longer junk.!!

Further out of the over 6000 remedies some proved, most others not even proved, the millions of symptoms ( large numbers common to many remedies) would preclude such an exercise being conducted by anyone but a "cyborg"!!!

Well, how do homeopathic persons do their provings? How do they find the "perfectly healthy persons" apparently needed for homeopathic provings?

In fact, you don't seem to have understood my suggestion for a test, so I'll post it again, with added comments:

A homeopath chooses three homeopathic remedies that will produce different, easily-distinguishable symptoms. We'll call them substance A, B and C. Note that the homeopath himself is to choose the substances, and that there are only three substances. We are not asking the homeopath to distinguish between the 6000 remedies you talk about: he only has to distinguish three different substances.

- A reputed homeopathic laboratory produces samples of the three remedies, plus a placebo sample.

- The homeopath is given a sample, and his task is to ascertain if the sample is substance A, B, C or a placebo.

- He may choose provers whom he already knows (himself included), so he should have a clear idea of how they react to the three different substances. He may choose as many provers as he deems necessary.

- How many provers would the homeopath need in order to find the answer?

 

[manioberoi]

How on earth were provings carried out in the first place, if they can't be replicated now?

Initially (18th century) recorded cases of poisonings were also used for preparation of materia medicas (usage as de facto provings). Systematic provings were done on persons 'presumed' to be healthy - depending on the indivdual different symptoms appeared in the proving ( at different potencies) - all of these were recorded as reported by the provers (bias, errors and all).

Some symptoms were more frequent, some less, and are so recorded. Unique symptoms also come up and are so recorded.

Next stage is to use on a person (on simila principle - this has exceptions) - clinical results are reported and noted for future use.

If a particular remedy regularly gives good results for a particular pathology it may even be used on a pathological basis in addition to individualization - most of the trials carried out are on this (pathological) basis which is a flawed approach - perhaps the proper method has not been tried on account of ground level difficulties. For an example of the difficulties see:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/7/7

Whenever too many new symptoms come up a fresh proving may be carried out - this may bring out entirely new symptoms not foreseen earlier.

Alternatively new provings of old remedies when carried out invariably bring out new and fresh symptoms.

I think , by now you should be able to see the level of complexity of the ever evolving human body mind complex which naturally leads to this evolving set of symptoms ( new hidden ones constantly coming up) which are dynamic and unforeseeable.

 

[manioberoi]

Well, how do homeopathic persons do their provings? How do they find the "perfectly healthy persons" apparently needed for homeopathic provings?

In fact, you don't seem to have understood my suggestion for a test, so I'll post it again, with added comments:

A homeopath chooses three homeopathic remedies that will produce different, easily-distinguishable symptoms. We'll call them substance A, B and C. Note that the homeopath himself is to choose the substances, and that there are only three substances. We are not asking the homeopath to distinguish between the 6000 remedies you talk about: he only has to distinguish three different substances.

- A reputed homeopathic laboratory produces samples of the three remedies, plus a placebo sample.

- The homeopath is given a sample, and his task is to ascertain if the sample is substance A, B, C or a placebo.

- He may choose provers whom he already knows (himself included), so he should have a clear idea of how they react to the three different substances. He may choose as many provers as he deems necessary.

- How many provers would the homeopath need in order to find the answer?

The three remedies would have hidden symptoms (common or different) and known symptoms(common or different). The three provers would have visible and hidden disease, besides the fact that body mind complex is ever evolving and a dynamic state is not conducive to the kind of static test you propose.

Also see the reply to JJM.

Sarvadaman

 

[JJM]

{snip} Systematic provings were done on persons 'presumed' to be healthy - depending on the indivdual different symptoms appeared in the proving ( at different potencies) - all of these were recorded as reported by the provers (bias, errors and all). {snip}

So, let's go ahead and do it! What is holding you back? Can't you find persons you can "presume" to be healthy?

The rest of what you wrote was indecipherable nonsense. I assume you think it releases you from actually doing any testing, even if you can find someone who is "presumed" to be healthy.