Alastair Hay BSc (Hons) LCH RSHom | M: 07940 525495 | E: al@homeopathical.com
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the skeptics agenda - part 6 - conclusions and solutions

11/10/2013

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The skeptics agenda, first and foremost is to have homeopathy banned. The basis of which is not sound evidence, but an aversion to ‘homeopathy’, a prejudice, by definition.

The etymology of skepticism implies enquiring and reflection, not dismissiveness. A true skeptic doesn't make pre-judgements. This actually makes them ‘pseudo’ skeptics. We all have prejudices, we are all biased. Our beliefs taint the way we judge and validate new ideas. The thing is, as is aptly explained in this blog, we don’t want to be wrong and we will strongly defend those beliefs.

The impression a skeptic, or indeed pseudoskeptic gives, is that they are right and you are wrong. They are wise and learned and you are not. They are the group that should decide whether you have access to homeopathy and not you. The ultimate result is a denial of your choice. If homeopathy was as insignificant as it’s made out to be, do you think they’d be gunning for it? The problem is, it’s viable ‘competition’.

For some, it’s really important to know ‘how’ something works, and for others it’s more important to see it work. My job, as a homeopathic practitioner, or ‘homeopath’ is actually to make homeopathy work, rather than to find out how it works. For example, the mechanism of action of the painkiller, paracetamol is still poorly understood, yet we know and accept that it works. However, you can analyse a paracetamol tablet and find ‘active’ chemical constituents in it. How about electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) though? No tablets, no chemistry, poorly understood, and still used in some circumstances to manage mental illness, with effect, yet we have little understanding how it works. I’m sure that if this fell under the banner of ‘homeopathy’, the skeptics' opinion of it would differ.

Summary of The Skeptics Agenda


Part 1 - Skeptics claim homeopathy is unscientific

Some elements of homeopathy are scientific, Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy was a scientist. Some elements of homeopathy are ‘artistic’. Medicine is not based purely on science. Many practices in medicine are based on inference, theory, the fact that it’s always been done that way and the knowledge of observable favourable reaction without fully understanding the mechanism of action.

Medicine ≠ science.

Solution – Do patients / clients derive benefit from it? Focus on the results.

Part 2 - Skeptics claim homeopathy is dangerous

Homeopathy isn’t dangerous but homeopaths can be. The lack of integration and animosity between medical disciplines and pride is a stumbling block.

Solution – Train homeopaths well, and regulate appropriately.


Part 3 - Skeptics claim homeopathy is merely placebo

The placebo ‘effect’, is still an effect. Understanding placebo is science. Conventional and non-conventional medical methodologies utilise placebo. There is no significant difference between the beneficial interventions of conventional medical treatments compared to the positive evidence for homeopathy. Animals respond to homeopathic medicines.

Solution – Focus on the word ‘effect’ and not ‘placebo’.

Part 4 - Skeptics claim homeopaths are bare-faced lying snake-oil sales people

Within the realms of homeopathic practice, we don’t have sales reps promoting their medicines to homeopaths. Homeopaths are not ‘incentivised’ to prescribe particular homeopathic medicines over another homeopathic medicine and when a new homeopathic medicine is formulated, it costs the same as one that’s been available for 200 years. Furthermore, the information about new discoveries in homeopathy is shared amongst homeopathic pharmacies freely.

Solution – Understand how homeopaths make a living and how the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession works.


Part 5 - Skeptics claim homeopathy is witchcraft

'Homeopathy is witchcraft' is a statement based on observing that homeopathy works but having no idea how.

Solution – Accept homeopathy works and that we have a limited understanding of how.



Conclusion

Be a skeptic, but be a real skeptic, not a pseudo-skeptic. Base your understanding of the world on what you actually see, feel, hear, smell, touch and taste for real; not what you read in the news or what someone tells you, but what you experience. Question everything. Never accept anything as unquestionable since that is where dogma starts, and progress stops.

Who actually benefits if homeopathy is banned? It's unlikely to be you.

Next week...

Al's Agenda
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the skeptics agenda - part 5

1/10/2013

1 Comment

 
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Homeopathy is witchcraft
Witches are bad
Witchcraft is dangerous



....Ban homeopathy

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To claim that homeopathy is witchcraft makes at least a couple of leaps of faith. Yes, faith.
  • The existence of witchcraft, and Satan(ism)
  • ...and the acceptance that there’s something in homeopathy... yet no idea what it is. 
Paradoxically, every skeptic I know is atheist or at least agnostic, which deems them ‘faithless’ or perhaps ‘faith-free’ depending on which side of the fence you sit.

I’m prepared to accept that favourable responses that people experience from a homeopathic treatment can indeed appear like witchcraft.

‘Witches’ weren’t so impressed when a skeptic turned the statement on its head and claimed ‘witchcraft is homeopathy’

Banning something since some perceive it as witchcraft is somewhat antiquated don’t you think? What year is this? “It’s the witches work... Burn the witch!” I mused over this and it got me thinking...

The majority of my homeopathic contemporaries are women, yet most of the sceptics I’ve engaged with, all bar one in fact, have been men. Is there some kind of disdain for ‘women who heal’ going on here? I don’t know, but it’s food for thought.

Does it sound so offensive to call homeopathy ‘magic’, or ‘wizardry’ instead?

But, does it really matter?


Here’s a testimonial from a former client of mine, a carpenter:

“I approached Alastair with an open mind and in desperation! By chance, I met a former client of Alastair who highly recommended him.
Some say it's witchcraft!
I don't care...
It works!”


Essentially, no, it doesn’t matter. People are getting well again.


References and further reading:

Homeopathy is witchcraft, say doctors
British Medical Association: homeopathy is witchcraft
UK gov’t condemns Prince’s homeopathy is witchcraft
Homeopathy is witchcraft, say doctors- The noose tightens

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the skeptics agenda - part 4

20/9/2013

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Homeopaths are bare-faced, lying snake-oil salespeople

Homeopaths make money from gullible sick people.

...Ban homeopathy. 
Really?


My understanding of snake-oil salespeople, is that they peddled their wares by travelling into a town, selling elixirs of no healing value and clearing off.

The origins of the term ‘snake oil’ are from China where oil from the Chinese water-snake was extracted and used for a multitude of maladies. Chinese water-snake oil contains 20 percent eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), one of the two types of omega-3 fatty acids most readily used by our bodies. In the 1860s, Chinese railroad workers would use that Snake Oil to rub their sore muscles. They shared the secret elixir with their American counterparts...and then things got crazy. To cut a long story short they tried to make their own without the Chinese water-snake. Elaborate travelling medicine shows were set up with demos of the remedy's ‘healing’ powers and when it was found that it didn’t work, the peddler had long gone to ply their wares elsewhere.

Essentially, the American counterpart was found to contain none of the ‘active’ ingredients.

This, I suppose, is where our reputation as snake-oil peddlers comes in. Chemically analysing homeopathic tablets for answers will reveal little or nothing, but how about asking the clients of homeopathy?

This is the difference between looking for an action of something or assessing a reaction to something.

Are homeopaths really salespeople?

A homeopath’s standing is largely built upon their reputation of helping people get well and stay well i.e. upon their results... and a homeopath will tend to stay in a town, settle down, become part of the community, integrate and obviously earn their reputation, rather than plying their wares then clearing off.

If you come from the sceptical-activism viewpoint of ‘ban homeopathy’ you’ll chastise homeopaths for both making lots of money, or making no money. 
If you make ‘lots’ of money from being a homeopath, a skeptic would interpret that as exploitation, since in their eyes it’s money for nothing :) ...and, if you don’t make any money as a homeopath, you’re deemed useless, or homeopathy is.

Therefore, being 'good' or 'bad' salespeople makes no difference as to whether skeptics want to ban homeopathy. 

As outlined earlier, our ability to make money, or as I call it 'earn a living', is based upon our reputation.

When I was at college, we didn’t have lessons in sales and marketing despite when practising as a homeopath, it is, in fact, a business. College taught us to be great prescribers and case managers but there were no lessons in how to be salespeople.


‘Homeopaths make money from gullible sick people’?

Not really...


We actually make a living from ill people getting well.
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The skeptics agenda - part 3

13/9/2013

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Homeopathy is placebo - ban homeopathy

Homeopathy... there’s nothing in it, it’s a sham.

Homeopathy is a con as the medicines contain nothing.

You are a ‘deluded fool’ to believe it works.


It’s a great leap to go from concluding that something is placebo, to banning it.


A total of 164 random controlled trial, (RCT) papers in homeopathy (on 89 different medical conditions) have been published in good quality scientific journals.
  • 43% had a balance of positive evidence
  • 6% had a balance of negative evidence
  • 49% were not conclusively positive or negative
  • 2% of the RCTs do not contain data that are suitable for analysis
Reference: http://www.britishhomeopathic.org/evidence/the-evidence-for-homeopathy/

A sobering thought then, for homeopaths: Pretty much half of the data utilised is neither positive or negatively conclusive.
​
However, by comparison, out of 1016 systematic reviews of RCTs in conventional medicine:
  • 44% of the reviews concluded that the interventions studied were likely to be beneficial (positive)
  • 7% concluded that the interventions were likely to be harmful (negative)
  • 49% reported that the evidence did not support either benefit or harm (non-conclusive)
Reference:  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2753.2007.00886.x/abstract

These statistics reflect the fact that research in homeopathy is a relatively new field (hence a smaller
numbers of trials leading to fewer systematic reviews), but the trends seen in the evidence base to
date are similar to conventional medicine.


So, what do we know about the placebo effect?

Placebo is more than just ‘nothing’, hence the term ‘placebo effect’.

To maximise its effect you can apparently employ some interesting tactics:

Give big tablets, even better, give big, coloured capsules, hell no, suggest two at a time, often, from branded boxes from someone in a white coat... Oh and charge a fortune for it.

You may be surprised then, to hear that homeopathic medicines are nearly always small and white, taken one at a time and quite often, infrequently, from an unbranded packet from someone in ‘civilian’ clothes who will either have included the tablets into their consultation fee or asked you to order them from a homeopathic pharmacy for a pricely sum of about £5 per item.

Maybe we’re missing a trick here? Well, the pharmacologists aren’t...

Here’s a quote from Trends in Pharmacological Science Volume 33, Issue 3, March 2012, Pages 165–172

Utilizing placebo mechanisms for dose reduction in pharmacotherapy

“The pairing of a placebo and a pharmacological agent may achieve satisfactory treatment outcomes in combination with a lower dose of medication.”

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Here is the breakdown of clinical evidence for 2,500 common medical treatments from the study in the British Medical Journal

The reality is 66% of the treatment procedures and drugs that are commonly used in conventional medicine have no or little evidence of benefit, yet they are still prescribed. (British Medical Journal, 2007)

Now, I’m not actually an advocate of banning conventional medicines, not even the ones for which there is 'unknown effectiveness'... This isn’t a blog about conventional medicine bashing, but more about demonstrating the illogical and somewhat paradoxically, unscientific skeptic’s agenda.

You may be surprised to learn that I’ve actively encouraged some clients to take conventionally prescribed medications, some of which have worked very well, when homeopathy hasn’t done all we wanted it to do. Their relief is all the more interesting since some of these conventional medications have been openly regarded as not significantly different to placebos!


But IS homeopathy placebo?

To accept that a response to a homeopathic medicine is purely placebo is, for me, a hard pill to swallow... pun intended.

Put yourself in my position... I’ve seen just over 1000 different clients, the majority of whom have initially followed a conventional healthcare path.

Quite frankly, they believed in the conventional route, or their parents did, more so than they believed in homeopathy, hence they tried the conventional route first. They took medicines in the form of big coloured tablets or capsules daily, they may even have had surgery, yet these medicines didn’t do all that was expected of them. Surely, the placebo response should have kicked in sooner than when they chose me as a last resort? But it didn’t.

Of those 1000 or so clients whom I’ve seen, most, but not all, have derived benefit, often long-lasting or even permanent benefit from treatment. The benefits are both observable and palpable. I find it more amazing still, astonishing even, if their favourable responses are really just from having a chat and dishing out sugar pills. I just find that claim more implausible.

To summarise...


  • RCTs of evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathic and conventional intervention are pretty similar.
  • Homeopaths and manufacturers of homeopathic medicines could do more to maximise the placebo effect but they don’t.
  • To conclude something is 'placebo', is not the same as concluding it is 'ineffective'.
  • The placebo effect whether derived via conventional or homeopathic medicines is still an effect.
  • If I can help people get better by just having a chat and dishing out sugar tablets that’s astonishing!
Further reading:

Harvard says placebos are going mainstream
10 Crazy Facts About the Placebo Effect
Are antidepressants just placebos with side-effects?
Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why
Pavlov and placebos could reduce the side-effects of drug treatments
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the skeptics agenda - part 2

4/9/2013

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Homeopathy is dangerous, ban homeopathy.

People have died whilst having treatment from homeopaths... Homeopathy killed them.

I find these statements an interesting paradox:

Skeptics, using a purely chemical paradigm, will tell you that there’s nothing in a homeopathic medicine... yet it can be dangerous.

I don’t believe that homeopathy is dangerous, but I will concede that homeopaths can be.

Our current UK laws allow pretty much anyone to set themselves up as a homeopath. The title 'homeopath' is not a 'protected title', so some calling themselves a homeopath may have no training, no licence to practice, no insurance, or belong to any governing body or register of homeopaths. So, choose your homeopath wisely!

I feel it’s vital that homeopaths receive adequate training and supervision both working towards becoming a practitioner and being a practitioner. It’s essential to recognise our limitations and liaise with other practitioners including medical practitioners, in our quest to help our clients work towards ‘wellness’.

What do I mean by ‘adequate training’?...

Well, there are some ‘disciplines’, that you can be a ‘master’ of after a weekend. Homeopathy isn’t one of them. The major governing bodies of homeopathy only endorse courses that are either 3 year full-time or 4 year part-time courses. Furthermore, whilst I was at college nearly 20 years ago , it was felt that it would be a great idea to integrate homeopathic teaching at universities, with the scope to further increase the calibre of training, qualifications, and ultimate safety and effectiveness of the practitioners graduating from them. Unfortunately, this caused umbrage amongst some noteworthy skeptics due to the department ‘homeopathy’ was allied to, and the subsequent Bachelor of Science (BSc) qualification awarded. It appears to me, that they would prefer you not to have adequately trained homeopaths... and increase the likelihood of homeopathic malpractice.

There have been some well-publicised cases of homeopathy being ‘dangerous’. In drawing your conclusions from such articles, do some detective work –

  • Was it actually the homeopathic medicine that was dangerous?
  • Was the medicine actually a ‘homeopathic medicine’?
  • Was the ‘homeopath’ actually a fully qualified, licensed, registered homeopath?
Inevitably, some practitioners have been negligent in either recognising their limitations, failing to understand the implications of interfering with medications prescribed by someone else or indeed both. The main governing bodies of homeopaths in the UK have and will strike people off their register for these breaches of their code of ethics.

Find a qualified homeopath

http://www.findahomeopath.org.uk/TheRegisters

Find a homeopathy course.

http://www.findahomeopath.org.uk/Courses

I would like to reiterate:

I don’t believe that homeopathy is dangerous, but I will concede that homeopaths can be. Choose your homeopath wisely!



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The Skeptics agenda part 1

28/8/2013

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Over the next 6 weeks I shall give my summary of what I consider to be ‘The Sceptics Agenda’.


Each week I shall focus on one aspect of the dogma that ‘skeptics’, ‘sceptics’ or even ‘Skeptics’ use as the foundations for their war against homeopathy and homeopaths with an ultimate goal of banning homeopathy.



‘Homeopathy is unscientific’ so, ban homeopathy

References:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2011.01956.x/abstract
http://sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/homeopathy-is-nonsense-and-so-can-you/

This is based on the tenet that something has to be ‘scientific’ to be incorporated into a healthcare system.

What do you understand ‘science’ to be? http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/science

When a substance it tested before becoming a homeopathic medicine, it's tested amongst a sizable group of volunteers who know they are going to be taking part in a homeopathic clinical trial, however, they do not know what they will be taking and it's taken in its homeopathic form. It’s prepared by a pharmacist with homeopathic knowledge and the organiser of the test does not know whom within the group has taken the substance or a placebo. A case history of the testers is taken before, during and after the testing of the substance, and the information gleaned is documented.

This forms the basis of a homeopathic hypothesis:


Someone presenting with similar symptoms to those that have been precipitated by the substance, later, the homeopathic medicine, can be encouraged to heal themselves by taking this homeopathic medicine.

It is also based on a physiological phenomena that our body produces symptoms. For instance, did you know that a fever is our body’s way of fighting off infection? The infection didn’t give you the fever, you body created the fever as part of its fight back. So, surely, it stands to reason to encourage that ‘fight’ rather than work against it. Isn’t that science? Furthermore, you would agree that a surgeon works within medicine, yes? But are they scientists? There is a difference between medicine, medicines, and science; they are not one and the same. Not all medicine is science, or even particularly scientific. For something to be considered appropriate to be incorporated into a healthcare system, I feel it needs to be seen to produce benefit for its clients, patients or users, in a consistent, reproducible manner and ideally be cost-effective too. I feel homeopathy fulfils these criteria.


As far as a 'Skeptic' is concerned, homeopathy is unscientific, so, ban homeopathy.


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    BSc (Hons) LCH RSHom Homoeopath

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