Why is Homeopathy so looked down upon?

Question

Surely there are those out there that can swear that this form of treatment does work for them.

It was not long ago that we depended on such natural remedies...is this not where a lot of our modern day medicines get their origins from?

Answer 1

There are many instances when a G.P. will tell a patient that (s)he must simply put up with a chronic ailment. In those situations, the patient would be plain silly not to seek an alternative treatment (Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture, spiritual healing, homeopathy, reflexology, aromatherapy etc. etc. etc.). The patient should treat it as a calculated experiment, being willing to spend a certain sum and a certain amount of effort on trying to find alleviation for the condition. If it works, great; if not, well, it was only £30 (or whatever) - better to spend it on trying that than down the pub.. So, if you have a chronic condition that the N.H.S. can't fix, look around your town's main shopping-district, or in the Yellow Pages, for an "alternative therapist". If a prescribed course of homeopathic treatment works, then bear in mind that you may well be able to get a week's supply of the drug from Boots or Holland & Barrett for about a fiver. Some people who dismiss homeopathic remedies probably went straight to Boots and didn't know what the correct treatment was, thereby choosing the wrong drug. As to why the medical establishment looks down on homeopathy, look up the profit-figures of the major pharmaceutical firms (bearing in mind that homeopathic drugs are much cheaper to produce). One last point: until the 1970s (or, to a great extent, the 1980s) acupuncture was dismissed as quackery by the British medical establishment - now one can, if one is lucky, get it on the National Health!

Answer 2

Simone C and dog'n'2cats have given excellent and comprehensive answers. I'd just like to add that I think there are three key problems, causing many people to dismiss homeopathy.

Firstly, there is a confusion about what is meant by homeopathy. It is NOT the same herbalism; and it is not about prescribing potentised (highly dilluted and shaken) remedies. It is about an approach to health, sickness and cure, characterised by 'like cures like' and an holistic approach that understands that humans are totalities (rather than conventional medicine which tends to give one drug for your arthritis, another for your anxiety and another for your indigestion - good homeopathy [not only classical homeopathy] would give one remedy which had that total picture).

Secondly, there is, as has been mentioned by others, the problem of pharmaceutical companies who are extremely powerful and stand to make nothing much out of potentised remedies, the sort of medicine most commonly used in homeopathy.

Thirdly, those potentised remedies DO contradict a great deal of what is understood scientifically about substances and their effects - such remedies have mostly been diluted so that none of the original substance is left in the stuff the patient takes. Nevbertheless, there has been some interesting scientific research which demonstrates that such remedies have an impact, whether taken by humans or animals or in a test tube. You can find some information about these research publications on the Society of Homeopaths' website - go to http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/whats-new/documents/POSITI.PDF or look at other things on their website - www.homeopathy-soh.org

Answer 3

Many common natural remedies are claimed to have blood sugar lowering properties that make them useful for people with or at high risk of diabetes. Learn here https://tr.im/APvTd

A number of clinical studies have been carried out in recent years that show potential links between herbal therapies and improved blood glucose control, which has led to an increase in people with diabetes using these more 'natural' ingredients to help manage their condition.

Answer 4

Because people are quick to rubbish something that they either don't understand, haven't tried or are threatened by. Some people will say it doesn't work having just selected a bottle from the shelf in Boots! It's just NOT that easy!! 4 years in college & learning for the rest of my life is the way to prescribe.
I have a hugely successful homoeopathic practice with a large patient base & with a 95% success rate of helping people who come to try homoeopathy, I'm extremely happy.
The trouble is, we are so entrenched in science & if it can't stand up to scientific trials, it must be rubbish. The fact of the matter is, all the time any trials of homoeopathy are carried out using traditional methods, the results will all be the same - not good! This is because the therapy is INDIVIDUAL to the patient receiving it - so it's ludicrous to suggest that x number of people should receive x remedy & get a positive result from it. I will carry on spending time with my patients to find out what makes them an individual prescribe the remedy that fits them with their problems, make them better and get a lot of job satisfaction at the end. Nothing I do harms anyone.
I wish those who are ignorant about homoeopathy would take off those blinkers and hope that they don't find themselves in the "incurable boat" because they will go down with it if they rely totally on conventional medicine to offer them help.

Thanks for the lecture on research methods Dr Frank - if you'd care to understand though that you can't "test" homoeopathy in this way because it lacks the individual prescribing that is part of the homoeopathic process. Placebo arguement? Babies & animals time after time react positively to remedies - do they have the power of thought that could be dismissed in this case? Did my patient who I saw this morning (who has PCOS & didn't have a regular period in 6 years) have a placebo effect when her periods have normalised every 29 days for the last 6 months & is now pregnant? That's one hell of a placebo effect. She just got the right homoeopathic remedy for HER & not one for PCOS - because that isn't how it works!

Answer 5

Absolutely it works! Modern medicines are necessary, but not for every ailment.

Any practitioner of natural medicine or acupuncture worth their salt uses a mixture of both. And they often use homeopathy to counteract the side effects of modern medicines!

My mother fought stage 4 pancreatic cancer with both chemo and homeopathic medicines, and lived 18 full, comfortable, and memorable months, and died very peacefully. The doctors had given her 2 months to live at diagnosis, and to expect an agonizing death.

I am being treated for a number of ailments, including pre-diabetes. I see both my doctor and my acupuncturist.
I have managed to halt the process with exercise, diet modification, acupuncture and Chinese herbs, from my acupuncturist.

My doctor's idea was to wait to treat me when I actually DEVELOP diabetes. She has since changed her mind about alternative medicine after seeing my steady progress.

I don't know why they look down their nose at it. The proof is there that it works, and they seem to forget nearly all their "miracle drugs" have their roots in natural medicine!!!

Answer 6

Homeopathy has it's origin in the way medical treatment was administered for centuries until around the 1920's. It was unscientific and included barbaric practices such as bleeding which for 99 % of diseases, is at best a panacea.

Answer 7

Naturally because it is a challenge to orthodoxy.
Just think how a safe cure to many illnesses could be a challenge to the drug manufactures particularly perhaps only one or two doses can effect a cure atr a very minmal rate for each tablet say 1 p and if that cure dosent work the simplicity of trying another

Answer 8

Try looking first at this massive analyis of homeopathic and conventional studies from the Lancet.

http://www.farmaciasfrancesco.it/Lancet_Omeopatia.pdf

It concludes 'This finding is compatible with the
notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects'

Placebo effects are huge! If a patient believes a symptom like pain for example is going to be helped by something even if it is totally inert more that 50% of people may be helped. That is a better success rate than many active drugs. The power of the mind is unbelievable.

This is why medicines can only be judged when used in large numbers of patients and when what is called double blind studies, often if possible with cross over studies being used.

This means that neither the patient nor the investigator knows who gets the active drug and patients are often, but not inevitably placed on both placebo and active drug at different times, again without knowing it. All data is sealed until the end of the study.

The difference between the patients on active and inactive drug are then compared and a statistical formula applied to compare these results with the possibility of the outcome occurring by chance. This gives a finite probability that the effect was due to the drug.

That sounded heavy going, but it is now used in every reliable drug trial published.

On the few occasions that these type of studies have been carried out on homeopathic preparations they fail to show a probability that they produce useful effect. Which means evidence based medicine indicates they just don't work.

Answer 9

Sheer Ingnorance, thats what makes people look down on Homeopathy. Nothing else !

Take Care and God Bless.

Answer 10

Avondrow is an idiot. Testimonials are legitimate scientific evidence.

Consider this. There are NO scientific trials (of any type) that document the efficacy of parachutes! Only 'testimonials' and 'clinical observation' provide evidence that they work. The world's leading medical journal, The British Medical Journal, published a very serious scientific review paper on this very issue a couple of years ago . You can find it on their website.

Best wishes.