Homeopathy

[Eilonnwy]

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2366

If you ever wanted to make your ears bleed, watch the video. Luckily Dr. Steven Novella listened for the rest of us and explained this woman's complete idiocy.

[leo-rcc]

As Tim Minchin said: You know how we call alternative medicine if it works? Medicine.

edit: W00T! 2000 posts.

[Meatball]

While homeopathy does have some legitimate remedies(as far as I know), what's damaging is the reasoning behind them and the entire body of misinformation that it's based it.

I can't watch the video because I'm at work, but I've seen a few hilarious homeopathy apologists.

[Tiberius]

I didn't think it had any legitimate remedies. I think you might be confusing it with other natural remedies, which are proper treatments (like St John's Wort). Homeopathic remedies involve taking something that causes illness (or to be specific, the same symptoms that the illness you are trying to cure has) and diluting it with water repeatedly until trace amounts (i.e. none) of the original substance are left.

[leo-rcc]

The phrase Homeopathy has been hijacked to mean "natural" but as Adrian points out the real meaning of homeopathy means diluting a substance that creates something that resembles what ails you (like dry skin or rash), shake violently, dilute again, shake again, and so on and so forth. It's like a vaccine idea, but there are no antibodies for dry skin or rash so it does not work that way.

[leo-rcc]

btw, be sure to read the book Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, well worth the read. It deals with a lot of these topics, including homeopathy, water memory, the Progenium XY complex, the MMR hoax, health scares (antivac), bad statistics, the works. I enjoyed the read a lot, and it was educational as well as funny.

[Eilonnwy]

As James Randi says, the first step of Homeopathy is to use a substance that resembles the symptom you're trying to cure, and the second step is don't do that.

[Meatball]

As I understand, there are various levels of dilution used in Homeopathy, and not all of them are absurdly sparse. Some known natural remedies happen to cross over with homeopathic ones.

That's what I've understood.

[Rhizomorph13]

Meatball,

There are different strengths but ALL homeopathic remedies are designed to remove all the active substance. The starting solution has one drop of active ingredient to 100 drops of water. A reduction is performed by taking one drop of solution and adding it to 100 drops of water, then stir. A 10x power of homeopathic remedy has had 10 reductions performed on it so 100x will have ten time the probability of being just water but even at 10x there is little chance of any substance making it into the final pill. It is based on avogadro's number and the reductions should make it impossible for any of the substance to be left in the pill except by some unlucky accident where one determined particle managed to find the dropper over and over again. The weirdest part of homeopathy is that the more reductions that are done the higher the potency is said to be.

Rhizo

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

While homeopathy does have some legitimate remedies(as far as I know),

Please name two,citing your evidence.