“…Do you know there are Dr.s of Homeopathy that know how to stop cancer, they know sugar feeds cancer, but when they treat people and it works, the Medical societys and the pharmasuiticals lobbys even cause them to lose their medical license…”
Citations please, not “I heard it from a friend” or “I read it on whale.to”

“…what do you think Aspirin is, ? It is an old remady from long ago and has proven to be a great remady for pain, inflammation…”
Amazing! I really must ask my doctor about this. Oh wait, he probably already knows this as do most people that take anywhere up to 5 minutes to look this old fact up. Not something that homeopaths actually discovered though. There may have been a scientist or two involved. Here’s another one; vitamin C cures scurvy. Just wait until Big Pharma learns about that!

“…Homeopathy can help people with M.S.and it teaches eating of the proper foods that will help any condiction you have…”

Homeopaths may well teach people the benefits of a proper diet. Oddly enough, doctors aren’t afraid to dispense the same information. Doctors do not, however, claim that eating a proper diet will help every condition. Homeopaths may do so; if they do, they are wrong. Oh, and the M.S. being helped with homeopathy; citations please.

Simply put, if homeopaths could do all of the marvellous things you claim, they would not have any need to claim that properly controlled, double-blind studies don’t let homepathy show its true benefits. And they’re not afraid to make a s***-load of money out of nothing either. Look up en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillococcinum . So much for the Davidian struggle of homeopathy against the Goliathean Big Pharma.

I think i mixed you up with ScepticsBane there with regard to quantum mechanics. But there are issues with what you have been arguing, particularly with people buying these products. The evidence for or against homeopathy is important when these products are pitched to customers.

The description of homeopathy implies a natural phenomenon that can be investigated critically. It’s supposed to be a repeatable and reproducible phenomenon, which is something that can be scientifically investigated.

@121, you’re admitting that homeopathy is simply placebo. This moves away from the water memory and quantum mechanics jibberish used to try and explain homeopathy.

yep.

I’ll leave it to you to find homeopaths who lie about scientific backing, then you can have the pleasure of reporting their fraud to the appropriate authorities.

And as far as real estate agents and used car salesmen go, if they get caught making false claims, they are dealt with. As were the homeopaths in that first link of mine.

So should the scientific community investigate homeopathy or not?!

Probably all Western countries have laws against false and misleading advertising and laws that enforce fair trading practices, when homeopaths cross those laws they should be stepped on.

Some of the most important questions to be asked.

Let’s put the whole “does water have memory/does Quantum Mechanics support this” to the side for a moment. Let’s even assume for the moment that water does somehow have memory and like cures like. (Big assumptions, I know, but I’m going somewhere with this.) How do I know whether Homeopathic Treatment 1 by Company A is better/worse/the same as Homeopathic Treatment 2 by Company B? How do I know that Company A isn’t just packaging plain water (or plain sugar tablets) and billing it as homeopathic medicine?

With mainstream medicine, it is easy to test. Grab a bottle of Advil and head to your local lab. They can examine the pills and tell just what chemicals are in it. If a container of Advil turned out to be nothing but gel-coated sugar pills, the company’s fraud would be found out quickly and stopped.

According to homeopathy’s supporters, though, a vial of homeopathy cure looks the same as a vial of plain water when examined in the lab. (“Science just needs to catch up.”) Therefore there is no mechanism for preventing fraud. Companies could release products billed as homeopathic cures without following any kind of homeopathic procedures and they would have no risk of being caught (unless the CEO was caught bragging or something).

To the homeopathy supporters, I pose this question: How do you propose ensuring that consumers receive products that are actually homeopathically-prepared solutions and not fraudulent products piggybacking on the “trendiness” of the name “homeopathic”?

To everyone else, you may now stop your suspension of disbelief regarding water memory and like cures like.

My position is not that because something is scientifically unsound it should be illegal. My comments on religion further up show that. Neither am I suggesting a justice system run by scientists.

My position is echoed by ND above. Homeopathic remedies are not medical treatments, therefore they should not be sold as such. That is why I believe it is fraud when they are.

In the case of homeopathy, selling a product for medical purposes without showing solid evidence of efficacy is part of the long history of selling medical products that don’t work. If you’re making the claim, they you should back it up with evidence, otherwise you have no right to demand that your claim be taken seriously.

You’re trying to shirk away from the responsibility of backing up claims by pushing it on the consumer (“it’s up to the consumer to make the judgement”) , or trying to represent science as a narrow minded endeavor .

“Remind people that they do not sell what they claim to.” What is it that are they supposedly claiming that they sell? They’re not claiming to sell conventional medicines, there’s no secret about what’s in the bottles they’re selling, it’s entirely up to the consumer to make the judgment as to whether or not the offered remedies are what they want to buy.

The scientific explaination about the effectiveness or otherwise of homeopathic treatments is irrelevant to whether or not its sale should be legal or not , in the human world many things are not determined by science.

Ian was correct in what he said, and most of what Nigel said I wouldn’t dispute. Where we differ is the suggestion that because something is scientifically unsound, it should be made illegal, or seen as fraudulent. While I, like many others, am no fan of lawyers, I think a justice system run by scientists would be far, far worse (and that’s from someone with a solid science based perspective on most issues).

(This whole debate is starting to remind me of the arguments on The Big Bang Theory between Lionel and Sheldon, Sheldon just isn’t equipped to understand the world outside of his narrow science based perspective).

@106 Andrew W

I guess you can’t find me that definition that excused homeopaths. Shame, I was looking forward to that. Anyway, if I had the time and the money I’d consider legal action. What I’m hoping is that with a little education in the general population that somewhere it’ll happen. A point I made in my first post and you ignored, preferring to go off on a tangent about religion. So that’s what I prefer to do. Remind people that they do not sell what they claim to.

OK. It’s just that you have the same name and initial and seem to support bogus medicine.

Yes Nigel explained it further up the page. He did it better than I could and I’d just be repeating him. Also Ian (108) has backed us up on this too.

But really, this supposed fine tuning to the individual’s biology and circumstance should make the effects even more pronounced because it’s so targeted. So all that needs to be done is a clinical trial with a ‘real’ homeopath doing ‘real’ homeopathy. Oh that’s right, ain’t gonna happen because of Big Pharma (imagine the profits they could make by selling pure water as medicine).

Not in medicine, where effectiveness is the test. Consumer satisfaction can be very misleading, a couple of years ago Asthmatics were surveyed for their use of herbal medicines, they reported that they were very satisfied with their herbals, but they also reported that they did not think the herbals helped!

No one has, because it was taken off the market by the very clinical trial mechanisms (in this case post marketing surveillance) that you disparage. Fen-Phen produces rare, but serious side effects (around 1 in 50,000 people will have serious side effects from Fen-Phen) that will not be picked up in clinical trials (typically of less than 10,000 people in a trial). In this case the risk of the rare side effects (heart valve disease, pulmonary hypertension) outweighed the benefits of the drug (mild weight loss) and the drug was removed.

(respectfully applauds Nigel Depledge)

I don’t know, but you apparently believe it’s legal fraud, assuming “under any definition” means “under any definition” so I look forward to reading about your legal action.

“Bit of a fan of him are you?” Never heard of him.

“Nigel has explained …” Oh, well, that proves it then. /sarc.