Homeopathy: It Just Doesn't Work

Homeopathy is big business.  But oops, it is just selling placebos.

The Lancet,  the United Kingdom's leading medical journal, has published a study (lead researcher) on the efficacy of homeopathy.

In a nutshell?  No homeopathic remedy has been found to work.  Any positive results can be ascribed to the placebo effect.  Allopathic medicine, on the other hand, does demonstrate results beyond the placebo effect.

In an editorial, the Lancet urged doctors to tell their patients they were wasting their time taking homeopathic medicines -- but also to make more time to connect with the patients rather than just prescribing and forgetting.

“Now doctors need to be bold and honest with their patients about homeopathy’s lack of benefits, and with themselves about the failings of modern medicine to address patients’ needs for personalized care,” the journal said.

Stand back and watch the homeopaths wriggle out of this one.

Over at the Millenium project, Peter Bowditch gets clear, posting a statement from a homeopath (in blue) and his reply (in red)

It has been established beyond doubt and accepted by many researchers, that the placebo-controlled randomised controlled trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy

Bowditch snorts: "In other words 'This stuff is so useless that the standard tests for efficacy of pharmaceuticals can't show that it works, but that's OK because we are going to keep selling it anyway'."

Exerpt from Lancet:

Clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects
The evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies is weak, according to a study. The investigators conclude that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are compatible with placebo effects. Aijing Shang and colleagues compared randomised placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy with matched RCTs of allopathy. When the analysis was restricted to large trials of high quality there was no convincing evidence that homoeopathy was superior to placebo, whereas for conventional medicine an important effect remained

citation:

The Lancet 2005; 366:726-732

Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy.

From MedPage Today

The meta-analysis of findings from 110 homeopathy trials and 110 matched conventional-medicine trials found that the benefits claimed by homeopathy can be explained by placebo effect, according to results reported in the Aug. 27 [2005] issue of The Lancet.                            

 

The researchers, led by Aijing Shang, Ph.D., of the University of Berne, said that previous reports that homoeopathic treatments were as effective as conventional or allopathic medicine were due to biases present in both homoeopathic and allopathic trials.

 

But when the biases are stripped away, there is still strong evidence of benefit for conventional treatments but "there was no convincing evidence that homeopathy was superior to placebo."

 

This finding was supported strongly by an editorial, a commentary, and a news report detailing controversy surrounding a World Health Organization draft report on homeopathy.

 

The Swiss group analyzed data from controlled trials of treatments or preventive measures with clinical outcomes. All studies were randomized with a parallel-group design and placebo controls and all were described in written reports but not all studies were published. All studies had sufficient data to allow calculation of odds ratios.

 

For studies in which no main outcome measure was defined, the authors selected outcomes from a pre-determined list: patients' overall assessment of improvement; physicians' assessment of improvement; or the most clinically relevant outcome.

 

Clinical topics in the trials included respiratory infections, surgery and anesthesiology. Fifty-eight percent of the homeopathy trials and 85% of the conventional medical trials were published in English-language journals.

 

The Lancet editorial concluded that based on the evidence doctors should be "bold and honest with their patients about homeopathy's lack of benefit, and with themselves about the failings of modern medicine to address patients' needs for personalized care."

 

In the commentary, Jan P. Vandenbroucke, M.D., Ph.D., of Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands wrote that "Shang and colleagues arrive at a class judgment about homeopathy that will be gladly accepted by many who always thought homoeopathic evidence was contaminated. Others will claim this analysis amounts to 'data dredging.'"

 

But, he added that allopathic medicine provides the ultimate proof of efficacy, "by preventing, alleviating, and curing disease ever more effectively."

And connecting the dots: The Questionable Authority  compares and contrasts the intellectual heft of homeopathy and intelligent design.

 

 

Comments

[Suzanne]

In that the homeopathic medicines do have a positive effect because of their placebo value, doesn't that mean homeopathy does indeed have a place in medicine?

I'm a firm believer in mind over matter. Sometimes. :)

Interesting post.
Thanks.

[gWallaceBurg]

Quoting Bowditch, criminal from Australia, in matters of science and medicine doesn't bring a lot of credibility to your arguement. However, quoting Bowditch in matters of libel, defamation and child abuse would.

[Liz]

Peter Bowditch is the proprietor of The Millenium Project. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Bowditch has never been convicted of anything, and therefore is not "a criminal" -- except perhaps in the minds of the quacks and shills he denounces.

Orac Knows reported on the 2004 awards.

Bowditch has been threatened with legal action many times, as a ploy to silence his skepticism.

I take allegations of child abuse seriously. I do not know if Mr. Bowditch has children himself. Bowditch takes on the "anti-vaccination activists" with vigor.

Anti-Vaccination Liars
It is almost beyond the comprehension of sane people that there should be organised opposition to vaccines. A special place should be reserved in Hell for people who want to kill or maim children by preventing them from receiving vaccinations.

I thought about changing the word "liars" here after investigation showed that many of these people are simply deluded, often through a lack of scientific knowledge. However, ignorance is no excuse, especially when any attempt to correct the ignorance or error is met with ridicule, spite and pride in ignorance. Something is not less wrong because you don't know it's wrong - the world was round when everyone thought it was flat and bacteria caused diseases before anyone suspected that such tiny organisms existed.

The child-abuser label seems to come about over the pros and cons of vaccinating children against chickenpox (varicella)* The quote below is from Bowditch's page entitled "Child Abuse"

For some reason, people seem to think that I refer to chickenpox as child abuse. This is not what I mean at all. Varicella is a serious medical condition. These children were abused because their parents thought that it was a matter of pride that the kids had become sick. This is as much a form of abuse as beating them or having sex with them. Perhaps more, because bashers and sexual predators usually don't publicly boast about the fact and show photographs to strangers in order to progress their perverted agendas. Anti-vaccination liars, however, hold as an article of faith that the end justifies the means.

For my money, Bowditch is a person of respectable scientific and skeptical credentials. I've forwarded gWallaceBurg's comment and ISP address to Bowditch.

===========
disclosure: I have one daughter and two stepsons. None were vaccinated against chickenpox, because all three had had the disease before the vaccine became available in the United States. IIRC, the vaccine came out in about 1993 or 1994. If I had small children now, I would not hesitate to innoculate them.

What I do not know is if vaccination against chicken pox will also later mean that the person is not at risk for shingles, which is a painful and debilitating condition.

[vk]

200 years of homeopathy was based on just placebo effect? Somebody is not observing and studying it right.

Some people jump and say "oh.. at high homeopathic dilutions there is not even a single molecule of the original remedy... so it can only be a quack". But how are we sure only molecular interaction can initiate a healing action? We don't have such a proof. It is a "thought" based on current level of science.

Homeopathy has astonishing healing power if you go to the right doctor and get the right remedy and potency. Now, the same type of people will jump again and say "..if it works it is only a placebo effect.." If placebo effect was that strong, drug companies could have marketed even ibuprofen for eczema. Because of the placebo effect, it must have cured many. I think the "placebo effect" itself is a placebo.

Articles like this will only help deny a simpe cost-effective cure to people, making them more desperate with fewer options and alternatives. I agree, homeopathy may not be effective for all conditions.