Jeremy Hunt, new Health Secretary, supports homeopathy

karkus30

Agreed. Some medical problems are mind induced and no amount of conventional medicine helps. Shouldn't be on the NHS though.

Sonic67

How Does Homeopathy Work?

johntheexpat

How can you say that it works in some cases while conventional medecine doesn't, and then categorically deny the right of some patients to the only therapy?

The placebo effect is powerful.  Very powerful in some cases and should be used more.

An excellent use for homeopathy would be, for those who are willing, as a replacement for the dangerous and pointless over-prescription of antibiotics.  Many doctors prescribe antibiotics for viral infections because the patient feels they should be taking something. And basically bully the GP into an antibiotic prescription.  Homeopathic remedies fit the bill.  They will do no harm, the patient gets something  as useful as antibiotics (ie no use at all) (and the placebo effect), and antibiotics aren't over prescribed.  Who doesn't win in a case like that?

imightbewrong

So just tell them you are giving them  homeopathic  medicine,  when in reality it is water (well, it is anyway) - they get cured,  and no money wasted on rubbish - win/win.

karkus30

I don't deny them anything as you can and should pay for those services. When the mind is involved in illness its a very different process from conventional medicine. Get ill with a failing liver, cancer, broken bones, furred up arteries and the body responds to straight conventional medicine. With mind induced illness ( not mental illness, depression or anxiety although they can be helped ) its best if there is a contract otherwise a dependency can develop which stops the success of the treatment. The best way of doing that is to establish a 100% need to change by token exchange and money fits that bill very well as its less messy than contracts written in blood and other weird rituals.

If there is no cost then the patient is often unwilling to give up the wooden leg and the treatment just becomes enfolded into the drama. I have helped cure people of various phobias and fears utilising a kind of voodoo ;-) success was higher when the client made that contractual exchange. Took I while to understand the mechanism, but essentially free things have no, or little value in people's minds so they don't really commit anything and that reduces the effect.

damo_in_sale

There's a name on that motion I recognise- some chap called Frank Dobson.

Wasn't he Health Secretary under the last Labour government?

johntheexpat

So,you want the doctors to lie to their patients?  That's unethical.

johntheexpat

So the whole NHS is useless, being free.

imightbewrong

But giving them unproven medicine isn't?
And not unproven like 'we haven't quite finished the trial' but unproven like 'this just isn't science'.

If it's purely for placebo, what's the difference?

johntheexpat

The thing about the placebo effect is that it is a definite effect, with tangible results in many cases.

Those of us who have read Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre know this.  We also know that the way clinical trials are abused, many modern pharmaceuticals, which have been through all the necessary clinical trials, have no tangible effect apart from the placebo effect.  And being licensed drugs under patent, they are hugely expensive and useless.  So why allow expensive and useless drugs but exclude homeopathy?  At least homeopathy can't have any serious side effects, while new drugs have potentially fatal side effects for their handsome price.