Professor Regan's medicine cabinet
Professor Regan's medicine cabinet
Author
Discussion

Dr Jekyll

Original Poster:

23,820 posts

277 months

Thursday 23rd April 2009
quotequote all
Homeopathy getting a well deserved kicking on BBC2 now.

sstein

6,249 posts

270 months

Thursday 23rd April 2009
quotequote all
thumbup

http://dcscience.net/?p=675

DCs_Improbable_Science said:
Homeopathy: giving patients medicines that contain no medicine whatsoever.

Herbal medicine: giving patients an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness and unknown safety.

Acupuncture: a rather theatrical placebo, with no real therapeutic benefit in most if not all cases.

Chiropractic: an invention of a 19th century salesmen, based on nonsensical principles, and shown to be no more effective than other manipulative therapies, but less safe.

Reflexology: plain old foot massage, overlaid with utter nonsense about non-existent connections between your feet and your thyroid gland.

Nutritional therapy: self-styled ‘nutritionists’ making untrue claims about diet in order to sell you unnecessary supplements.

Spiritual healing: tea and sympathy, accompanied by arm-waving.

Reiki: ditto.

Angelic Reiki: The same but with added “Angels, Ascended Masters and Galactic Healers”. Excellent for advanced fantasists.

Colonic irrigation: a rectal obsession that fails to rid you of toxins which you didn’t have in the first place.

Anthroposophical medicine: followers of the mystic barmpot, Rudolf Steiner, for whom nothing whatsoever seems to strain credulity

Alternative diagnosis: kinesiology, iridology, vega test etc, various forms of fraud, designed to sell you cures that don’t work for problems you haven’t got.

Any alternative ‘therapist’ who claims to cure AIDS or malaria: agent of culpable homicide.
hehe

Pot Bellied Fool

2,212 posts

253 months

Friday 24th April 2009
quotequote all
Dr Jekyll said:
Homeopathy getting a well deserved kicking on BBC2 now.
Homeopathy has been around a long time & has a big following.

But if it's so effective...

Why does no one produce homeopathic WMD? It's the same principle & got to be a lot cheaper & easier than all that nasty toxic stuff by the kilo surely? biggrin

Paul Dishman

5,019 posts

253 months

Friday 24th April 2009
quotequote all
sstein said:
thumbup

http://dcscience.net/?p=675

DCs_Improbable_Science said:
Homeopathy: giving patients medicines that contain no medicine whatsoever.

Herbal medicine: giving patients an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness and unknown safety.

Acupuncture: a rather theatrical placebo, with no real therapeutic benefit in most if not all cases.

Chiropractic: an invention of a 19th century salesmen, based on nonsensical principles, and shown to be no more effective than other manipulative therapies, but less safe.

Reflexology: plain old foot massage, overlaid with utter nonsense about non-existent connections between your feet and your thyroid gland.

Nutritional therapy: self-styled ‘nutritionists’ making untrue claims about diet in order to sell you unnecessary supplements.

Spiritual healing: tea and sympathy, accompanied by arm-waving.

Reiki: ditto.

Angelic Reiki: The same but with added “Angels, Ascended Masters and Galactic Healers”. Excellent for advanced fantasists.

Colonic irrigation: a rectal obsession that fails to rid you of toxins which you didn’t have in the first place.

Anthroposophical medicine: followers of the mystic barmpot, Rudolf Steiner, for whom nothing whatsoever seems to strain credulity

Alternative diagnosis: kinesiology, iridology, vega test etc, various forms of fraud, designed to sell you cures that don’t work for problems you haven’t got.

Any alternative ‘therapist’ who claims to cure AIDS or malaria: agent of culpable homicide.
hehe
All the above = total bks
and you'd wouldn't believe how many times I've had the "if its natural it must be safe" discussion

djmck30

258 posts

202 months

Friday 24th April 2009
quotequote all
There was a quote from Dara O'Briain a while back along the lines of:

"For thousands of years all we had was alternative medicine. Then we got round to testing it all - the stuff that worked we called medicine"

him_over_there

970 posts

222 months

Wednesday 6th May 2009
quotequote all
An old article, but what can happen if you rely on homeopathy.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/dead-babys-parents-...

smh said:
THE parents of a nine-month-old girl who died from septicemia were responsible for their baby's death because they shunned conventional medical treatment for her eczema in favour of homeopathic remedies, a court heard yesterday.

A homeopath, Thomas Sam, 42, and his wife, Manju Sam, 36, are standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court charged with manslaughter by gross criminal negligence after they allegedly resisted the advice of nurses and a doctor to send her to a skin specialist.

Instead Gloria Thomas, who was born in perfect health in July 2001, allegedly died with malnutrition and eczema so severe that her skin broke every time her parents removed her clothes and nappy.

The court heard that Gloria was above average weight, height and head circumference until she was four months old, but lost 20 per cent of her body weight in the last five months of her life after a nurse first identified her eczema and advised her parents to send her to a skin specialist.

The Crown prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi, QC, told the court they sat on this advice for two months and then saw a general practitioner who was so concerned by her condition that he told them to see a skin specialist immediately. But again, they demurred.

"The Crown case is that from this point on, for the next five months of her life until her death … Gloria's eczema played a devastating role in her overall health and it is asserted by the Crown that both her parents knew this and discussed it with each other," Mr Tedeschi said.

"Over time the eczema caused her skin to become thinner and weaker and the constant breaking of the skin allowed infections to enter her body."

The parents, who each had university degrees and postgraduate qualifications, instead sought help from other homeopaths and natural medicine practitioners, Mr Tedeschi said.

On the few occasions that they did follow conventional medical advice, Gloria would improve, but they would soon revert to homeopathic remedies and she would continue to deteriorate.



"Gloria spent a lot of the last five months of her life crying, irritable, scratching and the only thing that gave her solace was to suck on her mother's breast," Mr Tedeschi said.

"Towards the end she was sleeping an inordinate amount of time, her body desperately trying to overcome these infections."

Thomas Sam's sister allegedly "pleaded" with him to send Gloria to a conventional medical practitioner. He allegedly replied: "I'm not able to do that."

Mr Tedeschi said the parents knew their daughter was suffering from malnutrition, that she was losing weight, and even that it was all due to her eczema.

"Despite their observations … they failed to follow through with any proper serious conventional medicine attention for Gloria from proper doctors, as opposed to homeopaths."

The trial continues.
Very sad.

Daisy Duke

1,510 posts

217 months

Wednesday 6th May 2009
quotequote all
Paul Dishman said:
you'd wouldn't believe how many times I've had the "if its natural it must be safe" discussion
I just point out that so is arsenic, and that they probably wouldn't want to take that unsupervised either wink.