Whiplash-nyheter

Resultatet av homeopatistudien som publicerats i Lancet stämmer inte alls med min egen erfarenhet. Naturligtvis ersätter personliga erfarenheter inte vetenskapliga bevis. Men motsatsen gäller också; vetenskapliga resultat kan aldrig ersätta individuell erfarenhet. Ingen läkare eller terapeut kan med 100-procentig säkerhet i förväg veta exakt vilken effekt en viss behandling har på en enskild - det gäller både konventionella och alternativa terapier.

Innan jag använde homeopatiska läkemedel hade jag testat en rad andra alternativa behandlingsmetoder, med marginell eller ingen effekt.

Om man nu vill förklara vissa resultat med placebo, varför fungerar den då så selektivt?

I en annan studie som det skrevs om för några dagar sedan konstateras att placebo inte handlar om inbillning, vilket många tycks tro. Men jag saknar undersökningar som förklarar placebo-effektens begränsningar. Hur länge håller effekten i sig? Hjälper den även mot svår smärta till exempel?

Alla studier om placebo som jag läst om har inte gjort någon skillnad på t ex olika typer av smärta, symtomens intensitet, korttids- och långtidseffekt etc.

Just homeopati är dessutom en behandlingsmetod som är svår att bortförklara med enbart placebo. Terapin används med framgång på djur och den brukar ge en s k förstförsämringseffekt.

Jag återkommer säkert med fler kommentarer när jag har granskat den nya studien lite mer i detalj.
 

Eva Lindgren, ANH Sverige, har skickat information på engelska om den senaste tidens negativa skriverier om homeopati:

The Revolutionary Revival of Homeopathy and its Demolishment by the World Media

by Louise Mclean, Zeus Information Service

27th August 2005

Anyone who read the papers, watched the news or listened to their radios yesterday might be forgiven for wondering what yesterday’s media demolishment of homeopathy was all about.

It comes hard on the heels of a report on 24th August that Prince Charles commissioned a study on the economic benefits of complementary medicine and a report in The Times UK on 21st August which stated that ‘demand for alternative therapies such as acupuncture and homeopathy is soaring and people are increasingly using their medical insurance to pay for it’.

This news appears to have sent the pharmaceutical companies into a flat spin and they went into coordinated overdrive to get all their favourite medical and science correspondents to put out highly negative stories about homeopathic medicine in newspapers all around the world.

These reports were based on a very unfavourable study on homeopathy published in the Lancet which stated that the benefits of homeopathy could be all in the patient’s mind. The study was unveiled with fanfare at the end of a week full of complimentary articles about alternative medicine.

Commenting on the study Prince Charles commissioned, Professor Edzard Ernst, the only professor of complementary medicine in Britain, made unfavourable remarks about homeopathy and yet in an article of 22nd November, 2003 entitled ‘A Scientist in the Alternative Camp’ published in the British Medical Journal Online, he says:

‘Our family doctor in the little village outside Munich where I grew up was a homoeopath. My mother swore by it. As a kid I was treated homoeopathically. So this kind of medicine just came naturally’.

The ferocity of the media attack can only mean one thing – that there is a huge rise in popularity of homeopathic medicine and that it is now becoming a threat to the billion dollar drug industry!

This worldwide revolution has taken place almost entirely by word of mouth and by personal recommendation - a truly remarkable phenomenon because up until now the media has studiously ignored and excluded any positive news on the subject.

A few years ago the programme Horizon on BBC 2 tried to demolish the work of Dr. Jacques Benveniste whose studies proved that homeopathic medicines work. Benveniste claimed his studies had been replicated hundreds of times.

Dr. David Reilly of the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital has also conducted many such successful studies and the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital has conducted long term studies of the benefits of homeopathic treatment.

All these homeopathic hospitals, including the London Homeopathic Hospital reportedly have at least 6 month waiting lists.

If anyone needed proof of the efficacy of homeopathic medicine, they need only study the statistics of various epidemics during the 1900s.

In 1854 a cholera epidemic struck London. A report revealed that under allopathic care the mortality was 59.2% whereas under homeopathic care the mortality was only 9%. In the yellow fever outbreak in the US in 1878, the mortality in New Orleans was 50% under allopathic care and 5.6% for homeopathic care. Records of three years of diphtheria in Broome County, New York from 1862 to 1864, show the mortality rate for allopaths as 83.6% and 16.4% for homoepaths.

There are 220 000 homeopathic doctors in India and all over Europe, especially France and Germany, homeopathy is hugely popular.

The Queen, who is arguably the richest woman in the world, reportedly travels everywhere with a homeopathic first aid kit and often dispenses to staff.

The kings and queens of Britain have always had their own personal homeopathic doctor and for the last two centuries the aristocracy has traditionally enjoyed the benefits of homeopathic medicine.

Many famous people, including MPs choose homeopathic treatment. Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, Lyndsey Booth, changed careers from being a lawyer to becoming a qualified homeopath.

Is it possible that all these people have been deluded into taking dummy pills, the effects of which are ‘all in the mind’, in their imagination?! Hardly.

What about animals and babies? How does the placebo effect work on them?! As any homeopathic vet will tell you, homeopathic medicine works almost better on animals than on humans and likewise, babies respond particularly well to treatment.

Is it even possible to explain to them that the homeopathic remedy alleviated their symptoms, much less that the psychological effect of taking it brought about the cure?!

Hippocrates said there were two laws of cure – the law of opposites (orthodox medicine) and the law of similars (homeopathy). In homeopathy, a small, highly potentised dose of a substance (that in a large dose would produce the patient’s symptoms), works as a catalyst to stimulate the patient’s own dormant healing power, setting it into motion to bring about cure.

During the process of creating a homeopathic medicine, the dilution alone would do nothing. It is the effect of the succussion (vigorous shaking) in combination with the dilution that causes the medicine to become highly potent in its action.

This Lancet study is probably just another skewed trial intent on bringing down homeopathy, akin to the kinds of trials we have to come to expect from a pharmaceutical industry that gave the green light to such medicines as thalidomide and Vioxx.

The fact of the matter is that homeopathy has enjoyed a huge rise in popularity for one simple reason and that is because it works.

___________________________________
Possibly the largest worldwide press coverage of homeopathy in one day! Please contact me at louise@zeusinfoservice.com if you can’t get any of the articles up.

D-W World, Germany: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1692210,00.html

Arrive.Net, USA: http://press.arrivenet.com/pol/article.php/685773.html

Medpage Today:http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/AlternativeMedicine/tb/1609

The Scotsman: http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1836902005

Gulf Times: http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=50040&version=1&template_id=38&parent_id=20

BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/health/4183916.stm

The Guardian, UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,2763,1555248,00.html?gusrc=rss

The Daily Mail, UK:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/thehealthnews.html?in_article_id=360205&in_page_id=1797

The Courier Mail, Australia:http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,16374714%5E401,00.html

Reuters:http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-08-24T110146Z_01_KNE439306_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BRITAIN-ROYAL.xml

New Zealand Herald:http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10342648

Fox News, USA: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166947,00.html

Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa: http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/&articleid=249200

IOA, South Africa: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=vn20050827101045868C276991

The Times of India: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1211449.cms

The Weekend Australian: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16397748%255E2702,00.html

Herald & Times: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/45761.html

Zeus Information Service
Alternative Views on Health
www.zeusinfoservice.com

All information, data and material contained, presented or provided herein is for general information purposes only and is not to be construed as reflecting the knowledge or opinion of Zeus Information Service.
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