Dear Akshay,

"Homeopathy acts and that is sure.
Anyone saying against it will not make it stop acting."

I'm afraid that a leading homeopath has told me otherwise:

Nobody can force you to cure.

A chemical medicine can force itself on the body by brute force, creating the desired effect (but then it will not actually heal because the person was not involved, it would only remove the symptoms temporarily and push the disease further deeper into the future), but a homeopathic remedy works by sending a subtle message to the brain/body/spirit. One is always at choice to refuse that message, to shut their ears to it, and then it will not work. Belief is not necessary - being sceptic while allowing the possibility of the remedy working is sufficient, but actively rejecting it will void any remedy.

The King (Hazza) has spoken therefore it must be so!

Which of course, Yuyutsu, is exactly how a placebo works.

The mistake is dismissing the placebo effect as not being real. It is certainly real, but is very difficult to pin down and not many research organistations will fund study of the effect in and of itself.

I think you all should read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (especially anyone who is a sceptic), it will give a great insight into the marvellous things that the placebo effect can do.

For instance did you know that just by changing the colour of the pills or capsules that the efficacy of a particular drug can change? Weird huh?

And this one: did you know that a great many Naturopathic/Homeopathic medicines and vitamins etc sold are actually produced by the large pharmaceutical companies? They don't really care of you don't believe in the efficiacy of their drugs or not. They get your money either way, and the profit margins on homeopathic treatments are far higher.

After all, most of them are just water.

Bugsy,

How can a placebo work on babies or on the elderly or on a sleeping patient who are not even aware that they received it? The requirement for homeopathic remedies is only that one does not actively resist it.

I do have great reservations about the sell of homeopathic "medicines" by large pharmaceutical companies. These are indeed probably nothing but placebos and as you say, most of them are just water - unqualified water (or sugar or alcohol).

As I see it, the best homeopathic remedies (not "medicines") carry with them the love of the doctor that prepared them, where the specific essence being used, though probably chemically absent by now due to potentisation, helps to concentrate and focus that love in a particular direction. They are best given by hand from the same doctor. It is of course hopeless to try to explain this to someone who does not believe in love, only in chemistry.

Such people who do not believe in anything but chemistry would deny any non-chemcial qualification, not just homeopathy. For example, they would deny the "holiness" property of water taken from the Jordan river, which is special to most Christians. Such people would be happy, if given the opportunity, to cheat and sell ordinary local water for "Jordan-river water" with great profit (an interesting question is whether you believe this should be considered legally criminal even if you believe there is "no difference"), so such people would similarly refuse to recognize the quality of the doctor's love present in his/her remedies. I could not trust such anonymous, heartless big companies to be on the straight and narrow in that regard, nor do I know what kind of doctor they employed in the first place and what is his/her capacity to love, that is if they had a human doctor there in the first place and not just machines.

Clownfish (and Ho Hum)
It doesn't change the fact that this source backs up my claim that homeopaths still adjust dosages to the alleged minimum required to suit patients, and increase or decrease dilution to match sensitivity to medicines.

I don't really know why you are getting so bent out of shape about this, I'm merely pointing out some simple points, still without actually endorsing the practice at all.

Actually, King Hazza, your original claim (which I admit we have somewhat wandered from - the sheer lunacy of homeopathy offers so many tempting side paths of crazy) was that homeopathy was a primitive form of vaccination. This is most certainly bunkum.

Vaccination basically works by exposing the immune system to a small dose of a pathogen to stimulate an immune response.

Homeopathy does not, nor has ever, operated on such a premise. In fact, homeopathy often actively denies the germ theory of disease. Homeopathy is predicated on the belief that substances that mimic the symptoms of a disease are capable of curing it.

Homeopaths don't adjust dosages to suit patients: that would imply some sort of evidence-based approach, which homeopathy entirely lacks. Homeopaths dilute substances, usually beyond the point of actually being present, to satisfy a nonsensical magical formula, including among other things, the crazy notion of 'constitution types'.

Yuyutsu, I can see where you're heading, so a little heads-up: Masaru Emoto has been comprehensively debunked. 'Focusing love' on a substance makes no difference to its chemistry.

Pelican, if my intention is not clear to you by now, there's not a lot of hope (I stated it clearly in my last post). Just admit it: you draw an irrational divide between naturally occurring chemicals (good) and human-introduced chemicals (bad).

I have no 'pro-chemical agenda' (you mean you're *against* chemicals? All of them? :p ), I have a pro-evidence agenda. As you urge, I *do* choose to be an informed consumer - and the science-based information is that, contrary to your claims, pesticides are not all intrinsically harmful, nor are all naturally occurring plant-based chemicals beneficial.

It would seem that the ill-informed consumer is yourself. Your original statement, 'freshly grown food (no chemicals)' is still nonsense.

Looking back, I've also just noticed your reference to 'high voltage power lines': apparently we can add electrophobia to chemophobia on your shopping list of irrationalities.

You do know that there is no evidence (the claims of the usual quacks notwithstanding) that high voltage power lines have any adverse affect on human health?