Thursday, February 01, 2024

Homeopathy is pure folly.

In truth, conventional medicine is the real integrated medicine. When some treatment is shown to be effective through proper trials, it is embraced and incorporated into practice. But when Dixon or King Charles speak of the need for integrated medicine, what they mean is that doctors should consider recommending modalities such as reflexology, herbalism, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic Medicine and homeopathy, all of which lack compelling evidence. 

The argument for integrating these alternative approaches often introduces the claim that scientific medicine treats only diseases, not patients, and is not “holistic.” Anyone familiar with current medical education knows that claim to be bogus. The patriarchal days of “just do as I say, doctor knows best” are long gone, and medical students are taught to discuss every facet of a patient’s life before coming to a mutually agreed-upon treatment protocol. True, overburdened physicians cannot spend as much time with patients as can alternative practitioners, but the answer to that problem does not lie in asking doctors to legitimize treatments that lack evidence. 

Dixon claims that his professional life turned “from grey into colour” when, frustrated by the “blunt instruments” of his medical training, he gravitated toward offering his patients the likes of acupressure, a range of herbs, meditation, dietary advice and homeopathic pills. “I have witnessed the beneficial effects in so many patients (and) that has been proof enough for them and for me,” he said. 

But that is not how science works. As we are fond of saying, the plural of anecdote is not data. As far as data goes, we have it for the benefits of meditation, diets and even some herbs, and these are by no means solely in the domain of alternative practitioners. But homeopaths promoting the idea that something that contains nothing can cure something misleads patients.

Homeopathy is pure folly. 


https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-pseudoscience/homeopathy-scientifically-implausible

 

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