Deepinder Cheema wrote:
If these people want to apply aggressive techniques why don't they have their swallow-in outside NICE or govt offices.
They're going for Boots as they're the biggest pharmacy in the country, they are trusted to be selling effective medicines (none of us can have the time to check the data on the efficacy of everything our chemists give us), and yet they admit that homeopathic pills are useless.
Deepinder Cheema wrote:
These remedies seem to work for some people
Absolutely they do. As does a vast range of useless remedies, crystals, prayers and whatnot. Pooley is wrong to say
pooley wrote:
They work for no one - they are a placebo.
That misunderstands what placebo is. Placebo means there is no active medicinal value, and yet having it administered makes some people recover.
Check out Ben Goldacre's article on the placebo effect
http://www.badscience.net/2008/03/all-bow-before-the-might-of-the-placebo-effect-it-is-the-coolest-strangest-thing-in-medicine/
Sugar pills work as a placebo. Weirdly, giving two sugar pills has a better effect than giving one, and a saline injection has a better effect than either.
My guess - untested - is that having someone you trust take a bit of time to be nice to you and be soothing is immensely powerful, and the reason homoeopaths get good results is they sit down and be soothing with their patient for an hour or so instead of the 4 minutes you get at a GP's.
Some studies show homeopathy to work, others show it to be harmful, and the vast bulk show it to have no effect at all beyond placebo. It is not medicine in any real sense and should not be sold as such. It's not a matter of it doing no harm - by giving someone something they think is beneficial you delay them seeking real medical attention.
pooley wrote:
Worse than that, to work they need for water to have a memory!!!
Yep. It defies basic chemistry and physics. They get stronger the more diluted the medicine, so that the really strong stuff would need a pill many times larger than the earth if it were to contain a single molecule of the supposedly active ingredient.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVV3QQ3wjC8
