Minutus

Friends,
Last week the British Museum of Natural History held a debate on
homeopathy with Dr. Peter Fisher and Dr. Ben Goldacre. I'm wondering if
anyone attended and could give me/us a summary and analysis of what was
said.

Dana Ullman, MPH
Homeopathic Educational Services
2124 Kittredge St.
Berkeley, CA. 94704
(510)649-0294
(800)359-9051 (orders only in the U.S.)
(510)649-1955 (fax)
dullman@igc.org OR dana@homeopathic.com
http://www.homeopathic.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Dear Dana

I attended.

Dr Fisher opened by explaining the basis of Homoeopathy in that we were
looking for treatment by similars.

Had he started by explaining how it was discovered by Hn re Malaria and
China he would have advanced the cause greatly in my view.

He then spent much time saying that there had been various studies on the
effectiveness of Hom and that quite often the results were viewed with
extreme and unscientific bias. He had a go at the Horizon programme saying
that it was inconclusive and they had remained coy about the parameters of
their data and he said that he had discovered by chance that N had been 80
which could give a poor statistical result.
What he failed to mention about the horizon Prog was that they had shown
that some samples of potentised water had an effect on Basophiles!
This was a much better point to prove that something during experimentation
had gone wrong - most probably during labelling.
(with a magician involved who is to stand to lose a vast sum of money
anything is possible.)

He also explained that Hom had been wildly in use in various countries -
with a massive growth in the past 30 odd years.

Dr Goldacre basically attacked him on the use of these statistical reviews.
Attacked on the fact that Homs had prescribed Homoeopathic remedies for
people intending to go to a Malaria infested area and not mentioned anything
about other forms of protection, even proper dress code of long sleeves and
being careful at dusk, sleeping in a net etc.

Also he attacked because Homs were anti vaccination - especially MMR. Fisher
supported him in this saying that Hn is on record as supporting vaccination.
Time was short and I did not get a chance to respond to them as the father
of a vaccine damaged child.

There was of course the usual arguments about the placebo effect.

From Sheri:
"So far mumbo jumbo from Fisher as well as Goldacre - Nothing clear for the
audience
And Fisher just said placebo affect works for children and infants as they
want to please their parents and same for pets.
How wonderful that he represents us.

good comment from someone in audience - homeopath we know? That there needs
to be clarification regarding the difference between a potentized substance
used any which way and the use of that substance homeopathically according
to the symptoms. Not any response to that but glad she made that point.

Complementary medicine? It is a complete system on its own.

This one makes me nervous as Peter Fisher is a med doctor and not classical
or Hahnemannian and Ben Goldacre is adamantly against homeopathy and writes
as such.
We need Dr. Luc also for a better balance."

From Irene:
"In many diseases it seems that "placebos" only work in homeopathy....So
when do we homeopaths start holding classes for the medical profession in
how to get results with placebo?

After all that would at least remove a few hundred thousand deaths per year
that are admitted due to drug reactions and/or nosocomial
infections, not to mention 6 million or so reported "severe reactions to
drugs" in USA annually?"
After the break, I managed to have the opportunity to address the meeting
and built on the fact that the use of potentised substances did not show the
effectiveness of homoeopathy, but the substance had to be chosen on the
basis of symptom similarity and that in fact a substance is ONLY proven to
be homoeopathic after being taken by the patient and for symptoms to improve
subsequently. (At this Dr Goldacre raised his eyebrows!)

I added that therefore the double blind trials were unlikely to be
conclusive as quite often the remedy selection was not homoeopathic. The
only case where the effectiveness of Homoeopathic remedies can be shown is
during epidemics and sited as an example the events of the cholera epidemic
in London during the 19th century where Hom Hospitals were particularly
effective against the failure of the allopathic hospitals.

At this Dr Goldacre admitted that yes Hom was effective during epidemics! I
couldn't believe my ears!

One thing that came through that we needed a greater amount of funding to
show the effectiveness of Hom. One person attending (from Germany?) stated
that the whole amount of money spent on research on Hom was less that the
money spent on just one of the -lolo drugs for hypertension etc.

At the end I managed to speak to Dr Goldacre and asked him why he refused my
offer that he should take part in a proving - he said it was because I had
come across as too aggressive promising him to be rather ill during the
proving. This from the person who says that high dilutions have no effect.
(Minutus old hands will remember the story).

Rgds
Soroush