scientific proof

[Theresa Partington]

Hi,
Probably the way forward will be through the insurance companies who have the funds and the motivation to fund trials of alternative treatments, especially non-invasive and potentially cheaper ones. It was a German insurance company who sponsored the Witt study, published by Elsevier a few weeks ago, and presented in summary here. They actually chose a parallel cohort study which is a much more 'realistic' process and more compatible with what homeopaths themselves see themselves as doing.
They were not interested in making/scoring points but getting at a practical assessment.
Anyway, insurance is where the money is and the motivation, IMO.

Theresa

*************************************
You are most correct, but unless we have the financial backing and the
political clout we can't begin to challenge the immense powers that are currently
in charge of the medical world. The only real life scene I can imagine
happening is a revolt by patients tired of non-curing medical care, the great
expense of treatment, the high cost of medications, and becoming enlightened to
the value of homeopathy.
But folks are caught in the allopathic model. Run to the doctor or hospital
for treatment that is paid for by insurance. They pay a few dollars for a
co-pay for treatment and medication. It is so easy to use the allopathic
model.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Tanya Marquette]

i agree that insurance companies are a good venue to lobby since it is to
their
interest. what i admit ignorance is the ties between the insurance
companies
and the medical professions and pharma industry. otherwise why havent
they been pushing for greater 'research' into holistic healing. they do
have the
financial clout to function with independence.

as to a revolt by the public? the public has been conditioned into a
co-dependent
state with the medical profession. trying to argue with people sometimes
is like
arguing with their religious beliefs. and because most people won't take
the time to
educate themselves about their bodies and health, they wind up in a place
of insecurity
and fear at the thought of doing something outside the allopathic sphere.
then when
you add the seductiveness of 'free' health care--forget it-- its a losing
battle. i had a
customer once who was sick for about 8 months with low grade stuff. she
complained
about these doctors who aren't helping and dont know what they are doing.
i suggested
that she look elsewhere. her response: well i am going for an $800.00 cat
scan and it
wont cost me anything--this said with greedy glee!

i think our road is uphill and slow. but i do think that constant
education via all the
networks we have is necessary. one last story: i belonged to a women's
network group
for a number of years. people knew me to be involved in homeopathy. when
i wanted
to do a presentation on holistic health care one year i was ignored by the
groups leadership.
it took another 3 years, with several others asking for such a presentation
before i was
allowed to organize an evening's event. working with several other
holistic practitioners in
the group, we put together a panel discussion. 82 women came to the dinner
meeting, the
number was limited by the space and advance reservations. i know we would
have topped
this attendence if not for these factors. women came to us saying it was
the best presentation
they had been to in the organization and wanted more info. btw, 82 people
in a small
rural area is a huge turnout.

keep the faith

tanya

the funds and the motivation to fund trials of alternative treatments,
especially non-invasive and potentially cheaper ones. It was a German
insurance company who sponsored the Witt study, published by Elsevier a few
weeks ago, and presented in summary here. They actually chose a parallel
cohort study which is a much more 'realistic' process and more compatible
with what homeopaths themselves see themselves as doing.
practical assessment.
currently
great
enlightened to
hospital
a
allopathic
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[Theresa Partington]

Hi Chris,
you obviously feel strongly about insurance companies!
My point was that if a therapy works they have a vested interest in finding out about it. (I am aware they are in business to make money, but I am not sure I would be able to work if I didn't get paid, either! ) We have been bemoaning the lack of funding available for research and here is a place where it could come from. No body mentioned a quest for 'professional respectability'!!
As for what you went on to discuss ( which was a bit of a diversion), I was thinking of the kind of healthcare cover people come to us in UK with (and am assuming from your email that you are not in the UK). The big 'true' insurers only deal with medically qualified homeopaths and maybe your criticisms would apply here, too. However most get cover from hospital savings schemes which cover you up to a limit in each of several different categories, conventional and alternative. The more you choose to pay the more cover you get. Many, many of my patients use these schemes and subscribe enough to cover their cost or a fixed proportion of them for the year. At the same time as paying for homeopathy, acupuncture, osteopathy etc on a monthly basis, they are building up credit in the allopathic, chiropody, dental and optical boxes which they may or may not use. The fact that my patients don't use the other allowances up makes it pay as far as the association is concerned. I am explaining this as it may account for why my experience of people sticking with treatment is so different from yours: these are good long term customers who have found away of funding their treatment without having to find large lump sums for periodic family visits or at times when maybe they can't work. The savings associations are obviously happy to include alternative medicine because it works for them on an actuarial basis - who loses? .............and maybe they could be encouraged to fund research, too.
The logic could extend to BUPA etc. I f the research was there they might extend cover to deal with health care rather than disease care - you never know - it would pay in the long run.

bw

Theresa
Chris wrote
I feel we need to consider what are the motivations of the insurance
companies, and what it is that the insurance companies actually offer to the
individual client, rather than place an undue amount of our own
*professional respectability* in the fact that we are being incorporated
into various insurance companies' protocols.
I mean, they are offering a service/product of financial guarantee in which
a person is insured against *life happening* to them in terms of health and
disease. Everyone knows that "life" will happen to them anyway. So the bare
bone facts are, what will the insurance companies really cover?
In effect, this all comes down to, in their terms, if a patient has
"accrued" a chronic illness they will still only be covered for the minimum
amount of homoeopathic consultations as per *their* schedule. I'm sure I'm
not the only practitioner who has had patients default on treatment because
the patient's quota of "covered treatments" has expired.
I groan inwardly whenever a new patient starts talking about 'health cover'
for treatments, because experience has taught me that the priority for them
is on how many treatments are covered, rather than the real ongoing issues
of what it is that ails them, and what CAN be cured by homoeopathy. Give me
the uninsured patient any day, I am only TOO happy to give discounted
pensioner/disability/whatever discounts based on real need

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Rosemary C Hyde]

Are you-all really serious about wanting insurance reimbursement? Medical doctors are leaving the profession in droves because insurance rules are making it impossible for them to be healers. Personally, I don't especially want to be caught in that net. Rosemary

[Simon King LCPH MARH]

The homeopathic profession seems to think that if it can prove
homeopathy works scientifically then, hey presto, the medical world
will accept them and they'll get paid by the National Health Service
and 'all will be well and all will, be well and all manner of thing
shall be well' ( to quote St Julian).

This focus is based on the belief that H will be successful IN THE
MARKETPLACE, (not just therapeutically) if proved *scientifically* to
work.
I strongly disagree- it wont guarantee that at all!

Trees, dogs, barking and wrong!

It would still only be useful as a marketing tool even if it is
unequivocally and 'scientifically' proven, but as we all know there is
little that is 'unequivocal' at the level of *medical* science. So the
marketing opportunities for H have to be taken piecemeal while they're
still hot. It will always be swings and roundabouts no matter how many
times it is proven, because we have direct and powerful competition ...
and this competition is not going away. If the captains of H
profession thinks proving H scientifically will change that then they
are in for a rough ride!

Any number of trials and very clear evidence It did little for
Osteopathy or Acupuncture but a single register did show that they can
get its act together as a profession. It made no long term difference
to how they are paid, or by whom. The important thing is that the
public no longer felt they had better not mention it to their doctor.
It was suddenly respectable. Proving it works had nothing to do with
it. Many doctors still pooh pooh both those professions but both
professions run on their merits as sold to the public, NOT to the
scientific of medical establishments. It is public opinion, that
counts.

I am not suggestion that any efforts to prove H scientifically or
empirically, should be given up on, just that we be realistic about the
expectations.

Marketing is something homeopathy has never done properly * as a
profession*.
Marketing of H is done solely by individuals, with minimal, if any,
support from the representative bodies. (except token nod once a year -
HAW)
However now that there are more homeopaths than ever and now that the
registering bodies, pharmacies etc have more money than before, there
is the potential to do marketing on a profession wide, coordinated
basis. We should be wooing the public NOT the medical establishment
(it is the public we should address in our efforts not the medical or
scientific establishment, except to use results of tests as marketing
tools and not in the hope that it will provide some absolute, final
rebuttal to the naysayers)

Recognise the competition, recognise what that means we need to do -
We need to capitalise on our strengths not argue our weaknesses!

For that the registration bodies ( and preferably the pharmacies too)
need to combine their resources.
What the H profession isn't doing is making the benefits of homeopaths
clearly and consistently and relentlessly clear to the public, instead
they are letting the public see them on the defensive. There is no
coordination across the profession to make sure the public get the
message, in fact they are confused about H. It is on public perception
that we should concentrate our efforts, i.e. education, education,
education. We should be asking what the best way to achieve that is,
and why were are not currently doing so.

All other considerations, like how H works, should be secondary to
that problem and should work toward re-addresssing that problem, not
toward creating new problems or placing others higher on the agenda.

I suspect that unfortunately some of the motive for the current focus
comes from the secret desire among top homeopathic honchos to be
considered as 'consultants' i.e. they want the STATUS. After all they
feel they are curing just as well as the various Doctors and
consultants, sometimes even better so why no Kudos? I understand this
feeling but the implementation of that objective, as betrayed by the
registration bodies' councils' modus operandi, is not an intelligent
approach to the real problem. In fact it detracts from efforts to deal
with the real problem by placing emphasis where emphasis is not
commensurate with the objectives.

The real problem is NOT that homeopathy isn't accepted by the
scientific and medical communities, it IS that Homeopaths don't have an
endless flow of clients.

Therefore I argue that the priorities of the homeopathic profession as
a whole are weighted in the wrong direction.
I encourage members of the registering bodies to write to their
organisation, questioning their policy on marketing
Simon

[Tom Elder]

Right on Simon, thanks for writing this.

Homeopathy ought to be more careful about what they are asking for, or
expecting from, the medical establishment

Thomas
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Shannon Nelson]

I agree, and I don't think we want to be "part of that". Yet (at least
in some parts of the world) we need to have some sort of acceptance and
recognition; we need to be "legal", or else we will be made "illegal".

Also, the campaign of misinformation may be transparent and pathetic to
*us*, but it certainly won't be harmless. As that great proponent of
"my way at any cost" Hitler pointed out, if you tell people something
often enough, they will come to believe it. I don't think it's useful
to argue with people who are determined not to hear (e.g. James Randi
and his ilk), but we *do* need to keep speaking up for ourselves, and
we need to function as a *community*, not as a bunch of warring
factions.
Shannon

[Ellen Madono]

Hi Simon,
I am not up on scientific proof mainly because I don't think it helps with homeopathic decision making. But for other people, as you know there are many personalities who are very attracted and interested in "proof", especially the scientific type.

Artisan trades such as chiropractics, Chinese medicine and homeopathy travel a tricky road with pharmaceutical and MD science on one side and the naive public on the other side. I suspect that Chinese medicine has nearly ruined it's own internal integrity by adapting "scientific proofs" into its method of analysis and teaching. For example, a major MM textbook by Bensky and Gamble presents scientific experimentation with every herb. Most experiments are of chemical extracts of the herb that are useful for pharmaceutical companies but irrelevant to the whole herb typically used in complex formulae which use specially prepared herbs to change medicinal properties. These experiments on lab animals are mostly irrelevant to clinical use.

Another example, the Japanese have a very watered down version of Chinese medicine that fits nicely into the market model. Japanese style Chinese herbs are sold in any pharmacy. Of course few pharmacists are trained to read pulses. So no real prescription takes place. It's like our homeopathic combinations sold in pharmacies. This totally distorts what is actually an extremely flexible system of organic medicine. The system looks as if it has been bought out by market pressures. The Japanese market is complex and has many sophisticated niches. Real artisan Chinese medicine must exists outside those mass market pressures because it is an art and it is suited to another kind of market: the knowledge market, not the product market.

This is not to say that you are wrong. The market is important. Also, you are right we can't expect much from science when it is not set up to measure what is important in our science. But, irrelevant science is a facade for both of the professions that you mentioned, chiropractics and Chinese Medicine. They and homeopathy are artisan trades, but the mass market is not set up to appreciate the utility of art. I can't see how homeopathy can promote itself without some facade, some easy access point for the naive public. Obviously that is not enough. Real public education must take place along side the marketplace facade.

Blessings,
Ellen

[Dr. Joe Rozencwajg, NMD]

I beg to slightly differ here.
There is some utility in testing herbs and homeopathic substances inasmuch
as they confirm what experience and tradition have demonstrated over the
years. It also helps to have a better grasp of their utility, at least when
you come from "the other side".

Let me give an example, based on a patient: this patient with anal pain
diagnosed as haemorroids by the GP; history and repertorisation brings up 2
remedies: nitric acid and aesculus.
Knowing the vascular tropism of aesculus, you would tend to give it
preferably to nitric acid....if it were really haemorroids.....which it was
not (but nobody included the GP did bother to have a look: there was a
beautiful yellowish fissure, nitric acid solved the problem); knowing that
nitric acid is a caustic substance allows you to choose from the many non
vascular remedies that have the same signs and symptoms, with a different
understanding than simply saying "it is in the proving" but having a logic
based on uncontestable chemistry.

Same with herbs, neither Bensky nor Kerry Bone, nor Simon Mills in their
treatises of phytopharmacology claim that finding one or more "active"
substances gives the key to the use of the remedy, but it allows a deeper
understanding on a cellular and enzymatic level of the action of the herbs,
again not only because it is what tradition teaches us even though tradition
is mostly right.

I think what I mean to say is that some of us, me in particular, like to see
confirmation of what we learned through other means, especially the
so-called scientific one; it transforms empirical knowledge into
reproducible, incontestable facts and allows to walk on firmer ground.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, MD, PhD, NMD.
"The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind".

[Ellen Madono]

Hi Dr. Roz,
I was not thinking of the homeopathic use of those tests, but I see your point. What disturbed my about the testing of Chinese herbs is they are never used as separate chemical elements. The whole rationale for formulae and processing of the herbs is the complexity that is lost in pharmaceutical testing. The same cannot be said for homeopathy. I'll look at those tests with different eyes.
Thank-you,
Ellen Madono