Views » January 25, 2007

Faith Healing with Homeopathy

The half billion people worldwide using homeopathic remedies are playing a dangerous game

By Terry J. Allen

For the half billion people worldwide who use homeopathic remedies, the potions can be as healing as a hug, as benignly nutty as knocking wood for luck or as dangerous as believing a dashboard Jesus will protect you from an onrushing train. What homeopathy is not, however, is medicine that is scientifically proven to work better than a placebo. Independent researchers have debunked almost every favorable study they have examined and a $1 million prize for proving homeopathy’s efficacy remains unclaimed.

Some homeopaths counter that their cures are not amenable to scientific proof. That’s fine, if you want to call the multimillion dollar industry what it is: faith healing.

The U.S. homeopathic industry would have made my cousin proud. As a kid, he bottled his bath water and sold it to his schoolmates as a magic potion. Unlike this enterprising little charlatan (who went on to work for the Nixon administration—you can’t make this stuff up), most homeopaths claiming imaginary powers for ordinary water actually believe in their products. Some are licensed physicians, others simply hang up a shingle. But consciously fraudulent or not, the homeopathy industry is marketing magic; selling placebos wrapped in ritual, tied with a bright bow of superstition.

Homeopathy rests on three unproven$tenets: First, “Like treats like.” Because arsenic causes shortness of breath, for example, homeopaths prescribe its “spirit” to treat diseases such as asthma. Second, the arsenic or other active ingredient is diluted in water and then that dilution is diluted again and so on, dozens of times, guaranteeing—for better and worse—that even if the dose has no therapeutic value, it does no harm. And third, the potion is shaken vigorously so that it retains a “memory” of the allegedly curative ingredient, a spirit-like essence that revives the body’s “vital force.”

“A shocking fact,” writes homeopathic practitioner Bill Gray, “is that the more the remedy is shaken and diluted (serially), the more powerful the curative action! This remains true even beyond the point of there being even one molecule left in the solution!”

Scientific evidence for the memory? None. Rigorous, replicable double-blind studies documenting cure rates higher than placebo? Few to none.

So what about the fact that some homeopathic patients get better? Part of the effect comes from the ritual of consultation with a practitioner who treats the patient like a person rather than a body part on an assembly line. And just taking anything can help; the placebo effect is real. In gold-standard, double-blind studies, placebos presented as possible cures sometimes rival pharmaceuticals for effectiveness, or beat taking nothing at all.

Nor are the effects simply psychological. When volunteers took a placebo that they were told contained painkillers, they experienced relief, while researchers watching PET scans of the subjects’ brains tracked increased levels of the body’s own pain-relieving endorphins. In other studies, research subjects given placebos instead of antidepressants also showed chemical changes in their brains. FDA data for six top antidepressants showed that 80 percent of their effect was duplicated in placebo control groups.

Which brings us to the patient’s dilemma: Have faith in 19th century magic or rely on a pharmaceutical industry that suppresses negative outcomes (including death), promotes drugs for nonexistent diseases, repackages old drugs in new bottles to circumvent patent expirations, bribes doctors with perks and cash and hires ghost writers to author favorable studies? Given the hype, toxicity, and expense of many drugs and Big Pharma’s snake-oil tactics, the side effects of water (laced with “memory”) start looking pretty damn good. If your condition is relatively minor, self-limiting or untreatable, you may be a lot better off drinking homeopathy’s Kool-Aid-less Kool-Aid.

But if you have strep, a broken bone or a tumor, or if you need immunization from infectious disease, reliance on a homeopathic placebo may kill you.

British newspapers recently reported that homeopathic clinics and pharmacies offered unproven products to prevent malaria and other diseases including typhoid, dengue fever and yellow fever. Travelers who thought they were protected ignored warnings to use mosquito netting; some contracted malaria. And during the height of the smallpox-terror scare in 2003, U.S. doctor Bill Gray tried to market a homeopathic “shield” for smallpox. One reason the FDA stopped him was that its “Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia” does not recognize the “shield’s” supposed ingredient—Variolinum, purportedly extracted from “a ripened pustule of small pox.” It bothers the witless FDA not a whit that Gray’s water actually contained no Variolinium.

In general, the FDA turns a blind eye to homeopathy’s dangers and nonsense. Homeopathic remedies “are the only category of spurious products legally marketable as drugs,” according to Stephen Barrett, M.D., and Varro E. Tyler, Ph.D., authors of The Honest Herbal. “If the FDA required homeopathic remedies to be proven effective in order to remain marketable—the standard it applies to other categories of drugs—homeopathy would face extinction in the United States.”

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• Reader Comments

  Unfortunately, as logical as Ms. Allen sounds, she’s just plain wrong.  I went to see a homeopath after a friend told me that homeopathy completely cured his migraines.  I have suffered from migraines my whole life.  I’ve spent thousands of dollars on neurologists, whose miracle drugs resulted in rebound headaches that were worse than anything I had experienced before. 

  I am finally getting relief—with the homeopathic remedy.  It has been several months and the incidence and severity is better than cut in half and improving.

  The key, of course, lies in seeing a reputable, experienced homeopath.  My practitioner would never recomend a homeopathic remedy to protect against malaria.  Common sense is important here!

  The results that she has related about other patients she’s helped (no names, of course), are impressive.  As with me, many people turn to homeopathy after years of little or no relief from our medical system.  (And no, she’s not a liar!)

  Ms. Allen, in her attempt to protect us all from bogeymen, is doing a disservice.  The important thing is not to do away with treatments like homeopathy that work, but to use common sense.  If I suffered a heart attack, I would not run to my homeopath, I would run to the E.R.  Afterward, I would see the homeopath to help rebuild my strength.

  She means well, but she’s wrong.

  Posted by ChrisKM on Jan 25, 2007 at 7:59 PM

  You sound sensible, Chris. At any rate I don’t want the state dictating to us even more about medical treatment, etc.

  Posted by blondemike on Jan 25, 2007 at 8:40 PM

  I also agree with Chris that Ms. Allen is just plain wrong. At one time there was Hannemann Hospital in San Francisco, which was a homeopathic facility. This was before the mega corporate Sutter chain bought out that and other local hospitals. One of my grandmothers who died in 1967, had an excellent homeopathic doctor. I believe that we need a health system in this country that encourages rather than discourages alternative medical care, such as homeopathic, chiropractic, herbal treatments, and acupuncture. No responsible homeopathy specialist would recommend their remedies for such illnesses as malaria. I happen to see a chiropractor. His treatments are extremely effective for my back. If a patient has some kind of ailment that he is not able to treat, he is able to diagnose that and will advise such a patient to see his or her primary doctor. It must be said that many drugs prescribed by our traditional doctors, often cause serious illnesses and deaths. Shame on In These Times, which is supposed to be a progressive alternative publication, for publishing this nonsense!

  Posted by Walter on Jan 26, 2007 at 7:28 AM

  This is not a minor matter. Terry Allen has done a major service by writing these profound words. We are more than a few years after the Enlightenment, but hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted on unsupported quackery. If there is no proof, there is only blind luck and the benefits of massage. Why, then, is there a homeopath in my family, and why do otherwise smart women in America and the west chase so many pills, so many rubbings of newt, so much GNC profiteering? Because Americans are so good at not performing self-criticicism. And, as Ms. Allen so correctly points out, we are dunderheads at regulation. What an embarrassing state of affairs.

  Posted by notabilia on Jan 26, 2007 at 12:10 PM

  I would have nothing against the FDA testing homoeopathic and other alternative remedies, if the traditional medical establishment wouldn’t be dominating matters. notabilia just ignored what Chris stated, which is that homeopathic remedies have prevented Chris from getting migraines for several months. As Chris said, “The key, of course, lies in seeing a reputable, experienced homeopath.” Homeopathy and the other altermative treatments must be enoucraged as I said. The practitioners of such professions must be licensed, just like our traditional providers. notabillia is correct about one thing. There IS profeterring, but the profiterring is also by the big Pharma corporations, and too many of the traditional doctors peddle their drugs onto their patients without those doctors doing their own research, which often results in a lot of harm. It’s obscene that there are all of these advertisements in the media. Both traditional and alternative medical treatments have their place.

  Posted by Walter on Jan 26, 2007 at 4:55 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 16 posts.

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