WHO Lays the Smack Down on Homeopathy
August 22nd, 2009
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Finally, the World Health Organization has made a very clear statement on their position when it comes to homeopathy, and it seems they’ve chosen the correct one! The statement by the WHO was apparently prompted by a letter from the Voice of Young Science Network asking the WHO to “condemn the promotion of homeopathy for treating TB, infant diarrhea, influenza, malaria and HIV.”
In a letter to the WHO in June, the medics from the UK and Africa said: “We are calling on the WHO to condemn the promotion of homeopathy for treating TB, infant diarrhoea, influenza, malaria and HIV.
“Homeopathy does not protect people from, or treat, these diseases.
“Those of us working with the most rural and impoverished people of the world already struggle to deliver the medical help that is needed.
“When homeopathy stands in place of effective treatment, lives are lost.”
Dr Robert Hagan is a researcher in biomolecular science at the University of St Andrews and a member of Voice of Young Science Network, which is part of the charity Sense About Science campaigning for “evidence-based” care.
He said: “We need governments around the world to recognise the dangers of promoting homeopathy for life-threatening illnesses.
“We hope that by raising awareness of the WHO’s position on homeopathy we will be supporting those people who are taking a stand against these potentially disastrous practices.”
Dr Mario Raviglione, director of the Stop TB department at the WHO, said: “Our evidence-based WHO TB treatment/management guidelines, as well as the International Standards of Tuberculosis Care do not recommend use of homeopathy.”
The doctors had also complained that homeopathy was being promoted as a treatment for diarrhoea in children.
But a spokesman for the WHO department of child and adolescent health and development said: “We have found no evidence to date that homeopathy would bring any benefit.
“Homeopathy does not focus on the treatment and prevention of dehydration – in total contradiction with the scientific basis and our recommendations for the management of diarrhoea.”
Well, it’s about damn time!
The World Health Organization is the medical branch of the UN and is responsible for promoting good science-based medicine around the world. One of the biggest concerns of the WHO has long been the conditions in third world countries, where local health authorities range from ineffective to non-existent. In many of these areas, quackery is a huge problem and dishonest practitioners and snake oil pushers will take the few pennies that the poorest can scrape together.
Areas like rural India have become infested with quacks and traveling scam artists. The combination of desperation and lack of education and well established medical systems can make such areas especially attractive to homeopaths. These scammers do not only defraud the poor, they also have undermined efforts to improve medical care by international groups like the WHO. The homeopathy movement has allied itself, in many circumstances, with movements like the anti-vaccine interests. The spread of superstition and false claims of dangers from modern science-based medicine has turned out to be one of the biggest hurdles that groups like the WHO face. Indeed, vaccine fears and claims of alternative methods of treatment have managed to set back progress in the worldwide effort to eradicate polio considerably.
Not surprisingly, there is a response from one of the liars in question:
However Paula Ross, chief executive of the Society of Homeopaths, said it was right to raise concerns about promotion of homeopathy as a cure for TB, malaria or HIV and Aids.
But she added: “This is just another poorly wrapped attempt to discredit homeopathy by Sense About Science.
“The irony is that in their efforts to promote evidence in medicine, they have failed to do their own homework.
“There is a strong and growing evidence base for homeopathy and most notably, this also includes childhood diarrhoea.”
The UK’s Faculty of Homeopathy added that there was also evidence homeopathy could help people with seasonal flu.
Dr Sara Eames, president of the faculty, said people should not be deprived of effective conventional medicines for serious disease.
But she added: “Millions die each year as those affected have no access to these drugs.
“It therefore seems reasonable to consider what beneficial role homeopathy could play. What is needed is further research and investment into homeopathy.”
So there is evidence? Well lets see it! (remember, just citing the existence of evidence or “studies” doesn’t cut it here. You actually have to name the names of the studies and not make vague statements that they’re out there.)
One thing that the WHO would probably not disagree with Eames on is that there is indeed a worldwide problem with getting the proper drugs and treatments to everyone who needs them. However, homeopathy offers no benefit, and can make this effort more difficult. Every dime spent on homeopathy is one that is not spent on good science-based medicine and even worse, those who are lead to believe there is anything to homeopathy may not seek out legitimate medicine, believing they are receiving effective treatment.
There may be some circumstances where using old standby treatments or traditional remedies may have some value. For example, traditionally the chemical quinine was used to treat malaria. Quinine is derived from the bark of the cinchona plant and was used for malaria treatment well into the 1960’s. Today it is no longer considered the best treatment for malaria and the WHO no longer recommends it as the primary treatment method if other drugs such as artemisinin are avaliable. However, it is still fairly effective in most cases and certainly better than nothing, so if you’re stuck in the badlands with malaria and quinine is all you have to treat it, you certainly should use it.
But this is not the case with homeopathy. Unlike other treatments which may be obsolete in much of the world, but still of some value if they are all that is avaliable, homeopathy is 100% useless. It has no redeeming qualities and can do no good. It can only make the efforts to save lives and bring better medical care more difficult. No remedy or treatment should ever be sanctioned in any way unless it is at least better than doing nothing.
(also, homeopathy isn’t even traditional or natural. It was invented circa 1800 by a German guy.)
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Good Science, History, Paranormal, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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August 22nd, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Homeopathy condemned by WHO, the chiropractic quacks being convicted for tax evasion, insurance fraud, and credit card scams. Looks like the wheels of justice and reason are slowly turning against these practices.
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August 23rd, 2009 at 1:15 am
I can actually see how, if you defined the study carefully, you could manage to get a result where homeopathy is useful against diarrhoea. Not in stopping the disease, but in treating the symptoms. When you die from this, the actual cause of death is usually dehydration. So, a treatment which is basically water, as opposed to no treatment at all, would be more beneficial. One of the big problems with flu is also dehydration, so the same applies.
Of course, you’d have to make sure your study didn’t compare it to actual medical treatment.
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August 23rd, 2009 at 6:10 am
Weirdly, very weirdly indeed, homeopathy might in fact help with childhood diarrhoea.
The treatment is not water, as above though. Homeopathic medicines are diluted in water, certainly. Down to where there are no active molecules at all, as we all know. But the method of application is that this liquid is then ensconced in a sugar pill. That’s the actual tablet that is taken, a sugar pill.
And what is the treatment for childhood diarrhoea? Oral Rehydration Therapy. Which is sugar and salt in water. Actually, what we’re doing with ORT is not just rehydrating, we’re also restoring the electrolyte balance with the sugar and the salt.
So giving someone a sugar pill is in fact part of the conventional, ORT treatment.
If we were to test ORT against homeopathy then ORT would win hands down. But homeopathy here, because it uses the sugar pill as its applicator (and thus nothing at all to do with homeopathy itself) would indeed be better than doing nothing.
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August 23rd, 2009 at 6:26 am
Tim Worstall said:
“…and the very next day, thousands of homeopathic practitioners published blogs and wrote letters to the editor exalting in the endorsement of homeopethic treatment for serious childhood conditions by a prominent skeptics blog…”
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August 23rd, 2009 at 9:27 am
Stephen said:
A proper study would compare an equivalent volume of “regular” water. The idea of homeopathy is that the water is somehow energized or remembers the characteristics of what was diluted in it.
Similarly, if you were to use pills, you would want to use pills that were the same shape, same size and same composition (aside from active ingredient) for the control group. These days we use the term “sugar pill,” but most tablets are made of filler material like corn starch, gelatin and other intert ingredients. If you were doing a homeopathic study you’d want to use the same kind of pill for the control, minus the homeopathic water or whatever.
Anyway, I doubt homeopathy would really be that useful in terms of rehydration. Most homeopathic treatments I’ve seen don’t involve a tall glass of water, but rather the preparation is sold in tiny perfume bottles for $50 or something and you take a little bit like a legitimate medicine.
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August 23rd, 2009 at 11:46 am
Well, it seems as though everyone has elevated the “STUDY” as superiour to the results obtained with a real live human patient.
It gets curiouser.
Where are the “studies” showing the efficacy of chemotherapy, heart surgeries or radiation done on human patients.
For obvious ethical reasons, there aren’t any.
So then how does allopathy determine these treatments? BY THE EXACT SAME METHOD THE HOMEOPATHS USE, by the clinical reports, case studies and experience of the MD’s, surgeons and other well trained health professionals.
Some bit brained statisticians can go figure out how much of that is “placebo” and how much real, I’m sure the patients themselves don’t care.
Now what is this about calling the head of the Society of Homeopathy a liar? Seems like innuendo, ridicule and a lot of ANTI-scientific stuff here instead of some rational arguments and discussions – for example of the numerous research articles clearly showing that high dilution solutions can and do stimulate biological activity, yes, even after all the stimulant molecules are diluted away. It is the task of scientists, research scientists, to confirm and explain this, and that is exactly what they are attempting to do. See Ennis, Inflammation Research, vol 53, p181 among others.
So, if I understand this phenomena correctly, a bunch of self appointed censors, busily calling people “liars” or “quacks” have taken to attacking Homeopathy and other alternative medicine systems based on things as scanty and unscientific as their own 1930’s era ball and stick molecule visualizations, their personal sense of “outrage” that the whole thing is “impossible” or on their own studied anti-intellectualism and refusal to even bother to look for confirmatory studies and analysis.
The author of this blog post mentions that the WHO has advocated artemisinin for malaria, perhaps not even knowing that the Chinese used this (qing hao in Chinese) for HUNDREDS of years to treat malaria. Perhaps the author of this blog regards all of Chinese medicine as quack nonsense to be dismissed with contempt along with the “German” guy from 200 years ago?
I object. I object to innuendo, misrepresentation, ridicule of genuine scientists, MD’s, Homeopaths, researchers and other health professionals and to the anti-intellectualism which somehow attempts to substitute mass condemnation by the internet equivalent of a shouting mob for carefully conducted scientific observations, clinical reports, case reports and research which takes decades to complete and analyze. The anomalies which led to Barry Marshall’s Nobel prize winning discovery had been observed over a period of 40 or 50 years. Too bad there was no Internet then to permanently discredit ANY researcher who dared investigate them.
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August 23rd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Looks like Doc hit a nerve.
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August 23rd, 2009 at 3:10 pm
James Pannozzi said:
Sure there are! I can get you the cure rates versus doing nothing with no problem. Just give a more specific example. There are studies that have looked at chemo versus radiation versus both versus doing nothing. Studies on heart surgeries and so on.
These are first tested clinically on volenteer groups and before that tested in vitro or on animal subjects, of course.
James Pannozzi said:
Placebos don’t make you better, they only give the illusion of things being better and they are certainly not reliable! A placebo is a comforting lie.
James Pannozzi said:
Object all you want. I object to you defending fraud and lies.
James Pannozzi said:
Facts matter. Not inuendo or shouting mobs. Facts, as determined by valid scientific observation and study. Any genuine scientist or MD who buys into this crap needs to go back to school and take all the science 101 courses again.
James Pannozzi said:
What the hell does that have to do with anything? Marshall proved the link between bacteria and peptic ulcers. That was done by good scientific research. It has nothing to do with homeopathy
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August 23rd, 2009 at 10:50 pm
What is the difference between homeopathy and other traditional or nature-derived medicines or treatments?
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August 23rd, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Miniglossary of “Alternative” Methods at Quackwatch gives a good overview of the various fields of so-called ‘alternative medicine’. That would be a good place to start.
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August 23rd, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Nicely done, Gordon.
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August 24th, 2009 at 2:21 am
L337135 said:
Scientific evidence that it works, and adherence to other known science.
Homeopathy does neither.
/Michael
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