Arguing with homeopaths

this^

homepathy is not called medicine for the very reason that it is not, its ********.

dont believe me?

watch Richard Dawkins show on it, he completley destroys any arguments in favour of it.

I tell them I think it is snake oil. Samer or those people who swallow horse size pills of vitamin C. After that I leave it to them. They want to give the nice man at boots some money to believe it works better than placebo go for it. It does have the benefit it actually has a placebo effect on them cause they think it works.

Even if people are only going to use it for personal use? now that is insane. If someone wants to believe the the mystical juju berry when diluted to the point there would be less than 1 molecule in the pacific that is fine by me. Just don't give it out as a freebie on the NHS.

People who believe in homeopathy should be automatically labelled as clinically psychotic. There is no need to argue with them, they are insane.

Hey guys, I expect to get flamed to helll for this post, but here goes:

Placebo has shown to be effective ONLY for pain relief in several reliable trials. Homeopathic medicines have shown the same thing i.e. the won't actually 'fix' a broken leg or cancer, but they can reduce pain. In the case of homeopathic medicins though, some experiments have shown that they have stronger effects than placebo (i'm not certain on this, but I think at least some of these were carried out by groups or were not unbiased or even anti-homeopathy and in at least one case by some VERY reputed scientists). Some of these people argue that while we don't know how homeopathic medicines work, they seem to work (at least to some extent) in many cases. I have never tried homerpathic medice and i'm not attempting to defend or attack it, i'm just reporting what I have read about it. Homeopathy could be the 'dark matter' of medice i.e. we can see the effects, but we can't see it.

*Flame shield activated*

This is from a reader comment on the BBC:



How do you argue with people like this? I just had an argument with my mum regarding homeopathy. She used countless fallacies and would just not listen, including:
"Thousands of doctors in Germany prescribe it" [Appeal to authority]
"Conventional medicine got X, Y, Z wrong, so why should conventional medicine be able to falsify homeopathy?"

She even argued that while through the dilution process no trace of the medicine remains, the "energy" [sic] of the medicine remains. I am just shocked to see such leaps of faith in people's arguments.

As a last comic entry, let us hear Dr. Werner explain homeopathy.

Why do you care? Let people believe what they want.

I think we should stick to traditional invasive medicine but there is nothing wrong with trying alternative remedies. My mum stop using her insulin for three months and started drinking camel milk- as in my country it is used as alternative medicine- and it seemed to get rid of her type 2 diabetes, I disagree with staunch homeopaths but people who are dogmatically, wholeheartedly against it, too.

Why do you care? Let people believe what they want.

That's the thing, I wouldn't have a problem with it if I didn't think it was so dangerous. The treatments themselves aren't dangerous, but if you use homeopathic treatments in the place of medical treatments which are known to work, it can put your life at risk. Fortunately most people in Europe and the USA who use homeopathy would have the brains to go to their doctor or hospital if it got serious. However some groups of people have gone to the extent of finding poor African villages and setting up homeopathy schools and the like, and telling people that they can use it as a treatment for HIV/AIDS and malaria in the place of conventional treatments. It's sick... if it was just a case of people believing what they want then I wouldn't care, but it's beginning to go too far.

....

....

I was referring to Joe Blogs who acts like it's his duty to try and save you. I find it as annoying as those atheist pricks that decide they need to convert you to their point of view. They're even more annoying than the religious fanatics!

Meh it's like all those things: people who say they can talk to the dead, priests saying they can cure people for donations, tribal shamans in Africa. Part of the fight is psychological, and if these methods can help in some way to calm peoples spirits then that makes them useful.

I don't think you should be telling people homeopathy is useless, or that you shouldn't use it. The key point is it shouldn't be used in replacement of conventional medicine. We shouldn't be trying to outlaw unconventional medicine, it can run alongside conventional medicine perfectly fine provided people are educated.

Agreed.

So I agree that it is the placebo effect, but the fact is, that works. So there's no need to stop homeopathic medicine.

As a last comic entry, let us hear Dr. Werner explain homeopathy.

I don't really see where religion comes into this, or what fight you're talking about, but I agree with your last paragraph (particularly the bolded bits).