2008 July

Editorial July & August 2008

by Jan Scholten
Beginning of June there was a discussion on television about alternative medicine. Three professors of regular medicine were denying any possibility of homeopathy having an effect. All positive effects in patients were labeled as variability in symptoms or placebo.


I am always wondering how they can do that. Although I must admit that homeopathy is strange and when I first encountered the potentizing process I was wondering in a similar way "How can that have any effect". But seeing results is convincing. Of course there are many patients where the results could just as well be placebo, but there are also very many results were there is no doubt that the remedies have effect. A first situation often put forward is that of animals. Another situation is patients doing provings and thereby producing very peculiar symptoms of the remedy without knowing the symptoms, not even the prescribed remedy. And very convincing, are patients that are cured of "incurable" diseases.
Recently I had a patient that was cured of Hashimoto's. The specialist had said to the patient that such a disease is incurable and never disappears; so she "had to" have a surgical removing of the thyroid or a treatment with radioactive iodine to destroy the thyroid. When she was cured she confronted the specialist with his "predictions". He then said that in some very rare cases there is spontaneous cure, but that she should not think at all that homeopathy had anything to do with it.
This is what we often see in homeopathy. Specialists often deny the effect saying that it is just placebo effect. Or they deny that the disease has been there, that they made a false diagnosis. As a joke, one could call a homeopath "a specialist in spontaneous healing" or "a specialist in placebo cure". It is better said to call a homeopath "a specialist in self healing".


Coming back to the television program, the professors of course denied any effect. A patient with Crohn's disease for 10 years for the first time had no complaints and felt very well. They called it just placebo and if he would have been selected out of 100 patients that would not have been very strange to say but he was selected just for the program and 1 of 2 patients treated. I would have started to wonder "how can this be, this is very abnormal".
I can understand their problem when one looks from a materialism paradigm, but very strange is their denial of the meta-analysis of homeopathy. There have been about 8 meta-analysis of homeopathy and they all showed that homeopathy cannot be placebo; homeopathy is effective. How can they deny that? Meta-analysis are their own standard. It shows that many double blind studies (RCT, randomized clinical trials) were effective. So the effect cannot be placebo and they still deny homeopathy. This is a major scientific failure. This is denying experimental facts on theoretical grounds. It is like the scientists, the colleagues of Galileo not wanting to look through the telescope to Jupiter because Jupiter cannot have moons.


This shows there is something far deeper going on. It is not rational anymore, but belief. It is a real paradigm problem. The materialism paradigm hinders clear looking and thinking and it explains the fanaticism that goes with it. It is a religious fanaticism.

Categories: Editorials
Keywords: editorial, meta-analyses, paradigm problem
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Reply #4 on : Sun September 28, 2008, 12:01:47
I too have cases where other physicians have nay-sayed by results, one with hypothyroidism and another with pulmonary fibrosis. Allopathy is already in decline in the United States because it has become so bloated economically that desperate financial measures have had to be implemented that are now causing the system to contract. Those allopaths who seem to be bent on discrediting homeopathy are those who are feeling the most fear. Fear can not be argued with rationally. Arguments are fruitless. The only reasonable response to irrational arguments is to build up the scientific basis of homeopathy through further homeopathic research . There is already a considerable research base, but it is still uncomfortably flawed. More and better quality research needs to be done, and in great numbers with replication of data. Ultimately irrationality gives way to the truth, if the truth can be revealed consistently and clearly.

Mark Brody

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Reply #3 on : Sun August 24, 2008, 11:01:14
"There have been about 8 meta-analysis of homeopathy and they all showed that homeopathy cannot be placebo; homeopathy is effective."

This is not true. The most recent meta-analysis from Shang et al found that as the quality of the trial increased the effect of homeopathy became indistinguishable from that of the placebo.

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Reply #2 on : Wed July 23, 2008, 21:19:26
There are many instances, to quote one, a case of Pyrexia of Unkown Origin treated by an allopath with newer antibiotics (four)for more than ten days but still fever has not settled. When I saw the patient he had features of Ferrum sulph. advised them to take a water dose and in four hours the fever settled and the patient was discharged in the evening. Allopath as usual could not accept that a cheap drug would have that effect and declared spontaneous remission.

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Reply #1 on : Wed July 09, 2008, 20:43:33
Same Happened in the case of one of my patients who was suffering from extreme seizures (directly related to vaccines injected only a few days prior)

Emergency surgery was indicated as the brain was swelling quickly causing these seizures.I asked "why the seizures,whats the cause?"............The reply from the attending allopath "oh he was born with this".......................I said NO! He was fine before the vaccines,no seizures,none at all"................................

"the only thing that will stop these seizures is emergency Surgery".........................MD said.

I had the permission of the family to give homeopathics prior to the sceduled surgery.
Within minutes the remedy started doing its job of healing. Seizures were 100% gone(cured)
confirmed via CAT scans before and after seizures.

The attending Allopath said:" Oh it went away by itself"........................................