The TIME of homeopathy

The ZEIT of Homeopathy: An opinion of the German Central Association of Homeopathic Physicians (DZVhÄ)

12/13/2010

THE TIME of 9 December 2010 is entitled: „The secret of homeopathy.“ The basic statements: Homeopathy is a placebo, but an effective one. Conventional medicine should learn from her.

This article is a milestone. Not often does one of the major German leading media deal with homeopathy in detail and differentiated at the same time - including pros and cons. This fact is to be appreciated - even if some substantive weaknesses are obvious.

Why is this edition of ZEIT something special - and not self-evident? In view of the health policy importance of homeopathy and its positive image in wide circles of the population - even and especially the more educated classes - one can quite ask this question; It does not necessarily adhere to the usual habits of media stubbornly denounce the opinion of the majority of their consumers as an absurdity.

The answer is: a journalist can speak up for or against nuclear power, he can speak out for or against organic farming, and he can also express this or that view on climate change without endangering his reputation as a reputable journalist. On the other hand, there can only be one serious opinion about homeopathy: it is a placebo effect; at most nuances of this statement are admissible. Even common sense finally tells you that a drug in which nothing is in it can have no effect; or as Stefan Schmitt, the contra-lawyer of ZEIT puts it: „Trusting against all the evidence of the doctor's and patient's common belief in obscure therapy is simply dishonest, even with good intentions.“

"It's the potency, stupid!” - can be found in a modification of a known quote. If one looks at the available data on the evidence of homeopathy, one can at least speculate that the method would have long been accepted and established, if there were not the small problem with the potentiation.

Klaus Linde (then at the Center for Naturopathic Research at the Technical University of Munich) expressed this somewhat more academically a few years ago: "All the relevant published reviews [...] show that the majority of the available studies yielded positive results (this also applies to the work by Shang et al.). It is also undisputed that positive results are not as common in the methodologically good studies as in the less good ones, but this naturally means that there are also positive ones among the good studies It is therefore not clear to clinical researchers whether there is positive evidence from placebo-controlled studies, but whether it is sufficient to demonstrate the efficacy of homeopathy given the low plausibility from a scientific point of view. "

If the remedies were not so diluted that there is nothing left in there, after all we know about chemistry, then we would not even have this discussion about the evidence of homeopathy.

· There are relatively extensive data from health services research showing that the range of diagnoses treated corresponds to that of conventional practice (German studies) or even slightly more severe (Swiss data); and that the treatment outcomes (from the patient's point of view) are equivalent or slightly better.

· There are quite a number of double-blind studies that speak for a drug-specific effect.

· There is a whole range of experimental data from basic research, which also speak for a specific effect.

· From the homeopathic treatment of severe epidemics, such as cholera, smallpox, typhus and Spanish flu, there are a number of historical data that are consistent and difficult to reconcile with a placebo effect. Also, these data are consistent with modern experiences from developing countries.

· That the similarity principle is a plausible mechanism, can be explained with ease - but is probably worth a separate article.

· The fact that the principle of drug testing also works double-blind is also confirmed

· The case reports of homeopathic practice are consistent in themselves and with each other. - And why this is also an evidence criterion, Gunver Kiene has set out in the concept of Cognition Based Medicine.

Jan Schweitzer wrote the main article in this issue of ZEIT. He admits that homeopathy works and explains this effect with chance, expectancy and the magic nimbus that surrounds homeopathy.

These are all acceptable working hypotheses for further discussion. The only real content error Jan Schweitzer goes through with the sentence:„Meanwhile, a variety of serious studies refutes that the small, white beads act.“

This is simply wrong in this form - and not only because the majority of studies just the opposite, namely an effect of „small white beads“ shows, but also for the simple reason that studies for purely methodological reasons, can never prove the ineffectiveness of a treatment. Studies can only prove their effectiveness, or they can not prove it. The non-proof of effectiveness is not proof of ineffectiveness.

That's a mistake, but a forgivable mistake. Jan Schweitzer reproduces here only one statement that is made by a variety of self-appointed homeopathy experts from the environment of the so-called skeptics movement. Similar statements can be found on the website of the GWUP, by Science-Blog and also by the homeopathy expert Edzard Ernst.

Why the problem of exponentiation is a problem, but a relative problem, is certainly also worth a separate article. Here only so much: The principle of potentiation is not a basic principle, not a paradigm of homeopathy - it is a purely pragmatic part. Homoeopathic treatment prescribes remedies that could cause similar symptoms (coffee for insomnia). But one does not want to provoke the action of the remedy - in this case the insomnia - but only a reaction of the organism. In the early days of homeopathy, the substances were indeed used in even measurable quantities. To reduce the unwanted effect was then logically diluted. The interesting effect was that the undesirable effect did indeed diminish, but the reaction was still to be elicited. And that then became step by step and purely pragmatic that what we know today as potentiation.

We do not know why that works. - but: first, there is research (which is still in its infancy), and second, there are a lot of things in the world that we do not know very well about. Gravity e.g. can be calculated and measured, but basically we still do not know how and why two very distant objects can exert an effect on each other. (From where „knowledge“ two planets of each other?) In this respect, the problem of TIME that homeopathy contradicts common sense (rather than any scientific evidence) is a relative problem. And if patient listening is really the only thing that conventional medicine can learn from homeopathy - that too may be worth a separate article. (DZVhÄ)