I had a couple of beers in a Belgian pub once whose owner had named his dog "in honor of" Prince Charles. The dog looked something like this: http://www.mischiefblue.co.uk/images/4.jpg and I was dumb enough to ask why he had named it after Charles.

I'm not sure if the dog was dumb, too.

Does anyone know where I can find video of "The Tampon Prince" SNL skit online?

Sorry about the somewhat off-topic post Amy, but it's more fun to laugh at Prince Charles than it is to think about how dumb alternative medicine is.

There seems to be two kinds of chiropractor. The ones that make the pain in your back and neck go away, and the ones that make them look like nuts (see: Bullshit episode regarding same).

My chiropractor hasn't indicated that she can do anything but alleviate my back/shoulder/neck pain.

Although she keeps giving me exercises to do that I don't, so it's my own damn fault I still hurt.

Uh, just a question, but who is setting the criteria for "no reliable evidence"? And why no specifics given, such as the method of testing used, or was there any testing done at all? If someone proposes to me that such-and-such can cure so-and-so, all I have to do is not test it at all and I can pompously declare: "There's no reliable evidence for its effectiveness."

Amy, you're being suckered, to put it bluntly. The medical industry is interested in one thing and one thing only (and if you think it's your well-being, all I can say is, I'm very sorry and I thought you were much more on the ball than that): the medical industry.

Natural remedies exist for many things, including cancer. But the problem is that cancer is a multi-billion dollar industry, and the chemotherapy and radiation specialists like their fees too much. And if anyone wants to theatrically ask me, "Do you honestly think the medical industry would let millions of people die each year from cancer just so they can make a buck?"

My reply is, "Uh, yeah."

Regarding the claim that homeopathy is "downright ridiculous," I couldn't agree more.

There's no way in hell you're going to get me to get a flu shot. (Yes, flu shots and many other vaccinations are in fact, homeopathic remedies. Homeopathy is the profound dilution of the substance that would produce the illness in a healthy person. Gee, sound familiar.)

Sorry, Amy, you generally post very sound and informative articles, but this one is so full of holes, wrapping yourself in it would get you arrested for indecent exposure.

Patrick, I'm a big skeptic and have posted many times here about the ills of the medical profession, including the way pharmaceutical companies hide bad data. That doesn't change the fact that there is no evidence for many "natural" cures. There's something called the "naturalistic fallacy" -- the idea that because something is "natural" it's good. My idea, per Angell and Kassirer above, is that because something is tested and proven to work it's good.

Flu shots, Patrick, are not "homeopathic remedies." They actually have measurable substances in them.

If this post is "full of holes," feel free to post about how it is. You have yet to do that.

And come on, if somebody actually cured cancer with some "natural" remedy -- don't you think they'd win the Nobel prize?

And regarding liking "fees too much" -- does it occur to you that Boiron, which makes Occilloccocinum, is not in business for the love, and is, in fact, making enormous profits? People in "natural" medicines are not in it for the love.

Homeopathy is indeed alternative medicine -- an alternative to medicine that works.

http://www.keypoint.com.au/~skeptics/Homeopathy

'Homeopathic Dilution' - If you take a mixture and keep adding water, the mixture will get progressively weaker. Any effect the mixture has would be expected to decrease. Homeopaths, on the other hand, claim that if you shake or tap the container a certain number of times after each dilution, the healing effect of the mixture will in fact increase. Claiming the potions are getting stronger, homeopaths usually dilute them to such a degree that you'd need to drink more than an ocean's worth to be sure of getting just one molecule of the active ingredient. A bottle of pills or potion will contain only the diluting substance (usually water, alcohol or lactose), and none of the healing substance.

One homeopathic 'flu remedy, Oscillococcinum, starts with duck's liver. The liver mixture is diluted to the ratio of one part in 10400. (That's 1 followed by 400 zeros.) At that rate, one duck is easily enough to make enough anti-'flu "medicine" to satisfy the world's population many times over; in fact it's so dilute that if you were to prepare the product with only one molecule of the duck liver, it would produce more than enough 'flu potion to fill the known universe. This product reaps $20 million each year. (The unlucky duck has been dubbed "The Twenty Million Dollar Duck.")

The manufacturers don't show the quantities of ingredients on packets of homeopathic products; they show dilutions in a special code. This is because the high dilutions ensure the product will actually contain no active ingredients! The duck liver dilution in Oscillococcinum is written as 200C. This means the mixture has undergone a sequence of two hundred "C" dilutions. Each "C" dilution is a process where a mixture is diluted by 1:100 and then shaken exactly one hundred times. So a 1C mixture is one hundred times weaker than the original; a 2C dilution is ten thousand times weaker, and so on. Note that each dilution must be followed by exactly one hundred shakes performed in exactly the right way. This makes no sense.

Modern homeopaths cannot deny that their potions are too dilute to contain anything but water, and so they have made the claim that water "remembers" their initial ingredients, and behaves in the healing process as if those chemicals were still there. This claim is wishful thinking that has no basis in scientific study.

Does it matter? Firstly, there are more homeopathic remedies around than you might think. Often they are freely available on pharmacy shelves, and unless you are aware of labelling codes, you may not know that you are paying "top dollar" for seductively packaged sugar pills or water. Secondly, there is the danger that seriously ill people will use homeopathic remedies instead of effective prescription medicine. Although current laws generally allow ineffective potions and pills to be sold in chemists and health food shops around Australia, the authorities recently acted on notification from the Australian Skeptics to ban sales of homeopathic potions that claimed to be 200C vaccines against the deadly meningococcal disease and hepatitis B.

Here's a piece on standards of evidence, "Standards of Evidence for Evaluation of Safety and Claims of Natural Health Products":

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/prodnatur/activit/consult/archive/_evidence-preuve/soe-ndp_doc_6_e.html

Here's a test on homeopathy I pulled from Orac's site's comments.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2125.2007.03008.x

This is from the abstract:

The homeopathy treatment had no effect on morphine intake between 24 and 72 h or on the visual analogue pain scale, or on quality of life assessed by the SF-36 questionnaire. In addition, these parameters were not different in patients enrolled in the open-label noninterventional control arm.

ConclusionsThe complex of homeopathy tested in this study was not superior to placebo in reducing 24 h morphine consumption after knee ligament reconstruction.

If I am, in fact, being "suckered," feel free to show evidence of how I am. Don't just point out that medicine is big business. That's not enough.

Besides, it just leads me to say "So is the health products industry."

There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work.

Yup. Sometimes the medicine that doesn't work is developed at great expense by a major drug company, and the medicine that does work is an herb or vitamin available over the counter. That doesn't mean that "alternative" medicine - i.e. medicine that relies on anecdotes and emotions instead of efficacy testing - is valid, though. It means that not everything that has a positive effect on our health has to be formulated in a lab. Big difference.

Uh, just a question, but who is setting the criteria for "no reliable evidence"?

Amy posted an excerpt rather than the many entire books that have been written about the topic. I'm sure you can find one of them if you choose, but basically the authors are saying that none of the claims they are discounting was shown to be statistically valid in double-blind testing. There's a pretty standard format for testing out medical claims, and things such as homeopathy have yet to display any validity using them. You know what has proven to be effective and safe using double-blind testing? Vaccines, at least the ones currently on the market. Sorry if you don't understand the difference between homeopathy and vaccination, but if you need help: One has been shown to be utter rubbish in scientific testing and in practice, the other has been shown to be effective in scientific testing and in practice (which is why no one in the developed world gets polio or smallpox any more when they used to be scourges). I know this because I keep up with my scientific and medical reading. If you need proof, try Trick or Treatment.

This whole thing prompt me to ask a single question: Why are you asking to Prince what is good for your health? What kind of training he got in the matter?

Answer: None.

Asking Prince Charles what is good for you equals asking your neighbor or some stranger on the street. If you prefer trust the uninformed idea of some royalty about your own health, you are free to do so. On the other side, I will call it "Darwin In Action".

In all things, trusting professionals for advise in important matter is always the way to go.

Marion clarified this well. I don't care where a medicine comes from (whether from a vitamin company or a pharmaceutical company or a bush outside my door), but I do care whether it's been proven to work.

And Toubrouk, I don't believe in "trusting professionals," but in skepticism. I have a friend who's an epidemiologist and probably one of the best statisticians in the country, and he's helped me understand how many medical/pharmaceutical studies (including those published in peer-reviewed journals) are flawed. I see many anthropological studies that are flawed, too. I'm not arguing for deifying the medical profession and pharmaceutical industries. I'm arguing for testing (with solid study methodology and rigorous and honest data interpretation) instead of blind acceptance.

And Toubrouk, I don't believe in "trusting professionals," but in skepticism...I'm not arguing for deifying the medical profession and pharmaceutical industries. I'm arguing for testing (with solid study methodology and rigorous and honest data interpretation) instead of blind acceptance. (Amy).

Thanks, Jeff - you and I do agree on some issues!

> i.e. medicine that relies
> on anecdotes and emotions

Word.

Thing is, Patrick, if you could prove that homeopathy works, you would.

> who is setting the criteria
> for "no reliable evidence"?

We wish you'd gone to college. Biology 101 includes a short, harrowing series of lectures on the history of science and the birth of the scientific method. Statistical analysis is a demanding, competitive field like any other modern intellectual enterprise. Mistakes are made, but then corrected. (Vioxx was a darned shame, but so was New Coke.)

[And BTW-- If memory serves, we used to have a professional expert on this at hand: where's Lena?]

But as in so many issues we discuss here, you fall back and screech "Your attitude is all wrong!" It's amusing when we're healthy.

But terrible things are going to happen to each of us. That's how death works. And it's more often a matter of creeping debilitation than a sudden strike. The great thing about dying nowadays is that it often happens when we're old.

When I'm faced with strokes, cancer or Alzheimer's, I'm going to want a pill to fix it, or at least take away the pain. The one thing I will not want is shrill, personally-vindictive sarcasm of the "Uh, yeah" variety.

It's unlikely that your homeopathic services are delivered for free. If they are, by all means say so.

We should all have the benefit of scientifically tested products : such as those from Merck ( snark ).
Pharma means plant. All extracts, tinctures, etc. have been changed by processing - and really vary from toxic to poisonous.
I think I'd recommend most of us go back to planting small gardens of ferns and spices.

Okay, I'm a skeptic, too. I have doubted medicines ever since I was a kid, when my grandmother handed me an aspirin and said, "You have to believe it'll help you, or it won't work."

I didn't say anything, but I thought, "No. I want something that will kill my headache whether I think it will or not."

There's a lot to be said for this attitude, but it has one big count against it: I can't get the placebo effect. I tried saw palmetto pills for the prostate, but after a few doses, I thought, "This shit's not going to work. Nobody's done any double blind studies." So I quit. Later somebody actually did study it and showed it was just as good as the placebo it was compared to.

From a cynical perspective, I can see that homeopathic pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo might actually trick the mind of a few patients into making their body feel (and maybe even operate) better. The reason homeopathy is unethical is that it usually substitutes for proven treatments.

But what about using placebo effect to minimize side effects of real treatment, say? Or palliating the symptoms of hypochondriacs?

Has anyone worked out a way to exploit the placebo effect without lying to patients or otherwise violating ethical standards?

Opit, there's science and then there's "science" -- not the search for truth but the covering up of data that doesn't sell the product.

Opit, people smirk too much about Vioxx. Merck certainly handled it badly; but was not a wholly reprehensible death drug or anything.

Ax, "lying to patients" is a little heavy handed. I'd bet there are physicians at bedsides across the country this afternoon who are telling their patients "Maybe you'll feel better in the morning" when they know it's not likely. A razor-sharp boundary between truth and lying doesn't exist, and we should probably be grateful.

While I do enjoy modern medicine I think there are indeed some so-called "natural cures"

When I was stationed on Ft Knox I contracted a local fungus around the same time as everyone on post got the flu.

I wound up having to have about a third of my left lung removed, I also severly injured my right knee, the tendons specifically.

After my lung surgery I developed "asthma like" symptoms which made my plant allegies unberable, and within a few months of injuring my knee I needed a cane and a leg brace to walk around for any length of time.

The VA had me on these blue pills about half the size of my pinky finger, taking 12 a day for my leg pain.

My mother gave me a fruit product to try, which I only did to shut her up and leave me alone. But within about 3 weeks I was off that damn cane, and my allergies stopped bothering me too. High humididty still sets off my asthma though

lujlp: all cures are "natural." There are no supernatural cures!

It's good that you got better, but your story is a typical anecdote. Why do you ascribe the healing to the fruit product? Perhaps it did cure you, but perhaps you would have got better anyway (as I did from my knee injury), perhaps medication cured you, perhaps it was because you said "balderdash" three times. It's too easy to seize on one thing as the cause when you don't really know. It's like asking old folk what they attribute their long life to. That's why we have randomised double-blind experiments rather than anecdotes: to get reliable information free of human bias.

It would help if we called alternative medicine what it really is, an alternative TO medicine.

Well Norman, I never expeceted a liquifed whole fruit to cure anything so it wasnt a placebo effect. ANd when I stop taking it my allergies crop up immediatly and my leg pian comes back within three days so it is obviouly doing something. It is also cheaper than the allergy and pain medications I was taking and doesnt have warning labels about sexual side effects and driving cars.

Now dont get me wrong I certainly wont be using it to try to cure cancer or another fungal infection should I get one, but it works great for my athritis and allergies

Lujlp - go for it, I'd say. But even what you describe is not convincing. If you bang cymbals when there's a solar eclipse, the sun comes back again. If you take the fruit when your leg hurts, the pain goes away. Maybe that's not what you're doing but I'm sure you get the point. (It's called regression to the mean, and it's often used to justify putting speed cameras at accident black spots. Then the accident rate falls. The camera has worked!)

What fruit is it, anyway? It sounds interesting, to say the least.

You said a knee injury, not arthritis, before. A cure for arthritis would be a breakthrough.

Both my internist and my endocrinologist admit that there are some "natural remedies" which actually do bring relief and/or improve health in specific areas. Examples: Fish oil capsules for heart health (if you don't eat salmon or other oily fish at least three to four times a week); 8 ounces of red wine or red grape juice per day can improve HDL cholesterol levels (which are primarily regulated by genetics); ingesting a lot of plant fiber in the form of beans, fruit, and psyllium, will reduce your LDL cholesterol levels; and acupunture is a good option for those suffering from chronic pain, as well as those experiencing chronic nausea secondary to chemotherapy. Daily doses of concentrated cherry juice can reduce inflammation in some people who suffer chronic, inflammatory joint problems. Apparently dark cherries are high in an antioxidant enzyme that reduces certain types of cell inflammation (dark berries and pomegranate also have it, but at lower levels). That may be what Lujlp's fruit concoction contains. But it's certainly not a cure-all.

I take the fish oil capsules, and I try to eat 25 to 30 g. of fiber per day, and I enjoy my red wine. But I don't assume that these things absolve me of doing other "natural" things that really do ensure better health - like exercise, ample sleep, and keeping stress to a minimum.

BTW, I love reflexology. But has it unclogged my sinuses, improved my skin tone, increased my libido or cured my thyroid disease? Umm, no. It's just a kick-ass foot massage.

"Natural" remedies again ... this time, fish oil, red wine and acupuncture are classed as "natural" remedies. What exactly is this word supposed to mean?

Norman I think natural means not syntetically reproduced. Although I dont see what is natural about stabbing yourself with needles

As for the product, I have it shipped directly, give me a day or two and I'll dig up the websye I ordered it thru