If it\u2019s of any comfort to US homeopaths, until the past ten years or so, when the health insurance industry gave conventional medicine something serious to fret about, the organized hostility toward alternative medicine was mostly democratic. It hated all forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their battle cry, \u201cWe\u2019re the real doctors, down with quacks,\u201d was directed at any healer who didn\u2019t follow three rules: Go to our schools. Get the licenses we control. Don\u2019t make waves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A good example of this conventional hostility can be gleaned from the\u00a0Wikipedia entry on homeopathy<\/a>, obviously written by a virulent anti-homeopath. The writing style makes me suspect it\u2019s by Stephen Barrett, MD, a retired psychiatrist who runs\u00a0quackwatch.com. He\u2019s recognizable because the piece is littered with his usual buzzwords, including \u201cpseudoscience,\u201d \u201cplacebo effect,\u201d and \u201clacks biological plausibility.\u201d To express his contempt, he has a habit of placing the vocabulary of an alternative therapy in quotation marks, like homeopathy\u2019s \u201cprovings,\u201d chiropractic\u2019s \u201csubluxations,\u201d or Ayurvedic\u2019s \u201cchakras.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At one time or another, conventional medicine has vilified each and every form of alternative medicine as pseudoscience. But given that scientifically developed and correctly taken prescription drugs are currently the fourth leading cause of death in the US, you yourself might be a little safer using one of these \u201cpseudoscientific\u201d treatments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Homeopathy<\/a> has been a thorn in the side of conventional medicine since the early 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century, and it should come as no surprise that the basis for this hostility was originally economic. In those days, conventional medicine was even more brutal than it is now. Medicines were more toxic (mercury and arsenic were used to treat syphilis), bloodletting was common, and amputation was the surgeon\u2019s procedure\u00a0de choix<\/i>. To no one\u2019s surprise, patients preferred the gentle remedies of homeopathy. When during a mid-century cholera epidemic patients treated by homeopaths fared better than those managed by the medical establishment, conventional doctors began to worry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bullies win<\/b> But homeopathy was defenseless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019d see this helplessness were you to Google around (don\u2019t bother, I\u2019ll just tell you) for info on homeopathic clinical trials performed by MDs. These remind me of the Moscow show trials under Stalin, whose victims were allowed to go through the motions of having a trial even though the conclusion was predetermined and the firing squad stood just outside the door. Once anti-homeopath clinical trials are published, the livid responses from homeopaths protesting that the study was performed incorrectly and that the conclusions are biased rarely get printed or manages to appear at the bottom of the very last page of the journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet all around the world, homeopathy continues to not only survive, but actually thrive. Travel just about anywhere and you\u2019ll see signs for \u201cHomeopathic Physician\u201d or \u201cHomeopathic Pharmacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think patients like homeopathy for two compelling reasons<\/b> Patients themselves are not only open to homeopathic principles, but seem to grasp them more fully than conventional physicians, who are too busy with axe-grinding to think clearly. When you, the patient, read the sentence \u201cA homeopathic remedy consists of an extremely tiny amount of a substance that if taken in large amounts could cause illness in a well person,\u201d you shrug your shoulders and think, \u201cSounds like immunizations. Sounds like allergy shots.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But your conventional doctor bellows, \u201cSounds impossible! Quackery!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learning how truly small\u2014and I mean really really small\u2013<\/i>homeopathic doses actually are, you rightly wonder, \u201cAren\u2019t they too small to do anything?\u201d But then you remember that birth control pills are now dosed in micrograms, one millionth of a gram<\/i>. \u201cGee! That\u2019s pretty small too,\u201d you might think. \u201cI guess if a few millionths of a gram can turn off my entire fertilization system, I\u2019d better not use small<\/i> as a reason to disparage homeopathy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The real b\u00eate noir for conventional medicine occurs when carefully controlled studies show that homeopathy works. These studies of course need to be free from the prejudice and bias of MD researchers. When\u00a0a positive report appearing in 2005<\/a>\u00a0related that 70% of 6,500 patients suffering chronic illnesses (asthma, eczema, migraines, IBS, arthritis, etc.) self-reported improvement using homeopathic remedies, it was dismissed because it came from Bristol Homeopathic Hospital in the UK, home to some of the world\u2019s best homeopaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When a conventional hospital (University of Southampton) pulled a Benedict Arnold<\/a>\u00a0and reported that rheumatoid arthritis patients fared better when they received homeopathic remedies along with conventional therapy, the response was unintentionally amusing: This couldn\u2019t have been the remedies; it must have been the compassionate personality of the homeopath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A report from Germany and Switzerland should stop the bickering<\/b>
By manipulating the government into licensing graduates of non-homeopathic (allopathic) schools only, the medical establishment ensured the 20th century dawned with virtually all homeopathic medical colleges closing their doors. By mid-century, MD homeopaths had simply died of old age with no one to replace them. In conventional medical schools, generation after generation of medical students listened, as I did, to the same blather against homeopathy and chiropractic. Finally, in 1965, the Supreme Court told the AMA to keep its mouth shut about chiropractic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, when remedies are selected by a trained homeopath (rather than you staring at the often-overwhelming display case at a health food store and hazarding a best guess), homeopathy can be quite effective. Second, homeopathic remedies are virtually free of side effects. All that awful stuff you hear rattled off at the end of a TV drug commercial never, ever occurs with homeopathic remedies. If your toddler accidentally polishes off a whole bottle of a homeopathic remedy, the worst-case scenario is he won\u2019t be very hungry at suppertime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public health researchers who were neither holding a grudge nor waving a flag tracked for eight years the health of 3,709 people of all ages (children and adults) who were patients of 103 homeopathic primary care practices. Some, but not all, patients combined conventional therapies with homeopathic ones. At the end of the study, 40% of responders were \u201cvery satisfied\u201d with their treatment. Just 11% were \u201clittle satisfied.\u201d Even better, 68% of adults and 80% of children experienced \u201cclinically relevant treatment success.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n