Sunday, July 11, 2010

‘Homeopathy is nonsense’



Homeopathy is nonsense, say UK doctors.  They say it is nonsense to drive a point.   They want the state to stop funding this pseudoscience because it is bogus, ‘witchcraft’, and ‘nonsense’.    Almost anyone who has understood science the right way already knows that homeopathy is utter bogus, closer to magic than actual medicine.  And yet, many people swear by homeopathy and continue to consume balls of sugar dipped in alcohol hoping and believing it is actually going to cure them.

The ground reality is that 90% of the people who have studied science do not understand science.  They go through science classes because they have to, learning it by rote, understanding few implications not understanding the gist, and without imbibing the scientific temperament.  That’s quite understandable actually.  Most of the theories of science are counter-intuitive to humans and the laws of nature are not obvious to most of us.   Science has been in the mainstream thought only for the last few hundred years and human brains are not evolved to grasp scientific ideas naturally.   Humans have to leave their natural intuition aside and follow the rigorous tools of careful observations, sophisticated experimentation and logical deductions to understand and appreciate science.  However, most humans are lazy and they continue to see patterns where there are none, and continue to believe in certain miracles where there are none.

It is easier to assume that clouds are formed by a merciful and kind god in order to help humans with rains than to actually understand the complex climactic phenomenon based in physic and chemical laws.   It is easier to assume that the right amount of oxygen in our atmosphere is concocted by an intelligent being to aid life on earth than to actually understand the evolution of our planet through billions of years.   It is easier to assume that some godmen can conjure medicine right out of thin air to cure your bedridden grandmother than to understand how the chemicals and antibodies will actually work on the germs and microbes in her body.

Majority of the human population is comfortable with magic, miracles, and intuition that come naturally to them.  Only a disciplined education that imparts scientific temperament can allow humans to look at the world using tools of rationality and logic applying the discovered laws of nature.  And even after going through many years of schooling it is not guaranteed that all the students will actually develop scientific temperament. 

Homeopathy is bogus for the obvious reasons.  It is not based in science.  It is based in completely unproven techniques and ideas which have no basis in scientific ideas of the modern times.   It remains a quack medicine, pseudoscience and abracadabra. 

So how come so many patients and adherents of homeopathy actually believe it works?  Homeopathy works because placebo works.   Placebo is a dummy medicine.  It is just that the patient doesn’t know that it is a dummy medicine.  Placebo works because a human body when convinced it is taking a medicine can create its own antibodies to fight off some diseases and ailments.   A person who takes a placebo believes he is being cured and his body responds positively and therefore the body gets cured.  This is a well understood phenomenon in modern medicine.  However a placebo is never considered an actual medicine by modern doctors. 

Homeopaths capitalize on this phenomenon that placebo cures, and they fool the people into thinking that they are taking actual medicine when in fact no actual medicine exists in their concoctions.   The success rate of homeopathy is minimal in some cases and completely zero in other cases.  In those cases where the difference cannot be seen easily or where placebo works as effectively as real medicine, homeopaths have a higher success rate.   Homeopaths survive only in those domains where the modern medicine has not come up with an effective medicine. 

Homeopaths thrive for the same reason why godmen thrive.  People continue to rely on magic and miracles than established practices of science, because homeopathy comes closer to their natural intuition while science requires mental work to understand.  Belief gives bliss while logic requires work.

Since it is clear that placebos work, modern medicine created by scientists has to work better than a placebo to prove itself as a medicine.  If the new medicine works the same way as a sugar ball, then why should someone pay for it? Will the cure be effective? Is it guaranteed?  To qualify the new pill as actual medicine it has to pass a double blind experiment.   Only then it can be considered a medicine.  Homeopathy medicine would fail such a test. 

Homeopathy rides on the fact that placebo works.  So if it works what is wrong with it?  May be its success rate is lower than actual medicine, but the fact that it works should be good enough for many people.  Astrology works for some people, palmistry works for some people, and homeopathy could work some people.  The way we allow astrology and palmistry to be practiced, we should allow homeopathy to be practiced.  However, there is no reason for the state to fund it, because there is no research in it.  It’s like state funding magic, state funding prediction of events through bird flight, or funding prognosis by checking entrails of sacrificed animals.   Countries like India should also stop all its financial aid, support and promotion of quack medicines like homeopathy. 

Here is a criticism of what UK doctors said.  I am quite sure that many readers would have similar objections to the proposed ban. 

The British Medical Association says homeopathy, having no "scientific basis", shouldn't be taxpayer-funded. Many doctors ask for a ban, saying public money will be better spent promoting mainstream medicine. Now, these medical practitioners are certainly entitled to their views. But their associating homeopathy with "witchcraft" is rather unfortunate. That's not the kind of language expected of men of science. More so, since it amounts to insulting the intelligence of countless people who opt for homeopathic treatment.

Doctors in UK are not asking for a ban on the practice.  They are demanding that the state should not fund homeopathy.  There is a big difference between the two.   There is no better word to describe homeopathy than to describe it as ‘witchcraft’, because both of them are very similar.  In witchcraft, the witch has supernatural powers to invoke the dead or the ghosts to heal or harm a person, and people believe it works.  In homeopathy, the healer will give you sugar balls coated in certain alcohol, and you believe that it will cure you.  Neither witchcraft actually works just because people believe in it nor does homeopathy works just because people are duped into believing they are getting actual medicine.

Free societies should leave it up to people to choose what they want or don't, as long as their choices don't affect others. The point is, homeopathy has takers who, suffering chronic ailments, claim it helps them. Others say they prefer placebos to allopathy, believing these do less harm in terms of side effects. Still others turn to alternative medicine when all else fails. Reportedly, a survey in Britain's state-funded homeopathic hospitals shows 70 per cent of patients felt they were better off. Now, if consenting adults resort to homeopathy, ayurveda, naturopathy, acupuncture and the like, the decision is surely theirs.

Agree on this completely.  It is agreed that adults are free to choose whatever medicine they want to choose for themselves.  But there are certain risks involved in taking such medicine and these adults should be made aware of the risks.  The risk is that homeopathy may not work at all because there is no real medicine in it.  There are dangers in being ignorant or believing in false ideas.  For example, some parents may believe in these hocus pocus so much that instead of giving actual medicine to their ailing kid, they give homeopathy, probably resulting in death of that ailing kid.  So should the parents be prosecuted for not giving the right medicine to their kids?  Is ignorance and blind faith excusable when it puts another life in danger?

Does it not make sense to educate people that homeopathy is hocus pocus so that people do not take it seriously when it comes to matters of death, like that of kids or old people, who are not in a position to take a decision on their own.   

If democratic societies go about banning everything not 'scientifically' backed, where would it end? Should we proscribe home-made remedies based on traditional knowledge systems because their efficacy hasn't been lab-tested? Must scientists play referee between herbal and chemical? Yoga and meditation are said to have genuine therapeutic uses. Western researchers being divided on this, should both be outlawed? Why, many pray to beat psychological anxiety. Should they be coerced into seeing shrinks instead? Science is as much about what we don't know hence it questions as about what we do. The last thing it needs is to be made an excuse for placing curbs on individual liberty.

Banning the state funding and curbing it in funded hospitals is different from banning its practice altogether.  The author is confusing the two.  The doctors in UK are asking for banning of the state funding and its practice in funded hospitals.  Homeopaths are free to continue the practice the way astrologers continue practice their hocus pocus.  But definitely the state should not fund any such hocus pocus.

29 comments:

  1. I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it, and many supporters of this pseudoscience are not only ignorant but also proud of it

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  2. sujai..came to read your blog a few days ago. Liked some of your views and thought of reading your blogs just to know your opinions sometimes which results in facts and truth and sometime doesnt.As the blog writer you have the freedom and choice to tell what ever you feel is correct by quotinng examples , theories, axioms, etc.. I have a question for you regarding this post.Not to contradict you nor to make you accept that the post makes any sense. I shall quote you an example..a person has while walking bare foot in a construction area walked on some broken pieces of glasses.He was able to get rid of most of the piences which struck to his feet. After some days he felt like something is hurting under his feet and he was feeling that something was inside his feet.He went to 3 English doctors who were practising for years and are well known in the city and everyone said the same thing. He tried using the household techniques also to find out what happened but was not successful. then when he met a homeopathy doctor, he gave him the so called sugar pills. In a week a puss(dont know what it is called in other way) formed around the feet where it was paining for him. and when he was trying to clean the puss, he found a glass piece and removed it. He was fine from then. So do you say that he was not having belief in the english medicine which didnt cure him or all the 3 renowned doctors were dumb enough to not know what was there in the patients feet? If you talking about the funding of things and the taxpayers money is being misused or not used in the right way by funding homeopathy then there are many other things also where our taxpayers money are being used. Why do we want to invest our money in developing a nuclear bomb or an atom bomb when no one knows when we are going to use it or for that matter whther we are going to use it. Why should one invest in the Large hardron collider when big bang theory is just based on two assumptions? And more over no one is going to die just by consuming sugar balls. and there are no side effects if one eats sugar balls except for the sugar patients in some cases. So why to fear that homeopathy will kil people or parenst shall be balmed because without knowledge they take their children to homeopathy doctors. A kid is unware of the things that whtehr an english medicine or a homeopathy or ayurveda will cure his disease. So if we can cure diseases by just swallowing sugar balls India will be more tahn happy to provide 100% medication to its people with sugar balls. Thank you

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  3. Excellent post.

    @Raghu

    I'm not sure what you think the point of your anecdote was but unfortunately too many people have already died because they relied on the nonsense that is homeopathy.

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    1. mind u it is not nonsense if u don't believe come to my father's masters clinic in hyderabad.

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  4. Raghu:

    In a week a puss(dont know what it is called in other way) formed around the feet where it was paining for him. and when he was trying to clean the puss, he found a glass piece and removed it.

    Thanks for writing your example. I don’t know the details of this case and therefore I can only make some guesswork here. Just because pus was formed after taking homeopathy medicine does not necessarily mean that homeopathy medicine has triggered that pus. It could be that it takes 3 weeks for pus to form for such injuries and the patient went to ‘English’ doctors for 2 weeks and then went to homeopathy healer after that. It could be that pus would have formed no matter what after 3 weeks with or without homeopathy medicine. It just so happened that he started taking homeopathy medicine just a week before the pus formed. It is coincidence not causality.

    Most people see patterns where there are none. Most of us see causality and correlation when in fact it is just coincidence.

    Let me give you an example from a technology company. We were running a software version 4.1 on a live wireless link and the performance was bad. When we moved to a new software version 4.2 the performance improved drastically. For a non-scientific eye, it appears that software version 4.2 improved the system. But upon closer inspection, it was found that when 4.2 was loaded onto the system, the technicians realigned the antenna. Now, we do not know if the system improved because of new software load or because of antenna realignment.

    Unless we do further tests, where a new load is put without changing the alignment of the antenna, and where the system is tested with same load but different antenna alignments, we cannot conclude if the system improved because of the software or not. However, some engineers quickly conclude the 4.2 is better than 4.1.

    I see non-scientific behavior again and again in the Indian industry, and definitely a lot with patients who believe they got cured by alternative medicine. I have seen people taking real medicine for few weeks, and then getting impatient with results they switch to homeopathy to find out they are getting cured. It could be that the real medicine is actually taking time to heal and just got started to heal when the patient switched. To his surprise the new homeopathy medicine seem to work magic.

    Why do we want to invest our money in developing a nuclear bomb or an atom bomb when no one knows when we are going to use it or for that matter whther we are going to use it.

    Atom bomb is not mumbo jumbo. It is a credible weapon which can be detonated resulting in major damage. Whether it is going to be used or not is an ethical question. I am not going to discuss that here. For the question on whether it will actually result in damage if used or if it will just be a whimper, I can confidently say that it will be effective. The funding was done to create a weapon which will actually result in a blast, and in that respect it is a not wasting taxpayer’s money. Whether it going to be used or not is a different questions altogether.

    And more over no one is going to die just by consuming sugar balls… So why to fear that homeopathy will kil people or parenst shall be balmed …

    Imagine Indian soldiers are given dummy bullets convincing them that they are real bullets. Imagine a General sends these soldiers into a real war carrying guns with dummy bullets. And as a consequence all these soldiers die. Shouldn’t the General be prosecuted for sending these soldiers into a real war equipping them with dummy bullets? And what if the General says that some sadhu has given him these dummy bullets telling him they actually work in the real field? The general has to be prosecuted. Ignorance and stupidity are no excuses for sending soldiers into war with dummy bullets in their guns.

    A parent who takes his kid to a homeopathy healer is putting that kid in danger because those dummy pills may not save the kid.

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  5. @Sujai. Thank you for the reply. I was expecting an answer for the big bang theory example which I have quoted and i think thats relevant to what my point was and on other side speaking about soldiers ,getting dummy bullets to face a war, for you it might have sounded as an example to bring contrast between the scenarios discussed. We might have given number of statements in the past but in course of time we dont want to follow our own statements as we forget them. Any how I am happy I am getting to know many facts through your blog.i am ready to accept if my examples were irrelevant. And in the example which i have given he is my close friend and he did visited a homeopathy doctor after 3 weeks. It was after 3 months and as far as my knowledge is concerned I dont know any english medicine which takes 3 months to form the puss coz I am not a Doctor :) .

    I was not speaking about the result which atom bomb or nuclear bomb yields. I was speaking about the research work involved in developing a nuclear bomb where no one knows whether it will be used as we know it would result in a disaster.

    Thank you. Nothing personal just a view, as same as yours. Its Nice to vist your blog.

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  6. @skepticat..

    I was also not sure what the reaon of anectdote was coz I am not a doctor to get into the details of exactly what happened internally in the leg the actions and reactions. I was just referring the example because I personally saw this and it was not happened in a hurry or with in 3 weeks. The person took 3-4 months to visit a homeopathic doctor.

    If there are people dying of homeopathy there are also many people dying of English Medicine. I saw cases where people suffering form cancer where getting treated with kemo, hoping that they would be cured some day. Some die and some live according to each individuals body reactions to the medicine. At the same time I saw people getting cured by a plant medicine, if its just a coincidence then the people should be really lucky.I am not sure how many lucky people are living on this planet for them to happen things coincidentally and survive.

    Dont take this as a personal reply. If things should happen coincidentally or naturaly then there would be no reason to have a medicine for cold. It takes 7 days to cure cold if you dont take medicine and it takes 1 week to cure the same if we take medicine. :) and the cold patient here is MYSELF. :)

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  7. @sujai..

    "And in the example which i have given he is my close friend and he did visited a homeopathy doctor after 3 weeks. It was after 3 months "

    Sorry typo error..it goes like this..

    "He did not visit a homeopathy doctor after 3 weeks.
    It was after 3 months"

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  9. On a similar note:

    http://crookedtimber.org/2010/07/12/xkcd-possible-bad-science-alert/

    @ Raghu:

    Human body is an excellent system with built-in defenses against pathogens small and big. Just like the White-blood-cells attack micro-organisms (Viruses and bacteria) entering our system, they attack anything big (like a nail, a thread, a piece of glass etc) with the same "puss" reaction. Puss is nothing but a whole army of WBC martyred fighting against the foreign body. The defense wall created around the pathogen is a wall of puss, which finds its way to the closest skin-exit, breaking out eventually.

    If your friend waited long enough without visiting any English or Homeopathy doctors, the end result would have been one of the following two:
    1. The body's defenses gain over the pathogen, thus successfully pushing it out of the system.
    2. The body's immune-system goes into a crazy autoimmune reaction (also known as sepsis) and becomes more vulnerable to other bacteria entering through air and water, thus finally leading to severe illness due to infection, followed by death.

    In your friend's case, check with him if any antibiotics were prescribed by the English doctors.

    Another fable comes to mind:

    In a contest of a small village, contestants were asked to fall a huge tree... many grown and able men axe the tree till the bark is still supported by a small support. They grow extremely exhausted and fall to the ground before the task is accomplished. A small boy of 8yrs then takes the axe and hits the last bit of the bark and the mighty tree falls to the ground. The villagers claim that the boy is the winner of that contest.

    In this case, the boy may have won the contest, but it was never in his power to fall the mighty tree all by himself.

    Most of the "Homeopathy miracles" I've heard are from people who have tried many other things for too long before becoming disillusioned and trusting Homeopathy.

    A wise friend reacted to something similar in his way:
    "Hey, if you want to paint half your hair pink and the rest blue and tell me that it makes you feel better from age old feeling of heavy-heart, its your craziness working miracles for you. Don't try to pass it off as a suggested cure/remedy to me. I am good with my hair black and getting grey."

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  10. @telangana Bidda

    thank you :). People beleive in what they see, experience, listen to what happened in their surroundings, read articles, read blogs, read news, read books etc..Out of such experiences if I finds the number of people dying by consuming extra dosage of english medicine or were not able to get cured of it or were not finding any use of visiting a english doctor, is more then one beleives in it.

    Also if one listens, sees people finding results in using an alternative medicine teh one beleives that this is working for them. That doesnt mean that english medicine is of no use or others are only the source to cure diseases.

    In the same way if an other person experiences, sees, listens more cases where people are dying of using alternative methods other than using an english medicine he/she might feel that apart from what I use, listen and see, all others are crap.

    I am not here to support or blame people who use homeopathy. If a person is cured by eating a plant leaf and if he beleives in it let it be. When he cant afford to the medicines or when the healthcare provided is too high.

    What one can do is only provide a choice and let each individual decide which one he wants to choose and let him learn by his own experience. In this process if he fails let it be, he is responsible for his own decision.

    Thank you.

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  11. Sujai,
    You have made a very rational argument against Homeopathy. However my first hand experience suggests otherwise
    My dad had a very seious problem ina gland near throat. More than 6 months of Allopathic medicine provide no relief. The doctors were suspecting cancer. Biopsy was done more than once.
    Then we decided to switch to homeopathy. Within 1 month dad felt better and he was cured within 6 months.
    We consulted Dr.Parimal Banerji of Calcutta. He is prctising for more than 40 years. His family has been practising for 3 generations. His father treated Nehru, Dr.Radhakrishnan and Rajendra Prasad.
    His website is http://www.drpbanerji.com/. You will find numerous testimonials of patients who were cured when conventional medicine failed. I know another Homeopath from Patna who was physician to V.P.Singh.

    ...................................
    Probably you put astrology and Homeopathy in the same category. I accept that astrology is not a science. But I have personally come across astrologers whose predictions have been bang on! The horoscope they have have drawn is exactly the same. Even though it's not a science, there is some method in madness. So I believe in astrology.
    If you vist Indian matrimonial websites, they don't ask you about your education or financial status first. The first thing they ask is your caste. Then comes the horoscope. Remember the hoopla press created when it turned out that Aishwarya Rai is a "Manglik"? This shows wht a tremendous grip astrology has on Indian psych. Maybe there is some reason in it,even though it is not science.

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  12. Sujai,
    Homeopathy was ridiculed by me. When supporters insisted that it had a logical background and it actually used naturally occuring chemicals I used to smirk. They argued that for e.g., quinine exists in the cinchona tree and therefore the bark of the tree can cure malaria and therefore we should accept the possible existence of similar stuff in other plants etc.

    But I became a believer after a personal experience. I used to have a cabbage like growth on the neck since childhood. Tried every famous skin specialist in Hyderabad from the 70s. Eventually gave up after 15 years. About 5-6years ago while on a trip to Vizag, a homeo doctor travelling in the train looked at my problem and gave me some pills. After 15 days the cabbage like growth disappeared. I regret to this day not noting that gentleman's name/number.

    Since then i have on and off been to homeopaths.Some problems do get solved. By placebo effect or otherwise is not relevant. The fact is it works in some cases. Another recent case is that of a colleague of mine who had a problem of getting nightmares for about 5 years. He would dream of being pursued and running and would wake up at midnight with a sweaty body. The homeo doctor gave him some pills and today he has been rid of the problem.

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  13. just shut the fuck up and for chirst sake stop blogging !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  14. POK,
    This is not to ridicule you, but your example is totally irrelavant as it cannot be verified... I can create many more such stories in a wink.

    There can thousands of stories like yours, after something happened... yes after it happened... and have you noticed, such success stories get quoted only after it happens, not at the time of happening, which leaves little room for verification... This is one success rate out of ninety nine failures, which dont get reported. And yet on scientific scruitiny, these one out of 100 successes fall apart. That has been the case so far for every success story analysed, and yours will be no exception

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  15. this article was forwarded to me by a good friend. my daughter has had several bouts of bad cold leading to ear pain. i tried homeopath as a last resort as i ended up giving her antibiotics every month and she became immune to it. now, after the homeopath treatment, touch wood, she is not in antibiotics and slowly but steadily improving. now i depends on what u want to believe and what u dont want to.. there is nothing about being bogus its only faith.

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  16. Nalan,

    The only way for you (or anyone known to you)to verify is to visit a homeopath for any problem that has not been cured by allopathic medicine.

    Homeo medicines contain extracts from plants/living things. It is likely that a few atoms of these are able to 'cure' the problem in human bodies in exactly the same way that synthetically manufactured atoms in our allopathic medicines do.

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  17. my grand ma had diabetics and in course of time a kidney failure too. modern medicine left her, predicted only 3 months of life and suggested to take her home for palliative care.
    then some of our relatives suggested a homeo doctor. she took those medicines and lived for 7 more years, saw her grand children, including me.
    I won't say that it's nonsense, but the effectiveness of treatment depends on so many factors.

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  18. Sujai I read your recent blog about Ramar Pillai and was very impressed and started reading your other blogs including this...

    Here are my experiences with Homeopathy... I had s severe Sinus problem when I was fifteen (whcih was 18 years ago) my years were blocked and i was not able to hear clearly... server head ache and I

    I visited a famous ENT specialist in HYD and he said we have to do a minor surgery and suck out the liquid to free up the blocks and said this it is permanent solution as Sinus does not have a permanent solution and you have to keep taking medicine and get minor surgery when it ecomes sever again in future

    We came out of the doctors place plannig to schedule of an minor surgery any my neighbour suggested to see homepath doctor CK.Shastry (If i remember right) in nallakunta and we visted him next day he gave some medicines that might in 2-3 days i had relief and i even forgot that I had Sinus and doctor gave me medicine for another 6 months (Note: I did not use any allopathy medicines). Then I left to my Residential coollege (I was in hostel doing my 11th or Intermediate at that time) and to escape my sudy hours I used to liw warden that I need to take medicine and sllep for an hour and i did that for 6 months ....

    I was not taking the medicine thinking that it will cure me (I was completely normal by that time) but rather it was excuse for me to sleep... what I am trying to say here is regardng Placebo affect what you mentioned which works if you are thingking about illnes and correct me if I am wrong....I took it for 6 months and I forgot about it

    After fifteen years that is untill 3-4 years ago my firend had similar in US had problem and he was complaing about it that is when I realized that I had severe Sinus problem and it got cured with homeo

    I believe some people will not beloeve my story but it is 100% true and this is my personal experience.....

    I used to be an ass when I was young and I used to debate everything and now in 30s i reallize that experience is the best teacher and any articles, theories OR any other stuff are good to be read and debated but cannot be applied real time....

    Just my thoughts....

    - Satish

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  19. I visited a famous ENT specialist in HYD and he said we have to do a minor surgery and suck out the liquid to free up the blocks and said this it is NOT a permanent solution as Sinus does not have a permanent solution and you have to keep taking medicine and get minor surgery when it ecomes sever again in future


    Smalll correcction

    -Satish

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  20. Sorry for grammatical mistake and typos did not preview before I posted...

    Will be carefull next time

    Thanks
    Satish

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  21. Read the article

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Unani-and-ayurveda-docs-can-conduct-surgery-Madras-HC/articleshow/6235009.cms

    The Madras high court has said registered practitioners in siddha, ayurveda, homeopathy and unani are eligible to practise surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, anaesthesiology, ENT, ophthalmology, etc.

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  22. POK,
    The fact with Homeopathy is that, there is no chance of even an atom of these to be available in the medicine.

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  23. Your statement:
    Let go, India. Become mature.

    You write good articles but it is difficult to let go when you are emotionally attached to people and land. Will you let go your family if they want to separate from you or would you rather talk and compromise? There should be some rules/ethics in society else we will disintegrate..

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  24. http://ibnlive.in.com/photogallery/3131-0.html

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  25. Sujai
    People like you and I are not in vogue. Simple logical questions are:
    1 why do companies spend millions and billions of dollars when homeopathic meds (for the lack of a better word) work?
    2 why can no homeopathic dr make a claim to James Randi's 1 million dollars prize money?
    3 why can we no see the efficacy of the diluted solution under a microscope?

    Apparently we are not supposed to verify and establish this cause and effect relation.

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  26. @sujai: Here's an explanation for what happened -
    The gentleman who cut his foot had a glass piece remaining behind in his foot which was the cause of the pain.
    He went to 3 renowned doctors who, for their bad luck, missed the piece of glass which was still lodged in his foot (probably too deep to feel by using hands). In their defence, I'll say that even the best of men make mistakes. It doesn't make them idiots, just proves that they are humans.
    Anyhow, the three weeks which elapsed led to the establishment of an infection in the around the glass piece which is a foreign body. Contrary to what many people believe, formation of pus is NOT a good sign. It means that the body has failed to contain the infection. This pus gradually tracked down and escaped out. It was a coincidence that the pus came out around the time of administration of the homeopathic "medicine". Even if the gentleman had NOT taken the pills, the pus would have come out - that is how the human body functions, anyhow.
    When he discovered and removed the glass piece, he removed the source of infection and the foreign body which was otherwise preventing proper wound healing. If the glass piece had been discovered earlier, a surgeon would have removed it and there would have been no pus formation in the first place.
    Again, let me correct you - it is not "English" medicine. It is science based medicine. And, it doesn't work on faith, on sound, provable and reproducible principles i.e. science. You only need to have faith in your physician to allow him enough time to arrive at a diagnosis. It isn't magic - it takes time.
    Regarding wastage of taxpayers' money on atom bombs - our neighbours who have military ambitions against us have made nuclear bombs. Having our own stockpile acts as a deterrent. It doesn't necessarily have to be used. But in its absence a growing and ambitious china may not think twice before bombing your city or using threats of a nuclear winter to arm twist our government into accepting every other demand of theirs.
    Whether the big bang theory is right or wrong, many OTHER aspects of our world can be discovered from the LHC experiments which may eventually have practical applications. X-ray, CT scan, Radio therapy, telecommunications, internet etc have been spin offs of tech and research which required taxpayers' money to fund it. If you want to crib about it, don't reap its benefits either. You are free to stop using the internet (a product of cerns previous experiments and the innovations built for it). In your old age, if you get cancer, please don't use radiotherapy for treatment, despite its benefits (oh yeah, you'll be gulping moonshine dispensed by your local homeopath in the name of medicine). Certainly stop reaping the benefits of packaged food, much of which is sterilized using gamma radiation.
    People can die by consuming sugar balls if it makes them delay taking real treatment in case of critical illnesses.

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  27. I would not agree to this article. Homeopathy was born in Germany which is a largely a country with scientific temprament . The chemical composition of Homeopathy drugs are documented though not as much as allopathy. To compare it with astrology would be a disproportionate reaction. I agree it may not cure chronic ailments but certainly other ailments are curable. In Germany , Homeopathy is still in popular very extensively. Are rationalists going overboard on this issue.

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  28. i am a suffering from muscular dystrophy and people with this condition get severe breathing problems and with homeopathy i am better,if anyone thinks homeopathy is placebo they are gravely mistaken.

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