Making Homeopathic remedies from psychedelics to help mental disorders

[SWIMfriend]

prob not but the point is we dont know what the hell is really goin on here so to say anything is impossible is stupid and arrogant in my opinion....

Ah...but if you look at it fairly and objectively, to say "there are some things that are impossible" is no more or less a "bounded description" of reality than to say "all things are possible."

You seem to want to say we can't know things....yet you also want certain things to be true. If a thing is true then we KNOW something. As soon as we KNOW something, we also then know that some OTHER things aren't true.

 

[SWIMfriend]

...But I wouldnt dicount the possability of an energetic or morphic imprint/signiture being left behind in the water. Why is this so hard for people to comprehend?....

Because it ignores the fact that ALL water, at ALL times, ALREADY has concentrations of a VAST number of different molecules at HIGHER, EQUAL, and LESSER concentrations that all or most homeopathic medicines. So ANY water, including the water used by homeopaths to produce THEIR water would ALREADY be filled with COUNTLESS "morphic imprint/signatures." So a homeopath "playing around" with the water could not LOGICALLY (for that, science and experiment isn't necessary to draw a conclusion) have any SPECIFIC effect.

The logical error made by homeopaths (which they couldn't conceive in 1797 when homeopathy was invented) is the DELUSION that the water they begin their process with is a "blank slate." They could not understand (because they didn't even KNOW how many molecules were CONTAINED in a certain quantity of product), that their solutions would contain NOTHING of what they originally put in, but yet would STILL CONTAIN all the THOUSANDS of different molecules the water originally STARTED with (Avogadro's number was not calculated until 1865).

 

[jamie]

I like how you pick everything apart, and take it out of context:d ..no, that is not what I was saying..
I guess if you think that humans are actaully at that point where they can know everything, than thats youre opinion, but it's not mine. If we knew everything we wouldnt be spending all the billions and billions of dollars on advanced space programs trying to figure out what the hell the main portion of the universe even is..I mean, come on man.

 

[SWIMfriend]

...What about all the people who claim to see ghosts?? I am talking about classic hauntings, with repeated reports from random witnesses of the same phenomenon...Morphic imprinting would be a perfectly POSSIBLE, SCIENTIFIC explaination for the phenomenon...doesn't mean it IS the explaination...but it COULD explain alot of so-called "impossible" phenomenon.

Seeing ghosts is something WHOLLY different--which scientists know VERY WELL they can't seriously make pronouncements about. Scientists have no business insisting that ghosts don't exist. They DO have a business in saying that pouring water around among a bunch of test tubes won't change it in some fundamental way. UNLESS the person pouring the water around wants to make a CLAIM of a supernatural effect--and then scientists would have to bow out. But homeopaths DO NOT MAKE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS.

 

[SWIMfriend]

I like how you pick everything apart, and take it out of context:d ..no, that is not what I was saying..
I guess if you think that humans are actaully at that point where they can know everything, than thats youre opinion, but it's not mine. If we knew everything we wouldnt be spending all the billions and billions of dollars on advanced space programs trying to figure out what the hell the main portion of the universe even is..I mean, come on man.

If I try to analyze things it's because, yes, I am a scientist--that's what we do.

Do you not make a distinction between knowing EVERYTHING vs knowing SOMETHING?

Interestingly, science has given homeopathy FAR more respect than it deserves. It's based on a RIDICULOUS idea that isn't even worth testing. Nevertheless it HAS been tested...and no effect has been found. It's difficult to understand why anyone would still insist "I don't know" when faced with that lack of reason and evidence.

Really, is it so enormously COMPELLING to you to believe that diluting a substance to the point of non-existence JUST MIGHT POSSIBLY REALLY BE SOMETHING IMPORTANT, that you feel it's necessary to "keep the possibility alive" even after demonstrating that it doesn't work? Is your world really THAT boundless? As I've explained before, I don't think it is. I think you accept, as we all do, that we DO have to decide certain things all the time. Well...this is an easy one to decide.

 

[Jorkest]

SWIMfiend do you know how they make a 30C homeopathic remedy? They put a substance in the water and then they shake it..a lot. this would out an 'imprint' into the water. they do this over and over and over again. so yes..its VERY possible that this sort of imprint is taking place.

also the reason why I believe in it..is because it has worked for me countless times!! many times when i was an infant. so to ME it is tested and it DOES work..even when i had no idea...now if you can tell me that my mother was the one that 'layed on hands' and healed me..then i might believe that too...but croup just doesnt go away! it likes to stick around..have you ever had it!? it lasts for days..and this was gone in ONE HOUR! have you ever had really really bad breath? even after your brush your teeth and your tongue? well if that happens i would give you a 30C Sulfur pill. Your bad breathe would go away in about an hour.

it works for me..so..i dont understand why you keep saying its ridiculous..how much first hand EXPERIENCE have you ever had with homeopathic remedies?

i think you are being RIDICULOUS..because it DOES work..it works for me..and it works for thousands and thousands of other people..have you ever seriously studied homeopathy? have you read the history on it? do you even understand how its supposed to work? it sounds like you just read the WIKI and became an expert...read a few books about it..practice it for awhile..test it out on yourself and family(it wont kill anyone, cant say that for the US Healthcare System) and then come back to me and say it didnt do a damn thing.

US Healthcare System Third Leading Cause of Death

Starfield, B. (2000, July 26.) Is US health really the best in the world? Journal of the American Medical Association, 284, 483-485 - Quote from article...

*12000 deaths per year due to unnecessary surgery
*7000 deaths per year due to medical error in hospitals
*20000 deaths per year due to other errors in hospitals
*80000 deaths per year due to infections from hospitals
*106000 deaths per year due to negative effects of drugs

no deaths from homeopathic remedies!!

 

[jamie]

supernatural is just a word..be careful there. Linguistics is decieving that way..that comparison isn't as valid as you think..supernatural is word of which it's meaning is only relevant in the culture it is used within. Supernatural has meaning as such in terms of ghosts etc to western modern society, but it loses context when you start to bring it over and try to apply it to a comparativly, completelt different culture.. the disctinction between "natural" and "supernatural" arent so clear and defined like they are in westernised society, and in fact in most cases they are quite blurred and overlap in many areas.

So to say that its not "supernatural" to the homeopaths...I begin to wonder, how the hell do you know? is this comming from some western, new agy self taught homeopath, or did you actually read this somewhere in the history of homeopathy?? and how did you come to a proper translation of meaning, of context??...

 

[SWIMfriend]

SWIMfiend do you know how they make a 30C homeopathic remedy? They put a substance in the water and then they shake it..a lot. this would out an 'imprint' into the water. they do this over and over and over again. so yes..its VERY possible that this sort of imprint is taking place...

Well...they shake it and then DILUTE it. They dilute it to the point that the concentration vs the original is 1*10^-30 the concentration.

But did you read through what I wrote above? At THE SAME TIME, they're "shaking" THOUSANDS of other molecule varieties AS WELL. They can have NO KNOWLEDGE of the "imprinting" effects of those other molecules. What they BASE their ideas upon does not take into account ALL the minute impurities in ANY water they could possibly used--distilled, or even the most highly purified lab water, which is FAR more pure than distilled water.

It is for that LOGICAL reason that homeopathy can be dismissed (even though it can also be dismissed on scientific reasons--but we all know science is sometimes WRONG). When you can use actual LOGIC it's much more powerful than mere science. The logic of homeopathy is internally inconsistent because they are under the delusion that they start with "pure" water which contains only the substances they're interested in. And so, in addition, the water would already be "imprinted" with endless varieties of things. Finally, as they proceed with their dilutions, the original collections of molecules in the water are still there in the original concentrations (because they're in the NEW water they use for the dilutions, too). So, towards the end, it MUST be that, if "water imprinting" were a real phenomenon (which it isn't) at that point the impurites in the new water shaken would DEFINITELY "imprint" the water, and it would "lose" the imprint of the original solutions, because there would be no more molecules left of THAT solution to imprint the further dilutions. YOU CAN'T HAVE THE IMPRINTING PHENOMENON WORK BOTH WAYS.

Thus, the methods of homeopathy are logically internally inconsistent. It CANNOT work as they claim.

 

[jamie]

and at least i put forth SOME theory on HOW IT MAY be possible, put forth by respected SCIENTISTS AND BIOLOGISTS.. You keep comming here with nothing..its quite humerous..go do some reseach and bring here some theory disproving imprinting. You want to be so "scientific" about it..well thats just a fucking word as well..thrown around quite loosly these days.

 

[Jorkest]

then how come it works? and like i asked have you ever used homeopathic remedies? have you ever practiced with them? have you ever studied them? my guess would be no, no and no..

but the biggest thing..which i feel you keep ignoring is that...IT WORKS FOR ME..and it WORKS FOR THOUSANDS OF OTHER PEOPLE..so chew on that for awhile

 

[SWIMfriend]

no deaths from homeopathic remedies!!

Yes, I agree with that completely. After all, it's only water. In fact, even the wikipedia article makes the point that, during the 1800's, homeopathic medicines were CLEARLY less dangerous than a lot of the crazy stuff non-homeopathic medicine did. Since MOST people are cured NATURALLY from most illnesses, homeopathy actually did a better job then, because it didn't KILL PEOPLE before they could get better on their own!!

And medicine STILL has many failures (I went to med school too, as well as getting a PhD in molecular and cell biology). However, if I got in a serious car accident I'd definitely prefer a trauma surgeon to a homoepath--modern medicine has made SOME significant progress. I'm definitely NOT here to defend modern medicine (completely). I'm only here to say that homeopathy DOES NOT WORK AT ALL.

 

[Jorkest]

well im telling you it HAS WORKED FOR ME...so it does work..just not in your reality

 

[SWIMfriend]

then how come it works? and like i asked have you ever used homeopathic remedies? have you ever practiced with them? have you ever studied them? my guess would be no, no and no..

but the biggest thing..which i feel you keep ignoring is that...IT WORKS FOR ME..and it WORKS FOR THOUSANDS OF OTHER PEOPLE..so chew on that for awhile

OK, I've said this before. I'll say it one more time before I call it a day: MOST people get well BY THEMSELVES from MOST ILLNESSES. If they didn't, we wouldn't even BE HERE today. The human body is TREMENDOUSLY GOOD at making itself well. Modern medicine STILL depends on that fact in almost everything it does.

SO....if you get WELL from being sick, and you've been taking HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES, does that mean your homeopathic remedies made you well??? NO!!!!

In fact it's QUITE DIFFICULT to demonstrate that a medical treatment indeed has a positive effect--and MANY (even many that are used in accepted medicine) DO NOT.

The only way to know is from objective, WELL-DESIGNED, double-blind trials. There have been some on homeopathies which CLAIM to show some effect. There have been many with STANDARD MEDICINES that claim to show a LARGE EFFECT--and later on they're shown to have been BULLSHIT!

So far, the objective consensus is that homeopathic studies DO NOT substantiate any homeopathic claims. It's as simple as that...

Personal, anecdotal experiences--even though they ofte mean a LOT to those who have had them--do NOT PROVIDE satisfactory evidence of an objective effect. It's doesn't mean there IS NO effect. It means that you just can't tell, based on anecdotal experiences. And that's for the reason I gave above: there's no way to tell whether or not you would have gotten better without any medicine at all.

 

[Jorkest]

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/85009171/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

 

[SWIMfriend]

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/85009171/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

I get a message about "cookies" when I click on that link. I did look at your earlier link about vertigo.

Look, you have NO IDEA how difficult it is to design and carry out a truly objective and well designed study. As I've said, not only have I studied medicine, but I've also earned a very serious PhD (from the top research university in America) doing work that involved planning and writing scientific articles. MANY pure science articles are poorly (or only fairly) well done. Many MORE medical-related articles are poorly done--because they're often done by MDs rather than actual practicing scientists, or because money is involved in one way or another. Certainly, virtually ALL homeopathic research is done BY homeopaths...which, at least to some degree, calls some of it into question (don't get mad! As I said much REGULAR medical research ALSO is worthy of being called into question).

So, to make it short, referencing an article means almost nothing. Even if I were to read it, you are pretty clearly unable to discuss in analytically with me. I have to say (and it even may be a slight copout) that I can only depend on the consensus of the medical-reading world that no research yet on homeopathy has shown anything substantial.

OFTEN (and I get into similar types of arguments with creationists all the time), when you say that "nothing has been shown to substantiate the claims" I will hear back: "Scientists don't WANT to hear claims that invalidate their ideas!" Well...that's just not true. I'm sure MANY scientists and doctors would get quite a kick and a laugh if some homeopathic "medicine" showed a significant effect. Scientists LIKE to be surprised! Believe me, if homeopaths REALLY come out with something CLEAR, RESOUNDING, and POWERFUL that their medicines work--it will be heard...and investigated with enthusiasm. So far, that hasn't happened.

 

[Jorkest]

A randomized, controlled clinical trial of the homeopathic medication TRAUMEEL s® in the treatment of chemotherapy-induced stomatitis in children undergoing stem cell transplantation
Menachem Oberbaum, M.D. 1 *, Isaac Yaniv, M.D. 2, Yael Ben-Gal, R.N. 2, Jerry Stein, M.D. 2, Nurit Ben-Zvi, R.N. 2, Laurence S. Freedman, Ph.D. 3, David Branski, M.D. 4
1The Institute of Research on Complementary Medicine, The Center of Integrated Complementary Medicine, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel
2Bone Marrow Transplantation Unit, The Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel, Rabin Medical Center, Petach Tikva, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
3Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Sciences, Bar-Ilan University. Ramat-Gan, Israel
4Department of Pediatrics, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Hebrew University Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel
email: Menachem Oberbaum (oberbaum@netvision.net.il)

*Correspondence to Menachem Oberbaum, The Institute of Research on Complementary Medicine, The Center of Integrated Complementary Medicine, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, P.O. Box 3235, Jerusalem 91031, Israel
Fax: +972-2-6666975

Funded by:
International Society of Homotoxicology, Baden-Baden, Germany

Keywords
TRAUMEEL S®; stomatitis; mucositis; autologous; allogeneic; stem cell transplantation; bone marrow transplantation; randomized; placebo-controlled; homeopathy; complementary medicine

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Stomatitis is a common consequence of chemotherapy and a condition for which there is little effective treatment. Although the management of patients with other chemotherapy-related toxicities has improved in recent years, the incidence of stomatitis is increasing because of more intensive treatment and is often a dose limiting factor in chemotherapy. The authors assessed the efficacy of a homeopathic remedy, TRAUMEEL S®, in the management of chemotherapy-induced stomatitis in children undergoing bone marrow transplantation.

METHODS
A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial was conducted in 32 patients ages 3-25 years who had undergone allogeneic (16 patients) or autologous (16 patients) stem cell transplantation. Of the 30 evaluable patients, 15 were assigned placebo, and 15 were assigned TRAUMEEL S both as a mouth rinse, administered five times daily from 2 days after transplantation for a minimum of 14 days, or until at least 2 days after all signs of stomatitis were absent. Stomatitis scores were evaluated according to the World Health Organization grading system for mucositis.

RESULTS
A total of five patients (33%) in the TRAUMEEL S treatment group did not develop stomatitis compared with only one patient (7%) in the placebo group. Stomatitis worsened in only 7 patients (47%) in the TRAUMEEL S treatment group compared with 14 patients (93%) in the placebo group. The mean area under the curve stomatitis scores were 10.4 in the TRAUMEEL S treatment group and 24.3 in the placebo group. This difference was statistically significant (P < 0.01).

CONCLUSIONS
This study indicates that TRAUMEEL S may reduce significantly the severity and duration of chemotherapy-induced stomatitis in children undergoing bone marrow transplantation. Cancer 2001;92:684-90. © 2001 American Cancer Society.
Received: 21 December 2000; Revised: 27 March 2001; Accepted: 9 April 2001

so i finally point you to a study done and you dont believe it...typical

 

[SWIMfriend]

Yes, I told you I wasn't going to argue a paper with you. This one is SURELY pretty crummy--without looking at it in detail. The numbers are TINY--and I don't trust their p-value--I have a feeling they don't understand, and don't take into account, confidence interval. They say NOTHING (in this very SHORT abstract) about their evaluation methods--which are usually the very HEART of any clinical study. And the study was PAID FOR by a homeopathy organization which, for all I know, makes money from the drug "Traumeel." That kind of conflict of interest is OFTEN seen in drug research--and results are generally IGNORED from such papers. They're considered more as advertisements than scientific papers.

Here is a description of trameel. It contains a LOT of herbs. The "concentrations" aren't mentioned. If this is a legitimate "herbal" drug, then it is NOT something that falls under the true rubric of homeopathy. Clearly, uhh, there's a lot to herbs....or else none of us would even be at this site.

I'm NOT going to discuss journal articles with you. You are NOT up to it (and neither am I, unless I'm really interested in the topic--which I'm not).

 

[Jorkest]

i just dont care that much really..its just been funny getting you all puffy

 

[ohayoco]

There's no reason for conflict over this. Jorkest- you say that homeopathy is harmless, and you're always tripping anyway, so why don't you test out your theory on yourself?

Choose a long-lasting hallucinogen and get a whole batch of it. You will need to choose something long-lasting so there is no argument about whether or not it wore off by itself. DOB?! At the very least, nothing that lasts for less time than a day. Take a strong dose from this batch as your control (strong to make sure there's no chance of mistakenly thinking the effects have been cancelled out by your remedy). Be sure to have all other variables such as diet etc the same. Then make a homeopathic remedy from your batch (or a similar hallucinogen if it's not 'allowed' to be the same substance, although given the homeopathic logic I'd say the same substance would be perfect if the whole point is to treat like with like!). Take a strong dose of the hallucinogen. When you're feeling the full effects, take you're homeopathic remedy and see if you are cured of the hallucinogen 'within an hour'. Experiment with various long-lasting hallucinogens (using these as your 'model' for schizophrenia). Even if these chemicals can't really parallel with the schizophrenic condition, you will at least see if homeopathy can cure you from the effects of foreign matter in your body 'within an hour' (which is what much disease consists of).
If you meet with success, start using a system such that you don't know whether you took the homeopathic remedy or the placebo until after the experiment.

I wouldn't recommend you do this. But the responsibility of providing proof is on your shoulders, and experimentation sure beats arguing about it!

 

[Jorkest]

good idea!