The Homeopathic Cure of The Economist

It has long been held that unless you have studied the literature surrounding it and put it to an appropriate test, if you can’t say anything good about homeopathy, don’t say anything at all, because it will probably come off looking vituperative, read like a caviling complaint, stupid and flat out wrong.

 On April 1st, 2014, the same day as my last blog . . The Homeopathic Cure of Wikipedia . . The Economist posted another smug anti-homoeopathic cavil, and it will have about as much impact as another day in a 200 year old infection that’s been bugging Mankind, the disease being somewhere north of stupidity and south of deception.

Stupid or deceived, I have a hard time deciding which affliction any particular homeopathy antagonist is presenting, and I’m sure that’s exactly what they wonder of me. Touche’ a droit, et a gauche.

But my explanation for the physics of the homeopathic remedy I think are better than what I’ve got for why homeopathy isn’t accepted pandemically.

The article dodges around the usual rabidity about no active ingredients, the drooling “its just plain water” complaint. Well, the same thing could be said about Tritium, oxygen and hydrogen, the active ingredient of a chain reaction in a hydrogen bomb . .  and this a good corollary for the homeopathic remedy, just plain water except it has become radioactive. And this is not the only thing to blow up in the face of people who play gotcha with homoeopathy.

Homeopaths don’t like that explanation either. The devil they have in skepticism is an easier one to deal with than the one who resides in the physics of homeopathy, which are supramolecular and akin to the piezo electric effect.

But before my physics lecture gets me sued by Sominex for unfair competition by putting people to sleep without charge, or homeopathy for revealing a trade secret, allow me to return to the lies being spread by that rag with a one word oxymoron for a name:

The Economist says, “The most comprehensive review of homeopathy was published in 2005 in the Lancet, a medical journal. Researchers compared trials of homeopathic and conventional medicines. In the bigger, well-designed trials, there was ‘no convincing evidence’ that homeopathy was more effective than a placebo, they found.”

This is a lie. Now don’t take that as an insult, I admire a good liar. Pulitzer prizes are regularly awarded to people who, in a particularly good novel, have demonstrated an unusual talent for prevarication. Isn’t the word “fiction” just a civil replacement for a pack of lies? Of course it is. Story telling is just another way of getting our minds off the grisly truth.

And that’s what The Economist is doing here, the truth being that homoeopathy is a threat to the economics of the medical establishment.

What the smarmy author of The Economist is doing is quoting Shang, a debunked meta analysis of eight clinical trials cherry picked out of over 100 that appeared in Lancet in 2005 after the medical world was made especially miserable by Linde, a previous meta published in Lancet in 1997, of which the top critic of homeopathy at the time, Professor of Complementary Medicine Edzard Ernst of Exeter University, called “technically superb.”

After Shang hit the streets homeopaths began asking, where did they come up with this idea that homeopathics were no better than placebos?

Peter Fisher, MD, the Royal Physician and a practicing homeopath himself, asked to see the data. Shang refused, at first, then finally had to relent.

In a review of the literature for pharmacists, so they might form a more comprehensive view than the one presented by the The Economist, the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education reported, “In contrast to findings by Kleijnen and Linde, a 2005 meta-analysis by Shang et al that was published in Lancet found that the efficacy of homeopathic treatment was no different than placebo.⁵¹ However, this study has been highly criticized for being methodologically flawed on many levels.^52–61 Of particular concern, the researchers eliminated 102 of 110 homeopathic trials and based their conclusions on only the 8 largest high-quality trials without clearly identifying the criteria by which these trials were selected or the identity of these trials. Odds ratios calculated before the exclusions (on all 110 trials) do not support their ultimate conclusion that homeopathic interventions are no better than placebo.” [1]

So why is The Economist taking sides in such an acrimonious and long standing feud with bogus information sources to support a view less than neutral? Why isn’t it good enough that a growing number of people are asking for homeopathy in their health care? Why is The Economist inserting itself between patients and their physicians? Why is it that The Economist is reporting the conclusions of a highly criticized analysis of homoeopathy and not better ones reporting findings contrary to what The Economist is reporting?

April Fools?

 People will continue going to homeopaths as a last resort, some will report miraculous cures, and others, usually those who haven’t tried it, will cry fraud.

A blog follows The Economist article with commentary by readers.

[1] Am J Pharm Educ. 2007 February 15; 71(1): 07.

Where Does Homeopathy Fit in Pharmacy Practice?  Teela Johnson, HonBSc and Heather Boon, BScPhm, PhD