We’re looking at a real, proven cure for cancer and we’re going to let these kind of games interfere with our use of it?
John Benneth responds to Wikipedia lies about homeopathy.
EXPOSES WIKIPEDIA contradicting what its sources conclude.
“The collective weight of scientific evidence has found homeopathy to be no more effective than a placebo.” –Wikipedia
Investigation of Wikipedia’s sources reveals the statement to be not true and follows a disturbing trend of omitting, attacking or transmogrifying positive studies, tests, trials of homeopathy while pro forma accepting negative opinion as fact.
Since I made my bold predictions and video on Wikipedia, their article has changed slightly. Instead of the footnote numero uno [1] going to an obscure dictionary definition of homeopathy, it now goes directly to the number one hatemonger for homeopathy, Professor Edzard Ernst, a bizarre old self-described homeopath, a Dr. Frankenstein making malice and lies, author of the pretended über review of homeopathy “A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews of Homeopathy.”
Of course it’s nothing of the sort.
OUTRAGEOUS
It’s just a collection of his own garbage obscuring the evidence: One third of his references are to his own articles, opinion and commentary about homeopathy. And yet it is this squattaling albatross the groveling open online encyclopedia Wikipedia cravens to.
“A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews of Homeopathy,” the chief wellspring of hatecrime against homeopathy, is the headwater of lies about homeopathy.
Out of 224 footnotes on homeopathy in Wikipedia, Ernst is in 16 of them. Non-scientist, high school drop out James Randi, an entertainer, illusionist and debunker with an alleged million dollars to lose if homeopathy is proven to work, is in three of them, referring to articles entitled such as “Horizon’s homeopathic coup, Cuzco’s altitude, more funny sites, the clangers, overdue, Orbito nabbed in Padua, Randi a zombie?, Stellar guests at amazing meeting, and great new Shermer books!”
What’s amazing to me is that anyone with any kind of real knowledge about homeopathy, or even anyone with a lick of sense as to what makes a decent article, is going to let this kind of crap pass without raising hell about it. The Wikipedia article is an obvious piece of black propaganda, its sources peopled with pharmaceutical company shills.
No? You don’t believe it? Then let me ask you this: Does such an article as Wikipedia’s on homeopathy NOT serve to benefit competing interests in the health scare industry?
Whether or not you believe homeopathic remedies have any biochemical action, would you NOT agree that they pose a threat to conventional medicine?
What is it do you think these people who are antagonistic to homeopathy are doing? Who do you think serves NOT to gain by homeopathy’s demise? Could it not be that the antagonism to this tenacious remedial study sprung first from its implausibility, led into facing a difficult to understand doctrine, and finally morphed into embarrassment from a too-hasty judgment leading to the fools gallery?
Yes, of course. If they’re so irrational, than why are they omitting rational evidence?
Because it proves them WRONG!
It proves them to be the very thing they feared and subsequently condemned.
Is it because it is something that they condemned so hastily and so severely, leaping at the chance to bully something they thought they would make them look smart and tough minded, that when finally faced with the evidence they said didn’t exist, they can’t recant without doing real harm to their precious reputations and their belly scraping self-esteem?
Isn’t it amazing how men wear their fears so brazenly written on their sleeves when they’re pointing an accusatory finger? A man most often it seems will condemn in others what he fears hides within himself.
We’re looking at a real, proven cure for cancer and we’re going to let these kind of games interfere with our use of it?
Well, I guess I shouldn’t be so naive, should I? I guess it’s to be cynically understood, sub silentio, isn’t it?
In a brutal world led by self proclaimed heroes who would drag us into the use of radioactive weapons against civilians, such as was recently done against the insurgency in Iraq, a few lies, such as those being issued by Wikipedia regarding a traditionally proven system of disease prevention and cure, redoubts against a complex and powerful health scare system, might seem like nothing.
But I must confess, I don’t buy into the cynicism so easily. Cynicism is for men wh0 sleep in barrels in the park, for losers, cowards and comedians.
I say to you that here a few lies are everything. It’s a quarter of century on the average lifespan. The world’s richest man of all time, richest in the values of a dollar both then and now, was a homeopath. John D. Rockefeller lived to be 97 years old and died with his homeopath by his side. He was so committed to homeopathy that he ordered $350,000 for its support and development, but due to his philanthropic advisor defiance, it was diverted to the development of allopathic pharmaceuticals instead.
In 1906 the nation’s most powerful woman was a homeopath, as was her son and her first husband. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, had also become one of the nation’s wealthiest women, and discusses cases she had treated in the church manual. Her greatest critic the dean of American letters, was also an advocate of homeopathy. Mark Twain wrote, “The introduction of homeopathy forced the old school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business. You may honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of allopaths (the orthodox physicians to destroy it.”
Mahatma Gandhi was an advocate of homeopathy. He says, “Homeopathy …. cures a larger percentage of cases than any other method of treatment and is beyond doubt safer and more economical and most complete medical science.”
So certainly even my harshest critics must honestly observe how it is that I can have a passion for this work when some of the greatest people of the twentieth century were its advocates.
Not one major meta analysis has been able to effectively conclude that the action of homeopathic remedies is due solely to the placebo effect. Not even Shang, the most popular homeopathy meta analysis among skeptics, was able to clearly conclude that the effect was from placebo. A review of the data by independent analysis of Shang determined that even in this most damning meta of homeopathy, “Homeopathy had a significant effect beyond placebo.” Ludtke Rutten
Why aren’t we seeing that in the Edzard Ernst dominated article on homeopathy in Wikipedia? This guy’s sticky fingers get all over everything that has anything to do with homeopathy.
Now, I can’t run out into the street and effectively stop marches to war by grabbing guns or lying down in front of tanks, but I can say something about a carefully orchestrated corruption peddling deliberate lies, as is being done on Wikipedia.
‘Homeopathy i/ˌhoʊmi‘ɒpəθi/ (also spelled homoeopathy[1] or homœopathy) is a form of alternative medicine in which practitioners claim to treat patients using highly diluted[2][3] preparations that are believed to cause healthy people to exhibit symptoms that are similar to those exhibited by the patient. The collective weight of scientific evidence has found homeopathy to be no more effective than a placebo.[2][3][4][5][6]
Let’s take a closer look at the footnote, go to the article and see what the author actually said.
[2] ERNST: “The existence of contradicting evidence is not unusual in therapeutics. One solution to resolve such contradictions is to conduct systematic reviews and meta-analyses of rigorous studies. In 1997, Linde et al did just that. The conclusions of this technically superb meta-analysis expressed the notion that homeopathic medicines more than mere placebos.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1874503/
Oh, what was the conclusion of a technically superb meta-analysis is now just a notion? And really, isn’t Ernst leading us to thinking in misnomers? He says he’s a “trained homeopath.” Well, at what point in his training did he take such a skeptical view of it? Where did he get this training? From a textbook he wrote on it?
When he says that homeopathy is more than a mere placebo’s, what’s he referring to, exactly?
Finally theyf ound a man who’s really willing to completely betray himself, set aside all standards of science and attend to the highes ideals of equivocation.
But let me take a moment to be kind. Maybe he didn’t check the exact meaning of the word homeopathy? Does it not refer to similitude, not dilution? Is that what he’s talking about? Or is he whining about this long standing complaint that anything diluted 1 to 100 a few times can’t have any biological effects?
I don’t know. First of all, he must know about hormesis, the Arndt Schultz Law, that substances that will usually depress an organic system, will in very small amounts stimulate it.
He must be aware of the FACT that the action of similitude is credited with being the operative mechanism in providing the world with its greatest achievement, the small pox vaccine? Of course! What else would it be? Such is the mechanism for most vaccines. Hair of the dog that’s about to bite you. Prior to control of the deadly pox by homeopathic vaccination, variolation was the preferred method of immunization (technically isopathy) . . not like cures like, but same cures same. Homeo means similar. Homo means equal. There’s a huge difference missed by nuance. They used to use a knife blade to inject the serum from the infected into the uninfected by cutting it into the crease of your ass where the butt meets the thigh, so as to hide the ensuing ugly infection and ultimate scar, and in this way partially immunize against the disease. But then they found that the serum from a similar disease in cattle provided better protection, and it was made famous by Jenner.
Hahnemann called it testimony and proof of homeopathy.
“Not one case receiving homeopathic care died, while the “old school” doctors lost twenty percent of their (smallpox) cases…..I gave about three hundred internal vaccinations, five to adults acting as practical nurses; to the man who installed the telephone and lights in the pest-house; to mothers who slept with their children while they had smallpox in its severest form. All of these people, exposed daily, were immune.”–W. L. Bonnell, MD [ http://www.whale.to/v/bonnell.html ]
Follow the link 0n that one and read about Bonnell’s trial amd the difference between vaccinoid and variolinoid. But are the anonymous editors at Wikipedia going to supply readers with links like these? Hell no, this is too much proof for homeopathy.
Now, allow me to repeat the question. Who made this man Ernst a homeopath?
Does he know about anti venom? Isn’t that an example of homeopathy in the crude form?
Like cures like.
Adderall and Ritalin are ADHD “medications” that operate on the principle of homeopathy, being nothing more than methamphetamine salts.
Homoeopathy.
In fact, I might be compelled to say that I suspect just about every action has a homeopathic-like component in the response. There are other examples of homeopathy. In chemistry, like dissolves like in the action of solvents. In electromagnetics, like repels like in the action of magnets. And of course every bit of matter, living and not, has an electromagnetic component to it. What is it that holds the Moon in orbit so that it neither crashes into the Earth nor flies away from it?
Magnetism
Elucidating magnetism is no different than the explanations of Hahnemann, reciting what is at the heart of the homeopathic effect.
You know, I really don’t know how it is that a guy like Ernst can’t feel some shame or anxiety when reading an article like this.
And he says he’s a homeopath? How does a man like that sleep at night?
I wrote to Ernst once and asked him if he was still offering $10,000 for proof of homeopathy. He wrote back and said that he had pulled the offer. Just like any grease pole contest. When somebody with spikes on his boots shows up, the on man pulls the offer and heads for a new ounty before the sheriff arrives.
Could it be that Ernst thinks he received his education from me?
LINDE: “The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo.” Linde, Are the clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9310601
Linde also says, “However, we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition.”
The reason for Linde’s statement that there is insufficient evidence for any single clinical condition” is self evident. The Linde review is a meta analysis of the literature asking the question whether or not homeopathy is a placebo. Efficacy for any single clinical condition can’t be answered in such a review, and that’s why they had to put in that caveat. But Ernst takes this caveat and turns it into the meaning he wants. In his really not so systematic review he reworks Linde to say, “The authors also stated that no indication was identified in which homeopathy is clearly superior to placebo.”
As anyone can see, they did NOT state that.
Ernst says, “In conclusion, the hypothesis that any given homeopathic remedy leads to clinical effects that are relevantly different from placebo or superior to other control interventions for any medical condition, is not supported by evidence from systematic reviews. Until more compelling results are available, homeopathy cannot be viewed as an evidence-based form of therapy.”
From this the anonymous authors of Wikipedia allege, “The collective weight of scientific evidence has found homeopathy to be no more effective than a placebo.”
Even Ernst can’t say that.
Follow the John Benneth Journal on Twitter: