Just brought my son home

I need to find a pediatritian. I don't really know what kind of questions to ask, or how to even really start looking. All I know is that I want to try to find some one who leans more towards natural cures and doesn't want to give a pill for every little thing. I understand that sometimes they will need a shot or other medicines, but I think some doctors over do it. Anyone have suggestions on what I might look for, or what kind of questions i might ask?

 

Talk to a midwife. And congrats

 

Steer clear of the quackery - get a qualified medical professional, just find one who's relatively crunchy and knows when to leave well enough alone.

There's a difference between finding a qualified nurse practitioner or doctor who won't perscribe needless antibiotics, and somebody who thinks that illness is caused by rays from space.

 

RE: in the UK homeopathy is part of regular medicine mate - its just a different way of dealing with the body - instead of treating a symptom homeopathy gets to the route of why the body is exhibiting symptoms

Er, yeah. So?

A homeopath is someone who believes things contrary to the rules of chemistry.
Or rational science.

Giving someone a sugar tablet that was close to some plant that may or may not provoke an immune system response similar to an illness --- that isn't medicine nor is it science - it's pure new age fakery at its finest.

Oh, I'm sorry, once you dilute the herbal potion completely out of the solution in question, it's that "tap" against the heel of your hand that magically endows it with superhuman powers.

Perhaps if the homeopaths would like to enlighten chemists as to how that works, we can have a completely revolutionary new way of generating chemistry.

We could solve the oil problem too. Dissolve gasoline in water - repeat 12x until there's no way there's even ONE molecule of any hydrocarbon in it - and tap it with the heel of your hand. CAREFULLY mind you. Now that you've done that it'd be more potent than jet fuel.

Jesus.

 

What's that thing in your son's mouth?

 

RE: you're so grown up aren't you - so....its valid to bring it up in this thread and discuss it sensibly not debunk as some weird magic.

If it quacks like a duck...

RE: Nope... a homeopath uses science and chemistry daily -

BULL SHIT

Do you know what 12x means? Look it up. Try performing chemical reactions with 12x solutions. You can't - because it's so dilute there's NOTHING of the original substance left.

RE: a homeopath is interested in stimulating an immune system response - an allopathic doctor is interested in supressing an immune system response.

An allopathic doctor is interested in checking out signs and symptoms and fixing them based on some kind of empirical research - not some 1800s quaint theory about how water retains a "memory" of what's been in it.

RE: They are both scientific. Go do some research !

Dude, I have.

RE: So how come homeopathy is one of the most accurate health treatments with the best results? New age fakery - goddam witches lets burn them yeeeehaaaaaaaa?

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA find me ONE credible source that states this. The Ipswitch school of homeopathy and chip shop isn't credible. You'd have to rewrite the rules of chemistry and physics if what they sling out is true. Luckily most people who go to homeopaths do so because they have a chill or cough - which sorts itself out anyway. I knew few people who'd bring a car crash victim crashing on a gurney to a homeopath. Hang on while I make up a 15x solution of asphalt.

RE: Now you are just being silly and showing your ignorance and immaturity

THAT IS HOMEOPATHY

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html

It's got full-bore references and annotations - this page does a better job than I ever could at pointing out the CORE SCIENTIFIC FLAWS in it.

RE: Go google dear - world of information out there!

No, you are the one who makes these outrageous claims. You google it and explain to me why everything we know about chemistry is wrong.

RE: Now its interesting you should bring this up because a) it has nothing to do with the thread b) its highlighting your immaturity and c) whats this heelhand tapping nonsense? grow up!

THAT IS HOMEOPATHY. Once you've done the "proving" and dilution, you MUST tap the vial against your hand or a pad of leather for the "magic" to work.

RE: Blimey - that was an adverse reaction if ever I saw one ! Patronising aswell *claps*

Give me a few of your cells. I'll dilute them out of a water solution to oblivion, give the solution the magic tap and administer it to you. You should be dead of tissue rejection within minutes HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR

Or it could just be I've sold you REALLY expensive tap water.

RE: Now then Goth you really don't understand homeopathy do you other than the perpetuated allopathic myth that has been bandied about for years because allopathic - male dominated medicine is trying to win a big battle and has been for well over a hundred years - do ya??

Ah, yes. Here you show ignorance of logic as well. An allopath (which I am not) is wrong about the hoodoo being patent bullshit, because he has a vested stake in the info being wrong. I'm sorry, but though the allopaths have a LOT to answer for, in this instance they are DEAD RIGHT. It's called chemistry. Look it up.

RE: I dare say Hippy Landscaper has thought himself to ask his midwife - well done for that bit of advice

Glad we agree on something

RE: Linda Johnston, MD, DHt - "The early 1800's was a time of great transition in medicine. Whereas the standard, allopathic form of treatment was dominant at the turn of that century, that was not to last.

Allopathy in the 1800s was truly scary. NOT seeing a doctor in those days was actually a more healthy idea. But you see, with the advent of things like training, licensing, medical research and science, going to see the potion brewer complete with leeches is pretty pointless. I KNOW THEY USE LEECHES IN ALLOPATHIC MEDICINE NOW I am making a point.

RE: The two most popular alternatives to the orthodox practice were herbal medicine and Homeopathy.

They still are. In some parts of the Appalachians they use rootwork as well. And voodoo. Wanna call that adequate treatment?

RE: Mothers treating their children's problems easily and inexpensively caused the news of Homeopathy to spread like a brush fire. Many people successfully treated typhoid, cholera, measles, mumps, tuberculosis, smallpox and other diseases with their Homeopathic remedies and without doctors.

Yeah, and according to the website of Ernest Angeley, he can slap people in the head and cure cancer in the name of Jesus. Thirdhand information is of no interest to me. I wanna see how homeopathy is supposed to work. And I stop reading when I read about how it works, because it cannot.

RE: The rise of Homeopathy particularly coincided with a dramatic decline in the prestige of allopathic medicine and its methods. There was a general and pervasive disdain and mistrust of allopathic medicine. As a consequence, extreme hatred and economic jealousy was aroused in the allopaths.

IN THE 1800s, of course.

RE: Historically, homeopathy has proven many times to be more effective than allopathic medicine in the treatment and prevention of disease, with risk of harmful side effects. In a U.S. cholera outbreak in 1849, allopathic medicine saw a 48-60% death rate, while homeopathic hospitals had a documented death rate of only 3%.

Why are you discussing 1843? Frig, faith healing worked better then. Doctors at that time weren't preoccupied much with disease control.

RE: Roughly similar statistics still hold true for cholera today. Recent epidemiological studies show homeopathic remedies as equaling or surpassing standard vaccinations in preventing disease. There are reports in which populations that were treated homeopathically after exposure had a 100% success rate-none of the treated caught the disease. more During the epidemic of yellow fever in the southern States in 1878, the allopaths treated 96,187 cases, of which 12,296 died; a death rate of 23.b. At the same time the homoeopathic practitioners treated 3914 cases of the same disease, of which 261 died; a death rate of 6.6. In many of the southern States, by means of unjust medical legislation, the allopaths have obtained sole control, and they refuse to permit homeopaths to practice. This accounts for the great disparity in the numbers treated.

Sources, please. I don't buy it.

 

Homeopathy - all the idiocy that fits

Of all the things called "alternative medicine" the most ridiculous must be homeopathy. It's even sillier than iridology.

For those unfamiliar with the origins and principles of homeopathy, it was invented in the late 18th century by Samuel Hahnemann. It had no less success than the conventional medicine of the time and probably saved the lives of many people, simply on the basis that people get better from many illnesses without any intervention, so doing nothing (which is essentially what homeopathy is) could often produce better outcomes than bleeding, purging, cauterisation and amputation. The difference is that medicine has moved on and no longer does those things (or does them differently and for different reasons).

Homeopathy still relies on the principles set out at its invention. One of these principles is the Law of Similarities, which says that something which produces symptoms in large doses will be useful to treat diseases that have those symptoms. To determine what can be used for what, various things are subject to "proving" where they are administered in increasing doses until a reaction is observed. This reaction is then recorded, and when a patient presents with the same signs the homeopath can use a preparation of the cure to fix things. Jalapeno peppers would be a candidate for the treatment of excessive sweating and cat hair has potential as a treatment for hay fever. Presumably cyanide would provide a useful treatment for death.

To avoid the obvious problem, a second principle is invoked: the Law of Infinitesimals. This states that the more dilute a substance is, the better it will work against the "proved" symptoms. There are two sorts of dilution in common use - X and C. To make an X dilution, you take one tenth of the sample and mix it with nine parts of diluent. To make a 10X preparation, the dilution process is carried out ten times, each time taking one tenth of the mixture and diluting it. At each stage, the mixture is "succussed", which means hit in a certain fashion. Sometimes succussion requires the container to be tapped against a particular object, such as a leather-bound book. Preparations can be made at 6X, 10X etc. More powerful preparations can be made using the C method, where the dilution is one in a hundred each time. I have heard of M preparations where the factor is one thousand, but I assume these could only be handled by very experienced laboratories.

The folly of traditional homeopathy can be illustrated to even the simplest of minds, a fact that does not seem to deter those with "minds" coming in under the "simplest" score. As an example, someone suggested to me recently that a daily dose of 5 grams of some calcium salt could be taken in 6X homeopathic form to treat some condition or other. A simple calculation showed that this would require the patient to consume 49,995.995 kilograms of lactose per day to get the recommended dose of calcium. This weight of tablets will not fit into the back of your average semi-trailer, and would therefore require at least two truckloads of pills per day. Every day. (The same person had said that 30X preparations were so powerful that they should only be taken when under the care of a fully-qualified homeopath. To get 5 grams out of a 30X preparation, the daily weight of tablets would be just under the mass of the Earth. Every day.)

Faced with situations like this where the choice was either to eat the weight of forty small cars per day, drink a volume of liquid equivalent to one and a half petrol tankers or to take a manageable quantity of medicine that could not possibly contain any measurable amount of medication, the homeopaths have sought desperately for a resolution of the dilemma.

What they came up with was the memory of water. I assume lactose has a similar memory, but nobody seems to be talking about it. The memory of water voodoo says that water remembers things that it has been in contact with even after all traces of the substance have been removed. Strangely, however, it doesn't remember the bottles or bladders it has been stored in, or the chemicals that may have come into contact with its molecules, or the other contents of the sewers it may have been in at one time, or the cosmic radiation which has blasted through it. It just remembers the one thing that the "researcher" wants it to remember.

Then they tell us they can transmit this memory by email, but that's a story for another time

Water has a whole lot of special chemical and physical properties that nothing else seems to have. The molecules in liquid water keep grouping and ungrouping, combining and recombining into tiny crystals and patterns. This has a lot to do with the way life looks on earth and why water is essential for life. It also has a lot to do with why water is an almost universal solvent. What it hasn't anything to do with is the idiocy of homeopathy.

Homeopaths have adopted this "memory of water" nonsense in an attempt to recover from the disaster that arises whenever anyone who can think thinks about the ramifications of continuous dilution. In order to explain how something can continue to act even after all of its molecules have disappeared, it was necessary to invent the concept of "memory of water". Despite there being severe logical, philosophical and scientific reasons why any "memory of water" is a vacuous idea, and despite the fact that nobody has even come up with any even remotely feasible way of testing the concept, the homeopaths have simply willed it into existence. They then refer back to the weird way water molecules react with each other to say "see, some of these temporary structures could code for molecules that they have seen before".

The real problem for them is that, even if "memory of water" was both possible and proven, it would not make homeopathy any less ridiculous. You see, homeopaths go further by claiming that they can selectively control what it is that water remembers. We have the situation where they are claiming to do the impossible while working with something that does not even exist in the first place.

Let's look at making a typical homeopathic remedy. I have randomly chosen a treatment for cholera, which simply consists of a 30X preparation of human excrement. I won't bore you with the procedure because it just consists of successive dilutions and succussions. It's the final product I'm interested in.

How does the preparer ensure that only the excrement is remembered and nothing else? Remember how I mentioned that water is an almost universal solvent? How was the preparation controlled to eliminate the possibility that the water remembered any of the non-excremental molecules that it might have come in contact with? For example, if it had instead remembered the molecules in the glass preparation vessel, we might have ended up with a treatment for silicosis. What if the preparer had breathed out through her mouth and the air above the preparation vessel had become contaminated by mercury vapour coming off her fillings. Some of this could have become dissolved in the water and then we might have come up with a treatment for _____ (fill in whatever mercury in fillings is causing this week). If she smoked, we might get a cure for lung cancer. If some of the nitrogen in the lab air had got into the water, a cure for the bends might have resulted, and a tiny fragment of asbestos blown in from a nearby demolition site might have been remembered and a treatment for mesothelioma been produced. None of these would be of any use to the poor person sitting outside waiting for a cure for diarrhoea (well, sometimes sitting, sometimes hurrying to sit elsewhere).

If it were to be proved conclusively tomorrow that water can retain molecular structures related to other molecules that had been near the water ones, homeopathy would still be a stinking crock. Diluting it by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 would not make it more powerful or make it smell less

 

The No-Medicine Medicine
Homeopathy, founded by a German physician, Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), is a relative newcomer. Homeopathy is based on the so-called "law of similars" (similia similibus curantur), which asserts that substances that produce a certain set of symptoms in a healthy person can cure those same symptoms in someone who is sick. Although there are related notions in Chinese medicine, Hahnemann seems to have arrived at the idea independently. Hahnemann spent much of his life testing natural substances to find out what symptoms they produced and prescribing them for people who exhibited the same symptoms. Although the purely anecdotal evidence on which he based his conclusions would not be taken seriously today, homeopathy as currently practiced still relies almost entirely on Hahnemann's listing of substances and their indications for use.

Natural substances, of course, are often acutely toxic. Troubled by the side effects that often accompanied his medications, Hahnemann experimented with diluting them. After each successive dilution, he subjected the solution to vigorous shaking, or "succussion." He made the remarkable discovery that although dilution eliminated the side effects, it did not diminish the effectiveness of the medications. This is rather grandly known as "the law of infinitesimals."

Hahnemann actually made a third "discovery," which his followers no longer mention. "The sole true and fundamental cause that produces all the countless forms of disease," he writes in his Organon, "is psora." Psora is more commonly known as "itch." This principle does not seem to involve any laws of physics and is in any case ignored by modern followers of Hahnemann.

By means of successive dilutions, extremely dilute solutions can be achieved rather easily. The dilution limit is reached when the volume of solvent is unlikely to contain a single molecule of the solute. Hahnemann could not have known that in his preparations he was, in fact, exceeding the dilution limit. Although he was contemporary with the physicist Amadeo Avogadro (1776-1856), Hahnemann's Organon der Rationellen Heilkunde was published in 1810, one year before Avogadro advanced his famous hypothesis, and many years before other physicists actually determined Avogadro's number. (Avogadro showed that there is a large but finite and specific number of atoms or molecules in a mole of substance, specifically 6.022 x 1023. A mole is the molecular weight of a substance expressed in grams. Thus, a mole of water, H2O, molecular weight 2 + 16 = 18, is 18 grams. So there are 6.022 x 1023 water molecules in 18 grams of water.)

Modern day followers of Hahnemann, however, are perfectly aware of Avogadro's number. Nevertheless, they regularly exceed the dilution limit -- often to an astonishing extent. I recently examined the dilutions listed on the labels of dozens of standard homeopathic remedies sold over the counter in health stores, and increasingly in drug stores, as remedies for everything from nervousness to flu. These remedies are normally in the form of lactose tablets on which a single drop of the "diluted" medication has been placed. The "solvent" is usually a water/alcohol mixture. The lowest dilution I found listed on any of these bottles was 6X, but most of the dilutions were 30X or even, in the case of oscillococcinum, an astounding 200C. (Oscillococcinum, which is derived from duck liver, is the standard homeopathic remedy for flu. As we will see, however, its widespread use poses little threat to the duck population.)

What do these notations mean? The notation 6X means that the active substance is diluted 1:10 in a water-alcohol mixture and succussed. This procedure (diluting and succussing) is repeated sequentially six times. The concentration of the active substance is then one part in ten raised to the sixth power (106), or one part per million. An analysis of the pills would be expected to find numerous impurities at the parts-per-million level.

The notation 30X means the 1:10 dilution, followed by succussion, is repeated thirty times. That results in one part in 1030, or 1 followed by thirty zeroes. I don't know what the name for that number is, but let me put it this way: you would need to take some two billion pills, a total of about a thousand tons of lactose, to expect to get even one molecule of the medication. In other words, the pills contain nothing but lactose and the inevitable impurities. This is literally no-medicine medicine.

And what of 200C? That means the active substance is sequentially diluted 1:100 and succussed two hundred times. That would leave you with only one molecule of the active substance to every one hundred to the two hundredth power molecules of solvent, or 1 followed by four hundred zeroes (10400). But the total number of atoms in the entire universe is estimated to be about one googol, which is 1 followed by a mere one hundred zeroes.

This is the point at which we are all supposed to realize how ridiculous this is and share a good laugh. But homeopaths don't laugh. They've done the same calculation. And while they agree that not a single molecule of the active substance could remain, they contend it doesn't matter, the water/alcohol mixture somehow remembers that the substance was once there. The process of succussion is presumed to charge the entire volume of the liquid with the same memory. Is there any evidence for such a memory?
Smart Water?
Homeopaths have been administering this sort of no-medicine medicine for two centuries. Most scientists, however, first became aware of their extraordinary claims when Nature published a paper by French epidemiologist/homeopathist Jacques Benveniste and several colleagues, in which he reported that an antibody solution continued to evoke a biological response even if it was diluted to 30X -- far beyond the dilution limit (Davenas et al. 1988). Benveniste interpreted this as evidence that the water somehow "remembered" the antibody.

In reaching that conclusion, Benveniste turned conventional scientific logic on its head. A large part of experimental science consists of devising tests to insure that an experimental outcome is not the result of some subtle artifact of the conduct or design of the experiment. "Infinite dilution" is one such procedure used by chemists. The effect of some reagent, for example, is plotted as a function of concentration. If at low concentrations, the plot does not extrapolate through the origin, it is taken as proof that the observed effect is due to something other than the reagent. By Benveniste's logic, it's evidence that the reagent leaves some sort of imprint on the solution that continues to produce the effect.

Attention had been called to Benveniste's article by the editor of Nature, John Maddox, who pointed out in an editorial that Benveniste had to be wrong (Maddox 1988). Because the reviewer could not point to any actual mistake, Nature had agreed to publish the article in the spirit of open scientific exchange. Reviewers, of course, have no way of knowing if the author faithfully reports the results of the measurement, or whether the instruments employed are faulty. Nevertheless, the existence of this one paper published in a respected journal has been widely trumpeted by the homeopathic community as proof that homeopathy has a legitimate scientific basis.

The Maddox editorial encouraged other scientists to repeat the Benveniste experiments. An attempt to replicate the work as precisely as possible was reported by Foreman and colleagues in Nature in 1993 (Foreman et. al. 1993). The authors found that "no aspect of the data is consistent with [Benveniste's] claim." I am aware of no work that replicates Benveniste's findings. Why was Foreman's water dumber than Benveniste's? We will return to that question.

Quite apart from the matter of how the water/alcohol mixture remembers, there are obvious questions that cry out to be asked: 1) Why does the water/alcohol mixture remember the healing powers of an active substance, but forget the side effects? 2) What happens when the drop of solution evaporates, as it must, from the lactose tablet? Is the memory transferred to the lactose? 3) Does the water remember other substances as well? Depending on its history, the water might have been in contact with a staggering number of different substances.

A number of mechanisms have been proposed to account for this miraculous memory. These mechanisms are discussed by Wayne Jonas in his recent book, Healing with Homeopathy, coauthored by Jennifer Jacobs (Jonas and Jacobs 1996). Jonas is the Director of the Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health and is identified on the book jacket as one of "America's leading researchers of homeopathic medicine." Jonas appears, at the very outset, to acknowledge the possibility that the effect of homeopathic medicine may "turn out to be only a placebo effect." But as we will see, in alternative medicine circles the placebo effect can be the weirdest explanation of all.

If it is not a placebo effect, Jonas says, the "information" from the active substance must be stored in some way in the water/alcohol solution, perhaps in the structure of the liquid mixture. There has been an abundance of speculation about what sort of "structure" this might be: clusters of water molecules arranged in specific patterns (Anagnostatos 1994); arrangements of isotopes such as deuterium or oxygen-18 (Berezin 1990); or "coherent vibration" of the water molecules (Rubik 1990). I could not find a single piece of evidence supporting any of these speculations, and there are sound scientific reasons for rejecting each of them. Jonas refers to structural studies showing regions of local order in liquids. A "snapshot" of the structure of a water/alcohol mixture will of course show regions of local order, but these are transient; they cannot persist beyond the briefest of relaxation times depending on the temperature. That not even local order can persist is the definition of a liquid. The problem, of course, is entropy. The second law of thermodynamics is the most firmly established of all natural laws, but even if you could somehow repeal the second law, you would still confront the question of how this stored information can be communicated to the body.
The Illusive Biophoton
One possibility, according to Jonas, is that information is transferred by "bioelectromagnetic energy." Here he cites, as "some of the most carefully executed work in this area," studies of the effect of serially agitated dilutions of frog thyroxine on highland frogs that are in the climbing stage of metamorphosis (Endler et al. 1994). Thyroxine is reported to increase the climbing rate of the frogs -- and the response continues even after the thyroxine dilutions are taken far beyond the dilution limit. In other words, when it is certain that there is no thyroxine.

That would appear to be clear evidence that something other than thyroxine is responsible for the stimulation of the frogs. In this case, for example, it might be the alcohol that is producing the climbing response, or some impurity, or the frogs might be stimulated by the act of administering the medication, or there might be subconscious bias on the part of the experimenter in deciding whether the frogs are stimulated. Once again, however, scientific logic is turned on its head; the results are interpreted as evidence that an imprint of thyroxine has somehow been left in the water.

But even if the water contains information about thyroxine, how is this information communicated to the frogs? Rather than administering the water/alcohol solution directly to the frog, the researchers tried putting the solution in a sealed glass test tube and placing it in the water with the frogs. The frogs still responded. Why am I not surprised?

What conclusion did the researchers come to? They concluded that information that once resided in the molecular structure of the active substance, and which was then somehow transferred to the succussed water, must have been transmitted to the frogs via a "radiant" effect, perhaps an illusive "biophoton." No evidence of such radiation has been reported. Benveniste, however, now claims that a 50Hz magnetic field can erase the memory of his antibody solutions (Benveniste 1993), which might explain why other researchers do not find a memory. This electromagnetic link led Benveniste to the further discovery that he can "potentize" your water over a telephone line.

One possibility, according to Jonas, is that information does not pass from the solution to the frog -- or from a medication to a human patient -- but the other way. The unhealthy state of the patient might be "released through the remedy." "Such speculative theories," Jonas admits, "need further experimental work to confirm or disprove them."
The Case Against Butterflies
Jonas also speculates that chaos theory might offer insight into the effect of homeopathic remedies on the body's self-healing mechanisms: One concept in chaos theory is that very small changes in a variable may cause a system to jump to a very different pattern of activity, such as a small shift in wind direction drastically affecting climatic patterns of temperature and precipitation. Under this way of thinking, the homeopathic remedy can be seen as a small variable that alters the symptom pattern of an illness. (Jonas and Jacobs 1996, 89)

This dreadful shibboleth betrays a total misunderstanding of what chaos is about. "Chaos" refers to complex systems that are so sensitive to initial conditions that it is not possible to predict how they will behave. Thus, while the flapping of a butterfly's wings might conceivably trigger a hurricane, killing butterflies is unlikely to reduce the incidence of hurricanes. As for homeopathic remedies that exceed the dilution limit, a better analogy might be to the flapping of a caterpillar's wings.
Psychic Healing
But if none of these mechanisms work, Jonas says, "highly speculative and imaginary [sic] explanations may be necessary." What he has in mind is the placebo effect. "Belief in a therapy," Jonas explains, "may be an important factor in healing." Who would disagree? If it is a placebo effect at work in homeopathy, all of the pseudoscientific trappings of similia similibus curantur and the law of infinitesimals merely serve as props to deceive people into believing that sugar pills are medicine. But "placebo effect," as used by Jonas and other proponents of alternative medicine, turns out to be the strangest beast of all. It is suffused with the New Age notion of a universal consciousness. The placebo effect becomes psychic healing. Again from Jonas: Some theorists suggest that intentionality and consciousness must be brought to any explanation of how nonlocal, and nonspecific quantum potentials might be "collapsed" into so-called informational coherence patterns (molecules), which then have specific effects. Once these previously unstable and nonlocalizable coherence patterns (such as thoughts and beliefs) nudge potential effects into existence (by an intention to heal in the person or practitioner), they are then seen by the body as locally acting, stable, "molecular" structures that produce specific biological signals and have predictable effects in the person. (Jonas and Jacobs 1996, 90)

This all sounds very much like Deepak Chopra (1989 and 1993), who asserts that: "Beliefs, thoughts, and emotions create the chemical reactions that uphold life in every cell." The notion that by thought alone the medicines needed to cure illness can be created within the body comes from Ayurveda, the traditional religious medicine of India that dates back thousands of years. Chopra has, in any case, created vast personal wealth by simply invoking "quantum healing" in book after book. His books reveal no hint that he has any concept of quantum mechanics.

Nevertheless, there are quantum mystics, including a few physicists, who interpret the wave function as some kind of vibration of a holistic ether that pervades the universe. Wave function collapse, they believe, happens throughout the universe instantaneously as a result of some cosmic consciousness. That, of course, would violate causality in the relativistic sense, and it would also violate quantum field theory (Eberhard and Ross 1989).
Biofield Therapeutics (Touch Therapy)
Alternative medicine consists of a wide spectrum of unrelated treatments ranging from the barely plausible to the totally preposterous. At the preposterous end, I place those therapies that have no direct physical consequences of any sort, such as homeopathy and psychic healing. One must also include "biofield therapeutics" or "touch therapy," though in fact it would be more accurate to call it "no-touch therapy," since the practitioner's hands do not actually make contact with the patient. Instead, it is claimed that the patient's "energy field," "qi," or "aura," is "smoothed" by the hands of the therapist or shifted from one place to another to achieve balance. The energy field is said to extend several inches outside the body, and the patient's field interacts with the field of the practitioner.

The nature of this supposed energy field is obscure, but proponents often link it in some way with relativity and the equivalence of matter and energy. It has also been suggested that the body's energy field is electromagnetic. Quantum mechanics, despite its popularity in many alternative medicine circles, rarely seems to be invoked in touch therapy. Indeed, B. Brennan, author of Hands of Light (1987), writes: "I am unable to explain these experiences without using the old classical physics framework." I confess that classical physics does not make it any easier for me to explain. Practitioners claim to be able to "feel" the energy field and often employ hand-held pendulums to locate the "chakras," or vortices, in the field that must be smoothed out to promote healing. It would seem to be a simple matter to examine a field that can be felt tactually, or that affects the motion of a pendulum, but so far no one has claimed to detect the energy field with any instrument that is not hand-held. This is quite remarkable since there are said to be tens of thousands in the United States who have been trained in some form of this therapy. In the United Kingdom there are 8,500 registered touch therapists (Benor 1993).

The public is spending billions of dollars annually on sugar pills to cure their sniffles, hand waving to speed recovery from operations, and good thoughts to ward off illness, all with assurances that it's based on science. Society has been set up for this fleecing in part by the media's sensationalized coverage of modern science. Popular discussions of relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos often leave people with the impression that common sense cannot be relied on -- anything is possible.

 

I'm all for alternative therapies that work. Massage works very well - herbs have been found to have compounds in God's kitchen we can't invent.

But chiropractic and homeopathy ---- uh, sure. NOT.

People regularly die because some whack job with a mail-order diploma in some "alternative healing" decide to take a sick child and cease all of its medication, trusting instead in a cabbage-leaf wrap or water which has been left under a pyramid.

THAT BEING SAID

If an allopath wants me to do/take something, he'd better back it up empirically. Much of what's been done in medicine was never scientifically tested and was later found to be invalid.

 

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww he's so cute


Congratulations.

 

congrats on your new babe. the best, most natural thing to start out a healthy babes life is breastmilk. and it's not too late. just an fyi

 

Thanks for publishing all that research irongoth. It was interesting to read. I have to say that the research made sense to me and that scientifically it always seemed to me that homeopathy should be a load of poop. It doesn't seem like it should work.
But, I find something really wrong with giving a very small baby repeated doses of cold medicine so that they can stay comfortable. When my son was two or three months old he got a bad cold (he was attending a home daycare- as a single mom I had to work). He was miserable, I was miserable (spent practically two days sitting in a steamy shower so that he wasn't so conjested) I felt horrible giving him conventional cold stuff. I hate taking that stuff myself. I'd rather suffer with the cold than have the funky dextromothorphan dreams. So, I tried something else thay had at the drugstore- Hyland's C-plus cold, a homeopathic remedy. I didn't expect it to work.
Regular cold meds took 1/2 hr to start working. I slipped the teeny tiny pills under his tongue, reading the label and thinking belladona? caffine? chamomile- yeah right.
Within five minutes his nose had stopped running and I could hear him breathing better. For some odd reason they worked. I can't prove it scientifically, I heard it in his chest, lungs, and nose. They just worked.
Not all homeopathic stuff I've tried works. There have been some that don't work, and others that I won't use again because they had odd side-effects when I took them.
As much as I want to believe homeopathy is quackery it has worked too often for me to do that, With bodies I think not everyone is the same. There is no magic bullet that works for everyone. Bodies and bugs are all uniwue and its helpful to have a bunch of unique options when facing illness.
Congrats hippylandscaper hes so cute and I am very glad for you. I suggest you consult a midwife, maybe put a note up at a local whole foods or coop asking for recomendations for a good low-intervention pediatrician. Don't be afraid to shop around when it comes to doctors. And I am glad you got a chance to help with caring for your son and mama gets a break.
H

 

regarding all of those quackwatch articles quoted - watch out for quackwatch. i've come across some very inaccurate information on quack watch. the guy who runs that site has a personal beef with certain areas of medicine such as alternative therapies, pyschological health diagnosis and treatments etc. it's his personal mission and has little to do with good reliable and balanced information. it will only print articles that state the worst cases and ignores any positive reports.

according to quackwatch, my child can't have sensory integration disorder as SID is apparently non existent (according to quackwatch) hmmmm, i guess most child pyschologists and neurologists are wrong. someone should tell them about quackwatch! i resent the fact that they write off my sons disorders so easily despite the vast majority of mainstream medicines acceptance of the existance of SID.

he tries to lump SID in with the overdiagnosis of adhd. how can he really know and understand what he doesn't have to live with? he should have been here when my child went into hysterics and wet himself when we were on the fairgrounds during the demolition derby because it was too loud for him. he should have been here when i had to cut his hair when he was sleeping until he was 6 because he couldn't stand having anyone touch the back of his neck. thanks quackwatch, glad to now that my child's autistic like behaviour is just a figment of my imagination.

quackwatch is on a mission to 'save' us from any type of medicine they personally don't like. it is not a good source of information. please don't use quackwatch to make any important desicions, please!

quackwatch= bad info

kathy

ps- hippylandscaper very cute baby, good luck with finding a doc, whatever type you choose.

 

thats a beautiful lil fella.... what did you name him??? congrats!

 

RE: And all of that said I have experienced homeopathy and found it to work time and time again where allopathic treatments have failed... explain that?

Suggestibility?

RE: And as for you debunking chiropractic - lol - if it wasn't for the work of a chiropracter my mother would still be off work suffering a frozen shoulder - she isn't however - she had the pain relieved and the condition alleviated with chiropractice and also acupuncture!

Yes, but could that have cured cancer? Do people really drop dead of "subluxation"? So long as chiropractors stick to what amounts to specialised massage, fine.

RE: I'm interested in why you think its all aload of crap when it works for so many people?

I'm saying if you have a sick child don't rush him to someone whose medical concept is some Atlantean mythology from the 1800s. Adults can choose to die or be crippled by taking sugar pills rather than medication. Kids need help.

RE: I'm also interested in why you think its aload of crap when Private hospitals in the UK are now offering alternative therapies such as Reiki and Reflexology with Chiropracticioners almost standard in every public health service in the UK... yet its all crap is it?

No, it's more because England is full of flakes and liberals who've decided that chakra therapy is just as valid as empirical science. Political correctness at its worst.

RE: they actually recommend these days alternative medicines..'cos the medical world is starting to appreciate that symptoms are not in issolation to one another and there is a connection through the mind/body connection -

Listen - I've never slagged alternative therapies per se. Herbalism is excellent when done by someone knowledgeable. Massage can help drain lymphatic systems. Colonics can remove death and rot from the gut, etc. etc. etc. But when you start looking at "alternative therapies" right next door to the UNLICENCED GOD KNOWS WHAT OR WHO HERBALIST you have some other quack who thinks that death and disease comes SOLELY from spinal misalignment (chiropractic) or a lack of "warm chi" in your "liver middle burner".

RE: So for you to dismiss without sharing your own experiences is a little like pissing in the wind my friend.. I trust chemists about as much as I trust Bush/Blair - why? 'cos they fuck with nature big time!

The plural of anecdote is NOT data. And as for chemists, at least they can't say anything without demonstrating it and repeating its results. "Well of course you can't see "warm qi" it's "energy therapy".

RE: I'm not saying you're wrong - I'm just interested to know if you have ever tried homeopathy or chiropractice or a therapy that works on energy fields?

Herbalism, Asian herbalism, yoga. Sure. But I wouldn't see a herbalist if I had an aneurysm.

RE: I agree there are alot of charlatans out there who do alot of damage but there do exist people out there who are highly trained in not just their field but everything to do with physiology and biology - often more trained than your average general practicioner.

They could know more anatomy than the standard GP but if they then toss it out to hand around lactose pills.... ????? WTF?

RE: They take a holistic approach, meaning that they use a variety of different tools to heal ailments.

Did you read ANYTHING I pointed out about homeopathy and why it doesn't work?

RE: The trouble occuring here is that many many people demand empirical evidence (like you ) and rather than trust the fact it actually works

That's what "empirical evidence" means. I could point you to testimonials on Ernest Angley's home page - does that mean next time you break your leg you should head down to the prayer revival and let the snake handlers and suchlike poke you in the forehead and pronounce you healed? Hell no. You'd want INDEPENDANT VERIFICATION of results.

RE: you would rather sit there talking about why it really shouldn't work according to the theories that someone came up with in the field of chemistry. I mean for all you know chemistry laws could be completely wrong

All I'm saying is this. If a sugar pill with NO medication in it works contrary to the laws of chemistry, and this can be independantly verified and reproduced, sure, let's redo chemistry. Science does that all the time. Allopathic medicine no longer does bleedings, for example. However homeopathy refuses to accept that science has proven it wrong and argues, well, like you do. "I DO believe in the tooth fairy! I DO believe in the tooth fairy!"

RE: He had homeopathic treatment as a very small baby for chronic eczema and the homeopathic treatment cleared it up and he has never again suffered as he did as a baby - co-incidental crap that may be but un-arguably still evidence.

You know what, then? He should find that homeopath - he should get the treatment regimen, and then get an independant study done. Prove that chemistry is wrong and make it medical practice.

You've never felt an energy field so you wouldn't know anything other than to call it crap Ancient cultures have worked with energy fields, chakra's, meridians and the mind body spirit for a very long time mate and chemistry is to blame for completely ostracising that approach - its only since the 1800's that allapathy has been so prevalent aswell as homeopathy and to be perfectly honest I would rather trust something that I have seen work time and time again than trust allapthy for my conditions which just makes me condition worse in the long run.. FACT! That condition being eczema.

RE: But this is not a thread about alternative medicines - I was hoping to offer (as you were) hippy-landscaper some advice - I do hope with both mine and your inputs he will have some facts to consider in choosing a less intrusive healthcare for his baby.

Less intrusive is a good thing. I mean, homeopathy can't hurt cause it doesn't work. But I would NOT have the child's primary care giver be some quack. Children are too fragile at that age. The advice you were giving is dangerous.

 

RE: regarding all of those quackwatch articles quoted - watch out for quackwatch. i've come across some very inaccurate information on quack watch.

Absolutely.

But even though Adolf Hitler, who said some incorrect and invalid things said 2+2 = 4. 2+2 does in fact equal four.

 

RE: But, I find something really wrong with giving a very small baby repeated doses of cold medicine so that they can stay comfortable. When my son was two or three months old he got a bad cold (he was attending a home daycare- as a single mom I had to work). He was miserable, I was miserable (spent practically two days sitting in a steamy shower so that he wasn't so conjested) I felt horrible giving him conventional cold stuff. I hate taking that stuff myself. I'd rather suffer with the cold than have the funky dextromothorphan dreams. So, I tried something else thay had at the drugstore- Hyland's C-plus cold, a homeopathic remedy. I didn't expect it to work.
Regular cold meds took 1/2 hr to start working. I slipped the teeny tiny pills under his tongue, reading the label and thinking belladona? caffine? chamomile- yeah right.
Within five minutes his nose had stopped running and I could hear him breathing better. For some odd reason they worked. I can't prove it scientifically, I heard it in his chest, lungs, and nose. They just worked.

Maybe after the few days of him being sick with the cold it cleared up? You did mention you spent days in the shower.... that's long enough for the cold to clear itself.

That's typically what happens with this homeopathic stuff. "I tried Contac-C, etc. for days with no effect, took Mistress Wytche's Patented Lactose Pillse and woke up the next day feeling great!" Here's a hint, you could have drunk COCA COLA and woken up the next day feeling great. Problem is when you have something that DOESN'T go away.

 

I have to say about sciencem I , that in science, only measurable, proven things are seen as valid. Ok so far. I understand it, and it is a good way to do things. But now think back 100-150 years. Have microorganisms existed before louis pasteur discovered them with his rather primitive microscope? YES!!!!!!!!!
Has radiation existed before marie curie discovered it? YESSS!!! And there are many many things that existed long before our discovery.

the filter of perception of science has gotten finer and finer, but to say, we don't know all, but all we do not see does not exist in no way, is purely stupid. It just slips through the holes ;-)

Other then that, MY family was always and only treaded homeopathically.

My mother treaded a lot of children in the neighborhood, with success.
Among children, scarlet fiever is a common desease, and if healed out correctly (withough intevention of antibiotics) children get in only one time. Our neighbors ran striktly to the doc, always getting doses of antibiotics for their children, for the first sign of scarlett fiever. They got to the point, that their son had 5 attacks in about a year. (remember, this used to be a one timer.....;-) so my mother asked them wheather she can treat him, and since it's just sugar, they said ok, and did not go to the doc the next time, but called my mother. The guy never got it again. He was real sick, this time, for more then just a few days, but he never got it again.
Similar is a story of a little girl with urinary tract infections.

Another kid got a head trauma (the one where you fall on your head, and start vomitting), my mother gaver her arnica drops, and in about an hour the kid recovered from nausea, severe headaches and vomiting.

Arnica is working statistically so good, that even normal, allopathic hospitals in germany started using it.

If homeopathy is not seriously working, why are more and more formerly strict allopathic doctors in germany (and in the medical field, we are among the best in the world) getting aditional qualifications in homeopathy?

I believe that my good health, in fact the health from all of my family (except dad who went to military doctors) is due to the homeopathic treatment. Going through a homeopathic treated disease is much different from going through an allopathic treated disease. In the first one, it usually gets really bad for a short while, and then the recovering time is really short. Where as with an antibiotic treatment, the symthoms just disappear.
It is important for the immunesystem to go through diseases, and to developp antibodies, and if this cycle is stopped by antibiotics, it is not complete, and not as effective.


Then, nobody sais homeopathy is a wondercure. Not everything and everyone is curable with it. The same with allopathy. Somebody telling something else is not to be taken serious. And there are bad, good, and way better homeopathic working doctors. And it's not easy to find them, especially, since the studies are not protected, as well as the name. Every-f---ing-one can call themselves homeophatic practioner, with yeah, some stupid mailorder certifficate. And a lot of these people aren't worth shit, but others are worth every penny.

I also just saw a documentary, how most medications are not even suitable for kids, that the doses are only adjusted to bodyweight, but that this would not be the right way, since children's organism are different from grown out and developped bodies. Assuming that most of the medications on the European and American market are the same, (there are only very few big pharmaceutical companies on this planet) just under different names, that this is probably also true for the US. This kind of made me shudder.

 

The OP asked what questions to ask the new doctor. As a Lactation Consultant, and having worked with parents, babies and pediatricians for years there are a few questions which are helpful.

• What percentage of your clientel is breastfed at release from the hospital? (It should be 70% or higher.)
• What percentage of your clientel is breastfed at 6 months? (It should be 40-50% or higher.)
• At what age do you recommend solids? (NO baby should be on solids before the 5 month mark.)
• Do you give out free formula samples? (A good ped should answer NO, as if he does, he is going to push that brand, as well as "fall back" on formula feeding, if ANY problem presents itself with the infant in the first year. Also doctors who take the "gifts" formula companies give them, they are more likely to try to convince you that human milk feeing isn't that big of a deal. ALSO, only the big three brands are given as "gifts" Organic Formula, like Baby's Own (probaby the most safe if you have to formula feed) doesn't use doctors as pushers for their product.)
• Do you allow parents to make their own educated choices about vaccination, and will you give vaccination exeption for school and day care if the parent has good reason not to use these vaccinations? (A good ped should be doing this, instead of pushing a non proven virus into the systems of innocent babies.)
• Do you believe cow milk is neccesary for good child development. (There is a great deal of information that cow milk is awful stuff, and most peds know this. Any nutrient in cow milk, you can get from other, less allergenic foods.)
• Do you see sick children the day parent's call. (A good ped will not make a sick child wait, and leaves plenty of appointments free each day for sick children)
• Do you have "sick hours" and "well hours" or a sick waiting room, so that children who are there for Well Baby Visits are not exposed to every illness under the sun? (The answer should be "yes.")
• How long does it take for you to call parents of a sick child back when the office is closed? (Should be no more than 10-20 minutes.)
• Do you prescibe medicine for obvious illnesss and do refills for chronic conditions over the phone and during off hours? (The answer should be yes.)
• Do you double or triple schedule patients? (meaning giving two or three patients an appointment at the same exact time.) Obviously, the answer is NO!
• Do you follow the CDC's recommendations for the prescribing of antibiotics? (The CDC recommends that antibiotics be sparingly given, NOT used for suspected viral illnesses, only given for ear infections if there is a real risk of tympanic rupture, and NOT used "prophylactically.")
• Do you trust parental instinct? (YES!)

There are more, but these are just the beginning questions to ask any pediatrician.

 

Mags - that was the best post evar.