Nature Podcast 22 Mar 07
This week the Nature Podcast practices chemistry without protection, solves a tectonic teaser, and debates whether homeopathy is harmless superstition or dangerous pseudoscience.
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK: Is homeopathy fact or fiction? Superstition or pseudoscience? Read the special report and Commentary on the subject, and join the debate here.
(most comments on this topic are on another thread, here)
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Comments
Traditional medicine viewed with science or prejudice
David Colquhoun considers that some UK universities offer science degrees in complementary medicine without science but anti-science (D. Colquhoun. Nature 446, 373-374; 2007), which is unscientific and prejudiced. The arguments are as follow:
1.Traditional medicine (TM) orcomplementary and alternative medicine (CAM) such as Chinese medicine and acupuncture have been widely used for a long time, which contribute to the health care of local populations. According to WHO, TM is used for primary health care of up to 80% of the population in Africa, and account for 30%-50% of the total medicinal consumption in China. In Germany and the United States, 90% of the population and 158 million of the adult population have used TM, while the annual expenditure on TM is US$ 230 million in the United Kingdom (WHO Media Center Page, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs134/en/index.html). The data shows that TM has maintained its popularity in all regions of the developing world and its use is rapidly spreading in industrialized countries. Some UK universities offer science degrees in complementary medicine do meet the trend of TM development and modern public health care.
2.According to David Colquhoun, CAM is not science because it is not based on empirical evidence. Indeed, the efficacy of CAM may be difficult to confirm using so-called scientific method: double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial based on biomedical model which take the body as a machine. Actually, “the boundaries between health and disease, between well and sick, are far from clear…for they are diffused by cultural, social, and psychological considerations” (G.L. Engel. Science 196, 129-136; 1977). The efficacy of CAM may be successfully validated under the biopsychosocial model which is scientific conception for health, disease and remedy.
3.Indeed, at the present, many people do not understand CAM because there is no known mechanism by which this treatment could work, which should not be the excuse of considering CAM is “magic”, “unscientific” or “anti-science”. Actually, the purpose of scientific research is to explore the truth of unknown area. Is it scientific who oppose the degree education of CAM just because there are still something unknown? As we know, arsenic trioxide was used for a long time to treat some diseases in the world. However, with the development of modern chemotherapy and in conjunction with toxicity concerns with arsenical compounds, the use of arsenic diminished through the 20th century and was eventually abandoned in western society [E.V. Kandel et al. Arch Intern Med 60, 846-866; 1937, and E.T. Snow. Pharmacol Ther 53, 31–65; 1992]. But now, it is arsenic trioxide widely considered as an effective agent for treatment of some kinds of cancer, which based on the development of traditional Chinese medicine (D. Douer et al. J Clin Oncol 23, 2396-2410; 2005). In my view, the scientific opinion to CAM is allowance for the practisoner to explore the truth instead of against it with the prevailing paradigm temporarily.
Posted by: S.P. Li | March 23, 2007 03:08 PM
I agree that homeopathy should not be taught as a science, since it has failed all the clinical trials and its supposed mechanism is clearly unscientific.
However, I think it is unfortunate that one of the commentators kept diverting the conversation to acupuncture, since the results for it are less clear-cut. If acupuncture does work there will be a need to find out how using current or future models. I consider the ancient Chinese medicine model of chi and meridins to be outdated, but it doesn't fall into the same clearly placebo-only class as homeopathy.
This illustrates the problem with lumping all alternative medical treatments together. After all, some standard treatments we use in mainstream medicine today, may be proved worthless in the future. Doing scientific medicine means being open to falsification.
Posted by: Dr. Ginger Campbell | March 23, 2007 11:23 PM
Although I essentially agree with the commentary "Science degrees without the science" (Nature 446, 373-374; 2007), the statement that "Homeopathy has changed little since the early nineteenth century" is superficial. On the contrary, underneath its unchanging clinical precepts, homeopathy changed significantly for worse. Hahnemann's original (and undemonstrated) hypotheses have been simplified under several respects and a debate on these simplifications raged till half a century or more after his death. Let me provide just one example. Hahnemann justified the law of the similes, similia similibus curentur, by the assumption that the vital force has no memory of the perturbation causing the disease (e.g. see Organon §34) so that if a similar but stronger disease can be caused by a drug it will replace the older one (ibid. §26). The homeopathic physician can therefore exchange the natural disease with the medically induced one, that he will stop by interrupting the administration of the drug. This principle, that we may call the "curative disease", disappeared from homeopathic theory, to be replaced by the quite different concept of "self-healing": symptoms are or reflect reparative processes and causing or increasing them by homeopathic remedies promotes healing (e.g. see Gray B. "Homeopathy : Science or Myth?" North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, USA; 2000). The concept of self-healing entails a second strong but perhaps unintentional deviation from Hahnemann's doctrine, since it refutes his classification of symptoms into primary (expressing the damage of the vital force) and secondary (expressing its reparative reactions), and implies that all symptoms are reactive, i.e. secondary. These changes may have been introduced by mistake, rather than intentionally, and may appear minor ones, but they did not seem so to serious homeopaths and were strongly criticized by the british homeopath Richard Hughes (see "A manual of pharmacodynamics" B.Jain Publ. New Delhi, India; 2001; the original work was published in 1893). It seems to me that the changes to the original theory introduced by Hahnemann's followers testify the deep and unacknowledged confusion that reigns into the most basic assumptions of homeopathy.
Andrea Bellelli MD
Department of Biochemical Sciences "A. Rossi Fanelli"
University of Rome "Sapienza"
Posted by: Andrea Bellelli | March 27, 2007 10:29 AM
Hahnemann's original (and undemonstrated) hypotheses have been simplified under several respects and a debate on these simplifications raged till half a century or more after his death.
Posted by: alternative medicine | April 29, 2007 07:03 PM
It always amazes me how acupuncture is selected as the official representative of alternative medicine. My family and friends have tried it numerous times and found it immensely lacking. But faced by arterial stiffness and heavy metal toxicity, am finishing an EDTA chelation treatment. I, and so many others that I have encountered, would do it again without hesistation. The empirical data is, however lacking but they are working on that. Lo and behold, it has been discovered that Medicine is not a finite science, but is in fact evolving, and sometimes we cannot wait till the next century to encounter the cure.
Posted by: David Kesterton | November 24, 2007 09:17 PM
Homeopathy has proven for me, at least, to generate a significant amount of benefit, though for some associates, there has been no change at all. It reminds me of acupuncture, which was completely worthless to me, but made my friends, some of them anyway feel better. Intensive and honest scientific study is in order.
Posted by: Jose | December 24, 2007 11:06 AM
Homeopathy is Fact,not fiction.
Your article is very nice.
Posted by: NJBIZ | January 4, 2008 06:28 AM
Homeopathy is the best.
Posted by: Freedirlist | February 21, 2008 01:06 PM