Homeopathy is pants

Seriously. There’s only two modes of homeopathy in this world, and both of them are patently ridiculous. In the first, you’re looking at your symptoms, finding a chemical that also produces those symptoms, then diluting that chemical in pure water to the point where there’s likely not even a single atom of the original chemical in your dilution. In the second, you’re taking natural herbs or minerals and bypassing the whole “testing” and “science” thing, and applying them liberally to situations where they may or may not just end up hurting you, thinking it’s perfectly okay just because the stuff is “natural”. How many people that you know who take megadoses of St. John’s Wart or Echinecea were actually prescribed their use by a doctor? And how much of a death cap mushroom would you personally prescribe for a case of diarrhea? Or, let’s say, as per a comic I once heard, an angry bear. “He’s all-natural!”

Frankly, I’ll stick with science, where you take the natural herbs and such, find out what they’re good for, do clinical trials to make sure there are no unintended side-effects, then see if you can extract the good chemicals and keep them from the bad ones. Like how we figured out that the bark of the willow tree had salicin, something very nearly like aspirin, in it, then modified it slightly to eliminate some of the side effects that willow bark had.

Because homeopathy has gained so much public sympathy over the years, thanks to idiots pushing it as safer and better than actual scientifically derived medical knowledge, the laws for homeopathic preparations in the States is decidedly not where it should be. As a result, drugs like Zicam nasal gel get onto the store shelves with little vetting, marketed as a way to alleviate cold symptoms, and due to their heavy zinc content, could very likely be causing permanent anosmia — permanent loss of smell. Per Steve Novella at the above link:

Correlation does not prove causation, but there is reason to think that the anosmia in some of these cases may have been caused by the zinc in these Zicam products. As the FDA reports, viral upper airway infections can also cause anosmia, but the anosmia that results from zinc is associated with burning and is much more rapid in onset. Apparently some of these cases had features suggestive of zinc-caused anosmia.

Further, it has already been described in the literature that decreased smell (hyposmia) or loss of smell (anosmia) can result from the intranasal use of zinc.

All because it’s homeopathic, and therefore not necessary to regulate as stringently.

Orac as usual does this topic more justice than I could ever manage.

Fuck you, homeopathic practitioners, for trying to bypass proper science.

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Homeopathy is pants
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3 thoughts on “Homeopathy is pants

  1. 1

    The problem is sometimes naturopathy gets conflated with homeopathy. So, naturopathic remedies (which are also pants if not derived from science) sometimes get the benefit of asshat laws like the one described in the article.

    The main mode of medication of homeopathy is that the chemical or mineral has to produce the same symptoms as the disease it supposedly cures. Whether it’s diluted or treated as a naturopathic cure doesn’t really matter, though homeopathy involving dilutions are obviously way safer.

  2. 2

    I thought to be truly classified as “homeopathy” it had to follow the dilution-succession protocol. Are herbal remedies that actually contain an active ingredient considered homeopathic? More google time needed for me, I guess.

  3. 3

    […] As I’d posted recently, Zicam cold remedies (e.g. nasal gels) contains zinc gluconate, commonly used as an orally administered supplement.. Zinc is really bad to stick up your nose, as it could kill your sense of smell permanently. It might not technically be homeopathy according to homeopaths themselves, however it got by FDA approval by claiming to be homeopathy, and therefore falling under the jurisdiction of a really old law stating that homeopathy gets a bye-in into the public sphere. This law got passed mostly because the lawyers understood that, as homeopathy is almost identical to water, it has no real negative effect on humans aside from distracting people from science-based medicine. In other words, the law was passed to protect those idiots that run around trying to sell pure distilled water that may have once touched an atom of something chemically active. A law specifically designed to protect snake-oil salesmen, in other words, to the detriment of the public at large. Zicam took advantage of this law in creating a drug that obviously does not fall under its intent. […]

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