Homeopathy: Placebo or Real

If a person has had a long term bacterial infection that is resistant to all antibiotics but one & that is the strongest one known to medicine (for that type of infection) what happens if they get a different infection? Will they be able to go back to the other antibiotics for treatment or are they all now useless?

Bacterial resistance comes about when all the bacteria in, let's say your body, aren't killed by the antibiotics, some survive and mutate their DNA to where a particular antibiotic is not longer viable. Bacterial DNA mutations where the bacteria survive and are viable are much more common than in say plants or animals. So, let's say you have a particular bacterial infection, one that isn't susceptible to any antibiotic but one. Assuming you got a new bacterial infection, one that isn't resistant to any drugs you could take any viable antibiotic and it would kill the secondary infection. It, however, would have no affect on the first bacterial infection. Multi-Antibiotic resistance is something that is built up by bacteria over time. Just because you have one infection that is resistant to many antibiotics doesn't mean that a new bacteria you get infected with would have the same resistance. i.e., bacterial antibiotic resistance isn't transferred between different species of bacteria.

Unfortunately due to poor antibiotic administration by the doctors (prescribing antibiotics when there is no bacterial infection) and patients (not using the whole blister, saving the unused medicine for later and for self-treatment, forcing the doctors to prescribe antibiotics as a magical remedy, etc) we have an outcome of multi-drug resistant (MDR) diseases and even worse Extensively drug-resistant (XDR) disease (for example tuberculosis).

Yep. Fortunately, bacterial strains that are MDR are the exception rather than the rule.

Have a read: Excellent Article on Tuberculosis

Time to revive this thread with an excellent article .

Excellent, indeed. Nothing there that I can't agree with 110%.

If conventional medecine did not let so many patients down, it would be easier to chase out homeopathy. For instance, about 10% of GP's patients do not need treatment, they need someone to listen to them. Doctors are totally untrained to do this. Big pharma does its best to ensure that the patient does not leave the surgery empty handed.

you speak of ignorance as if it something you have none of look in der spiegel sometime

That's a remarkably unhelpful reply, Madkap. Hard to understand too.

If you are NOT ignorant about the proven benefits of homepathy, please share your insights with us, to remove our ignorance.

Just insulting others is great fun, but doesn't get us anywhere.

So as not to upset Frank Zappa maybe "closed mind" would be a more approproiate terminology

One of the authors of this article, Edzard Ernst, edited The Desktop Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine, an evidence-based approach , which I can highly recommend to those who are interested in knowing what the real evidence is for the effectiveness of many alternative diagnostics methods, therapies and medicines. If, however, you prefer to take treatment decisions based on anecdote you may find it uncomfortable reading.

Yes but look who is funding /responsible for the research (Wellcome and Spiked). Now they are hardly likely to be interested in finding positive evidence in favour of homeopathy are they?

The EF being an even-handed forum, we'd welcome even the tiniest shred of positive actual evidence in favour of homeopathy you could come up with.

Yet another "close-mindness" / "open-mindness" discussion (previous one in the evolution discussion)? I thought that only the US people loved this (keep the open-mind no matter what, and if you dare to have different opinion then you're close-minded)...

http://www.skeptics.org.uk/article.p..._open_mind.php

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2...peal_to_b.html

I think most scientists would find your comments rather insulting.

I know a few scientists and none of them would base their views on these matters on hearsay and conjecture.

They want to see results to form a opinion.

There are no conclusive results forthcoming for homeopathic treatment yet the evidence for conventional medicines is great.

I'm sure they have written this article with this in mind.

I'm interested - where did you find the evidence of GSK and Spiked funding the Harcourt publication edited by Ernst?

Its contributors come from the universities of Harvard, Toronto, Calgary and Exeter. Perhaps you are saying that research into complementary medicine in these universities is funded by GSK and Spiked?

Evidence in the form that you require I dont have - only personal experience.

If you really want a personal account ok here goes:

Back in the 1980s I was plagued by some kind of stabbing pain in the lower abdomen ranging in intensity from needles to knives at least 5-6 times per day The GP (Hausartz) couldnt help me and didnt seem to take me seriously.

So I went to a gyneacologist who also couldnt help me or make a diagnosis even after a totally unnecessary D&C. So, this gyneacologist retired and then I ended up going to another one who also could find nothing wrong after yet another totally unnecessary laparoscopy. So then I went to the

Chief Consultant at the Kantons Spital who gave me some anti inflammatory tablets but which I had to stop taking because they made the lining of my stomach bleed and I kept spitting up blood.

By this time 3 1/2 years had passed and I was considering going to a pyschiatrist when a colleague at work gave me the address of a chinese

practioner of homeopathy and acupuncture practising in Bern. After 5 minutes he was able to tell me simply by using iridology and pulse measurements that I had a chronic inflammation of the bladder. After the first acupuncture treatment I remember having to sit down on the way home because everything seemed to be vibrating (something to do with the energy being rebalanced). I took the homeopathic medicine which was in liquid form and later passed at least 2 litres of water that had probably been in my bladder for ages. After about 7 treatments there was a vast improvement and an enormous relief knowing what the problem was. Although the pains still occurred they became less and less often and I learned to associate them with alcohol and coffee which I stopped drinking.

OK I know a chronic bladder infection can be treated with antibiotics, that is if it is diagnosed in the first place and i am of the opinion many

doctors have problems with diagnosis.

Case No 2.

7 years ago my youngest son, then aged 13, got sent home from school with a blinding headache after he had spent the whole morning nearly asleep on the desk. He spent the afternoon in a darkened room after taking 2 headache tablets. The second day there was no improvement. On the third day we went to the GP (Hausartz) who thought it was just a migraine and gave us more headache tablets. 7 days later - still no change and he was becoming increasingly lethargic so his father took him again to the Hausartz for further investigations and demanded blood tests. The Hausartz (who actually must think we are stupid) took some blood but never bother sending it away for analysis but did some kind of test there in the practise and said yes it was ok (its red), my son just has migraine (after 10 days). In desperation and not knowing where else to turn, except the hospital, I asked our neighbour who happens to be a homeopath. He gave him a homeopathic remedy which caused his headache to worsen, then vomit but the next day he had no headache. He remained however lethargic and a week later another homeopathic remedy helped with the lethargy.

3 months later we discovered Duncan had a borreliose infection caused by a tic and that the headaches were very probably related to that and had been a slight form of meningitis (once again not diagnosed by the doctor because the symptoms were not typical),

Case no 3.

In 2004 I had a back operation after which I was in permanent pain. In order to function properly I had to take painkillers including morphine plasters, voltarene (which makes the stomach bleed so you have to take another tablet with it to protect the stomach and which costs 180Fr. for a months supply). A visit to the Pain clinic in Basel did nothing much to help - just cortisone injections in a nerve which lasted for about 6 weeks. Physiotherapy didnt help, craniosacral massage helped for a time but nothing else and with time the painkillers have less and less affect. After 3.5 years I finally went to an anthroposophical doctor with the problem. He immediately issued me with arsenic tablets, followed by a course of silver and gold in very diluted amounts and, do you know, since November 2007 I have been able to leave off the painkillers except the nights when I have to work which I take as a precaution.

Of course its not a magical solution and my back will never be as it should be, but at least I am relatively pain free most of the time.

The choice of homeopath is important too as some have the qualification but not the intuition and this is the important factor in making diagnosis and

selecting the correct medicine.

As said before, not evidence but experience and as the saying goes "the proof of the pudding is in the eating"

I think it can be so transferred. Google something like

"wild "antibiotic resistance" plasmid interspecies transfer -transgenic"

and settle in for a long night's soporific reading ...

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned this quote (or similar) on this thread so far:

"The patients of homeopaths die of the disease, and the patients of conventional medicine die of the cure.”

Good for you. I hope your antroposphic crook warned you that arsenic is actually a poison, and that gold being almost an inert metal isn't likely to do much more than burn a hole through your wallet.

She means homeopathic arsenicum album - not actual arsenic.