Beware the Phony Pharmacists!

[Dr Nancy Malik]

the medical establishment is intrinsically conservative, blinkered and unreceptive to new ways of thinking.I think that the modern medical establishment needs to be a lot more open-minded and progressive

I wonder what you’d do if you needed a procedure like neuroplasty or some other delicate medical interference that is the product of “the medical establishment” that, according to you, “is intrinsically conservative, blinkered and unreceptive to new ways of thinking.”  A friend of ours almost died at a very young age of a middle ear infection because his parents insisted on going to a homoeopath.  Only when things got very bad did they see a conventional doctor who successfully treated the condition with antibiotics.  Our friend has noticeable hearing loss in the affected ear, which can be laid directly at the feet of the homoeopath who should have known better and recommended conventional treatment from the start instead of prescribing what is no more than distilled water.

'Luthon64

Homeopathy is not a pancaea for every ill. When surgery is the the only last option left, one has to and should resort to surgery. Homeopathy is not opposed to surgery. We say when something can be cured without undergoing surgery or something can be cured with gentler system of medicine, why to subject your body to torture and hardship. ANd when homeopathy has no answer to a patient's problem, we ourselves ask them to resort to allopathy.

[Dr Nancy Malik]

the medical establishment is intrinsically conservative, blinkered and unreceptive to new ways of thinking.I think that the modern medical establishment needs to be a lot more open-minded and progressive

I wonder what you’d do if you needed a procedure like neuroplasty or some other delicate medical interference that is the product of “the medical establishment” that, according to you, “is intrinsically conservative, blinkered and unreceptive to new ways of thinking.”  A friend of ours almost died at a very young age of a middle ear infection because his parents insisted on going to a homoeopath.  Only when things got very bad did they see a conventional doctor who successfully treated the condition with antibiotics.  Our friend has noticeable hearing loss in the affected ear, which can be laid directly at the feet of the homoeopath who should have known better and recommended conventional treatment from the start instead of prescribing what is no more than distilled water.

'Luthon64

With the massive way antibiotics (kills healthy as well as bad bacteria) are being prescribed today they have suppressed and in no time going to destroy the immune system. It is going to be open to new diseases that are going to be incurable

[Dr Nancy Malik]

Two other things:

• Hahnemann’s homoeopathy goes back to the early 1800s, making it near enough 200 years old.  This age hardly qualifies it as a member of  the category of “new ways of thinking.”  If anything, it falls under the rubric of “ancient and ignorant ways of seeing sympathetic magic everywhere.”
• If someone asked you to prepare, say, a 36C dilution of Pulsatilla, would you be able to pick your own preparation out from a bunch of inert preparations that all look alike?

'Luthon64

What about allopathy? It is much older than homeopathy . around 600-700 years old. That means it is not a modern medicine.

[Dr Nancy Malik]

Two other things:

• If someone asked you to prepare, say, a 36C dilution of Pulsatilla, would you be able to pick your own preparation out from a bunch of inert preparations that all look alike?

'Luthon64

Very simple to do. Even you can do that. Try doing it. Then you have no option other than giving homeopathy 10 out of 10.

I need to have two things

1.  a mother tincture of it i.e Pulsitilla Q.
2. bloating paper

steps

1. I will immerse bloating paper in pulsitilla Q. It will get stained yellow.
2. The same bloating paper when imersed in various inert preparaations but the medicine i.e. pulsitilla 36C will get stain free.

This way it has to be done.

[Mefiante]

Since you have never have an advantage of homeopathic treatment, how do you know it does not work?

How can you possibly know what treatment any other forum member has received?

Homeopathy is not a pancaea for every ill.

True enough: it’s a placebo for many.

ANd when homeopathy has no answer to a patient's problem, we ourselves ask them to resort to allopathy.

That’s very honourable but unfortunately not true.  There are far too many cases of avoidable harm and even death resulting from a homoeopath or other CAM practitioner pretending to know better.

With the massive way antibiotics (kills healthy as well as bad bacteria) are being prescribed today they have suppressed and in no time going to destroy the immune system. It is going to be open to new diseases that are going to be incurable

I’m afraid this shows your knowledge of antibiotics to be quite deficient.  They don’t impair the body’s immune system; they augment it.  It is the evolutionary aspect of microorganisms that results in the deterioration of antibiotics’ efficacy over time.  The microorganisms evolve resistance to antibiotics, as for example in the case of MDR and XDR TB.  In order to address this problem, there has for several years now been an ongoing and concerted drive in the medical community to reduce the willy-nilly prescription of antibiotics and limit their use to where they are essential.  In addition, doctors will always advise their patients to complete the course of antibiotics, something many patients fail to do and so they too must share in the blame.

What about allopathy? It is much older than homeopathy . around 600-700 years old. That means it is not a modern medicine.

This must be another joke, I think.  Medical science has adapted from what it originally was – folk wisdom mixed with mysticism and superstition – into an evidence-based enterprise that has bestowed enormous benefits on humanity as a whole.  In contrast, homoeopathy is still essentially the same unfounded nonsense it was 200 years ago.

Very simple to [identify a batch of 36C Pulsatilla from preparations that look alike]

…

This way it has to be done.

So you claim.  By “bloating paper,” I assume you mean “blotting paper.”  Unfortunately, the laws of chemistry will thwart you because a 36C dilution will not have a single particle of Pulsatilla left in any manageable quantity of preparation, and so cannot possibly affect the paper.  If you think otherwise, you can win one million US dollars from the JREF just for demonstrating this ability.  That money would surely help spread the benefits of homoeopathy, quite apart from proving all us sceptics wrong.

'Luthon64

[Dr Nancy Malik]

Since you have never have an advantage of homeopathic treatment, how do you know it does not work?

How can you possibly know what treatment any other forum member has received?

Homeopathy is not a pancaea for every ill.

True enough: it’s a placebo for many.

ANd when homeopathy has no answer to a patient's problem, we ourselves ask them to resort to allopathy.

That’s very honourable but unfortunately not true.  There are far too many cases of avoidable harm and even death resulting from a homoeopath or other CAM practitioner pretending to know better.

With the massive way antibiotics (kills healthy as well as bad bacteria) are being prescribed today they have suppressed and in no time going to destroy the immune system. It is going to be open to new diseases that are going to be incurable

I’m afraid this shows your knowledge of antibiotics to be quite deficient.  They don’t impair the body’s immune system; they augment it.  It is the evolutionary aspect of microorganisms that results in the deterioration of antibiotics’ efficacy over time.  The microorganisms evolve resistance to antibiotics, as for example in the case of MDR and XDR TB.  In order to address this problem, there has for several years now been an ongoing and concerted drive in the medical community to reduce the willy-nilly prescription of antibiotics and limit their use to where they are essential.  In addition, doctors will always advise their patients to complete the course of antibiotics, something many patients fail to do and so they too must share in the blame.

What about allopathy? It is much older than homeopathy . around 600-700 years old. That means it is not a modern medicine.

This must be another joke, I think.  Medical science has adapted from what it originally was – folk wisdom mixed with mysticism and superstition – into an evidence-based enterprise that has bestowed enormous benefits on humanity as a whole.  In contrast, homoeopathy is still essentially the same unfounded nonsense it was 200 years ago.

Very simple to [identify a batch of 36C Pulsatilla from preparations that look alike]

…

This way it has to be done.

So you claim.  By “bloating paper,” I assume you mean “blotting paper.”  Unfortunately, the laws of chemistry will thwart you because a 36C dilution will not have a single particle of Pulsatilla left in any manageable quantity of preparation, and so cannot possibly affect the paper.  If you think otherwise, you can win one million US dollars from the JREF just for demonstrating this ability.  That money would surely help spread the benefits of homoeopathy, quite apart from proving all us sceptics wrong.

'Luthon64

Who will oppose homeopathy? Only two types of people: One who has never taken homeopathic medicine, so he does not knows its immense benefits.  And second: Who have taken but shows no sign of improvement. No medicine including homeopathy can have 100% results.

Now you know yourself in which of the two categoriers you fall in. I have no  need to know.

Placebo is equally there in allopathy.

www.deathbymodernmedicine.com

Long term use of antibiotics suppesses the immune system and has serious (bad) effects on body especiaaly kidney. Even the allopathic community itself has been fed up with its side effects, so they now have come up with probiotics (which do no harm to health bacteria)

Why don't you try for yourself using blotting paper instead of beating around the bush. That would be a proof that even if does not contain any molecue, it's still a medicine.

ANd for your kind information there is a million dollar challange to allopaths also
http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/SC/$75,000VaccineOffer.htm

[Mefiante]

Who will oppose homeopathy? Only two types of people: One who has never taken homeopathic medicine, so he does not knows its immense benefits.

That is what clinical trials are for: to test whether, and if so, to what extent a drug or medical procedure is effective.  What you’re saying is no less absurd than that a surgeon should first have to undergo every procedure on him/herself before s/he can be judged competent to perform it.

And second: Who have taken but shows no sign of improvement.

Not true.  There is at least one more category, namely those who recognise the ludicrous and wishful pseudoscience that comprises the bulk of homoeopathy.

No medicine including homeopathy can have 100% results.

Perhaps so, but a medicine should at the very least perform at a statistically significant level above a placebo.  More than that, one should be able to demonstrate its efficacy objectively.

I have no  need to know.

Yes, that would seem a good summary of the essential difficulty here.

Placebo is equally there in allopathy.

Ignoring once again the malapropistic “allopathy,” the above is correct, and conventional medicine has recognised the placebo effect.  That is why clinical trials are usually controlled for the effect by having a sub-population that receives a placebo instead of the test drug.  A large part of homoeopathy’s problem is that the drug is the placebo, and hence its effect can’t be distinguished.

Long term use of antibiotics suppesses the immune system and has serious (bad) effects on body especiaaly kidney.

Oh, so now we’ve shifted the goalposts by the opportune introduction of “long term use.”  In that case, you are undoubtedly correct.  To put things in their proper context, I assume that you know that drinking enough water can also kill you.

Even the allopathic community itself has been fed up with its side effects, so they now have come up with probiotics (which do no harm to health bacteria)

But – and this is just in case you missed it – these probiotic agents were not developed by homoeopaths!

Why don't you try for yourself using blotting paper instead of beating around the bush. That would be a proof that even if does not contain any molecue, it's still a medicine

I have tried it, though admittedly not with Pulsatilla, on more occasions than you probably suspect, actually.  Your crude test cannot even get close to the distinguishing capabilities of spectrographic analysis, another marvel of modern science that homoeopaths are apparently oblivious to.  “Medicine” it most assuredly is not, at least not in any usual sense of that word.

ANd for your kind information there is a million dollar challange to allopaths also
http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/SC/$75,000VaccineOffer.htm

So instead of actually answering a perfectly reasonable challenge that you correctly identify a homoeopathic preparation from a batch of similar-looking counterfeits, you dodge and issue a counterchallenge.  But here’s the hook: that challenge has nothing to do with anything that would in reality support homoeopathy.  Worse, it’s quite obviously an idiotic, even a dangerous challenge.  There are substances that are safe to ingest but not inject (e.g. tap water and snake venom), and vice versa.  The challenge is for some conventional medical practitioner in the US to drink a bodyweight-calibrated amount of vaccine preparation.  Since I am not on the list of eligible participants, the point is in any case moot, so you’ve once again wasted everyone’s time.

Now, will you or will you not answer the JREF challenge to identify successfully a homoeopathic preparation from a batch of fakes?

'Luthon64

[Dr Nancy Malik]

I challenge you to prove that Homeopathy does not work.

[Mefiante]

I challenge you to prove that Homeopathy does not work.

Did you miss the part where it was pointed out that the onus of proof rests only on the claimant?  If science had a responsibility to disprove any and every fantastical notion that people dream up with tedious abandon and regularity, no matter how foolish, scientists would never get anything useful done because there are infinitely more ways of being wrong than there are of being right.  Thus, if you think you are right in claiming that homoeopathy works better than a placebo, it’s very much up to you to supply the evidence supporting that claim.  It’s hardly up to me or anyone else to disprove it.

Nevertheless, there is no known way that homoeopathy can work because it violates well-established laws of physics and chemistry, so there is good reason to suppose that it does not in fact work.  As pointed out elsewhere in these pages, clinical trials by independent authorities bear this out further.

So please stop skirting the issue and answer the question: will you or will you not answer the JREF challenge to your claim of being able to identify successfully a homoeopathic preparation from a batch of fakes?

'Luthon64

[Dr Nancy Malik]

I am not inteested in a challange by any tom, dick and harry

[Mefiante]

I am not inteested in a challange by any tom, dick and harry

It’s not “any tom, dick and harry.”  It’s the James Randi Educational Foundation, or JREF.  But if that’s your position, all of your claims can simply be dismissed because that which is offered without evidence can also be rejected without reason.

Has it been worthwhile, your wasting everyone’s time on this unsustainable codswallop?

ETA #1: You are a very naughty person, Dr. Nancy Malik. You have not been completely honest with us, now have you?  In fact, it would be fair to say that you are deceitful, would it not?

ETA #2: Two of the three links in ETA #1 require one to be logged in at the JREF Forum.  The first is to an Admin Suspension Notice for multiple Membership Agreement breaches directed at Dr. Nancy Malik and dated 11th March 2008.  The third link is to an Admin Ban Notice for continuous Membership Agreement breaches, ignoring an official Admin warning and numerous mod actions directed at Dr. Nancy Malik and dated 19th March 2008, eight days later.  Thus, Dr. Nancy Malik, apart from having a propensity for Stuka-posting, is perfectly well aware of the JREF Challenge.  And equally well aware, no doubt, that she will fail it.

'Luthon64