Right here we go. Time to unplug yourself from the self-sedation kit that some call the TV! Stop watching their biased accounts of homeopathy and read my biased blog instead!
It’s common to come across humans who have watched a TV programme or read an article in a paper or even perused a scientific meta-analysis paper and had their opinions formed by such exposure. BUT this is only ever part of the story. To have made up your mind on any topic by referring to the media is similar to listening to a New Kids on the Block track and then stating “Yes, I have listened to hip hop but I don’t like it.” What no KRS One? No Doctor Octagon? … I could go on but I’m sure you get the idea. Suffice to say that modern media outlets frequently present a one sided, at times distorted and very rarely a balanced view of many topics.
This blog will focus on the biggest experiment using homeopathy done to date on planet Earth. Not read about this one in the papers yet? No! Of course not. Because they chose not to write about this particular piece of research. Which is a bit weird given that it is the largest quantity of people given homeopathic medicine for a study ever! Yes ever! In fact the number is 2.3 million! Yep that’s a lot.
Here’s the bare bones of the trial:
Leptospirosis, a bacterial infection, is a problem in Cuba. Human infection may be acquired by contact with contaminated animal urine (rodents, dogs, pigs and horses). Leptospirosis can cause multiple symptoms and disease states such as: hepatitis, nephritis, mastitis, myocarditis, hemorrhagic crisis and multiple organ failure. This broad spectrum of symptoms can lead to easy misdiagnosis, incorrect treatment and high mortality rates.
The allopathic treatment of leptospirosis is split into two groups:
1) Chemoprophylaxis (antibiotic- Doxycycline 100mg)
2) Vaccination.
Chemoprophylaxis is used for disease outbreak control, but it has a short half-life in the blood stream (18hours) therefore its prophylactic effect is limited and it is unfeasible for high population treatment in endemic areas.
Vaccination. The Finlay Institute in Havana produce a vaccine called vaxSpiral®, which has demonstrated 78.1% efficacy and has been part of the national immunisation program since 1998.
However, there is a limited amount of vaccine and it takes time to complete the immunisation schedule, particularly in endemic areas with high circulation of pathogens.
In 2007 Cuba took the strange decision to trial Homoeoprophylaxix (HP) tp prevent infection. A nosode was prepared from 4 circulating strains of leptospirosis. The medication is called nosoLEP and the 200c and 10M potencies are used. The schedule for HP was two doses of nosoLEP 200c given a week apart. Then ten-twelve months later two doses of nosoLEP 10M given a week apart. The treatment was given to 2.3 million people in a high risk area with doses given to the entire populous from age 1 year and up. It should be noted that there was a minimal vaccination coverage of this group of 0.6% in contrast to 92% of HP.
The rest of Cuba (9 million) was not given nosoLEP.
The results:
Allopathic treated areas showed an increase in Leptospirosis cases of 21.7%
HP treated areas showed a decrease of Leptospirosis areas of 84%!!
Conclusion:
HP was strongly associated with a drastic reduction of Leptospirosis cases resulting in complete control of the epidemic in a high risk area. These results support HP as a feasible treatment modality to help control infection. Integrated approaches should be designed according to regional conditions and epidemic characteristics.
Scientific research is warranted for further investigation and application of HP.
So there we have it. Really interesting results that surely every sceptic and true scientist would be interested in. Well, not quite. The coordinator of this work, Dr Gustavo Bracho, was initially very sceptical of homeopathy and did not want to take on the project. He now concludes that more research is needed. Note that no prestigious medical journal would publish his results from this study. Also, since publishing this paper he has received email death threats and been labelled a terrorist!
So my advice is follow the link for this work at the end of the blog. Copy it and then the next time you have a chat with someone who emphatically states that there is no scientific proof for homeopathy… send them the link. Then ask them to meet up and discuss what they have read.
Remember that this is the biggest trial of homeopathy done to date – 2.3 million people. The results clearly warrant further investigation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20674839
Fantastic blog.
I prefer to call ‘them’ ‘pseudosceptics’ since the one’s I’ve attempted to converse with can’t dialogue effectively.
Brilliant article…All this fabulous work met with nothing from the media but sounds of silence. Nothing new there of course but still shocking.
Your ad homenim attacks on sceptics in no way reduces the efficacy of their critical thinking and scientific process to reduce bias and sort fact from fiction. If there is a correlation with people taking magic water and a decrease in symptoms there is still no plausible mechanism for this to work. It is also not a proper double blinded controlled trial so no doubt biased. There still remains no robust evidence to prove homeopathic treatment has any effect beyond placebo. If you spent the same energy on thinking critically about real things as you do on the thouroughly refuted claims of homeopathy you could actually make the world a better place, rather than trying to con people to believe in homeopathic nonsense. It doesn’t work. It has never worked. There is no reliable evidence to support it. Every claim is based on fallacy, misunderstanding and lies.