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[GT49er]

The power of the placebo effect is often extremely underestimated and not well understood. It can be an incredibly effective treatment. People often associate it just with doctors mollifying patients who had nothing wrong with them, but its far greater than that and can massively help the brain and therefore the body to fight genuine illness. There seems to be more acceptance these days that there are strong links between mental and physical health and I remember reading about the power of the effect in Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science'. Weirdly, trials have even proven that telling physicians that they are prescribing drugs rather than placebos can further increase the benefits. Goldacre is absolutely no fan of the pseudo-science of homeopathy, but he does discuss in his book the huge benefits that can be gained from ensuring that patients are made to feel cared for, valued and listened to. Treat the person as well as the condition and any treatment can prove to be far more effective, something that alternative therapies often have the time and resources to do far better than the NHS does.

The power of a placebo may well work sometimes, if the patient thinks he/she is actually gettig a medicine which will cure them. The logic doesn't work when applied to babies or very young children who don't even have the vocabulary to understand 'This'll make you better'.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Personal experience; no articles; no publications. Very close up and very personal experience. As an intelligent 10 year old child with no re-conceptions I witnessed at painfully close quarters what happened. Probably I did say prayers for my litte brother - so if you prefer prayers as the only possible explanation over homeopathy, go with it, whatever.

You 'guess' I'm afraid, comes across as a rather spiteful bit of sneering. I was there, you weren't. The facts obviously don't fit with your beliefs. Well, I can live with that. Up to you whether you do or not.

Context - somehow we got into a discussion about whether alternative medicine has intrinsic benefit or may 'work' in some people due to the placebo effect. I'm not comfortable with such a discussion to be a battle of personal experiences.

But, yes, it was sneering. I apologise for that.

The good thing is that your brother recovered. It doesn't really matter how it came to pass. It would be 64 years ago, now, right? Have you ever asked him what his recollections were of the time? Did he feel that his familiy were rooting for him? I suspect that can be very powerful.

 

[Swansman]

Your Mum Swansman results in very little, Your Mum AND Swansman result in a lot of great stuff.

 

[GT49er]

Context - somehow we got into a discussion about whether alternative medicine has intrinsic benefit or may 'work' in some people due to the placebo effect. I'm not comfortable with such a discussion to be a battle of personal experiences.

But, yes, it was sneering. I apologise for that.

The good thing is that your brother recovered. It doesn't really matter how it came to pass. It would be 64 years ago, now, right? Have you ever asked him what his recollections were of the time? Did he feel that his familiy were rooting for him? I suspect that can be very powerful.

The point is, it did come to pass. Your guess as to the timescale isn't far out, to be fair. He has no recollection, none at all, for at least a couple of years after that. The NHS treatment wasn't helping him - in fact it was killing him. Mum and Dad took him to a homeopathic practitioner - and he lived. Our GP (who had a mindset like yours), struck us all - me included - off the NHS. We didn't get back on untill we moved away, a different area and a different health authority..

At that time we found, luckily for my brother, that homeopathy was availabe on the NHS and he continued to get treatment. Yes, that's a fact too, not mumbo jumbo. Sorry! The rest of us stayed in the normal GP system, but the last time I had my adenoids removed it was done at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (yes, it was NHS) - slept, or was out cold under anaesthetic, for most of the Cuban missile crisis................

It remained an NHS hospital for some years after that. What it is now, I don't know. Judging from the outlook from the balcony of the ward where I was treated? Very, very, VERY expensive flats, I would imagine!

 

[Stato]

The power of a placebo may well work sometimes, if the patient thinks he/she is actually gettig a medicine which will cure them. The logic doesn't work when applied to babies or very young children who don't even have the vocabulary to understand 'This'll make you better'.

I wouldn't have argued with your reasoning, it makes complete sense to me to but, as I suggested, I have read of an effect you might call placebo by proxy, where trials have shown improved outcomes in the patient even if the person prescribing, rather than the patient, believes that the treatment will be effective. I seem to remember it proving effective even if further removed than that. I found it hard to compute, a bit like those counter intuitive things in physics where they say that things react differently depending upon whether they are being observed. However, trials have shown the effects to be repeatable, and as HWT rightly suggests this is needed for the scientific method to accept a theory, so I might not understand how it works, but am happy to believe that it does, a bit like when I get on a plane.

Whatever the facts behind why the treatment worked, I am very glad for you and your family that it did. I suspect that, putting aside your disagreements about the causes, HWT will feel exactly the same.

 

[WATFORD zero]

I wouldn't have argued with your reasoning, it makes complete sense to me to but, as I suggested, I have read of an effect you might call placebo by proxy, where trials have shown improved outcomes in the patient even if the person prescribing, rather than the patient, believes that the treatment will be effective. I seem to remember it proving effective even if further removed than that. I found it hard to compute, a bit like those counter intuitive things in physics where they say that things react differently depending upon whether they are being observed. However, trials have shown the effects to be repeatable, and as HWT rightly suggests this is needed for the scientific method to accept a theory, so I might not understand how it works, but am happy to believe that it does, a bit like when I get on a plane.

Whatever the facts behind why the treatment worked, I am very glad for you and your family that it did. I suspect that, putting aside your disagreements about the causes, HWT will feel exactly the same.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

The point is, it did come to pass. Your guess as to the timescale isn't far out, to be fair. He has no recollection, none at all, for at least a couple of years after that. The NHS treatment wasn't helping him - in fact it was killing him. Mum and Dad took him to a homeopathic practitioner - and he lived. Our GP (who had a mindset like yours), struck us all - me included - off the NHS. We didn't get back on untill we moved away, a different area and a different health authority..

At that time we found, luckily for my brother, that homeopathy was availabe on the NHS and he continued to get treatment. Yes, that's a fact too, not mumbo jumbo. Sorry! The rest of us stayed in the normal GP system, but the last time I had my adenoids removed it was done at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (yes, it was NHS) - slept, or was out cold under anaesthetic, for most of the Cuban missile crisis................

It remained an NHS hospital for some years after that. What it is now, I don't know. Judging from the outlook from the balcony of the ward where I was treated? Very, very, VERY expensive flats, I would imagine!

Your GP (at the time) does not have the same mindset as me - it was very wrong of him to remove you from the NHS list.

I would be interested to know what anaesthetic you were given at the homeopathic hospital.

An old colleage of mine was head of anaesthesiology at a big teaching hospital. He has used hypnotism as an 'anaesthetic' in a patient who requested it. Fairly minor surgery, but still.

It would never work in a rat of course. Rats are not sufficiently intelligent to be fooled into imagining they can feel no pain.

I remember looking this up some years ago. It is interesting:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/homeopathy/

Regarding infinite dilution, there is an interesting story from mainstream science where a scientist who made a mistake with dilutions (this is not captured in the Wiki link below - the original research was not done to test the existence of homeopathy - that is aftertiming) attributed 'effects' in an animal study to 'imprinting' of molecules, no longer present, in water, a phenomenon that does not exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory

It annoys me that Benveniste's work was not done 'blinded and randomized', meaning that it is invalid a priori as far as I'm concerned, a particular source of annoyance for me. When I do an 'open' pilot study with small groups, the test nearly always works. Why? Because I cheat. I don't intend to cheat or even know how I'm cheating, but I cheat. I want the drug to work (in my rat model of a disease) so it does. When I repeat the study randomized and blinded and fully powered it may or may not work.

Anyway, my thing, always, is that I want to know, but I can understand in your case your wanting to not know (whether there is a real phenomenon at work or whether it is a placebo effect). It worked so let sleeping dogs, etc..

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I wouldn't have argued with your reasoning, it makes complete sense to me to but, as I suggested, I have read of an effect you might call placebo by proxy, where trials have shown improved outcomes in the patient even if the person prescribing, rather than the patient, believes that the treatment will be effective. I seem to remember it proving effective even if further removed than that. I found it hard to compute, a bit like those counter intuitive things in physics where they say that things react differently depending upon whether they are being observed. However, trials have shown the effects to be repeatable, and as HWT rightly suggests this is needed for the scientific method to accept a theory, so I might not understand how it works, but am happy to believe that it does, a bit like when I get on a plane.

Whatever the facts behind why the treatment worked, I am very glad for you and your family that it did. I suspect that, putting aside your disagreements about the causes, HWT will feel exactly the same.

Well said, and of course I do!

Someone who wants to strike out the right outcome because it arived via an unapproved method is what is technically know as a vindictive b'stard

Also despite my immutable attitude to design and analysis, and the inviolate role of scientific proof, I don't regard doing things 'by the book' for the sake of it to be defensible. I am a repeat offender when it comes to rule breaking. And when it comes to understanding mechanisms - well, that's another massive worm hole....

So a bit more background. Drug research is my area. Pharmacologists became obsessed with 'mechanisms' in the late 1970s. The cell was a 'black box' and we 'need to know what happens' when a receptor (on the cell membrane) is activated. My response to that my surprise some. It is 'Far Cough'. You need to know what process is triggered inside the cell only when you have a reason. If you have a reason, great. But if I can prove that activation of receptor X causes changes that cures disease Y, then I have acquired all the information I need. I am part of a team with a patent on a new drug, and we have demonstrated how actions on ion channel B lead to beneficial changes in disease C, and have explained the linking mechanisms, P, Q, R, S and T, but the latter is mainly fluff to help get the paper published. Alright, that's a bit unfair (to me) - it demonstrates a reiterative cascade of process that coherently links B to C. The trouble with much of biological research these days, however, is that it maps P to Q to R to S to T, without any consideration of the initiating event B or the possible therapeutic benefit C. In other words we have a mechanism but we have no drug and no clue as to whether affecting the mechanism will have any value.

Anyway, enough ranting for now

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I wouldn't have argued with your reasoning, it makes complete sense to me to but, as I suggested, I have read of an effect you might call placebo by proxy, where trials have shown improved outcomes in the patient even if the person prescribing, rather than the patient, believes that the treatment will be effective. I seem to remember it proving effective even if further removed than that. I found it hard to compute, a bit like those counter intuitive things in physics where they say that things react differently depending upon whether they are being observed. However, trials have shown the effects to be repeatable, and as HWT rightly suggests this is needed for the scientific method to accept a theory, so I might not understand how it works, but am happy to believe that it does, a bit like when I get on a plane.

Whatever the facts behind why the treatment worked, I am very glad for you and your family that it did. I suspect that, putting aside your disagreements about the causes, HWT will feel exactly the same.

ps - yes placebo by proxy. I mentioned it in passing in an earlier post without giving it a name.

It sthe equivalent of 'home advantage' at football.

It is why I asked [MENTION=12935]GT49er[/MENTION] what his brother remembered from the time.

One last comment - it is a mistake to look for a mechanism for how one person is cured of one disease on one occasion. Coincidences and unlikey outcomes are incredibly common. Factor that into the human ability to see patterns even when none exist and you have any number of strange phenomena that 'can't be explained' popping up with an alarming regularity. They can be explained, but the explanation isn't one that the beneficiaries normally wish to hear. Chance.

 

[GT49er]

Your GP (at the time) does not have the same mindset as me - it was very wrong of him to remove you from the NHS list.

I would be interested to know what anaesthetic you were given at the homeopathic hospital.

An old colleage of mine was head of anaesthesiology at a big teaching hospital. He has used hypnotism as an 'anaesthetic' in a patient who requested it. Fairly minor surgery, but still.

It would never work in a rat of course. Rats are not sufficiently intelligent to be fooled into imagining they can feel no pain.

I remember looking this up some years ago. It is interesting:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/homeopathy/

Regarding infinite dilution, there is an interesting story from mainstream science where a scientist who made a mistake with dilutions (this is not captured in the Wiki link below - the original research was not done to test the existence of homeopathy - that is aftertiming) attributed 'effects' in an animal study to 'imprinting' of molecules, no longer present, in water, a phenomenon that does not exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory

It annoys me that Benveniste's work was not done 'blinded and randomized', meaning that it is invalid a priori as far as I'm concerned, a particular source of annoyance for me. When I do an 'open' pilot study with small groups, the test nearly always works. Why? Because I cheat. I don't intend to cheat or even know how I'm cheating, but I cheat. I want the drug to work (in my rat model of a disease) so it does. When I repeat the study randomized and blinded and fully powered it may or may not work.

Anyway, my thing, always, is that I want to know, but I can understand in your case your wanting to not know (whether there is a real phenomenon at work or whether it is a placebo effect). It worked so let sleeping dogs, etc..

As far as this discussion is concerned, I'll let sleeping dogs lie.

As to the anathetic that was used in the RLHH in the 1960s, I suspect it was exactly the same as used by hospitals (and dentists) nationwide - more or less laughing gas. I don't think their surgical procedures were any different to anybody else's - they were all, after all, fully trained NHS doctors too, just specialising in homeopathy.

A lot different to the rohypnol like stuff they use (with another drug to paralyse you) these days. Hurts like bu88ery (according to a friend who had a stillborn Caesarian with the paralysing one but not the other), but you remember nothing of it - but apparantly less chance of fatalities than wth variants of laughing gas, which put you completely 'under' - from which there is a chance you won't wake up, apparently!

 

[GT49er]

They can be explained, but the explanation isn't one that the beneficiaries normally wish to hear. Chance.

Not quite. They may - or may not - can be explained - but if their existance is something that people do not wish to hear - or accept - therein lies a problem.

FWIW, I agree that many forms of 'alternative medicine' are a load of old bollocks - but nevertheless it is palpably true (and provable) that many herbs (and other plants) do have the power to affect humans beneficially - and, in some cases, fatally!

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

As far as this discussion is concerned, I'll let sleeping dogs lie.

As to the anathetic that was used in the RLHH in the 1960s, I suspect it was exactly the same as used by hospitals (and dentists) nationwide - more or less laughing gas. I don't think their surgical procedures were any different to anybody else's - they were all, after all, fully trained NHS doctors too, just specialising in homeopathy.

A lot different to the rohypnol like stuff they use (with another drug to paralyse you) these days. Hurts like bu88ery (according to a friend who had a stillborn Caesarian with the paralysing one but not the other), but you remember nothing of it - but apparantly less chance of fatalities than wth variants of laughing gas, which put you completely 'under' - from which there is a chance you won't wake up, apparently!

That's nitrous oxide. An anaesthetic.

It isn't homeopathic.....

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Not quite. They may - or may not - can be explained - but if their existance is something that people do not wish to hear - or accept - therein lies a problem.

FWIW, I agree that many forms of 'alternative medicine' are a load of old bollocks - but nevertheless it is palpably true (and provable) that many herbs (and other plants) do have the power to affect humans beneficially - and, in some cases, fatally!

Indeed. But homeopathy, and alternative medicines, and 'natural substances' are not the same thing. Not at all. You are conflating the good, the bad and the ugly.

Aspirin, morphine and digitalis. All natural products. All powerful medicines.

Feverfew - an alternative pain killer. A 'traditional' medicine. No evidence that it, or parthenolide (the 'active' chemical) do anything. You can buy it in alternative medicine shops because it is a 'food additive' like thyme. This this the only way 'alternative medicines' can be legally sold in the UK - as food additives.

Homeopathics? This is where you take the supposed cause of the disease and dilute it down so that there is almost (and in some cases literally) nothing left, and proclaim you can fight fire with (reduced) fire. It doesn't even make sense to write it down. Like treating third degree burns with.....a chinese burn.

The existence of alternative or complimentary medicine has been around for thousands of years (Chinese traditional medicine which, for example, includes killing rhinos for their miraculous horns - calling [MENTION=13715]jimhigham[/MENTION]) .....or five minutes (Dianetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianetics). Alternative to medicine would be the best way of putting it, according to all evidence. Anyway, I'm geting annoyed again so best I shut up.