Even More Fun with Homeopath Dana Ullman, MPH(!)

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

Mojo asked if Darwin might have experienced major improvement without ANY treatment. Hmmmm. Hey, Mojo...you gotta do better than that. Darwin tried no treatment for 12 years…and then, within 8 days of being under Dr. Gully’s treatment, Darwin begins to experience significant improvements.

What condition was Darwin suffering from? Please give references to a reliable diagnosis.

Quote:

Are you all now becoming advocates for the powerful effects of water-cure?

Try reading what I posted:

Originally Posted by Mojo

Oh, and by the way, the fact that Darwin believed in it doesn't mean that hydropathy isn't also quackery.

Quote:

The point is that Darwin was smart enough to explore and personally use treatments with which he didn't understand or even didn't believe in is a part of his deep wisdom. The smartest of us have to stretch our own beliefs. The smartest of us have to continually explore. In THIS case, this use of Dr. Gully's treatment proved to be very helpful.

Can you provide a single quotation from Darwin in which he writes approvingly of homoeopathy (not hydropathy)?

Quote:

You can make all of the excuses and theories that you want, but you have to admit that one real possibility, if not probability, is that homeopathic medicines had a dramatically beneficial effect on Charles Darwin...and further, we may not have even heard of him if not for going to Dr. Gully and receiving homeopathic medicines.

The evidence shows that homoeopathy does not have this sort of dramatic effect. The best (from your point of view) results from meta analysis of controlled trials just say things like "the results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo. However, we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition." This makes it highly unlikely that the "dramatically beneficial effect on Charles Darwin" was caused by homoeopathy. Why would it have worked any better in the 19th century?

Quote:

In the September 1850 letter, Darwin noted that the girl improved. Are you saying that Darwin assumed that diagnostic clairvoyance was therapeutically effective?

It is clear from the letter that Darwin considered homoeopathy to be utter nonsense. That you are using such a letter as evidence that he was a supporter of homoeopathy is quite astonishing, and shows how desperately you are clutching at straws in your attempt to portray him as a supporter of homoeopathy.

Quote:

And further, Darwin was not alone in his use of homeopathy, even if he was somewhat silent...and it was absolutely necessary for him to be silent about this (as he noted in his Drosera experiments, he was extremely embarrassed to have to report on them). What would have been the reception to his theories if he publically proclaimed that he benefited from homeopathy or even that he went to a homeopath?

What sort of reception did he think his theory of evolution by natural selection would receive? He was highly concerned about the reception this work would get, and delayed publishing. This didn't, however, prevent him from discussing it in his private correspondence.

Quote:

This is a good reason that so many of the smartest and most successful people of the 19th century sought out and used homeopathic medicines...and there are equally good reasons that people do so today.

If all these "smartest and most successful" people sought out homoeopathy, why would Dawrin be so scared to mention it?

Have you found any evidence that Darwin "sought out" homoeopathic medicine yet?

Quote:

We all can agree that water-cure, if effective at all, rarely provides rapid improvement in chronic ailments like that of Darwin.

And anyone who looks honestly at the evidence from properly controlled trials can agree that we can say the same about homoeopathy.

Quote:

As for the Drosera (sundew) experiments...did you read how small of a dose Darwin (and his son) used in these experiments. Yes, there were trace (extremely extremely trace) amounts of ammonia salts remaining...but the results were very significant on these plants

All it showed was that the plants were sensitive to extremely small doses of the salts.

Quote:

...and as Darwin noted, these plants don't even have a nervous system (imagine the sensitivity of living things that have one!).

What has having a nervous system got to do with the sensitivity of receptors?

Enough with appeals to 19th century authorities.

"GIVE ONE, YOU ONLY NEED ONE, INCONTROVERTIBLE EXAMPLE, WITH REFERENCES, OF HOMEOPATHY CURING A NON-SELF-LIMITING CONDITION."

[wilsontown]

This whole Darwin thing is just bizarre. Even if Darwin thought homeopathy worked (and there seems to be little evidence for this), that wouldn't change the fact that modern placebo controlled trials show no effect for homeopathy. Honestly, what's it got to do with anything? Let alone the subject of the thread?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Gordon bennett he's at it again. Dana, please try to get it through your shiny thick skull that we don't care about 150-year old anecdotes relating to Charles Darwin. It does not matter one iota to your case whether he was an arch-sceptic of homeopathy's claims or a dyed in the wool True Bleever. Homeopathy has millions of misguided anecdotal believers.

As to the sepsis study you have been told repeatedly that that study is irrelevant because of its flaws. Never mind the actual flaws in the study it is irrelevant because the patients were in an ICU receiving conventional medicine. The interference of the homeopath was just another piece of background noise that cannot be said to have any material effect on the outcome.

Will you please stop repeating the same things after you have been shown why they should be discounted. You keep on doing this, whether it's Rustum Roy's inept wanderings into spectroscopy or the "silica hypothesis". Once one of your Big Ideas has been busted it doesn't miraculously become unbusted 5 minutes later allowing you to rehearse the same tired arguments another time.

Why do you find this so hard?

You have been asked over and again to come up with
ONE INCONTROVERTIBLE EXAMPLE, WITH REFERENCES, OF HOMEOPATHY CURING A NON-SELF-LIMITING CONDITION.

This is like arguing with a stubborn and stupid 2-year old who keeps insisting his toy is lost behind the sofa when you have already found it and tidied it away hours ago.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally Posted by wilsontown

This whole Darwin thing is just bizarre. Even if Darwin thought homeopathy worked (and there seems to be little evidence for this), that wouldn't change the fact that modern placebo controlled trials show no effect for homeopathy. Honestly, what's it got to do with anything? Let alone the subject of the thread?

He's written his book and he can't bear to see it pulped. It must be hard to see the "greatest work" of your life being torn to shreds and left tattered in the dust. But, heck, he's had plenty of opportunity to alter his views and I don't have much sympathy.

I just noticed this line on one of his web pages;

"Numerous sports greats have bragged about their use of homeopathic medicines including David Beckham"

and we should takes lessons in medicine from a footballer who can't even grow realistic hair??!!

I mean to say, argument from authority is always fallacious, but it there comes a point where it just becomes silly.

So, the other questions remain;

HAS HE CURED ANYONE OF AIDS?

Can he provide a single example (with reference) of a homeopathy trial which has been discontinued early because the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board concluded it would be unethical to deprive study participants of homeopathy, such was its obvious clinical benefit?

[fls]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

Well, well, well. We are off to a bad start.

I finally figured Linda out. She must believe in reincarnation because it seems that everything is "non-self-limiting."

I dunno. You seem to be under the impression that every time someone came down with a headache or a twinge in their toe, it was invariably progressive and fatal. Until homeopathy came on the scene, of course.

Almost everything that happens to us is self-limiting. Otherwise our average lifespan would be about two years.

Quote:

The fact that Darwin thought he was dying is of no consequence. Persistent and intense nausea and vomiting and heart palpitations, both of which he had for over 12 years, and the fainting spells and spots before his eyes that he had for over 2 years are considered non-self-limiting. Cool.

You misunderstand. You simply do not have enough information to determine why he had those symptoms. Which means you do not know whether or not it was self-limiting.

Again, your example fails because it is too poorly documented, and there is no way to get around that. You've reached the point where you're dredging through 150 year old cases, desperate for an example? Sheesh. Thanks for the ongoing demonstration that you are unable to find a single example where homeopathy actually cured someone.

Linda

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

This may be dangerously close to derailing my own thread, but it is relevant and Dana does not seem to see what is going on in the forum elsewhere so I'll post it here;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...nhpathy107.xml

Jayne Thomas, the vice-chairman of the Society of Homeopaths, said: "If a patient was seriously ill, any genuine homeopathic practitioner would encourage them to visit a GP."

Is it the use of Lachesis that causes homeopaths so frequently to speak with a forked tongue? It may be politically expedient to pass the buck to conventional medicine for any real diseases and that is certainly the official stance of the SoH and other public hom bodies, but yet again it contrasts with the general belief that homeopathy can cure everything as embodied in the claim on the SoH website

http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/

"About Homeopathy
Homeopathy is a complete system of medicine, suitable for everyone."

Their definition of the word "complete" must be different from the rest of the English-speaking world.

[Dana Ullman]

Originally Posted by Mojo

What condition was Darwin suffering from? Please give references to a reliable diagnosis.

Again, you haven't done your homework. There are various theories about his diagnosis, but that is not the point. Are you or anyone saying that Darwin's 12+ serious ailment "just happened" to get better 8 days after visiting Dr. Gully's clinic and had nothing to do with the treatment he received. Once again, skeptics tend to be much more metaphysical than I am. Thank you for making your position clear.

Originally Posted by Mojo

The evidence shows that homoeopathy does not have this sort of dramatic effect. The best (from your point of view) results from meta analysis of controlled trials just say things like "the results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo. However, we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition." This makes it highly unlikely that the "dramatically beneficial effect on Charles Darwin" was caused by homoeopathy. Why would it have worked any better in the 19th century?

It is interesting to note that skeptics love to mention that the above meta-analysis said, "we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition." However, do they ever mention what the authors of that meta-analysis say was their definition of "sufficient evidence?" They said that there must be 3 clinical trials conducted by independent investigators.

In 1998 (a year after that meta-analysis published in the LANCET was published), a third such trial on Oscillococcinum was published. And by the way, this meta-analysis showed that patients given a homeopathic medicine had a 2.45 times greater chance of experiencing a therapeutically beneficial effect than those patients given a placebo.

Skeptics can no longer say that homeopathic medicines are proven to be effective in treating a specific condition.

If anyone is asked, does Oscillococcinum have an effect on influenza or influenza-like syndrome, one must say YES. I'll say it for Linda: but this is a self-limiting condition. Sure...but it is worthwhile to reduce the time YOU have the flu to make a cheap medicine without side effects? Yes...except for some of you who like to suffer.

As for that sepsis study...it is a tad ironic (again) that Mr Monkey says that this study doesn't count because the patients were also given conventional drugs. Yeah, Mr. Monkey that is right, but those patients who got individually chosen homeopathic medicines (chosen according to their own unique syndrome of severe sepsis) had a 50% (!) reduced mortality rate. Hey Linda, is this a "self-limiting condition?" Believing in reincarnation doesn't make it such.

Originally Posted by Mojo

All it showed was that the plants were sensitive to extremely small doses of the salts.

Thank you. Yes...plants do have this hypersensitivity, and plants are so much more sophisticated that humans, so there is no way that humans can have this type or any type of hypersensitivity. Hmmm.

The irony here is that homeopathy is said to be based on SIMILARS, when a better term might be RESONANCE...and there is hypersensitivity from resonance (any music appreciators out there?).

[JJM]

Originally Posted by Badly Shaved Monkey

This may be dangerously close to derailing my own thread, but it is relevant and Dana does not seem to see what is going on in the forum elsewhere so I'll post it here;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...nhpathy107.xml

Jayne Thomas, the vice-chairman of the Society of Homeopaths, said: "If a patient was seriously ill, any genuine homeopathic practitioner would encourage them to visit a GP." {snip}

A question for J. Thomas- how would a homeopath know if a person was seriously ill? Some serious illnesses are preceded by seemingly trivial symptoms (leukemia may be presaged by a sore throat). Homeopaths have no clinical experience that would allow them to recognize true illness; this is generally true for sCAM providers.

[Here_to_learn]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

Are you or anyone saying that Darwin's 12+ serious ailment "just happened" to get better 8 days after visiting Dr. Gully's clinic and had nothing to do with the treatment he received.

Well, I guess your point is that there would be a very low probability of this happening, but I hope that you do agree on that the chance actually is there. (Linda/fls mentioned that only a few posts ago, and argued that the chance is much greater that you seems to think).

Given that this is the only case you have presented in this thread (that specifically asks for cases), and this case happened some 150 years ago, could you please show us the calculation that this is unreasonable. I mean, surely there has been more visits to homeopaths that this one during the last 150 years?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

As for that sepsis study...it is a tad ironic (again) that Mr Monkey says that this study doesn't count because the patients were also given conventional drugs. Yeah, Mr. Monkey that is right, but those patients who got individually chosen homeopathic medicines (chosen according to their own unique syndrome of severe sepsis) had a 50% (!) reduced mortality rate. Hey Linda, is this a "self-limiting condition?" Believing in reincarnation doesn't make it such.

Here we go again. It's that reading comprehension problem again.

I chose not to repeat, yet again, the reasons why the study itself was invalid. So, instead of pointing out why it was an inherently poor study (remember it only got published in a crap journal and that should have been your first clue) and to add a little variety I saying why it was irrelevant to the question that you are supposed to be answering. But since you tediously keep failing to get the point I shall tediously repeat it- sepsis is a highly heterogeneous condition, that fact is contained in the original statement that it has a 40-70% mortality rate. Such a wide range should tell you something about the inherent variation in the condition. Indeed you have also been told this by Criticalist who actually works in the field whereas you only hand out coffee and sympathy in between reading other people's research and misunderstanding it. He/she told you that studies in this field require much larger numbers to allow any valid conclusions to be drawn because otherwise the study groups will be too heterogeneous. Got that now?

So, be a good chap and please strike that from your list and don't raise the topic again. Thank you.

[fls]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

Again, you haven't done your homework. There are various theories about his diagnosis, but that is not the point. Are you or anyone saying that Darwin's 12+ serious ailment "just happened" to get better 8 days after visiting Dr. Gully's clinic and had nothing to do with the treatment he received. Once again, skeptics tend to be much more metaphysical than I am. Thank you for making your position clear.

The documentation is inadequate to say whether his complaints were serious and to what degree they were present or not at any given time. You have filled in the blanks with a story that fits your particular desire, but it is still just a fiction.

The remainder of your post is dealt with here.

Linda

[Dana Ullman]

Mr. Monkey claims that the severe sepsis trial is not valid because it deals with a condition in which different studies have found a 40-70% mortality rate. Heck...this is true for a lot of serious illnesses... Your wiggle factors grow and grow and grow.

I can't remember if Linda has considered severe sepsis as "self-limiting," as she does with virtually everything else...even Darwin's chronic illness. Please read some history about Darwin and then you'll learn how much of a sick puppy he was. According to his own letters, he said that he was DYING ("going the way of all fresh") just BEFORE seeking Dr. Gully's care.

The fact of the matter is that in THIS study 50% of the people given conventional medicine and a placebo died, while only 25% of the people given a conventional medicine and a homeopathic medicine died.

As for JJM's statement about diagnosis...jeez, I wish that some of you would do your homework and stop shooting from the hip. The vast majority of homeopaths in Europe are MDs who are quite qualified to diagnosis. The vast majority of patients who go to homeopaths who are not MDs have previously gone to MDs, have gotten their diagnosis, and have not gotten effective treatment.

In India where 100 million people rely entirely upon homeopathic treatment, there are over 100,000 homeopathic physicians who have graduated from 4 or 5-year homeopathic medical schools and who are also able to diagnose, or they refer to specialists who do.

Please stop the simplistic thinking that tends to pervade this site.

What I also find so interesting is that total resistance of people on this site to even consider the possibility that you may be wrong or that you may have misinterpreted something.

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

Skeptics can no longer say that homeopathic medicines are proven to be effective in treating a specific condition.

I don't think they ever have said that, Dana.

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

Please read some history about Darwin and then you'll learn how much of a sick puppy he was. According to his own letters, he said that he was DYING ("going the way of all fresh") just BEFORE seeking Dr. Gully's care.

...

What I also find so interesting is that total resistance of people on this site to even consider the possibility that you may be wrong or that you may have misinterpreted something.

have you considered the possibility that Darwin was wrong, or that your interpretation of his comments about Gully's treatments may be mistaken?

[fls]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

Mr. Monkey claims that the severe sepsis trial is not valid because it deals with a condition in which different studies have found a 40-70% mortality rate. Heck...this is true for a lot of serious illnesses... Your wiggle factors grow and grow and grow.

Right. If there's a 30 to 60 percent chance someone will survive, how is the survival of an individual such an amazing event that it can only be attributed to receiving a homeopathic treatment?

Quote:

I can't remember if Linda has considered severe sepsis as "self-limiting,"

I answered your question here. I said that individuals recover even when not given homeopathic therapy.

Quote:

as she does with virtually everything else...even Darwin's chronic illness. Please read some history about Darwin and then you'll learn how much of a sick puppy he was. According to his own letters, he said that he was DYING ("going the way of all fresh") just BEFORE seeking Dr. Gully's care.

But if you know anything at all about medicine, you know that people frequently think they are dying when they are not. And the state of knowledge at that point in time was such that even a medical opinion wasn't particularly useful on that point. And you certainly don't have enough information to tell 150 years after the fact whether any of them were correct in their assessment.

Quote:

The fact of the matter is that in THIS study 50% of the people given conventional medicine and a placebo died, while only 25% of the people given a conventional medicine and a homeopathic medicine died.

So what? That's what you'd expect to see any time you take small groups of people who were in the ICU and follow them for months and months. In fact, this is a problem I have run into before when analyzing data from a database that includes patients with a high mortality rate. When my groups are small (and 35 is small), the mortality rates in my groups often diverge and become significantly different even if all I've done is randomly divide them into two groups and followed them for a long time.

Linda

[Blue Wode]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

As for JJM's statement about diagnosis...jeez, I wish that some of you would do your homework and stop shooting from the hip. The vast majority of homeopaths in Europe are MDs who are quite qualified to diagnosis.

And if French homeopathic MDs are typical of those throughout the rest of Europe, they’re hardly treating serious ailments with their magic potions:

Quote:

It emerged that the type of patients who consult homeopathic GPs are chiefly women, between the ages of 20 and 54, living in an urban environment, not in employment, covered by National Health Insurance for Salaried Workers, and belonging to a Mutual Benefit Association. The most common reasons for consultation were ENT disorders, stress and anxiety. The homeopathic GPs mainly used homeopathy to treat these disorders. On average, four medicinal products per patient were prescribed per 2-month course of treatment, for an average reimbursed cost of 3.78€.

Study of the practice of homeopathic General Practitioners in France
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...c354fad92036b3

Dana, don't the 'worried well' tend to suffer from fluctuating ENT disorders (colds), stress and anxiety?

[Criticalist]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

The fact of the matter is that in THIS study 50% of the people given conventional medicine and a placebo died, while only 25% of the people given a conventional medicine and a homeopathic medicine died.

Let me go through this again, though I suspect it will do little good. Forgetting for the moment the other serious methodological and reporting flaws which I have already described, the actual figures are as follows. Day 30 survival rates:
Homeopathy 81.8%, placebo 67.7%. p=0.19 non significant. This is a NEGATIVE result. Sepsis outcomes are routinely given at 28 days as after this the survival curves do not change. From the literature we see that ICU, 28 day and hospital mortality rates are of the order of 26.5, 32.4 and 37.5% respectively. (Adult-population incidence of severe sepsis in Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Units, Finfer et al Intensive Care Medicine 2004)
and that average ICU length of stay is 7 days (same ref.). Remember that in this study the homeopathic treatment was only given for the duration of the ICU stay. You cannot take figures of 180 day mortality and claim they are significant - its laughable.

Seeing how Mr Gully is fond of mentioning this paper I have a question for him.
How did the researchers go about obtaining the detailed symptomatology and background information he maintains is necessary if their patients were unable to communicate? How does he reconcile this with the information presented in table 4 of the study?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

Mr. Monkey claims that the severe sepsis trial is not valid because it deals with a condition in which different studies have found a 40-70% mortality rate. Heck...this is true for a lot of serious illnesses... Your wiggle factors grow and grow and grow.

Criticalist has been through this again. I'm sorry, Dana, that you are one of those people who could perform a t-test given a book and a calculator but will never have any meaningful grasp of the principles that determine how and when to draw reasonable inferences from data. I am sure you are familiar with the old line that there are "lies, damned lies and statistics". The reason that cliche has some validity is because people like you have so little grasp of the principles and discipline of good data analysis. I'm afraid that your persistence in defending this paper simply disqualifies you from having an opinion on it.

The odd thing is that you are the only person impressed by this sepsis study. Even the authors cannot think very highly of it because, as I have pointed out before, they only managed to get it published in one of the in-house homeopathic magazines not in a proper journal. These are people who managed to get a poor paper past the reviewers of a good journal, so they know what a good journal is. What's the betting that they hawked this one to a respectable journal first, but had to settle for having it printed on the toilet tissue that is Homeopathy?

[BillyJoe]

Originally Posted by Badly Shaved Monkey

What's the betting that they hawked this one to a respectable journal first, but had to settle for having it printed on the toilet tissue that is Homeopathy?

Anyone for homeopathic toilet tissue!

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally Posted by BillyJoe

Anyone for homeopathic toilet tissue!

No, thanks. I always use Star Trek toilet tissue because it goes round Uranus and wipes out Klingons.

[Dave_46]

Originally Posted by Badly Shaved Monkey

No, thanks. I always use Star Trek toilet tissue because it goes round Uranus and wipes out Klingons.

BSM, that really is a crap joke.

Dave

[BillyJoe]

A homeopath's favourite son:

(WARNING: The spoiler tag is there for a reason)

[Dana Ullman]

In the severe sepsis study, the survival rate at day 30 was 81.8% for homeopathic patients and 67.7% for those given a placebo. At day 180, 75.8% of homeopathic patients survived and only 50.0% of the placebo patients survived (p=0.043). One patient was saved for every four who were treated.

The long-term benefits that are typical from homeopathic treatment are again observed in this study, and the probability of these statistics happening by change are extremely small...but you know that.

If YOU were a patient in this study, which group would you rather be in?

But then again, if you squint your eyes tightly enough and narrow your definitions of what works and what doesn't work so that you blind yourself to real life situations (real life tends to go beyond 30 days!), you will successful not see reality ... but this is your choice.

Homeopaths do not simply do a diagnosis (as I previously mentioned), but also observe the patient (not every sepsis patient looks exactly alike)...and although there are many common symptoms of sepsis, the homeopath looks to observe any unique characteristics...plus they learn something about their health history... Homeopaths then prescribe according to both objective and subjective symptoms that they observe. This isn't really mysterious, except to those who don't want to understand.

It is amazing that you have to be taught this stuff. I would have thought that you knew something about homeopathy...but once again, you don't...you just are against it, despite never trying it (by going to a professional homeopath) or even trying to figure out how to treat yourself for a common acute ailment or injury.

According to the Shang study, which people on this list love to harp on, the homeopathic studies that were found to be of a "high quality" were TWICE as many as the group of allopathic medical studies (21 vs. 9). Therefore, if you are going to assert that Shang's study is valid (and I don't), then you must also say that homeopathic research tends to be more scientifically valid than conventional medical studies. Ok...I'm waiting for someone to say this! Come on...

And speaking of these high quality studies, there has been a comparison of these trials which will be published in a GRADE A scientific journal shortly. Be prepared to whistle a different tune...but I have a sneaking suspicion that you folks would rather think about the Shang study that primarily evaluated that trials in which only ONE medicine was given to HUNDREDS of patients, without any individualization. Although I will certainly admit that this type of treatment sometimes works, it is an EXCEPTION rather than the RULE. But you folks prefer to look at exceptions as though they are the rule. WRONG!

As for getting homeopathic research published in conventional journals, you have to KNOW that there is great prejudice against homeopathy and homeopathic research by YOU and by many medical editors (as well as by many members of editorial boards).

Prejudice is even more insidious when people think that they don't have it. Medical bigotry and medical chauvinsim is deep and wide, and this list is evidence of this.

Slam dunk.

[BillyJoe]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

If YOU were a patient in this study, which group would you rather be in?

It seems you would rather be in the homoeopathic group.
Me? Slam dunk! I'm using conventional toilet paper.

[Criticalist]

Mr Gully you just do not seem to understand. The majority of deaths in sepsis occur within the first 28 days. This is an established fact. The homeopathic treatment was given only for the duration of the patients stay in ICU. Length of stay was not reported in the study (one of its many failings) but we know average length of stay in ICU for septic patients is around 7 days (ref ICM 2004 in my previous post). You would have to propose that the treatment has no effect whilst it is being given but only manifests after it is ceased.
THIS IS A NEGATIVE STUDY.
Once more please answer my questions as to how the authors obtained detailed subjective symptomatology from unconscious patients, and how you reconcile this with the information presented in Table 4 of the paper.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally Posted by Criticalist

You would have to propose that the treatment has no effect whilst it is being given but only manifests after it is ceased.

I wouldn't worry about that. The typical pattern of homeopaths is to develop a convenient hypothesis post hoc then test that on the data already obtained and carefully neglect ever to do a follow-up study in which this hypothesis is part of the study design.

Provided you write your paper carefully you can even make that look like part of the original study design.

So, of course, Ullman will be happy to accept your offer of a post hoc hypothesis that he can retrofit to his data.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I've just created a nice little spreadsheet to try to educate our friend in some statistics.

Just follow these instructions and make your own. It's a bit time-consuming, but not difficult.

A1 "Death Rate per interval"
B1 Death rate for Group A
B2 Death rate for Group B
A3:A37 =IF(RAND()>$B$1,1,0)
B3 =IF(AND(A3=1,RAND()>$B$1),1,0)
copy this to fill B3:j37

A38:A72 =IF(RAND()>$B$2,1,0)
B38 =IF(AND(A38=1,RAND()>$B$2),1,0)
copy this to fill B38:j72

A74 =SUM(A3:A37)
A75 =SUM(A38:A72)
copy across to fill the cells to J74:J75

This gives you a list of survivals at each of 10 intervals.

Here is an online contingency table calculator.

Enter 2 for rows and 2 for columns, where columns are treatments and rows are live and dead respectively.

Now simply ask Excel to recalculate your spreadsheet over and over again.

You will find that for quite modest differences in group death rates (due in our real-world example to the heterogeneity of the condition of these patients that results from small group sizes) you can elicit loads of statistically "significant" treatment differences especially in the later time intervals where survival rates in the two arms can frequently be seen to have diverged.

Putting values for "Death Rate" around 0.1 and varying it by even 10% between the groups produces very impressive differences in group survival as the trial proceeds in about 50% of trial runs.

Independently of wanting to show Dana why he is so foolish to cling to this paper, I've found this exercise quite interesting so should be grateful to him for the opportunity.

So, Dana, do you see now why this could only get itself published in a rubbish journal?

But this is all yet more of a derail from the purpose of this thread;

Dana, HOW MANY AIDS PATIENTS HAVE YOU CURED?

[Island Skeptic]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

If any of you have a sincere interest in personally testing homeopathy, you should do so in the way that others do that: go to a professional homeopath who is certified (DHt, RShom, or CCH in the US). ....

Mr. Gully, I have been to certified Homeopaths. I am surrounded by them out here. (Even my very best friend is a Homeopathic Veterinarian!) I used to have great faith in alternative medicine for many years despite the fact that not a single homeopathic (or other alternative) remedy/treatment worked for any of my ailments (self-limiting and non-self-limiting).

For those conditions that are serious: the Homeopaths I went to were at least decent enough to finally admit that my case should be directed to conventional medicine (although only after trying various remedies for the various misdiagnoses they made + collecting hundreds -or perhaps even thousands- of dollars from me.)

I suffered for 2 very long years under their care before I finally went for proper medical attention & was propertly diagnosed --and have since then been on a treatment plan that enables me to lead a reasonably "normal" life and hold a job again.

So, I *have* tried homeopathy (and during that time, I even held faith in it! But obviously not enough faith, because I did not even experience the placebo effect in any of the treatments).

CAN YOU CURE MY COPD?
HOW ABOUT MY COAGULATION DISORDER?
OR MY ARTHRITIS?

YES or NO?

If YES: Why are you withholding treatment from me?

If your homeopathy works, my lack of faith in it should not be an issue.

Is it money? Are you avoiding me because I have not offered money? Sorry, I vowed not to spend another dime on non-evidence-based medicine again. But you do have a Nobel Prize to win if you can cure me.

Let me guess: You are not interested in a Nobel Prize or winning Randi's Million dollar challenge? I have heard that excuse too many times.

Or, you know deep down that your remedies do not work?

My offer is still open on the terms that everything is carefully monitored and documented by a team of unbiased professionals.

And your treatment would be terminated if my INR should drop to a dangerous level. I was very lucky to survive a horrifying Pulmonary Embolism (as well as 2 mini-strokes/TIAs), and refuse to subject myself to the danger of going through that again. Being that I would stop all conventional care while under your treatment, I expect you to be capable of maintaining my PT within safe ranges with your homeopathy or the deal is off.

Lastly: if your remedies cannot keep my pain at a tolerable enough level that would enable me to continue working & attending college as I have been, then I would also expect that you -or someone- cover all my costs of living, while i am forced to take a leave of absence.

[fls]

Fabulous job Badly Shaved Monkey.

Linda

[fls]

Originally Posted by JamesGully

According to the Shang study, which people on this list love to harp on, the homeopathic studies that were found to be of a "high quality" were TWICE as many as the group of allopathic medical studies (21 vs. 9). Therefore, if you are going to assert that Shang's study is valid (and I don't), then you must also say that homeopathic research tends to be more scientifically valid than conventional medical studies. Ok...I'm waiting for someone to say this! Come on...

I've already trashed your criticism of the Shang study here.

Quote:

And speaking of these high quality studies, there has been a comparison of these trials which will be published in a GRADE A scientific journal shortly. Be prepared to whistle a different tune...

I'm all aquiver, considering that you did such a grand job of predicting our reaction the last time you made this claim...

Quote:

but I have a sneaking suspicion that you folks would rather think about the Shang study that primarily evaluated that trials in which only ONE medicine was given to HUNDREDS of patients, without any individualization. Although I will certainly admit that this type of treatment sometimes works, it is an EXCEPTION rather than the RULE. But you folks prefer to look at exceptions as though they are the rule. WRONG!

As for getting homeopathic research published in conventional journals, you have to KNOW that there is great prejudice against homeopathy and homeopathic research by YOU and by many medical editors (as well as by many members of editorial boards).

Prejudice is even more insidious when people think that they don't have it. Medical bigotry and medical chauvinsim is deep and wide, and this list is evidence of this.

Slam dunk.

I know you are, but what and I?

Linda

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by Jaana

CAN YOU CURE MY COPD?
HOW ABOUT MY COAGULATION DISORDER?
OR MY ARTHRITIS?

YES or NO?

If YES: Why are you withholding treatment from me?

Perhaps because it appears that after being arrested for practising medicine without a license in Oakland on 5th May 1976, he had to give an undertaking not to diagnose or treat disease. See here and here.

[JJM]

Originally Posted by Mojo

Perhaps because it appears that after being arrested for practising medicine without a license in Oakland on 5th May 1976, he had to give an undertaking not to diagnose or treat disease. See here and here.

Nice catch!

[Island Skeptic]

Originally Posted by Mojo

Perhaps because it appears that after being arrested for practising medicine without a license in Oakland on 5th May 1976, he had to give an undertaking not to diagnose or treat disease. See here and here.

Woah...

I withdraw my proposal/request.

Thank you, Mojo!

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally Posted by Mojo

Perhaps because it appears that after being arrested for practising medicine without a license in Oakland on 5th May 1976, he had to give an undertaking not to diagnose or treat disease. See here and here.

"I have not done much practice since
then, even though I won this case, because I've been working on educating
people and health/medical professionals about homeopathy."


Completely hilarious.

No wonder he won't answer questions about real clinical "successes". He ain't not got none.

[BillyJoe]

Originally Posted by Badly Shaved Monkey

He ain't not got none.

Phew! For a moment there I thought it was just a double negative!

Originally Posted by Badly Shaved Monkey

No wonder he won't answer questions about real no clinical "successes".

This one would have worked as well.

[wilsontown]

Originally Posted by James Gully

And speaking of these high quality studies, there has been a comparison of these trials which will be published in a GRADE A scientific journal shortly. Be prepared to whistle a different tune...but I have a sneaking suspicion that you folks would rather think about the Shang study that primarily evaluated that trials in which only ONE medicine was given to HUNDREDS of patients, without any individualization. Although I will certainly admit that this type of treatment sometimes works, it is an EXCEPTION rather than the RULE. But you folks prefer to look at exceptions as though they are the rule. WRONG!

No, you're talking rubbish here. In the Shang paper, studies of 'complex homeopathy' (more than one remedy) made up 32% of the sample, and studies of 'classical homeopathy' made up 18% of the sample. So these types of homeopathy were tested. The main point to get from this is that THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE OF ANY DIFFERENCE IN OUTCOMES BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF HOMEOPATHY. That is, classical homeopathy and complex homeopathy were no more effective than clinical homeopathy, in which all patients received the same treatment. This is surely not difficult to understand.

Originally Posted by James Gully

According to the Shang study, which people on this list love to harp on, the homeopathic studies that were found to be of a "high quality" were TWICE as many as the group of allopathic medical studies (21 vs. 9). Therefore, if you are going to assert that Shang's study is valid (and I don't), then you must also say that homeopathic research tends to be more scientifically valid than conventional medical studies. Ok...I'm waiting for someone to say this! Come on...

You're talking rubbish here as well. Out of all the homeopathic literature, the authors could only find 165 trials that met the inclusion criteria. All the other ones were of inadequate quality. So the most you could say is that a highly selected subset of homeopathic trials are of better quality than a matched set of 'conventional' trials. This tells you nothing about the quality of homeopathic trials versus 'conventional' trials as a whole. Again, there isn't anything particularly difficult about this.

You complain that people harp on about the Shang study. This is not surprising, as it is at present the best evidence available on the efficacy or otherwise of homeopathy. Despite your huffing and puffing, you've yet to come up with any convincing criticism of it.

[Dana Ullman]

Originally Posted by wilsontown

No, you're talking rubbish here. In the Shang paper, studies of 'complex homeopathy' (more than one remedy) made up 32% of the sample, and studies of 'classical homeopathy' made up 18% of the sample. So these types of homeopathy were tested. The main point to get from this is that THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE OF ANY DIFFERENCE IN OUTCOMES BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF HOMEOPATHY. That is, classical homeopathy and complex homeopathy were no more effective than clinical homeopathy, in which all patients received the same treatment. This is surely not difficult to understand.



You're talking rubbish here as well. Out of all the homeopathic literature, the authors could only find 165 trials that met the inclusion criteria. All the other ones were of inadequate quality. So the most you could say is that a highly selected subset of homeopathic trials are of better quality than a matched set of 'conventional' trials. This tells you nothing about the quality of homeopathic trials versus 'conventional' trials as a whole. Again, there isn't anything particularly difficult about this.

You conveniently used percentages rather than true numbers because you know the numbers in the Shang analysis were cherry-picked and minimal. 18% = 2 studies. One of the studies was by Jacobs on childhood diarrhea, and rather than include all 3 of her trials, including one published in PEDIATRICS, Shang only used one trial, not the one in that "junk" journal PEDIATRICS (how convenient). Once again, even though Jacobs had conducted 3 trials with the same design and even though they published a meta-analysis of these 3 trials in a major pediatrics journal, Shang selectively chose to only include 1 of these trials (how convenient).

The only other trial in the Shang comparison that individualized medicines was a headache trial. I bet that no one here read that trial, but people in this trial on average had had chronic headaches for 20+ years. Although I was surprised that homeopathy didn't provide improvement, the fact that it didn't in THIS trial is not big whoop because nothing has helped these people for the past 20 years. Sometimes, some people have ailments that may be resistant to all treatment.

The bottomline is that the Shang trial evaluated only LARGE trials, a total of 6 of the 8 trials used 1 medicine for everyone. I am still waiting for someone (!) to explain how a total preliminary "weight-loss trial" that was a part of this analysis. Sometimes, larger trials create their own bias due to their design.

The fact that you choose to call my analysis "rubbish" suggests that I am touching a nerve. Ouch.

[wilsontown]

Originally Posted by James Gully

You conveniently used percentages rather than true numbers because you know the numbers in the Shang analysis were cherry-picked and minimal. 18% = 2 studies. One of the studies was by Jacobs on childhood diarrhea, and rather than include all 3 of her trials, including one published in PEDIATRICS, Shang only used one trial, not the one in that "junk" journal PEDIATRICS (how convenient). Once again, even though Jacobs had conducted 3 trials with the same design and even though they published a meta-analysis of these 3 trials in a major pediatrics journal, Shang selectively chose to only include 1 of these trials (how convenient).

We've been through all of this already. I did make a mistake here: In fact it was 16% of the trials that were of classical homeopathy. That is, 18 trials, not 2. AND THE ANALYSIS SHOWED THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE THAT CLASSICAL HOMEOPATHY WAS BETTER THAN ANY OTHER FORM OF HOMEOPATHY TESTED. I don't think I can be any clearer than that.

Quote:

The fact that you choose to call my analysis "rubbish" suggests that I am touching a nerve. Ouch.

Not particularly. I just think that you're talking rubbish, as myself and others have shown.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally Posted by Badly Shaved Monkey

Dana, HOW MANY AIDS PATIENTS HAVE YOU CURED?

Still got reading comprehension problems?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally Posted by wilsontown

I just think that you're talking rubbish, as myself and others have shown.

And he's still talking rubbish in the wrong thread because he is too scared of the question that the thread was created to ask.