EPTEdit: beat me to it but yeah =P
Homeopathy - does it work? - Page 7
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
Edit: beat me to it but yeah =P | ||
Twisted
Netherlands13554 Posts
On June 16 2010 04:47 Djzapz wrote: According to homeopaths the more dilute the more powerful. When it's 1:100 it's not homeopathy. When you take an aspirin it's not 100% active ingredients. When you take antibiotic pills it's not 100% antibiotics. The reason why it's 1/100 is so you can pick it up with your fingers or so they can put something else in the other 99%. Well then those homeopaths are full of shit and I agree with the general consensus of the topic. Still the medicine that I took, which Ao_Jun said was diluted 1:100, is known as a homeopathic medicine in the Netherlands. Maybe there are just a bunch of misunderstandings on what we're arguing though. Maybe homeopaths in the Netherlands (or the specific one I went to) actually use medicine that have some relation to homeopathic (fake) medicine. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
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Lefnui
United States753 Posts
On June 16 2010 04:51 Twisted wrote: I put science in quotes because it's a vague concept. Not because I'm cynical/sarcastic about it. It's not a vague concept at all. And I find it interesting that you refuse to respond to the rest. Tell me, do you believe that diluting something makes it stronger? | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On June 16 2010 04:57 Lefnui wrote: It's not a vague concept at all. And I find it interesting that you refuse to respond to the rest. Tell me, do you believe that diluting something makes it stronger? You don't understand what he means. | ||
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DefMatrixUltra
Canada1992 Posts
On June 16 2010 02:30 GG.Win wrote: Show me some proven science saying homeopathy doesn't work. Show me that the Hormesis principle is proven false. If you're so sure it doesn't work, then a large portion of Europe and Asia must be fooled silly. Are you even going to compare costs of homeopathy and conventional medicine? What a joke. Randi is not a scientist, the guy is a fucking magician. I personally don't support homeopathy but writing it off immediately with fucking youtube videos of randi is such a joke. You should seriously think logically, just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't work. Wait, the earth is flat right? I don't know what you have against Randi, but it's not some crusade of his that is the reason behind homeopathy being rejected by the scientific community. You just need to know the following: 1. What homeopathy is/does. Basically they take ingredients and dilute them to an incredible level. 2. A little bit of chemistry, perhaps some physics. The nature of molecules, subatomic particles, and so on. 3. A scrap of biology. Take caffeine for instance. What does it do? Common knowledge says that high amounts of caffeine induce jitteriness/wakefulness/whatever you want to call it. It's used commonly as an every-day stimulant in the form of coffee etc. Biology tells a little more specifically the same story. Is caffeine used in sleeping pills? That wouldn't make sense. They are a stimulant. We'll challenge this view later on, though. What if you take a single sip of coffee or cola? Is there any noticeable difference? What about if you ingested a single atom of caffeine? As a physicist, I can tell you that it's perfectly OK to ingest a single atom of highly radioactive material - you will experience no effect. So it stands to reason that ingesting a simple stimulant like caffeine in such a small quantity as a single atom would have no effect as well. ------------- Now someone suggests to you that you can use caffeine in sleeping pills. You're open-minded enough to hear any arguments. What they do is dilute the caffeine heavily and say that it will have the opposite effect. This is already sounding suspicious without even telling you how much to dilute it. If you took any kind of chemistry, you are probably somewhat familiar with a common dangerous substance like hydrochloric acid. If you spill hydrochloric acid on your skin, you can severely damage your body from horrible chemical burns. So what if you drank it? It would do the same to your insides (which would actually probably be even more vulnerable, but you'll have to ask a biologist about that). What if I told you that diluting hydrochloric acid causes it to have the opposite effect (like the caffeine sleeping pill)? Would you believe that diluted hydrochloric acid can "heal" or somehow mend the burns caused by the undiluted acid? Clearly, it doesn't, and I would recommend that you not try it. But then they tell you how diluted the substance is. In the case of the substance in that video, it was diluted to 1 part in ~10^1500. But we know from Avagadro's number and the nature of atoms and molecules that this is an impossibly dilute substance. If you pour sand into a glass of water, you can see the water and sand mixed up. But if you put a single atom of sand into a glass of water, that atom is not going to mysteriously multiply into two atoms. There isn't any kind of characteristic residue or similar that the sand will "leave" on the water. That's a single atom of sand in a glass of water containing ~10^22 atoms of water. So how can you dilute something to one part in 10^1500? Technically, it's impossible (unless your solution is the size of a galaxy or something larger). Because the most dilute a substance can be is to have 1 atom in the solution. If something is labeled as being 1 part in 10^1500, then we can interpret that as a sort of probability that if we had a glass big enough to have 10^1500 atoms in it, then there would be a good chance of having 1 atom of the active substance in it. But to figure out the chance that there is actually any ingredient at all in the "medicine", you'd come up with a number so close to 0, that you'd basically be forced to say there is, for all practical purposes, no chance at all of even a single atom being in that solution. ------------ Remember when I asked what happens if you ingest a single atom of caffeine? Well what happens if you ingest 0 atoms of caffeine? What effect does the caffeine have? | ||
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Ao_Jun
Denmark396 Posts
On June 16 2010 04:47 Djzapz wrote: According to homeopaths the more dilute the more powerful. When it's 1:100 it's not homeopathy. When you take an aspirin it's not 100% active ingredients. When you take antibiotic pills it's not 100% antibiotics. The reason why it's 1/100 is so you can pick it up with your fingers or so they can put something else in the other 99%. I dunno where you got it that 1:100 is not homeopathic, but http://ecam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/neq042 states that the homeopathic thujone usen on animals is 1:100 dilution.. And i just assumed that if 1:100 can be called homeopathic there is a chance that whatever twisted took is diluted to maybe between 1:10 and 1:1000 or even 1:10000 at which point there is still sufficient thujone for it to possibly work. I really didnt want to investigate more. Anyways i don't think the idea of homeopathy is plausible, but that does not mean that no homeopathic "medicines" work. | ||
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Twisted
Netherlands13554 Posts
On June 16 2010 04:57 Lefnui wrote: It's not a vague concept at all. And I find it interesting that you refuse to respond to the rest. Tell me, do you believe that diluting something makes it stronger? Are you trolling or honestly devoid of reading comprehension. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On June 16 2010 05:00 Ao_Jun wrote: I dunno where you got it that 1:100 is not homeopathic, but http://ecam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/neq042 states that the homeopathic thujone usen on animals is 1:100 dilution.. And i just assumed that if 1:100 can be called homeopathic there is a chance that whatever twisted took is diluted to maybe between 1:10 and 1:1000 or even 1:10000 at which point there is still sufficient thujone for it to possibly work. I really didnt want to investigate more. Anyways i don't think the idea of homeopathy is plausible, but that does not mean that no homeopathic "medicines" work. Ok. Let's rehash homeopathy for the kids who didn't bother to "investigate more". Do your homework. The medicine has to have an effect that's the opposite of what the diluted item does. 1: If I take a bite of the Thujone, it'll have a certain effect on me. 2: According to homeopathy, if I take that same Thujone and dilute it (A LOT), it will have the opposite effect. 1: If I take caffeine, I'll be more awake 2: If I dilute caffeine to 1:10^27 and I take it, in a small vial, chances are I don't have a single part of caffeine left. According to homeopaths, this WATER's memory will make me sleep. That's right, diluted caffeine is a sleeping pill. If I dilute it even more, say to 1:10^40, the sleeping pill will be even more powerful. That's what they say. If the Thujone is "diluted" to 1:100, it's still part of the solution. When I take that solution, it's just like taking the thujone directly. If you dilute poison to 1:100, you won't get the poison's cure. You'll just get a smaller amount of poison. Maybe you'll get sick because of it. If the poison is powerful enough, 1:100 will still kill you. It is NOT homeopathy just because people SAY it is. At least 2 reasons. -It's not dilute enough. You do actually take in your body an ingredient which may have effects. Do you think the 1:1000 solution is more powerful than the 1:100? And what about the 1:10^27 dilution? Does it make me explode because it's so powerful? If it doesn't work like that, then it's not homeopathy. -It's the effect of the thujone, not its opposite. You can call it homeopathy and you can call it voodoo medicine. It goes 100% against what homeopathy means. This is no different from taking any pill and calling it homeopathy because it's not 100% active. Just because some people call it homeopathy doesn't mean it is, seeing how it goes against everything homeopathy stands for. | ||
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Sinensis
United States2513 Posts
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Empyrean
16987 Posts
Fun game: try to make it to the end! | ||
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endy
Switzerland8970 Posts
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DefMatrixUltra
Canada1992 Posts
On June 16 2010 05:12 Empyrean wrote: Just allow Dr. Charlene Werner to explain homeopathy. She does a great job: + Show Spoiler + Fun game: try to make it to the end! Oh my god. I lost. I can usually stand through anything. That is just... unbelievable. Stephen Hawkings gave us the strings theory. | ||
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Twisted
Netherlands13554 Posts
On June 16 2010 05:11 Djzapz wrote: text Well this is just arguing what homeopathy is. I guess if homeopathy is summarized as: if you dilude a certain product to 1:10^x it will work less well than if it's diluded to 1:10^2x then homeopathy is retarded. I doubt that's the only definition of what homeopathy is though. Because that summary makes it sound like some kind of deluded (lol) voodoo. | ||
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R0YAL
United States1768 Posts
I think the main reason people shoot down the homeopathy is because they dont fully understand the complexity of water. That may sound stupid to some people, but the reason homeopathy exists is because of the theory that water has the ability to "copy" information. Im not going argue about this stuff, i just wanted to promote the book  | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On June 16 2010 05:24 Twisted wrote: Well this is just arguing what homeopathy is. I guess if homeopathy is summarized as: if you dilude a certain product to 1:10^x it will work less well than if it's diluded to 1:10^2x then homeopathy is retarded. I doubt that's the only definition of what homeopathy is though. Because that summary makes it sound like some kind of deluded (lol) voodoo. Still it's the main idea behind it... Some "homeopaths" may disregard that part and just do their own thing. By the looks of it anyway many of them are unclear on what they're actually doing =P | ||
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knyttym
United States5797 Posts
On June 16 2010 05:12 Empyrean wrote: Just allow Dr. Charlene Werner to explain homeopathy. She does a great job: + Show Spoiler + Fun game: try to make it to the end! Aww yeah I won the game. The strategy is you realize that she is joking and laugh at her. She's actually pretty damn funny | ||
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Schnake
Germany2819 Posts
Abstract: Homeopathy remains one of the most controversial subjects in therapeutics. This article is an attempt to clarify its effectiveness based on recent systematic reviews. Electronic databases were searched for systematic reviews/meta-analysis on the subject. Seventeen articles fulfilled the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Six of them related to re-analyses of one landmark meta-analysis. Collectively they implied that the overall positive result of this meta-analysis is not supported by a critical analysis of the data. Eleven independent systematic reviews were located. Collectively they failed to provide strong evidence in favour of homeopathy. In particular, there was no condition which responds convincingly better to homeopathic treatment than to placebo or other control interventions. Similarly, there was no homeopathic remedy that was demonstrated to yield clinical effects that are convincingly different from placebo. It is concluded that the best clinical evidence for homeopathy available to date does not warrant positive recommendations for its use in clinical practice. | ||
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PanN
United States2828 Posts
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Badjas
Netherlands2038 Posts
Buy a bottle from me at 1:10^30 dilution! 50 cc for $24,95! Here is how it works for you gentlemen: Buy 10 empty bottles from me, $2,45 per piece. Fill the bottles for 9/10th with water. Top each bottle off with 1/10th of my homeopathic potion. Shake. Now you have your own homeopathic substance at 1:10^31 dilution! Amazing is it not? You can sell each one of your bottle for $25,95 for sure, as it is more diluted, more valuable, more effective, than the original potion you bought from me! Another good sale incentive will be that your buyers will be able to make potions at 1:10^32 dillution! Imagine the riches! So what do you say, are you in? | ||
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