The other day I met a relative of mine in a hospital and expectedly our talk plunged into the topic of health care. He told me that homeopathy was doing wonders in some cases where modern medicine had failed. One example he mentioned was that of a relative of his who was suffering from brain tumor. Her only chance of survival on undergoing surgery was 15 per cent and so her husband decided against it and brought her to a famous homeopath in town, he said. He emphasised the point that the patient was no longer bed-ridden as she had been till she began homeopathy treatment. At least, she talks to the people who went to meet her, he said with a glint of faith in his eyes, knowing that the person he was talking to was not a zombie.
I am not an admirer of alternative medical systems including homeopathy. But what puzzles me is that all those who have faith in homeopathy are not as wacky as my relative who sought to engage me in a debate on the virtues of this crazy system of medicine. There are celebrities including Prince Charles who will openly defend it.
Its central principles are treated as a puzzle by scientists. It foundational principle is `like cures like', that is, a disease can be cured by small part of a substance that causes similar symptoms. The second principle is that the more your dilute a solution that can offer remedy the more effective it becomes and that the shaking of the dilution gives healing power to water in which it is diluted. I recently watched the Horizon programme on the BBC which debunks the scientific basis of homeopathy. The Horizon team assigns investigators and researchers to study the scientific basis of homeopathy.
If a homeopathic mixture is diluted 100 times, the result is 1 C solution. The 1 C solution is added to 99 parts of water. At 2 C, the medicine is one part in 10,000. At 6 C, the medicine is diluted a million times (one drop in 20 swimming pools); at 12 C it is one drop in an Ocean. But homeopathic dilution does not end there. A typical homeopathic dilution is 30 c! One has to be very naive to believe that this solution can cure a patient. Then, how homeopathy works in some patients? Scientists say that it can be placebo effect. Placebo is a drug containing no active ingredients. It is administered to patients participating in clinical trials for assessing potential of a new drug. Sometimes doctors prescribe placebo pills to patients that can give a feeling of relief that in turn reduce stress and anxiety experienced by patients. This reduction of stress and anxiety may improve their health.
The Horizon programme gathered scientists from leading scientific institutions in England to examine whether homeopathic solutions have any medicinal power. The researchers filled 5 test tubes with water diluted in water and five with histamine diluted in water. Each of the tube is diluted again all the way to 5 C. A professor of engineering was asked to randomly re-label each of the 10 tubes. Only this professor had the code to know which tube contained histamine dilution and which contained water. Now these solutions were diluted to true homeopathic levels upto 18 C. There were now 40 tubes. The researchers took a drop from each of the tubes and added a sample of living human cell.
Then a medical researcher was assigned to examine whether human cell in each of the tube had any effect. To be precise, a second scientist was also asked to do the same test independently. The statistical analysis of the tubes that seem or not seem to have an effect on the cells confirmed that homeopathic water had no special effect.
I didn't tell all these things to my relative who is a homeopathy believer. Because I have no problem if somebody who gets relief from a system of medicine which has no scientific basis. Real danger comes when people who advocate alternative medicine seek to rubbish modern medicine.
1 comment:
At long last, I have been able to more than agree with you on this issue of alternative medicines/modern medicine.
My father advocated homeopathy. Apart from this, he was also fond of reading astrological predictions. I remember we subscribed to Indian express because it had a huge page of astrology by someone named peter Vidal. In all other matters, my father had a scientific bent of mind.
From the time I could think on my own I have beieved only in modern medicine - also because it is our bread and butter. Now, though my siblings cry foul, saying that I began posturing only after marriage. Also because I did not fall ill at any given time, except for the childhood rounds of Measles, chickenpox and the like. Nowadys it is very rare to see a child from the above mentioned diseases.
Any system of medicine, which does not have a cure for all sicknesses, is rightfully a sham. Modern Medicine is absolutely blunt on diseases wich has no cure.
Take the case of AIDS. It is a viral communicable disease, and modern medicine bluntly tells you to stay away from catching it. Though of course, retro viral therapy can prolong as well as change the quality of ones life. No tall claims of curing AIDS come from those who practise modern medicine.
My husband who is a GP with immense understanding of all kinds of diseases has nothing but indifference to Homeopathy. How can you compare a person to a doctor who has one and a half years of cutting up human bodies behind him? Or about assisting more than 300 deliveries and around the same number of surgeries to someone who has not seen the insides of a human body or has learnt its workings?
We profess to be a literate society, but as you had mentioned some time back there is a kind of retrograde journeying and that too in the 21st century!
Doctors prescribe plcaebos regularly. Placebos could be harmless vitamins as well as addictive tranquilisers. They serve their purpose. In a day, more than half of our patients are only prescribed placebos - simply becuse they do not have any diseases to be cured.
About the brain tumor patient you mentioned. All tumors need not be malign, they could be benign as well. Even if it is malignant, if the patient has intense belief in homeopathy or whatever, he or she would most definitely benefit from having a placebo. Also do not forget the fact that he or she has been intensely treated with powerful drugs, even chemotherapy must have been done, so all those drugs must be acting as well. It could also be the final peace before the storm. People who undergo intensive cycles of chemotherapy, an array of potent drugs, that they have been known to experience euphoria - where the world finally looks benign and a happy place to be in.
In all this melee, we forget those unsung heroes. I remember the huge headlines that were splashed about the dozenns of vehicles that accompanied a local MLA all the way to Ernakulam after one of his hand had been chopped off, carrying dozens of volunteers willing to donate blood to the said MLA.
Nobody remembers the fabulous job the neurosurgeon did, standing for 14 hours for the micro vascular surgery. Now they only talk of the ayurvedic physiotherapist who did some massage juggling it with doses of real physiotherapy.
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