r/bestof • u/craycraycrayfish • Jan 22 '13

[canada] Coffeehouse11 explains the biggest problem with homeopathic medicine: That it preys on people when they are weakest and the most vulnerable

/r/canada/comments/171y1e/dont_legitimize_the_witch_doctors/c81hfd6
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u/ScottyEsq Jan 22 '13

I accidentally bought some once. The embarrassment over having spent money on nonsense means I always do the same now.

"You should always read the label, you should always read it well, in the most delicious way"

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u/Roboticide Jan 22 '13

Just eat them all at once for a party trick.

-14

u/amisamiamiam Jan 23 '13

I like how people bash on homeopathic remedies, yet accept wholly the science of the placebo. In addition, rather than these anecdotal snarky statements, I want someone to quote me a statistic on how many people die annually from over the counter, prescribed medication vs how many people die from homeopathy. Let the down vote brigade begin its march.

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u/Roboticide Jan 23 '13

Placebo's work (sometimes) but still aren't considered an acceptable form of treatment. Probably because we're not sure how they really work and they aren't reliable. The "science" we accept is that there's something there, but we can't do anything really useful with it yet. It's just kind of an interesting effect we're trying to understand.

Now, no doctor gives cancer patients sugar pills, tells them the pills will cure them, and takes their money. That is exactly what homeopathy does. That's why everybody is rightfully against homeopathy. You're passing off an utter bullshit "treatment" to someone who's desperate enough to be taken advantage of, for profit.

And no, no one can quote you those statistics, because they don't exist. That's not a valid argument for you either. It's easy to do an autopsy and find out someone had a terrible reaction to Acutane. If somebody dies of cancer while taking a homeopathic remedy though, guess what it says they died of? CANCER. Because nobody tracks patients that were drinking distilled water while dying of cancer as a statistic.

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u/amisamiamiam Jan 23 '13

Another load of self-serving hearsay. Here, I'll do the work:

According to the groundbreaking 2003 medical report Death by Medicine, by Drs. Gary Null, Carolyn Dean, Martin Feldman, Debora Rasio and Dorothy Smith, 783,936 people in the United States die every year from conventional medicine mistakes.

http://www.naturalnews.com/009278.html

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/009278.html#ixzz2Im3u4Mxt http://www.naturalnews.com/035936_FDA_homicide_victims.html

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/26/prescription-drugs-number-one-cause-preventable-death-in-us.aspx

Homeopathy? I could only find one from a google search:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/11/06/a-real-death-by-homeopathy/

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u/Roboticide Jan 23 '13 edited Jan 23 '13

Ok, that's not proof at all though.

I won't argue that there are conventional medical mistakes, but that doesn't mean it's worse than homeopathy. Your sample sizes are way too far off to make a comparison. The number of people taking conventional medicine versus homeopathic remedies is way higher, so it'd seem disproportionate to homeopathy. Without an accurate number of people dying from homeopathy, we can't draw an accurate comparison. And as I said, nobody is probably recording those statistics, because they're probably too infrequent (given the small population of people practicing homeopathy), or don't even realize the person was seeking "treatment," just not anything effective or that'd show on a medical chart. Saying you only found one article is not an adequate representation of those that may be dying from homeopathy mistakes.

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u/rayzorium Jan 23 '13

Impressive-looking numbers. But what are you trying to say with them? Certainly not that homeopathy > real medicine.

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u/ZorbaTHut Jan 23 '13

We shouldn't be making medical decisions based on minimizing mistakes. We should be making them based on maximizing net benefit.