ON a reader’s letter which claimed homeopathy was ‘totally ineffective’.

Posted by keble 23rd: So true! It’s time to stop this mumbo jumbo.

Posted by BobinStroud: Here here! It says quite a lot of the intelligence of those who believe in homeopathy. When you dilute something to the extent that even a single molecule of the ‘active ingredient’ isn’t present, you do have to wonder if these people are entirely there!

Posted by MaverickToo: Did you hear about the homeopath that forgot to take his medicine? He died from an overdose.

Posted by Crow: Just a placebo that might work due to being prescribed by a doctor who spent years training in medical colleges.

Ironically homoeopathy on the NHS would dilute the NHS.

Posted by TigerTigerBurningBright: What the NHS should do is reduce the money for homeopathy to a millionth of what it is now. The money will then be way more effective.

Posted by Em Colley: I find it intriguing that Mr Watson above mentions malaria in particular, and whilst I am fairly sure what he refers to, it can’t only be my sister who takes conventional medical prophylaxis tablets for malaria (reportedly the best available) whilst travelling and gets malaria twice on two separate occasions. Would that prove it doesn’t work? It certainly didn’t for her. Dangerous even? Maybe. She certainly wasn’t well on each occasion. Not saying homeopathy is the answer here. But equally I think malaria, given our family experiences helping her to recover, is an interesting one to quote.

Aside from that, many doctors work with homeopathy, seeing patients that have been referred to them as nothing else in the medical world (so far) had helped them. Often they are helped. Surely the placebo argument would also refer to all the other treatments they’d had?

I genuinely believe the NHS strategy to reduce spend should be to give every household a homeopathy kit and some basic training and for every doctor to practice homeopathy! Surely a strategy to address the root cause of a problem is more sustainable than to just keep treating symptoms?

Posted by Alan Henness: For your argument to be sound, we’d need to accept the veracity of your premises. So far, they have just been asserted without evidence. And, of course, your logic is flawed, just because you cannot understand it does not not mean it must be so.

Posted by fighting4homeopathy: There is a role for homeopathy in cancer treatment. A sample size of 44 Russian cancer patients who developed chemotherapy induced peripheral europathy (CIPN) were studied. Because of the painful neuropathy these patients had to either have a reduced chemotherapy dose, a delay in treatment or stop their treatment completely.

This impairs treatment effectiveness and patients survival. The aim of the study was to test the effectiveness of a treatment regimen that included a complex of allopathic and homeopathic drugs, combined with hydrotherapy. This regimen resulted in a subjective and objective regression of the neuropathic symptoms and improved quality of life in all patients. Additionally, patients who had to delay chemotherapy were able to restart it.