suede - 19 November 2011 04:46 PM
ShadowSot - 18 November 2011 10:05 PM
Oh yeah, and while bloodletting is good if you have that specific blood disorder, it’s useless for anything else, whereas historically it was used to treat a multitude of symptons.
Is that bloodletting’s fault?
I disagree Mid Atlantic. there are some heral treatments that are helpful, yes, however at the same time there are a number of treatments sold at sotres as herbs that do not.
Is that the Herb’s fault?
Your responses to considered opinions is the crux (and the problem) of this discussion.
NO ONE is faulting bloodletting, bloodletting itself is not a practitioner but a practice. I am faulting (and excusing) the medieval practitioners of bloodletting as being uninformed. But for a practitioner to persist in proven ineffective or harmful practices, in spite of modern scientific evidence, makes the practitioner a quack at best and a scammer at worst.
NO ONE is faulting herbs, herbs are naturally occurring plants, some with beneficial properties, which were used by serious medicine (wo)men in days of old as the only available medicines at that time. As has been previously mentioned, there is no disagreement about some herbs having beneficial properties. But a claim that herbs are “more” effective than modern medicine derived from these herbs or synthesized is false and a scam.
NO ONE is disputing the concept of “like cures like” to build immunity for a select few diseases which can be prevented by introducing the body to small amounts of that microbe. It is called “vaccination”, but modern vaccines use “dead” microbes in order to stimulate the production of antibodies which “recognize” the shape of the microorganism and thereby can respond faster to infection. Anyone who professes that diseases caused by micro-organisms are disturbances of the “vital life force” are quacks or scammers.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_purpose_of_vaccines
What is the purpose of vaccinating a person with live microorganisms, when the body is already infected with live organisms and is already producing anti-bodies? When the organism is too virulent for the body to combat and control the infection by itself you do not aggravate the situation by adding “dilutions” of more live organisms, you assist the body with anti-biotics (penicillin, vibramycin, etc) to combat the virulent organism itself.
Maybe, just maybe, in a few select cases homeopathic “like cures like” may be effective as a preventive immunizaton method, but it does not CURE anything. Purposely infecting someone with live organisms (at any dilution) without strict medical controls and supervision is potentially life threatening.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
suede, you are obviously a bright person with analytical ability. But in order to come to a skeptically considered conclusion, you’ll have to do research, not only on the “unsubstantiated” claims of the benefits of homeopathy, but also on the “substantiated” claims of medical experts that homeopathy is at best ineffective and at worst dangerous.
It is obvious you do not have this expertise and your attack on Skepchick’s narrative (who undoubtedly has researched the subject) is just not valid.
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