Topic: International Debate on Homeopathy on Oct.25th....
Truthfinder
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Member # 8512
posted
It will be interesting to see what transpires (although I won't be able to watch it). It could be a boring `presentation' of conflicting ideas, or it could be like a 4th of July fireworks display...... sort of like `an unstoppable force meets an immovable object'.
I guess the good news is that the two sides are talking to each other, and there's been very little of that in the past several decades. Here's the information......
Dear Members: On October 25, 2007, the University of Connecticut Health Center will be hosting a historic debate on homeopathy. This event will mark the first time a major U.S. medical school has examined homeopathy in this depth. It also marks the first time that the clinical, historical and basic science data will be examined simultaneously. We invite you and your colleagues to watch. Please pass this important announcement along to colleagues and patients. This event is one they will not want to miss.
The University of Connecticut Health Center presents:
A Debate: Homeopathy - Quackery Or A Key To The Future of Medicine?
An international forum to explore the facts around this controversial modality in an attempt to determine whether it has a place in medical care.
Low Learning Center* University of Connecticut Health Center 263 Farmington Avenue Farmington, Connecticut 06030 Thursday, October 25 2:00P.M. - 4:00P.M. ET
Homeopathy is used by tens of millions of people around the world. On October 25, you are invited to watch a debate between six internationally renowned experts (Iris Bell, M.D., Ph.D., Rustum Roy Ph.D., Andre Saine N.D., Donald Marcus M.D., Steven Novella M.D., and Naduv Davidovitch M.D., Ph.D.) as they examine the basic science as well as the clinical and historical evidence around this 200 year old system of medicine. Is homeopathy pure quackery as some contend or perhaps the future of medicine? Watch on October 25.
The event will be broadcast live over the internet and can be seen by logging onto http://tinyurl.com/38ybo2
The forum will also be archived at this url address. Seating is extremely limited so if you would like to attend in person, please email [email protected] or call 860-674-1500 to reserve your spot.
For more information, please feel free to contact Peter Gold at [email protected]
U Conn Medical School to Host Web-Accessible Debate on Homeopathy: Is it Quackery or ... ?
Written by John Weeks Monday, 08 October 2007
U Conn Medical School to Host Web-Accessible Debate on Homeopathy: Is it Quackery?
Summary: The October 25, 2007 event is entitled: A Debate: Homeopathy - Quackery or a Key to the Future of Medicine? Organizers advertise that this is the first time that such an exploration will be blessed by a medical school. The University of Connecticut Health Center is the sponsor. Content from the 6 international participants, on basic sciences, clinical sciences and historical evidence. At least one participant is on the record urging that the NIH NCCAM be shut down. The event, which will be web-accessible for viewers, will be moderated by reporters from National Public Radio. One cannot tell yet if the differences will get a full House of Commons style airing ...
Homeopathy is not typically at the top of the list of therapies offered in integrative medical school educational and clinical programs. In fact, despite strong clinical interest from research leaders such as Brian Berman, MD and Wayne Jonas, MD, championing this therapy which breaks all the rules of conventional medical thinking has its singular challenges. You mean when there's less of the substance there's more power in the medicine?
The editors British Medical Journal captured this medically nauseating uneasiness 16 years ago when, in an issue in which it published a review of the literature which suggested these infinitesimal doses could be effective, the editors had to run an editorial which distanced themselves from the evidence. (Kleijnen J, Knipschild P, ter Riet G. Clinical trials of homoeopathy. BMJ 1991;302:316-23)
On October 25, 2007, homeopathy comes into the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in what is being billed as a 'historic debate." Peter Gold, a biologist who is serving as a publicist for the program, told the Integrator that "this event will mark the first time that a major U.S. medical school has examined this subject in this depth."
The debate will be moderated by hosts from National Public Radio. The faculty members who brought this to pass are Mary P. Guerrera, MD, an integrative medicine leader at the school, and Thiruchandurai Rajan, MD. Here's the skinny.
Homeopathy Debate at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine
Faculty Sponsors - Mary P. Guerrera, MD, T.V. Rajan, M D
Presenters:
Rustrum Roy, PhD (U Penn) - Basic sciences Steve Novella, MD (Yale) - Basic sciences
Iris Bell, MD (U Arizona) - Clinical evidence Donald Marcus, MD (Baylor) - Clinical evidence
Andre Saine, ND (Canadian Academy for Homeopathy) - Historical evidence Nadav Davidovitch MD, PhD (Columbia/Ben Gurion) - Historical evidence
Pro & Con Presentations - 45 minutes for each team Discussion/debate - 30 minutes Moderator(s) - National Public Radio reporters
From materials provided by Peter Gold.
While the event is presented as a debate, information provided by the sponsors indicates that the speakers will be "discussing" the topics. A query from the Integrator discovered a format which is less inter-active than the idea of debate suggests. The two teams will making presentations more as a panel, followed by some give-and-take. The pro/con split for the teams appears to be:
Pro: Roy, Bell and Saine Con: Novella, Marcus and Davidovitch
According to event materials, 10 million souls around the globe presently use homeopathy. The event will be broadcast over the internet and archived by the university for future viewing. For information, Peter Gold at [email protected].
Comment: A full blown debate, with debate format, was especially appealing. However, it sounds like what will occur is a set of panelists on opposite sides of, well, history and science, discussing a compelling theme. Still, this could get interesting. Marcus is a long-time anti-CAM fellow, who has made it known in Science that he'd just as soon shut down the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine as a waste of federal research dollars better spent elsewhere. (See related Integrator story.)
Here's hoping that the discussion is allowed to heat up a bit to honor the passion on both sides of the argument. The key question in scoring the debate's outcome will we be whether judges will recognize both punches landed in the whole form and those that arrive fully succussed and only register energetically.
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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luvs2ride
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Wow! Tracy thank you for this information. I will be working on the 25th but will watch it in the archives.
As many of you know, I began my lyme treatment with only homeopathy. It was awesome!
I had severe mental brain fog, shortterm memory loss, stiff neck, joint pain, energy drain and hearing loss. The homeopathy cleared everything but the joint pain which worsened significantly and sent me in other directions.
I feel if the doctor (MD, Anthesiologist & certified homeopath)had attended to my leaky gut, my joint pain would have disappeared as well.
I loved taking the homeopathy as it was easy and safe. Safe and effective medicine is the treatment I seek first and foremost.
This debate will be very interesting to hear.
Thanks again Tracy. You are a wealth of good information.
Luvs
-------------------- When the Power of Love overcomes the Love of Power, there will be Peace. Posts: 3038 | From america | Registered: Oct 2005
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luvs2ride
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up
This should be good info for believers and non-believers alike.
-------------------- When the Power of Love overcomes the Love of Power, there will be Peace. Posts: 3038 | From america | Registered: Oct 2005
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Truthfinder
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Thanks, Luvs.
I agree that this should be an interesting debate whether you believe homeopathy works or not. At least one of the presenters is a fairly well-known skeptic.....
And I can't believe this debate is being held at a major medical school in the U.S.!!! I never expected orthodox medicine folks would ever dare acknowledging homeopathy as anything but a pesky nuisance to what they consider REAL medicine. Normally, they don't take the time to debate much with pesky nuisances.
Anyway, bumping this up for those who may be interested in watching it live on the Internet (or later in the archives):
Thursday, October 25th, 2:00P.M. - 4:00P.M. ET.
The event will be broadcast live over the internet and can be seen by logging onto: http://tinyurl.com/38ybo2
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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CaliforniaLyme
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Liver posted this (in midst of bigger article) on gen Support- thought it belonged here*)! I support Ledum treatment for Lyme- *********************************************
Belfast homeopathy results
MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.
In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation.
These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.
So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.
You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial.
But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.
-------------------- There is no wealth but life. -John Ruskin
All truth goes through 3 stages: first it is ridiculed: then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer Posts: 5639 | From Aptos CA USA | Registered: Apr 2005
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Truthfinder
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Thanks very much for your post, Sarah!
I've read similar studies, although most are done in other countries and not reprinted in English. However, there was an interesting analysis done of several of these types of studies, and published in the Oxford Journal. It is too `scientific' for me to understand well, however. Not all studies had the same results, but the bottom line was the same as what your post reported:
***''...something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry .''***
Here's the link to that study I talked about (warning - may be long and difficult for the average Lymie): Immunology and Homeopathy. 2. Cells of the Immune System and Inflammation http://ecam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/3/1/13
I do appreciate your support of homeopathic Ledum in the treatment of Lyme. And I also understand that your support comes from direct experience with the remedy.
Just bear in mind that supporting Ledum - to the exclusion of other homeopath remedies which have shown to be effective in treating Lyme - is a bit like saying that you support Doxycycline in the treatment of Lyme. The implication being that Doxy is the ONLY antibiotic that you support.
Now, since you report primarily from personal experience, I guess if Doxy were the only abx you had personally seen work for Lyme, then Doxy is all that you would support. I can live with that. Just be aware of how it reads to others.
Thanks again - great study and very gracious of you to post about it.
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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Truthfinder
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....bumping this up one more time since the debate is TOMORROW (Thursday, the 25th).
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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Looking
Posts: 590 | From Canada | Registered: Oct 2007
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Truthfinder
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Looking, thanks for posting that link - this does look interesting!
I see the Homeopathy: The Scientific Proofs of Efficacy book can be downloaded for free at your link...... however, off to the left there is a note that says ``Publication reserved for Med. Doctors, Pharmacies, Public Institutions''. Wonder what that means?
Since I can't use my Adobe program (PDF files) right now, I am unable to try to download the book....... (*grrrr!*)
Here are some excerpts from the book:
********************************************
...The main purpose of the work condensed in this volume, however, was to establish whether definite proof exists that homeopathic medicines possess therapeutic efficacy, and we believe that this objective has been achieved beyond all reasonable doubt.
Alessandro Pizzoccaro Chairman of Guna
PREFACE
The specific purpose of this book is to test the ``paradoxical'' theory that homeopathic medicine has definite therapeutic effects, on the basis of scientific evidence.
In accordance with the standard pharmacological sense, it seems ridiculous to believe that a homeopathic medicine containing very low, sometimes undetectable concentrations of active constituents, could interact with a living organism and restore it to health.
Yet during the 200-year history of homeopathy, numerous studies have been conducted which appear to provide empirical confirmation of the therapeutic efficacy of homeopathic medicines.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of these studies used a special language and methodology which were incompatible with those of the academic and scientific world, thus relegating homeopathy to an inevitable long isolation.
We believe that this approach is unsuited to the purposes we aim to achieve with this volume.
Moreover, the therapeutic efficacy of homeopathic medicines may be confirmed by the fact that an increasing number of patients and doctors on every continent rely on homeopathy to solve their health problems.
A survey conducted by ISTAT (the Italian Statistics Institute) in September-December 1999 (``State of health and use of the National Health Service'') demonstrated that no less than five million Italians use homeopathic medicines, almost twice as many as in 1994, and even more people use this type of medicine in other European countries.
However, even these figures do not suffice for our purposes.
The Parliaments of numerous European and non-European countries have included homeopathic medicines in their legislation, and the health authorities have approved homeopathic pharmacopoeia, thus giving homeopathic medicines the status of drugs.
However, not even these official recognitions are sufficient for our approach.
Our specific aim is to establish whether it is possible to be certain, beyond all reasonable doubt, that homeopathic medicines have therapeutic effects. We believe that the most objective method can only be based on scientific research, performed in strict compliance with its standard methodological criteria.
We also believe that if the efficacy of homeopathy can be proved, it must be communicated in the language used by the present-day scientific and academic community.
We have consequently performed a lengthy, detailed analysis of the extensive homeopathic literature and selected studies that comply strictly with scientific methodologies and criteria. Fortunately, the scientific quality of the studies performed in this field has considerably improved in the past 3-4 years, often reaching very high standards.
Our analysis concentrates mainly on these studies, in order to offer a comprehensive review of the state of the art in homeopathic high level research.
This analysis effort, performed under the supervision of an Advisory Committee, required the examination of a huge number of publications, and led to the production of an updated chart of homeopathic research.
The basic, significant findings of the selected studies are presented here, with all the bibliographical references required to allow further information from the source.
Our purpose is to offer readers basic information in a deliberately concise, concrete text which is solely aimed at presenting results based on rigorous research.
Finally, we have illustrated in greater detail ten particularly interesting studies on the efficacy of some homeopathic medicines vs allopathic medicines regularly used to treat the same disorders.
We consider these studies to be particularly significant because of their socio-medical implications.
We have not tackled here the various issues relating to ``the epistemological basis of the experimental method in medicine'', ``the extreme personalization of homeopathic treatment'', ``ethical doubts relating to pharmacological research'', ``theoretical non-standardization of the choice of homeopathic remedy'', ``the absence of the usual dose-effect relationship'', ``the explanation of the action mechanism of homeopathic remedies'', and so on.
Our aim is to reach a definite conclusion: do homeopathic medicines interact with living beings, and above all, can they restore health? As readers will see, we consider that these studies lead to the undeniable conclusion that homeopathic medicine possesses therapeutic efficacy............
CONCLUSIONS
............These studies demonstrate that the effect of homeopathic medicines may be at least similar to that of the allopathic reference drug used for the same disorder.
They also confirm that homeopathic medicines, unlike allopathic drugs, rarely produce side effects. Finally, they show that homeopathic remedies are usually cheaper, and in some cases much cheaper, than the corresponding conventional treatment.
Everybody is entitled to his own opinion and can deny the evidence, even when faced with the clearest proof. But [those] who hold public and institutional offices and responsibilities have the duty to analyze actively all the body of information that may improve the patient's quality of life.........
........It may seem paradoxical that tiny amounts of an active constituent (diluted by the very special process of homeopathic production) can produce effects on living beings, but this is evidently a scientific fact.
Science acts on the basis of objective, verifiable observations; if the event demonstrated cannot be interpreted by a theory, it is the theory that needs to be revised. This is the principle behind the progress of science.
We trust that subjective opinions will leave room for the objective findings of laboratories and clinical research centers, so that full medical integration can be achieved, without losing the specific identity of different therapeutic approaches, as this would be the most appropriate prelude to the new medicine of the third millennium.
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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CaliforniaLyme
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Truthfinder,
Just be aware of how it reads to others?
That is not the measure I use to make decisions.
I AM particular about things- my parents were both PhDs and social scientists and taught me that, I suppose. I think it is important to be specific and accurate.
As a matter of fact I don't support IV antibiotics in ALL Lyme, only in severe cases that are unrepsonsive to other measures including IM and orals, unless a person is deathly ill.
I don't support Flagyl longterm because it causes cancer...
I am specific about things. I try to be. I try to be truthful and I try to be accurate and I try to come from a good place in my heart. If I can't come from that place, I don't write it, I wait for whatever mean thing I am feeling to pass.
I try to help as much as I am able, because Lyme treatment made me be able to help, when I was otherwise going to die.
Well, I don't endorse what I don't know. That's all.
I don't know a lot about homeopathy.
I used to be a herbal healer. I used to herbally treat all my friends in high school -and friends and acquaintances in college- it was what I was known for. So I do know something about herbs, but not about homeopathy.
If you asked me to name 5 treatments that are homeopathic, I could name- one. Ledum.
Should I support something I know very little about? No, that would be dishonest of me.
I am not aware of any other homeopathic treatments that have been effective for Lyme- simple truth of my experience.
Sincerely, Sarah
-------------------- There is no wealth but life. -John Ruskin
All truth goes through 3 stages: first it is ridiculed: then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer Posts: 5639 | From Aptos CA USA | Registered: Apr 2005
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