homeopathy

[tracey]

Hi

Has anyone tried homeopathic secretin its supposed to have helped kids

with ASDs.

I've been given some leaflets for a local homeopath but prices are

very high �68 for first apt and �30 a visit after that.

Just wondered if anyone has tried this

T

[Lucas]

Despite comprehensive review and study concluding that Secretin is 'as effective as tap water' which is pretty much what all Homeopathic treatments are, people still try it.

 

I would find the side-effects deeply hilarious(Homeopathy isn't supposed to work at all, so how come there are negative side effects?) if it weren't for the suffering visited on some who actually have a reaction to it(which leads me to question if it really is just water).

[call me jaded]

There is an Irish researcher whose name escapes me who tried hard to disprove the effectiveness of homeopathy a couple of years ago. She failed and was generous enough to be gracious in her defeat.

 

Being rather tight-fisted I question whether you need a homeopath to try this when you can order homeopathic drops formulated for children with autism for around �8. I've always kept a food/behaviour diary before during and after anything new. Only try one thing at a time.

 

Read Paul Shattocks review of secretin (he's not referring to the homeopathic formula, but the porcine hormone) on the ARU website.

 

I've never done it myself, as my son's digestive difficulties were dealt with by GFCF diet.

 

Further reading 'Children with Starving Brains' by Jacqueline McCandless.

[Lucas]

I would be very greatful if you could recall the name of that reseacher so I can do a search for her work. Homeopathy is debunked when the scientific grounds for it are found to be without merit. But it's impossible to disprove something which isn't 'real', I mean that in the sense of Astrology, which can't be disproven.

 

The problem with such things is that they can only be proven but not disproven. Homeopathy is 'proven' by it's results time and time again(thanks to the 'bury a potato, cure a wart' paradox) but it is an idea which abhors being put to scrutiny.

 

There is no scientific basis for the idea that diluting an agent by association with a condition in water millions of times makes the water 'remember' it and change how it behaves. Otherwise, drinking ANY water will cure you as there will not have been one drop on the entire planet that has not been recycled and exposed to nearly everything.

[call me jaded]

The doctors name is Ennis. This is from The Independent:

 

"Sceptic's tests support homoeopathy. Now the challenge for scientists is to

repeat it

 

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

19 August 2004

 

To some it is the snake oil of the New Age. To others it is a

tried-and-trusted treatment that has been good enough for the likes of Bill

Clinton, the Prince of Wales, Geri Halliwell and David Beckham.

 

Homoeopathy is big business and getting bigger. Yet there is little if any

evidence to show that it works, and absolutely nothing to justify its

central claim - that highly diluted solutions containing nothing but water

can affect human health.

 

That is until now. Researchers have just published what could be the first

hard evidence in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that appears to support

the central idea behind homoeopathy.

 

The scientists, from Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands,

have chosen the relatively obscure but respected Inflammation Research to

publish what some call the "holy grail" of homoeopathy.

 

In summary, the study found that extremely dilute solutions can have a

biological effect. Like homoeopathic remedies, the solutions in the

experiments were so diluted that there was no realistic chance of a single

molecule of the substance remaining in the liquid.

 

Scientists have likened this to believing in magic. How could something that

was once dissolved in a solution, and can no longer be present in that

solution, still have an effect? The scientists themselves are baffled. "We

are not yet able to propose any theoretical explanation of these findings,"

they write. In showing that high dilutions exert a biological effect, the

findings seem to break the laws of physics. Surely there must be errors in

the experiment; an accusation the scientists reject. "Despite searching for

artefacts, we have been unable to find any," they write.

 

An editorial in Inflammation Research explains why the journal published

such controversial research: "The authors are unable to explain their

findings but wished to encourage others to investigate this area," it says.

"It is with this spirit of openness that the journal, after submitting the

paper to a rigorous reviewing process, has agreed to publish the paper."

 

Understandably, the practitioners of homoeopathy have seized on the findings

as vindication. Peter Fisher, of the Royal Homoeopathic Hospital in London

and homoeopath to the Queen, said the findings were nothing short of

groundbreaking. "History may come to view [the study] as a turning point in

the scientific controversy surrounding homoeopathy," Dr Fisher said.

 

"Of course further repetition is required, but it may be that this

represents the holy grail of basic research in homoeopathy," he said.

 

There are two central tenets of homoeopathy. The first is that an illness or

malady can be treated by administering tiny amounts of a substance that

might under normal circumstances actually result in similar symptoms -

extract of onion for instance to treat hay fever.

 

The second belief is that the concentrations have to be really minute, so

minute that the dilutions involved in effect get rid of the substance in

question from the liquid solvent.

 

Homoeopathic solutions are diluted repeatedly to produce solutions that are

millions of times weaker than they were originally. Often the solutions are

so weak that they are equivalent to dissolving a tiny speck of something in

a volume of water several times greater than all the world's oceans.

 

Scientifically, this would mean that the chance of just a single molecule of

the homoeopathic remedy being left in the solution is next to nil. Sceptics

say patients might just as well treat themselves with distilled water -

which is cheaper.

 

Science cannot explain how such highly dilute solutions could have an

effect, that is until the French biologist Jacques Benveniste came along.

Working at his laboratory in Paris, Dr Benveniste formulated the idea that

water retains a "memory" of what has been dissolved in it and that it is

this memory that results in the homoeopathic effect. In 1988 Dr Benveniste

published a study in the journal Nature in support of his water-memory

theory. He claimed his experiments showed that an ultra-dilute solution

exerted a biological effect.

 

However, the then editor of Nature, Sir John Maddox, had insisted that he

would only agree to publication if he was able to investigate Dr

Benveniste's laboratory procedures. A few weeks later Sir John invited an

American science fraud investigator, Walter Stewart, and a professional

magician and arch sceptic, James Randi, to watch over Dr Benveniste as he

and his team tried to repeat the experiments.

 

The Nature investigation concluded that Dr Benveniste had failed to

replicate his original study. In subsequent issues of Nature, Dr Benveniste

suffered the professional ignominy of being ridiculed by arguably the most

influential scientific journal in the world.

 

As a result, the idea of memory water was consigned to the dustbin of

science history, or so it was thought.

 

France as a country is a keen advocate of homoeopathy and there were many

French scientists who had not given up on the notion of investigating the

phenomenon. Among them was a one-time collaborator of Dr Benveniste called

Philippe Belon, who now works for a French homoeopathy company, Boiron.

 

Dr Belon, who fell out with Dr Benveniste a long time ago, has investigated

high dilutions for 20 years and although he works for Boiron, and has

himself tried homoeopathic remedies, he insists he is only interested

discovering the truth about the claims.

 

In the spirit of scientific investigation he organised a collaboration

between four different groups in Europe who all undertook to carry out

identical high dilution experiments at separate places involving separate

teams of scientists.

 

The British end was run by Professor Madeleine Ennis, an established asthma

researcher at Queen's University of Belfast and an avowed sceptic of all

things homoeopathic.

 

In fact Professor Ennis became involved in the project in the first place

because she could not accept what some of her scientific colleagues were

saying. "I told people I didn't believe it so they said 'why don't you try

it'," Professor Ennis said.

 

The dilution experiments they carried out, and now published in Inflammation

Research, involved a substance called histamine which is released by a type

of white blood cell called a basophil. Normally basophils release histamine,

and as levels of histamine rise this exerts a "negative feedback" which

inhibits further release of histamine.

 

The four teams of scientists tested highly dilute solutions of histamine to

see whether they still exert an effect on basophils in a test tube. At

extreme dilutions, three out of four laboratories found a statistically

significant effect and the fourth found an effect which just fell out of the

typical range for statistical significance.

 

Professor Ennis emphasised that the research does not prove that homoeopathy

works, nor does it even show that Dr Benveniste was right because he had

used a different test for a high-dilution effect. "The paper didn't test

homoeopathy, it tested high dilutions of histamine. I know what we tested

and I cannot explain the results," said Professor Ennis.

 

For Dr Belon, however, the research does at least support the basic premise

behind homoeopathy. "Of course it supports it, on the other hand it is not a

demonstration that homoeopathy works," he said.

 

In whatever ways the latest findings are interpreted, they cannot be

ignored. The experiments were repeated by four different teams using the

same experimental protocol that involved a blind code - the scientists did

not know whether they were working with a high dilution solution or a

control sample of pure water until the code was broken at the end of the

experiment.

 

When BBC Horizon televised a similar attempt at replicating the same

experiment two years ago, the results were negative but scientists such as

Dr Belon believe this was trial by media rather than science by the

peer-review process.

 

This time, with a full scientific paper detailing the precise protocol,

anyone can try to replicate the findings - and replication is the essence of

science. Until others repeat the work it will take a lot to convince

sceptics such as James Randi, who has offered $1m to the first person to

prove the scientific basis of homoeopathy.

 

Mr Randi warns about reading too much in a single scientific paper. "A paper

is a paper is a paper. Don't forget, two scientists wrote a paper, published

in Nature, back in 1974, that endorsed the powers of Uri Geller," he said.

 

But the homoeopathic gauntlet has been thrown down. The question now is

whether anyone will be brave enough to pick it up."

[Zemanski]

I have two children who react badly to allopathic drugs so I use homeopathy from time to time (have to try something when they're suffering and can't be given drugs)

 

so far it has been very successful - for example after months of serious dermatitis on her face that the doctor had no success with (steroids etc ) I gave Dot sulphur for 2 days and it hasn't been back since

 

I agree with Lucas, it shouldn't work - but there is now definite scientific proof that it might work, not just from professor Ennis

 

scientists just haven't figured out why or how.

 

if it might work and doesn't do any harm it's worth a try in my book

 

 

Zemanski

Edited June 28, 2005 by Zemanski

[call me jaded]

The philosophy of treating like with like is actually a fairly harmless way of going about things. In mainstream medicine the EPD technique and other forms of desensitisation are used to treat allergies, and I would guess it is the same principle that makes homeopathy successful with my intolerant child. Who cares? It works for us, which is more than allopathic medicine does.

 

Vinton McCabe is good to read on the theory of homeopathy.

[Lucas]

Hold on! It's not even proof that it MIGHT work, just as heat alone doesn't cause fire. Take it in the context of the many many studies which found it didn't work(it's the buried potato dilemma).

 

And as I read that article, there was only one skeptic in the group of researchers and that was Proffessor Ennis. I am a big fan of Walter Stewart, the scientist fraud-buster, magician and skeptic of homeopathy. I saw him in the Horizen programme and thought he was really clever, he likes illusions and magic tricks and has a knack for spotting them in science. It was he who did the control test for Horizen, so I don't buy into the accusation of trial by media.

[call me jaded]

Ok, Lucas! It's snake oil and quackery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But works for us. I don't even pretend to understand why.

[Lucas]

I have just discovered that Secretin is made with a hormone from pigs blood and that there is a Homeopathic version which isn't(if you consider that it's unlikely there will be any molecule left in the water), this thread is talking about the Homeopathic one.

 

Someone on another board said to me 'how would those who believe mercury vaccines cause Autism react if they found out it was made from pigs blood, yet they still use Secretin on their children?' .

 

One of the most enlightening things about the Autism community(not to be confused with the Autistic community) is watching how proponents of some theories attack others of different theories. Those who push IBI refute the vaccine claims because behavioural intervention wouldn't work otherwise, as it doesn't with Rett's or those with actual mercury poisoning and biological irritants. The chelation crowd do the same with IBI.

 

Sometimes one group actually resorts to science, once in every million years. One noble truth of psychology is that you can tell what makes someone scared just by observing what they try to do to scare others. You can equally determine what is wrong with someone's ideas by watching the means they use to discredit others.

 

The IBI group stigmatise suggestion of a biological cause, whilst trying to hide the fact that the Operant Conditioning central to ABA is a marketing nightmare as it distantly supports the Refridgerator Parent hypothisis made a a discredited charlatan. All this whilst the chelators point out all the flaws in behavioural data gathering and how futile it is, but without being able to make a scientific attack on it, highlighting their own skewed methods. Both groups tend to keep their criticism of each other private, not public though.

 

As for Homeopathy, wether it works or not, it is still falling into the ethical pit traps which were prologue to every other unethical 'treatment' out there. Behaviourists study behaviour, not Autism. The anti-vaccinators study statistics and faulty tissue samples, not Autism. Homeopaths study Homeopathy, not Autism.

 

Those who think they study Autism tend to just study their own prejudices without realising it, attributing bad things they see to Autism and good things they see to anything but Autism.

 

In The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, the super computer Deep Thought could not work out the meaning of life because the question was inadequete and the only answer available was forty two. I believe Deep Thought would have reached the same conclusion if asked "What is Autism".

[call me jaded]

http://www.trusthomeopathy.org/trust/tru_nhs.html

 

The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital has been around since 1849 (I just looked it up) and became part of the NHS at its inception, so not so alternative as you may think.

[Lucas]

Yes, but so has Psychoanalysis for the longest time been associated with medical science before almost all it's daft ideas about us wanting to sleep with our parents were debunked as quackery just a few decades ago(though I hear France is full of them).

 

Homeopathy survived just because it was old, so people assumed it had some basis even when medical peer-review started becoming tighter. If this was something someone just thought of in the last few years, it wouldn't be here now without some really fancy gimickery.

 

I'll stick with good old fashioned Voodoo.