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To discover how honest homeopaths are, here is a passage from the Society of Homeopaths’ website, edited for accuracy:

Homeopathy simply explained: What is Homeopathy?

Homeopathy is an effective system of healing which assists the natural tendency of the body to heal itself. It recognises that symptoms of ill health are expressions of disharmony within the whole person and that it is the patient who needs treatment not the disease.

In 1796, a German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann, discovered a different approach to the cure of the sick which he called homeopathy (from the Greek words meaning ’similar suffering’). Like Hippocrates two thousand years earlier, he realised there were two ways of treating ill health: the way of opposites, most commonly used by conventional medicine and the way of similars.

Hahnemann discovered that diluting and succussing (shaking) remedies, which homeopaths call potentisation, not only produced fewer side effects but also produced better results. Homeopathic remedies are drawn from the natural world and prescribed on the principle of treating “like with like” or the way of similars.

How does it work?

Scientists cannot yet explain the precise mechanism of action for homeopathy but there is published evidence of its efficacy. It is believed that homeopathic remedies work by stimulating the body’s own healing abilities and that this stimulus assists your own system to clear itself of any expressions of imbalance. For more details on research evidence, please see the Society’s website at www.homeopathy-soh.org.

That’s not too bad. I’ve crossed out very little by homeopathic dilution standards.

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8 Responses to “Cherry-Picking the Society of Homeopaths”

  1. Gravatar Zeno Says:

    Excellent!


  2. Gravatar barriejohn Says:

    Very funny!


  3. Gravatar barriejohn Says:

    I had to take my mother to the doctor’s today, and happened to look through an old copy of Reader’s Digest whilst waiting. This is what I read:

    Did you hear about the guy who forgot to take his homoeopathic medicine?

    He died of an overdose!

    Well – it made me laugh anyway.


  4. Gravatar barriejohn Says:

    Seen this?

    http://www.xkcd.com/765/


  5. Gravatar Andrew Says:

    I have.

    I thought it was sub-par for xkcd and only got passed around the web because it mentioned homeopathy. I’d have hoped self-described ’skeptics’ would be more discerning than that, but oh, well.


  6. Gravatar barriejohn Says:

    Perhaps I’m easily amused then!


  7. Gravatar Mark Taylor Says:

    Lots of jokes about homeopathy seem to forget the whole “like cures like” thing. Shoddy jokesmanship. Especially when it’s in the name.


  8. Gravatar barriejohn Says:

    Homoeopathy is about a lot more than “like cures like”! Herbalists were using similar ideas for centuries, if not millennia, without this silly idea of dilution and magical shaking, so that the solution somehow “memorized” the active ingredient and even increased its efficacy. I think that ridicule of such unscientific ideas is quite justified!


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