[sanctus]

I always have been a skeptic of homeopathy and said it only works through placebo effect. But lately a frind of my girlfriend who is "help-veterinary" (sorry no idea of what it is in english) told me that they use homeopathy on animals and that it works, but animals can't have placebo effect.
What do you think is this a proof of homeopathy working?

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by sanctus

I always have been a skeptic of homeopathy and said it only works through placebo effect. But lately a frind of my girlfriend who is "help-veterinary" (sorry no idea of what it is in english) told me that they use homeopathy on animals and that it works, but animals can't have placebo effect.
What do you think is this a proof of homeopathy working?

I think your skepticism is well-founded.

My vet (I have 2 elderly cats, and see more of her than I wish) recommends a lot of homeopathic and other alternative meds, too.

Given the lack of any peer-reviewed (or even just statistically sound, adequately controlled) research, I don’t believe a case has been made that homeopathic meds work any more in animals than in human, which is to say, that they do not work at all. And while it may be true that animals are not cognitively capable of experiencing a placebo effect, the human beings who observe them and report their condition to veterinaries certainly are.

I’ve seen people distraught with what they perceive as the terrible condition of a pet, only to be told later that by the vet that a diagnosis is in error, and the pet is fine. The pet changes its behavior very little (other than in reaction to changes in interaction with its owners). It is the perception of the owners that experiences a “placebo effect.”

I believe the more wide-spread acceptance of alternative medicine in veterinary medicine is due to its promotion by veterinary pharmaceutical companies, which, unlike their human counterparts, are subject to little regulation requiring scientific proof of their claims.

[sanctus]

Wjen , I see her the next time I'll ask her if she thinks that it is possible that she may be or her clients under placebo effect.
But I guess it's ver possible, I never looked at it from that perspective.

[Tormod]

I wonder what the ethics are of this. Is it really ethical to use treatments on animals when we don't know if they work at all?

[sanctus]

Well, if you are convinced that it works it's very ethic. Besides the experiments made in laboratories are much worse...

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by sanctus

Well, if you are convinced that it works it's very ethic.

How so? They have no scientific data to back them up, so in practice they are doing animal testing that may be harmful. An animal doesn't respond different to treatment depending on what the homeopath believes to work or not AFAIK - unless there is some evidence to show that they do I think they are violating the ethics of the medical profession.

[sanctus]

But they believe they have proof and they don't do it for the purposeof experimenting, so it is ethic. We may find un-ethic just because we don't think that those proofs are actually real proofs

[Qfwfq]

I certainly think the stuff such as "magnetic memory of water" and the like is plain BS but I have heard that some products may have preventive effects by mildly stimulating the immune system. I also heard about a guy I haven't seen for years, that always had terrible allergy trouble, other friends of mine say he finally cured it with a homeopathic product. That of course has a lot to do with the immune system.

I do however continue to find it wrong that producers these so called alternative meds are allowed to fill the general public up with crap and false advertising and that it has even been creeping into medical faculties. There is big money behind it.

[CraigD]

In case all our readers aren’t familiar with modern theories of homeopathic medicine, here’s a brief summary:

All homeopathic medicine involves the administering of dilute quantities of a (usually) physiologically active ingredient, typically something similar to the suspected cause of the illness being treated. In this sense, it is much like the conventional, and very successful, medical practice of inoculation, where a controlled amount of live or dead pathogen is administered, causing a mild infection, which results in ones body’s immune system becoming “trained” to combat a later infection of that pathogen.

Where homeopathy diverges from the medical mainstream is in how extremely dilute the active ingredients in its remedies are, usually “30C+”, or less than 100^30 parts inactive to 1 part active. The theory holds that the more dilute the active ingredient, the more effective the treatment.

To my mind, there are 2 major modern variants of homeopathic theory. The first holds that the solution must contain at least a little bit – perhaps just a single molecule of the active ingredient, or it will have no effect

The later holds that even if the solution is so dilute that a dose of it contains not one bit of the active ingredient, it will still have a powerful effect. These theories hold that the inert ingredient – almost always water – retains a “memory” of its contact with the active ingredient, and that it is this that actually produces the therapeutic effect.

There’s been no compelling scientific evidence that these techniques work.

In terms of safety, though, homeopathic remedies are typically more pure of any potentially dangerous substance than tap water, so they’re very unlikely to do any harm to a patient. The main danger cited by opponents is that a patient undergoing homeopathic medical treatment may chose to forgo conventional treatment, allowing an otherwise treatable illness to progress to a dangerous or fatal stage, or that practitioners of homeopathic medicine may overcharge for their remedies, bilking desperate people out of money they need for basic sustinance or conventional treatment.

[HydrogenBond]

Homeopahtic medicine may have some direct scientific basis, but it better expresses the power of a proper state of mind for healing. Faith healing tries to create that state of mind to help the body heal itself. For example, when someone is happy and forfilled they are less likely to need as much sleep, because the body is able to recover easier when one is happy. Animal medicine beyond cancer, bone breaks, etc., is partially connected to human psychology. Much of the treatment is as much for the owner as it is for the pet. If the owner is worried about the pet's eye goo, the pet will react to these emotions. If the owner feels secure, the pet will feel that and may make a miraculus recovery. My little niece who loves animals summed it up best, there are no stupid animals just stupid owners. If one treats an animal like an animal you are doing it a service because it can be what nature intended to be. If you treat it like a child it will have to act unnaturally to forfill the needs of the owner, thereby creating unnatural stresses that may assist in sickness thereby forfilling the nurturing needs of the owner.