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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKing Charles Is a Passionate Supporter of Fake Science
The new monarch has been pushing bunk homeopathic medicine for four decades. This isnt just silly, its dangerous.https://www.thedailybeast.com/king-charles-is-a-passionate-supporter-of-fake-science
What type of king will Charles III be? This is a question I have been asked many times during recent days. As a scientist, I might be good at establishing facts, but I have to admit I am lousy at reading tea leaves. The best answer I can offer is one based on Charles track record in my area of expertise.
In his role as Prince of Wales, Charles promoted all sorts of alternative nonsense for 40 years. His anti-scientific stance went so far that he once even stated that he is proud of being an enemy of the enlightenment. But his favorite type of quackery has always been homeopathy.
The royal familys love affair with this therapy is as old as homeopathy itself and can be seen in numerous guises. Homeopathy became part of the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) from its beginning in 1948not least because of royal support.
Queen Elizabeth II was the patron of the Royal Homeopathic Hospital in London. Charles has lobbied U.K. politicians in support of homeopathy and, in 2019, he became a patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy, the professional organization of medical homeopaths in the U.K.
snip
Beakybird
(3,329 posts)OAITW r.2.0
(23,851 posts)A ripe target for QAnon support.
Pisces
(5,592 posts)Is the way to go instead of just being closed minded. Doctors dont always know everything and medicine has often been found out to be bad for you. Im for all the information we can get.
Big Pharma is no ones friend.
edhopper
(33,208 posts)has been proven false and scientifically impossible. Dr's might not know everything, but they know what is junk.
Medicine is why we live as long as we do.
Pisces
(5,592 posts)Got money from Johnson and Johnson due to titanium metal on metal hip replacement. He lost his hearing due to metal poisoning. No doctor made the correlation. Maybe watch Dopesick, or look up medication taken off market.
Big Pharma is here to make money. I think there are things we dont understand and alternative treatments in conjunction with some home remedies may be the answer.
Chinese medicine has been around for a long time with billions that believe in it.
Doc Sportello
(7,455 posts)The supplement industry alone takes in hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide every year and most of what is sold hasn't been proven to do what is claimed. And anecdotal stories like yours don't prove anything.
Pisces
(5,592 posts)Many lawsuits due to metal on metal. This is not anecdotal.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,788 posts)Pisces
(5,592 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,788 posts)Pisces
(5,592 posts)This is not whataboutism. Im saying there is no one way.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,788 posts)It's deadly crap.
Water does not have "memory".
Celerity
(42,666 posts)Disaffected
(4,508 posts)Definitely.
Blood spinning?
Seems legit for certain conditions(?).
Homeopathy??
Arguably the quackiest of all - based on nonsense and utterly devoid of credible clinical evidence.
Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)is NOT homeopathy.
Also, there is evidence that there is some success with fertility treatments and pain relief with acupuncture support.
There is ZERO evidence that homeopathic cures cure anything.
RockRaven
(14,784 posts)One could continue to gather information on homeopathy until the Sun puffs up and engulfs the Earth and it would remain bunk. How do I known this? Because of the tremendous amount of information we already have.
EndlessWire
(6,377 posts)I recall from decades ago, a study that was done and reported on, which tested the efficacy of homeopathy (no, I can't give you the publication or authors.) It was very interesting. They showed that even one, single molecule of something had a predictable outcome or effect. It left the researchers puzzled, and unable to explain it. It shouldn't have worked, but it did.
Be careful what you think you know. I'm not saying that we can't tell junk science, you know, like drinking malaria medicine to counter covid, or shoving a uv light up your ass to kill it, from sound advice, or that mainstream science shouldn't prevail. But, don't talk in absolutes. You can't really disprove it.
RockRaven
(14,784 posts)today generates a very strong "prior" to overcome -- a Bayesian approach being the appropriate way of evaluating any claim of new evidence of efficacy. It would require mind-boggling extraordinary evidence -- of a kind which two centuries of homeopathy proponents and practitioners have persistently failed to generate.
What reason would anybody have to expect that to change?
Proving homeopathy is valid isn't just a matter of demonstrating that patients get better (a development in the field of medicine), it requires explaining how an enormous body of fundamental physics and chemistry knowledge is all wrong and has been this entire time. It's a much heavier lift than your vague anecdote aboutone group of baffled scientists -- which by the way isn't really relevant since many commercially available homeopathic items are, if actually what is advertised, diluted well past the point that a single molecule of active agent is left.
Disaffected
(4,508 posts)My mother lived to 98 and she was no fan of alternative medicine.
Someone 72 and walking? What's so special about that?
Did "Big Pharma" not bring us the Covid vaccines (and a myriad of other beneficial drugs/treatments)? I'm alive today (as well as millions of others) because of Big Pharma so personally I would say that's being pretty friendly. No-one is alive today because of homeopathy and in fact quite the opposite.
EndlessWire
(6,377 posts)They all walked behind that casket without faltering. For what looked like miles. It was amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed--despite it being a funeral--watching Princess Anne marching. She looked good.
RockRaven
(14,784 posts)he's (apparently) an environmentalist. As if people can't be accidentally correct, or adjacent to correctness but still full of shit, or flat out wrong but holding a popular/trendy position which people misunderstand to be correct.
NewHendoLib
(59,940 posts)Response to NewHendoLib (Reply #7)
Celerity This message was self-deleted by its author.
Celerity
(42,666 posts)The remedies are typically so dilute that they contain not a single molecule of the substance advertised on the bottle. The most frequently used dilutionhomeopaths call them potenciesis called a C30. A C30-potency has been diluted 30 times at a ratio of 1:100. This means that one drop of the starting material is dissolved in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 drops of diluentwhich equates to less than one molecule of the original substance per all the molecules of the universe.
Homeopaths assume that their remedies work not on a material level, but via a mysterious vital energy. The process of preparing the homeopathic dilutions, they claim, transfers this energy from one to the next dilution. They also believe that the process of dilutinghomeopaths call it potentizationrenders their remedies not less, but more potent.
Homeopathy follows the like cures like principle: if, for instance, a patient suffers from runny eyes, a homeopath might prescribe a remedy made of onion, because onion makes our eyes water. If you suffer from sleeplessness, you might get a prescription of coffea arabica because coffee keeps us awake.
It is undeniable that the assumptions of homeopathy contradict the known laws of nature. In other words, we do not fail to comprehend how homeopathy works, as enthusiasts like King Charles tend to claim, but we understand that homeopathy cannot work beyond placebo.
Berlin Wall pills: a cure for emotional trauma or royal-endorsed quackery?
The homeopathic pills, made from ground-up pieces of the Berlin Wall, supposedly help overcome emotional barriers, and are available at the royal familys pharmacy of choice
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/aug/21/berlin-wall-pills
KentuckyWoman
(6,666 posts)Heat or cold packs, ginger tea, or ground corn husk scrub., breathe right strips, Or any of the other things I use to get the job done instead of taking a pharm.
There is a good place for pharma, surgeries or whatever. Of course. But it is not the best choice for everything.
Pisces
(5,592 posts)Celerity
(42,666 posts)Last edited Thu Sep 15, 2022, 01:56 AM - Edit history (1)
Celerity
(42,666 posts)have nothing to do with the quackery that is homeopathy
Raine
(30,540 posts)Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)of the things you listed are homeopathic cures.
I use them all. I take vitamins and supplements. I use Zicam. Tiger balm. Acupuncture. Chiropracty. Reflexology. What I don't do is take memory water pills (homeopathic medicine)
Lancero
(2,983 posts)Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)bc their products contain larger amounts of zinc than what homeopathic practitioners "prescribe" for their medications. They do market it as homeopathic, so thank you for pointing that out. Homeopathic practitioners don't consider it a true homeopathic treatment, though.
For instance: https://myranissen.com/blog/a-comment-about-zicam-its-not-homeopathy/
And I will admit I used the nasal swabs every day when my daughter and husband had covid in our household. (Along with Vitamin D and C.) I never got the covid. Was it bc of the zicam? Probably not. I had luckily gotten my booster a month before they got sick. (Timing is everything.)
But I'm susceptible to magical thinking and marketing. lol
ETA: Now you sent me down a rabbit hole! https://inthesetimes.com/article/zicam-homeopathy-fails-the-sniff-test
Celerity
(42,666 posts)The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has caught itself in a trap of precedent and logic that should force it, finally, to regulate homeopathic products. FDA regulations require that drugs and treatments be scientifically proven safe and effective. Homeopathic remedies, except when people rely on them to treat serious conditions, are usually safe as water??which they actually are. Some homeopaths claim that shaking and serial dilutions??even to the point that not one molecule of the active ingredient remains??create a memory of the long-gone ingredient. So far, though, the FDA has ignored the multi-million dollar fraud. After all, whats the harm?
Well, one harm, according to hundreds of people and dozens of lawsuits, is that some of Matrixx Initiatives homeopathic Zicam cold treatments cause anosmia??the loss of smell, a sense necessary both to enjoy a summer day and to detect gas leaks, fires and spoiled food.
Rather than the usual homeopathic magic water, some Zicam products contain pharmaceutically significant amounts of zinc, which was shown in the 1930s to cause anosmia when used intranasally. Some Zicam homeopathics also include an unspecified amount of benzalkonium chloride, which disrupts signaling between molecules, a mechanism that could allow it to have widespread unanticipated effects, says Peter Montague of Rachels Democracy and Health News. The U.S. Material Safety Data Sheet lists it as a hazardous, potentially mutagenic chemical; Canada bars it from products applied to mucous membranes.
But the giant regulatory loophole that is homeopathy allowed Matrixx, either by accident or design, to slap on the label homeopathic, slip under the regulatory wire and sell 1 billion doses of untested Zicam. Despite Zicams decade on the market and numerous lawsuits, the National Center for Homeopathy never condemned the mislabeling.
Under the Obama administration, the FDA requested that Matrixx recall a number of Zicam intranasal products. On June 16, the FDA warned, Because they are not generally recognized as safe and effective for their labeled uses, these products [must undergo] well-controlled clinical investigations regardless of their homeopathic status [before re-marketing.] While there is conflicting evidence that oral zinc shortens colds, it likely does little harm. The FDA, however, found Zicam ineffective, thereby fitting it under the agencys definition of health fraud. It also ruled that Zicams moneymaking innovation of delivering the chemical into the nose rendered it unsafe.
Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)There are any regulations on what products can market themselves as homeopathic, as homeopathy itself is a non regulated industry, I believe.
Though I may be wrong on that too.
mvd
(65,148 posts)Sure certain things can work for people, but too often for homeopathic medicine supporters it without reason beats established ways.
Response to Celerity (Original post)
Archae This message was self-deleted by its author.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,041 posts)According to homeopathy, your tapwater should cure anything coming your way. The fact that it doesn't is sufficient to disprove homeopathy.
GoneOffShore
(17,309 posts)Homeopathy - total junk
"If you show me that, say, homeopathy works, then,
I will change my mind, I will spin on a fucking dime.
Ill be as embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling,
Its a Miracle!
Take physics and bin it.
Water has memory!
And whilst its memory of a long lost drop of onion juice seems infinite,
It somehow forgets all the poo its had in it.
You show me that it works and how it works,
And when Ive recovered from the shock,
I will take a compass and carve
Fancy that on the side of my c*ck."
Tim Minchin - Storm
Celerity
(42,666 posts)Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)I read about his support for homeopathic medicine years ago.
I have a friend who is all into homeopathic medicine. She sees a homeopath for all her ailments. It confuses me because she's genuinely a really smart woman, but this is her jam. I have to give her and her homeopath credit where it's due, though. Her homeopath encouraged her to get the covid vaccine. (She also suggests vitamin supplements where there is some evidence of them working. Vitamin D, Probiotics, Fish Oil for mild anxiety. So maybe the practitioner is actually a naturopath and not a homeopath....)
But she does prescribe homeopathic allergy "solutions." (My word in quotes, not theirs.) And I just blink my eyes at how she can believe that NOTHING will cure her allergies.
ETA: It's clear after reading this thread that a lot of people "defending" homeopathy don't actually understand what homeopathy is. They equate is with supplements and alternative medicines. Homeopathic medicine is a very specific thing that doesn't encompass supplements and acupuncture.
I take a few supplements myself, as does my wife (we take the same things mostly).
meadowlander
(4,358 posts)In 1648, this might have been worth worrying about. Now he's just a daft old man who gets to play dress up for the tourists.
Celerity
(42,666 posts)whistler162
(11,155 posts)Celerity
(42,666 posts)malaise
(267,823 posts)How he feels about all those swan and other bird feathers used in those ridiculous costumes worn by various branches of their military. Where do they source the feathers. Do they still eat the swans. I mean Queenie used to own all the swans in England right?
Celerity
(42,666 posts)Not sure about auld Kingy and the feather sourcing.
leftyladyfrommo
(18,816 posts)and live to be really old and are very active clear to the end.
Celerity
(42,666 posts)leftyladyfrommo
(18,816 posts)use herbal remedies. And since antibiotics aren't working in lots of cases people start looking into alternative medicine.
I see this a lot with people who suffer from UTIS where antibiotics aren't working anymore. Modern medicine hs nothing to offer them. But there are some herbs that do help.. i use a combination of herbs that work way better than antibiotics.
I think it's important to at least keep an open mind.
Celerity
(42,666 posts)what homeopathy actually is.
I have posted further explanations in this thread. I am not making a complete blanket condemnation of all natural and alternative medicine.
My OP is about homeopathy, which IS 100% pure woo and quackery. I thought that was self-evident, but apparently not.
leftyladyfrommo
(18,816 posts)it can work even if it's woo.
At least those products don't have horrible side affects like so many modern drugs do. They won't kill you.
I talk to so many people that modern medicine has simply failed. Theur doctors just abandon them or blame them for their illness. The drugs cause awful side effects.
I don't do homeopathy but if someone does and it helps them to have hope then go for it. The power of their mind can heal if they believe.
Celerity
(42,666 posts)which is trodding into the woo sphere.
you said
read about Zicam, which is falsely labelled as being homeopathic
here
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217158364#post51
also, in regards to homeopathy itself
see
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217158364#post25
Homeopathic remedies can be based on plants or any other material; a famously ridiculous remedy, for example, is made of the Berlin Wall.
The remedies are typically so dilute that they contain not a single molecule of the substance advertised on the bottle. The most frequently used dilutionhomeopaths call them potenciesis called a C30. A C30-potency has been diluted 30 times at a ratio of 1:100. This means that one drop of the starting material is dissolved in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 drops of diluentwhich equates to less than one molecule of the original substance per all the molecules of the universe.
Homeopaths assume that their remedies work not on a material level, but via a mysterious vital energy. The process of preparing the homeopathic dilutions, they claim, transfers this energy from one to the next dilution. They also believe that the process of dilutinghomeopaths call it potentizationrenders their remedies not less, but more potent.
Homeopathy follows the like cures like principle: if, for instance, a patient suffers from runny eyes, a homeopath might prescribe a remedy made of onion, because onion makes our eyes water. If you suffer from sleeplessness, you might get a prescription of coffea arabica because coffee keeps us awake.
It is undeniable that the assumptions of homeopathy contradict the known laws of nature. In other words, we do not fail to comprehend how homeopathy works, as enthusiasts like King Charles tend to claim, but we understand that homeopathy cannot work beyond placebo.
Berlin Wall pills: a cure for emotional trauma or royal-endorsed quackery?
The homeopathic pills, made from ground-up pieces of the Berlin Wall, supposedly help overcome emotional barriers, and are available at the royal familys pharmacy of choice
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/aug/21/berlin-wall-pills