Today this email appeared in my inbox:
Respected Madam,
(I hope that you are the same person who did sleeping pill experiment)
The otherday, I watched the video of your experiment on homeopathic sleeping pills.
First of all, let me appreciate you for your interest in the evidence based medicine. As per the experiment done by you, the homeopathic sleeping pills can’t induce sleep in a humanbeing. I fully agree with you. But, let me tell you the truth that, there are several patent preparations (combinations) marketed as homeopathic medicines. These are actually not homeopathic as per the principles of homoeopathy. The genuine homoeopathic medicines are totally different from these combinations and mixtures. Let me tell you the truth that, homoeopathy has suffered a lot from these non homoeopathic medicines.
A medicine becomes homoeopathic when it is selected on the basis of homoeopathic principles. Recently one scientist in India took a homoeopathic medicine and reported that the medicines could not produce any symptoms on him. This clearly proves that he was not susceptible to the medicine he had taken. If a group of people take the same homoeopathic medicine, only a small percentage of them will have the symptoms and others will not respond immediately. On the other hand, taking the same medicine repeatedly on regular interval can produce the symptoms in many, but here also a few will not be affected.
we can classify homoeopathy in to classical and modern homoeopathy. The classical homeopathy is the genuine one and the other is just an imitation of modern medicine, ie, suppresing the presenting complaints of the patient.
I am practicing homoeopathy since 8 years. Initially, my results were not satisfactory. But, after learning the real homoeopathy by joining BHMS (Bachelor of homoeopathic medicine and surgery), my results are excellent. Now I get different varieties of cases including the failed cases coming from the hands of modern medicine.
While going through your experiment, I feel that, instead of taking a “homoeopathic” patent preparation, you could have taken a genuine homoeopathic medicine for the experiment. The other option is (which will be the best and easy method for you), you notedown your own symptoms in detail and take a suitable homoeopathic medicine from a trained homoeopath or a group of homoeopaths. I am sure that this will prove the efficacy of homoeopathy.
After watching your video, many homoeopaths might have called you as skeptic or a critic funded by some allopathic drug manufacturing company. But, I am not in that category. I feel, if you experiment homoeopathy in a proper way, you will become the ambassador of this system; because most of the famous homoeopaths were once had critical attitude towards the same.
Eagerly waiting to get feedback from you.
Kind Regards.
Dr Muhammed Rafeeque, BHMS, PGNAHI.
Family Homoeopathic clinic
Kerala
India.
www.familyhomoeopathy.com
Contact Ziztur at ZizturIsWrong at gmail dot com.
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Oh, ZING! He sure told you!
It sounds like you can get money by being a consultant or “ambassador” for their organization. Cha-ching
Hey you’re a Madam!
What they said, with the whole “only a small percentage of them will have the symptoms and others will not respond”, they basically said that it’s a placebo. If you give enough people a placebo, and tell them that it will do X for you, then eventually a small percentage will have X happen. It’s a matter of their mind saying, X is supposed to happen, so I’ll make X happen. They pretty much gave away the secret to homeopathy, although they did dance around the fact a bit. It’s nothing but a placebo.
Dr. Rafeeque is correct. This product really isn’t “homeopathic” both for his purposes as a practicing homeopath (because no effort has been made to relate the symptoms caused by this product and your symptoms before or after taking it) but also for your purposes as a skeptic. The main ingredients in this product Calms Forte are in 1X dilution, i.e. one part in ten. Similar to a cup of tea. And indeed these herbs are regularly used as herbal teas for sleeplessness. Drinking a cup of tea made with harmless herbs and having nothing happen should surprise no one, homeopath or skeptic.
A better skeptical experiment would be to take something actually poisonous, but in the dilutions that you object to. Homeopathic preparations of arsenic or mercury are widely available for instance. Arsenicum 30C or Mercurius 30C are diluted way past Avogadro’s number, so for your purposes they should be inert.
Now mind you, I would never recommend anyone swallow a whole bottle of these remedies, I’m just saying it would be more to your point. In fact, if you really want to “disprove” something about homeopathy, do what homeopaths do: rather than swallowing the bottle at once you could take a few doses everyday until the bottle runs out (or you develop symptoms), that is essentially what homeopaths do to determine the actions of a remedy (although in a more controlled manner with more participants, placebos, blinded, etc). This would make more sense, because it relates to how homeopathy is actually practiced.
JH
JH