This post is about homeopathy and its
many flaws and its creation. For those who do not know, homeopathy is the
practice of treating aliments by using diluted substances that in their
undiluted form would cause similar symptoms of the aliment in healthy people. The
problem with homeopathy is that its principle is based in pseudoscience. So, in
this essay I’ll be showing the flaws in homeopathy and why it does not work as
an effective treatment.
Homeopathy was created by German physician
Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann was alive in era before germ theory was developed,
back then the main hypothesis on the cause of diseases was that there was an
imbalance in the four humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm).
Hahnemann did not believe the four humors hypothesis but rather believed that
diseases were caused by miasmas. Hahnemann’s miasmas hypothesis was that
medications did not cure diseases but rather suppressed the symptoms; this
would cause said diseases to go to internal organs of the patient.[1]
Nowadays homeopathy is touted as an
all-natural medication to be used along modern medicine. This was because in
the 19th century germ theory was developed and led to a decline in
the four humors and miasmas theories. Many homeopathic practitioners stared
marketing homeopathic treatments as a complimentary medication to modern
medicine. This was done because modern medicine was still new idea and some
people still rejected it and had a distrust of it. To justify homeopathy many
people turned to anecdotal evidence and pseudoscientific methods.
The
first major problem with homeopathy is the dilution process, which is the
practice of taking a substance which can cause similar symptoms of the aliment
in healthy people. This is done by diluting the substance with water over 30
times, also known as 30C. This is an issue because a dilution of 30C is very
unlikely to contain a single molecule of the original substance. On the other
hand, a homeopathic remedy may contain too much of the original substance which
can cause adverse effects, which can sometimes be serious[2].
Another problem with homeopathy is that
many studies, including one meta-analysis by Australia’s National Health and
Medical Research Council, found that hemopathy works no better than a placebo[3]. This is a problem because
even if the user believes the treatment, the placebo effect doesn’t always
happen. This can be a problem because if the patient is using a homeopathic
remedy as the only treatment for a fatal disease or a choric disease they won’t
see improvement in their condition.
In
conclusion homeopathy can be tied to pseudoscience in general. This is because
homeopathy was founded on an outdated and scientifically disproven idea. It
uses anecdotal evidence rather than data and was created before germ theory,
which changed medicine drastically. Homeopathy can even be dangerous if used as
the only treatment for serious and chronic diseases. Homeopathy also has little
regulation which means sometimes a homeopathic remedy can have too much of the
substance, and it means homeopathic practitioners can make false claims about
their product as long as they include a blurb reading: “These statements have
not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not
intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”[4] And those are the reasons why homeopathy is
flawed, can be dangerous, and can be firmly classified as a pseudoscience.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20090307120146/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/homeopathy_advice/Theory/Intermediate/miasm.html
[2] https://nccih.nih.gov/health/homeopathy
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/11/no-evidence-homeopathy-is-any-better-than-a-placebo-major-australian-study-says/?utm_term=.25ee47a4e77e
[4] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=101.93
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