Page 6 - Winter 20-21

Dear Sceptic,
Homeopathy is receiving considerable criticism in main- stream outlets; I propose that we examine this by taking a look at what your arguments against homeopathy may be.
You want the best for patients, and you may be worried that clients or patients are fooled by using methods, you do not acknowledge. The basis of your criticism of homeopathy might be your scientific convictions or the scientific convictions of others.
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A conversation with a sceptic Edward De Beukelaer, UK • Patricia Cayado Spain • Sara Fox Chapman, USA
Worrying about patients/clients being fooled is an honourable position. If you worry about this, do you maintain that every single client/patient who goes to see a homeopath (vet or human) is delusional? Do you believe they are not capable of judging, whether they or their children or animals are getting better? Note that a large part of the public, who chooses to see a homeopath, is educated mothers with children [1].
Such a worry doubts the capacity of any clients/patients to make judgments for themselves in relation to responses to treatments. This concern also questions the judgment of every single medical doctor or practitioner, who prescribes homeopathy.
This same assessment must also apply to the question of whether clients/patients can determine, if they improve from using conventional medicine, which also applies to conventional doctors’/vets’ opinions. Why would users and practitioners of homeopathy be less able to observe response to treatment than users of conventional medicine?
You may say that homeopathy is just placebo.
The definitions of placebo and the placebo effect vary depending on the reference. We may agree that placebo means that you/we do not know or understand, why a patient improves following an intervention. You may have decided that a placebo is a particular ‘treatment or intervention’ that has no effect based on your/our knowledge. The former shows, how much we still have to learn, the latter is about a convention. A convention is something a group of people have agreed upon: this is not necessary an absolute truth.
The placebo argument against homeopathy is only based on the fact that there is no generally accepted bio- chemical explanation for, how a patient(s) can get better after receiving a homeopathic medicine: there is no convention on how homeopathy works.
A scientific conviction can appear to be a good reason to be sceptical about homeopathy.
For this criticism to remain logical, one has to believe that molecular biology is the sole explanation for the effects of medicines. This is what a majority of people and scientists do believe. Homeopathy, however, is distinct from molecular biology. Without rejecting the values of molecular biology, what is the evidence that molecular biology is the best way or the only way to do medicine? Is the molecular biological model not mainly model by convention: a point of reference?
Lets’ examine the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
This principle has allowed quantum mechanics to progress to where we are today. What it basically says is that you cannot know everything about a system by just examining its constituents. The system is more than the sum of its constituents. This is called an intrinsic system. In the case of the Heisenberg principle it initially resolved the question of how to deal with atoms. It proved impossible to describe an atom by establishing how electrons, protons and neutrons behave inside the atom. Heisenberg proposed that the only way to study and work with an atom is to study how the atom as a whole behaves, all the while ignoring its building blocks. It has led to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.