UK Labour Party's Support For Homeopathy Grows 414
An anonymous reader writes: The UK's Labour Party is currently led by Jeremy Corbyn, who has shown support for homeopathy in the past. So has Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. (So-called 'shadow' posts in the UK government essentially comprise an alternative Cabinet with positions held by party members in opposition to the party in power.) Now, homeopathy seems to have additional support from the newly-appointed shadow health minister, Heidi Alexander. "I know lots of people who know about benefits of homeopathy. Whether it's the right use of public money is another thing altogether. I'm open to hearing the argument as to why people may think it appropriate."
Politics of homeopathy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Politics of homeopathy (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, if you get your "placebo ~20% effect" from [treatment that does nothing other than convince you that it does something], that's great for health.
I completely agree with her statement that supporting it with public money is completely different from acknowledging that placebo effect can indeed provide help to some people.
Re:Politics of homeopathy (Score:5, Funny)
If it's homeopathy, we should only need to support it with a barely detectable amount of tax money.
Re:Politics of homeopathy (Score:4, Informative)
FALSE, if it's detectable, it's still far too concentrated for homeopathy.
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I thought that homeopathy was supposed to be the basis of Trickle-Down Economics!
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Re:Politics of homeopathy (Score:5, Informative)
Trickle-down economics is a joke.
No, literally, it started off as a joke by an American humourist, Will Rogers, who said of President Hoover's recovery efforts
money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes it would trickle down to the needy.
But the notion that prosperity for the rich leads to prosperity for everyone is no straw man - it's a well known part of right wing policy.
Re:Politics of homeopathy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well it works! Americans drink watered down piss that remembers it once contained beer and get drunk ever week!
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Obsolete meme. Just as there is dentistry now in the UK, the US has undergone a revolution in craft beer, with more variety available now than anywhere else.
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This required state governments to stop outlawing microbreweries AKA your corner pubs with a copper hooskerdoo in the corner, which had been outlawed since the end of prohibition at the behest of giant national breweries.
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20 years ago Budweiser Budvar was a popular drink in the UK. That's what you will have seen. It has absolutely nothing to do with American Budweiser. It's a completely different company and a different brew. It's a good Czech beer.
But more people will have been drinking the many other types of beer.
Re:Politics of homeopathy (Score:5, Interesting)
Corbyn is also anti-nuclear and anti-GMO. Homeopathy couldn't have been far behind.
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Anti-nuclear and anti-GMO are pretty much mainstream positions in the UK, so that would seem to be democratic.
Homeopathy? I'm not sure what the prevailing opinion is, but the economics of it would seem to indicate that enough people believe in it for it to be a commonly held belief that it works.
The papers (Score:5, Insightful)
I was reading the Metro (a 'free' paper that's given away at a lot of UK train stations), and it was filled with wall-to-wall criticisms of Corbyn's shadow cabinet choices. In the run up to the leadership campaign, there was nothing but smoke blown in Jeremy's direction. And now this post on Slashdot of all places.
Makes you wonder what the establishment is afraid of.
Re:The papers (Score:5, Informative)
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Even the Guardian is doing it. The shadow cabinet is 50% female but apparently there aren't enough women in 'top jobs'.
Re:The papers (Score:4, Insightful)
If you need any more explanation, you're probably not a close follower of British political life.
Oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for Heidi Alexander, here's a quote from the linked buzfeed article
“I must admit I’m not totally convinced at the moment but I’ll have to look at it. I know my own parents are great believers in homeopathy. It’s not something that I would immediately support but I’m going to have to look at a whole range of issues. It’s not something that I have given hours of consideration to.”
Oh yeah, definitely a *huge* backer.
How nice of slashdot to become a place for anonymous political shills. In this case I guess it's a Tory sympathizer.
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Of course. All conventional medication says to use homeopathic fluids to assist taking orally.
Re:Oh really? (Score:4, Informative)
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Well, exactly. That's why it can work.
All the mummery and ritual that go into the production of homeopathic remedies add to the convincing impression that it has some efficacy.
That's not incompatible with saying that you believe it works for some people. Neither is saying that incompatible with knowing full well that it's hokum, if you want to humour those of your constituents that believe in it, just as you wouldn't trample on someone's religion.
If I was in a position to make policy about it... I'd probabl
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True enough but billions of people get real, sustained relief from life's travails by believing in magical religions that promise one hell of a lot more than surviving your cold.
I mean, eternal life beats the pants off off no hemorrhoids any day.
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Link [parliament.uk]
Re:Oh really? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Never said that woo isn't bipartisan. Just pointing out that yes, Corbyn is a woo supporter. Because hey, it comes from "organic matter", just like actual medicine!
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It's got acolytes .... er, electrolytes!
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Her invitation for arguments almost reads like, "Go on, I need a good laugh."
Tedious Smear (Score:5, Insightful)
This smacks a lot of the continuing media smear against the new labour leadership - which is getting tiresome for pretty much everyone (whatever their political views).
From the second paragraph of TFA : ... It’s not something that I have given hours of consideration to.”
She added: “I must admit I’m not totally convinced at the moment but I’ll have to look at it.
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Corbyn and McDonnell are on this list:
http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2... [parliament.uk]
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Re:Jeremy Corbyn is not GCHQ approved (Score:4, Insightful)
He is one of those rare creatures, an honest man with no motivation other than to make the world a better place. I would venture that he has very little dirt to leak, and is probably the most selfless politician in a generation.
This all makes him incredibly dangerous.
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* - For example, Trump is clearly a xenophobic lunatic, but it's hard to argue he is insincere.
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The beliefs of the royals does not matter. Those of a potentially government-forming political party do.
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Trump would certainly be considered extremely right wing by the population of the UK. From a UK perspective Corbyn is genuinely left wi
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Those Anti-Science Liberals. (Score:2)
Just to show you, your political leaning has nothing to do with your understanding, or acceptance in science.
Homeopathy is medicine based on rumors and gut feelings, not by actual full science. Sure sometimes you may randomly get something that hasn't been studied yet that has a positive effect. But for the most part it is just snake oil, and sometimes it will be more hazardous then actually getting a pill, that had found the healthy elements, took out much of the bad ones, and dosed at the optimal level.
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Most of the benefits seen are actually attributed to medical staff taking the time to listen to the patient for an hour or more at a time. It's not even placebo, it's just psychological therapy.
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Homeopathy (or other placebos) are an excellent cure for GPs or other front line doctors to offer for cvommon viral infections like the common cold, instead of antibiotics (which many patients insist on).
I don't support homeopathy (except as a placebo), but it's a damn useful tool for first world hypochondriacs..
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> But to say that often homeopathy is better than medical treatments as the GGP said is just plain false.
That's being generous. Not only are they false, to propagate their usage over other medical treatments that do work is negligent and harmful.
You understand incorrectly (Score:2)
Steve Jobs' cancer was more amenable to treatment, meaning you get to live for several years after diagnosis instead of several months. Which is exactly what happened. (In fact, since he lived more than five years after diagnosis, technically he was a cancer "survivor" by most metrics.)
Certainly the quackery he tried prior to actual medicine didn't help things, and it's entirely possible (even probable) his lifespan would have been extended at least somewhat further with real treatment, it was never "easi
Re:You understand incorrectly (Score:5, Informative)
Islet cell neuroendocrine tumor has very long average survival time if caught early (like Jobs' was) and treated properly (which Jobs' wasn't). Not just a couple years - over a decade. And that's for regular folk, not for people who count among the wealthiest individuals on Earth and can afford the best care on the planet. These tumors are so passive that 10% of autopsied patients in the general public are found to have had a gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumor without ever knowing, and 30% of the tumors are so good at maintaining their original function that there's debate over whether to even call them "cancer". Insulinomas are anything but a virulent form - but they can spread if left to fester. Jobs' cancer was caught very early on, and by all standards he should have had a very long life expectancy had he actually gone with actual medical treatment advised by his doctors (as well as his friends and family). Instead, he committed "suicide by woo", letting it fester until it become something actually bad and hard to remove completely. Something that he deeply regretted [telegraph.co.uk] later.
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Note the frauds who sold him, and a million others, known ineffectual treatment in place of real treatment, are not rotting in jail.
That is the problem.
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Homeopathy is medicine based on rumors and gut feelings, not by actual full science.
Or just "science", as it's more properly known.
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Science is a process, and it will not always fit nicely into peoples political views. Sometimes ideas you hold most dearly are wrong.
“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” - Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Marcia Angell
If we're gonna accept witchdoctor medicine (with iffy at best science behind it), might as well let in the homeopaths,
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No, you draw the wrong conclusion. What we do when we find out that work that should be scientific did not follow sound scientific methods (here for instance by being heavily influenced by economic incentive) is not to LOOSEN the requirements and say "whatever, if some scientific studies were bogus, let's just give up and believe what ever the next guy is trying to sell", instead, what we do, and what I assume Dr Angell was aiming for, is to rat out the phony work and require a HIGHER standard for what we c
Alternative alternative medicine (Score:3, Funny)
I for one am a strong supporter of an alternative to alternative medicine: sociopathy. The practitioner of this method, called a sociopath, can treat sufferers more effectively than homeopathy ever could, and would suggest that people who believe in homeopathy should try seeing a sociopath too for increased effectiveness. Although unaware, when they go to a homeopath they might be seeing a sociopath too, at the same time, and think it's really homeopathy that helped them.
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I was thinking that we should put this newly discovered set of rocks near Stonehenge to use. Maybe a few human sacrifices there would appease the Gods, and improve the health of the folks in the UK . . . ?
Re:Alternative alternative medicine (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they are selling for money stuff that doesn't work, and persuading people to not trust medicine that does work. Thus they are profiting off harming vulnerable people. This is obscene.
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I don't see people on Slashdot arguing that someone poorly shouldn't drink water.
I do see people arguing that telling poorly people they'll get better by drinking water is (when their issue is not dehydration) fraudulent, damaging and dishonest.
That doesn't stop anybody managing their own body however they want. We need an abortion debate for that.
Sad for Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
So now even Slashdot lazily swallows and unquestioningly regurgitates a smear against Labour? Whoever you are, Samzenpus, you've just lost Slashdot a reader.
Re:Sad for Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
So now even Slashdot lazily swallows and unquestioningly regurgitates a smear against Labour?
True, What we have is a "noncommittal answer" ... not a surprising thing in a day old cabinet when policies have not been determined. And its not as if any other party has announced a policy that homeopathy is unscientific and won't be funded. As others have pointed out it may not even make sense to do so, as homeopathy is a cheap placebo ... and if that avoids more expensive treatments for some people then that has to be good.
Selective news (Score:5, Insightful)
The ridiculousness is not limited to the Labour party; the Conservatives actually put a deluded believer [telegraph.co.uk] into an *actual*, not shadow, ministerial position and to top it all it was minister for health.
The UK press has been full of negative comments about Corbyn, more so since he became leader this weekend, so why is Slashdot joining in? Why don't you run articles on the front pages of the Daily Mail, The Sun, etc. for today and yesterday? During the leadership campaign it wasn't just the right-wing press either since many Labourites didn't want him since they think that they can only regain government by being more like the Conservatives to the point that they are now frequently referred to as the "Red Tories".
Personally, I didn't care about the Labour leadership election because I think that the sooner Scotland can get away from the rest of the UK the better.
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I think that the sooner Scotland can get away from the rest of the UK the better.
Well, thing is though, Scotland voted to stay.
Can we stop the bullshit reporting here please? (Score:5, Informative)
Someone asked her about homeopathy, she ducked the question. She was far from enthusiastic about it, but said she would be open to hearing arguments about it - which is what politicians say when they have no clue what their policy is and don't want to answer the question. She should have been decisive and said that the NHS should not ever fund anything that does not outperform a placebo and has no plausible theory of action, but she didn't, yet. This failure to respond to the question is now being spun, and slashdot is getting in on the action too. Maybe if she ever actually takes a position on homeopathy then there will be a story to report, but right now, @heidi_mp has not really done anything other than duck a question.
It's German nonsense. (Score:2)
I don't give a damn but.. (Score:2)
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It's no bloody use right now!
* We can't maintain one-boat-at-sea at all times, because they're falling to bits - they can't even complete readiness drills reliably
* We can't use it anyway : From the House of Commons Defence Select Committee (in 2006) : "the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it [parliament.uk]"
In short, it's just a way to siphon money into the pockets of defence contractors.
Jeremy's heresy is that he wants to use those resour
Homeopathy = Bullshit (Score:2)
What utter bullcrap.
Did you hear about the guy who forgot to take his homeopathic medicine? He died of an overdose.
Fine with Homeopathy (Score:2)
As long as all treatments must pass the same double blind studies as all other drug treatment plans before they can be claimed to be effective and safe.
And that no treatments can be offered until they have passed the studies that prove they are both safe and effective.
All drugs/treatments should be treated equally.
National Delusions (Score:2)
I am curious as to how this became a particularly British national science delusion.
I'm surprised any party endorses this drivel (Score:3)
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Vaccines, opium, digitalis and many more came from the homeopathic school. Suggest you read some medical history and stop guessing incorrectly.
Re: I'm surprised any party endorses this drivel (Score:3)
Medically harmless (Score:3)
I don't like the idea of tax money being spent on something that is scientifically verfiable as completely wrong. And I also don't want people with serious illnesses not getting proper medical treatment.
However, people have the freedom to do stupid things, and homeopathy is relatively harmless. I mean, it's just expensive tap water. Also, it's a placebo, and placebos have been shown to have some limited effectiveness.
Remember diamond water? I should start selling silicon water. It's special water that's been infused with computer antivirus software by having had it in a water-cooled rig. The imprint of the antivirus software on the water has great antiviral effects in humans. :)
Re:Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Interesting)
Corbyn also blames the Ukraine crisis [politics.co.uk] on the west and ticked off Poland by saying that they never should have been allowed into NATO and instead "should have gone down the road Ukraine went in 1990". He thinks Britain should leave NATO, but recently backtracked [telegraph.co.uk], saying that there's no "appetite" among the public to do so at the moment and he'll respect that. Russia basically endorsed [twitter.com] him today.
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The Ukraine crisis IS as much a fault of the west as that of Russia. NATO is also an organization that was created to oppose an enemy that no longer exists, and provides very good ammo for Putin to point out how the west would like to corner them..
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It's almost like there was similar expansionist policies in almost all of Europe.. you act like they were alone in this.
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Were vs Are
There were similar policies on the part of the western nations.
There still are those policies in place by the Russians.
Or maybe you might like to take it up with the Ukrainians.
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So, you think there was no western influence in the decision of the Ukraine to attempt to join the EU?
As for hanging on to old territories, let's not forget that much of eastern Europe was Russian in our lifetime, I don't see western Europe renouncing a lot of territory either.
Re:Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody was talking about letting Ukraine join the EU. They're way far away from meeting the standards, and as it stands, a lot of people think that even letting states like Hungary in was a mistake. What was being offered was a trade pact.
Here's a quite detailed [spiegel.de] history of the negotiations and where things went awry, from both sides. Basically, the EU handed Yanukovych a set of economics calculations showing the huge amount of money that would flow into Ukraine, and the conditions they had to meet to get it. They were never really open to negotiation, convinced that the amount of windfall was all that mattered, and they'd fall in line on the conditions. "Vast amounts of money flowing into the country" certainly appealed to ostrich wrangler [youtube.com] Yanukovych, but the main sticking point early on was his political prosecution of former prime minister (and Princess Leia impersonator [kievukraine.info]) Yulia Tymoshenko. The EU was quite confident that he'd fall in line in order to get the windfall from the trade membership, and they also didn't see how it was any matter of Russia's what Ukraine, a sovereign state, decided to do on its own, and thus how they even were relevant to the negotiations. It was a pretty haughty position, but if was a quite passive position. Everything Yanukovych tried to change about the deal was rebuffed - it was a "take it or leave it" situation, with the EU fully convinced that the "take it" answer would arrive any day. Russia first tried imposing counterpressure on Ukraine with an economic carrot and stick approach, but this approved not enough to derail the negotiations - although left the Ukrainian side increasingly rebuffed trying to get further concessions from the EU to compensate it. However, the sudden and unexpected reversal came after a relatively brief meeting between Yanukovych and Putin. What was said at that meeting is anyone's guess - although how far Russia was willing to go to keep Ukraine from drawing closer to the EU has been made abundantly clear since then.
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Were vs Are
So the bit about "going back to Peter the Great" is irrelevant. And that bit was in the only sentence in smitty_one_each's post.
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Oh sorry, that's "fighting terrorism" and the occurrence of valuable natural resources in those areas is just a massive coincidence.
Considering that all that was needed in order to buy the oil from Saddam was to relieve the sanctions we had on him, I can't imagine why you think going to war was easier.
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Sweet, someone too dumb to write a proper response has marked me as a troll, good job moderating dude.
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The current labour leadership are a total joke who will never be elected, ...
Perhaps - if so, then I suggest you grab some popcorn and enjoy the show. Personally, I'm not sot so sure; nobody expected that Corbyn would be anything more than a loser in the leadership election, yet he won. A part of the reason is probably that the well-established elite in Labour have become too polished and woolly-mouthed; too clever at not actually expressing any views that can't later be revamped as something else - and they have been good at keeping the "less desirable elements" away from any chanc
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As opposed to not going to a doctor or hospital at all because they would face financial ruin for doing so?
Re:Homeopathy as euthanasia. (Score:5, Informative)
You know nothing about the NHS, or indeed state healthcare. Keep swallowing the misinformation and lies fed to you by the commercial interests in US healthcare and you get the health system you deserve.
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The real deal is NHS is killing the UK.
One could argue that people who see no use for NHS is the ones doing all the killing of your citizens.
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This is the most stupid thing I have read, even more stupid than the article itself, today. Congrats.
Protip, the NHS is one of the best healthcare systems in the world, in the top 5. (I think it was 3rd, the other 2 countries ahead of it spending more money per person)
Whereas private healthcare-driven countries are some of the worst in the modern world.
The US for example, the "king" of private healthcare, is the worst and most expensive of all modern countries. Shocking! Call the presses!
State-sponsored
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Nice that you're pointing out how the right wing gutting the NHS means that cancer patients can't get expensive, mostly pointless drugs.
Let's ignore the fact that they're just life extenders ("Kadcyla, currently prescribed to around 800 women a year, which has been shown to extend life by an average of six months"), and that the US healthcare system (insurance) probably wouldn't pay for them either.
They'd probably be better off spending the money to send these people and their family on a nice 2 week vacati
Re:Homeopathy as euthanasia. (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the US system where she wouldn't have been able to afford to pay and the insurance company would've found an excuse to void the policy she'd been paying into for a decade and so she couldn't even get on a list in the first place?
Great. That's much better.
Sacrificing an individual to keep costs down is exactly how the US healthcare system works, that's exactly what happens when you throw capitalism and profit into the mix - you have to grow profits by maximising the amount of people who pay and how much they pay and minimising the amount of people you actually treat in practice.
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I don't think this is that far off the mark.
Most homeopathic "medicines" are unpatented herbal potions of inexpensive origin and most homeopathic hands-on therapies involve nothing much more expensive than marginally trained hands using extremely low-tech facilities and tools.
It's not hard to see politicians endorsing their use, both as a purely political way of not offending people who believe in them and as a diversion from more expensive, real medical care.
And maybe there's some practical value to it, to
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Nope. Homeopathy != herbal remedy, natural medicine, or whatever else. It is something very specific. If it contains anything else but water (on top of whatever it takes to make a pill or whatsnot) and negligible traces, if any, of active ingredient, it isn't homeopathy
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Homeopathy is cheap
If only it were so. It's actually quite labour-intensive to produce ; it involves multiple steps of repeated dilution and agitation - which is often intentionally done manually.
Unless you were some kind of charlatan, of course, who just put a few cheap sugar pills in a bottle and labelled it "Arnica". Sadly, you can't tell the difference. /s
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Actual exchange:
I love political debate on Slashdot.
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Ronald Reagan believed in astrology and thought aliens were going to attack the world. Even more ridiculous, he believed in the pseudo-science of supply-side economics.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05... [nytimes.com]
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We should dilute the sun with 10,000 parts water and see if that fixes global warming.
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Jobs was no idiot, and if avoiding things that didn't work in his case while a bit of peaceful woowoo kept him from losing his mind while he was losing his body, I wouldn't hold it against him.
Except that when he chose this course of action, he wasn't seeking a peaceful end to his life, and he later reversed that choice and regretted not doing so sooner.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/al... [forbes.com]
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Homeopathy began in the 1720s upon the accidental discovery that milkmaids who get cowpox on their hands never get smallpox. The Homeopathic school assumed this met their criteria for "like protects against like" and from the homeopathic school we got immunization technology in 1720.
That's utter bollocks.
So vaccines are homeopathic for one thing
No, that's utter bollocks.
Your entire argument appears to be based on stating utter bollocks then using flawed logic to extrapolate some fantasy fucked up argument that is in fact utter bollocks. Please stop.