Starve a cold

Today from the Unintentionally Hilarious Department, we have a paper that made its way into PubMed that has the title, "Pharmacoeconomic Comparison Between Homeopathic and Antibiotic Treatment Strategies in Recurrent Acute Rhinopharyngitis in Children."

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Here's a quick summary of the objectives and results, as quoted from the abstract:

Objectives: A pharmacoeconomic study to compare, in terms of: medical effectiveness, quality of life and costs two treatment strategies ('homeopathic strategy' vs 'antibiotic strategy') used in routine medical practice by allopathic and homeopathic GPs in the treatment of recurrent acute rhinopharyngitis in 18-month to 4-year-old children. 

Results: The 'homeopathic strategy' yielded significantly better results than the 'antibiotic strategy' in terms of medical effectiveness (number of episodes of rhinopharyngitis: 2.71 vs 3.97, P<0.001; number of complications: 1.25 vs 1.95, P<0.001), and quality of life (global score: 21.38 vs 30.43, P<0.001), with lower direct medical costs covered by Social Security (88 Euros vs 99 Euros, P<0.05) and significantly less sick-leave (9.5% of parents vs 31.6% of parents, P<0.001)...  Homeopathy may be a cost-effective alternative to antibiotics in the treatment of recurrent infantile rhinopharyngitis.

What makes this hilarious is that the authors of the article, Melanie Trichard, Gilles Chaufferin, and Nicolas Nicoloyannis, are apparently unaware that because acute rhinopharyngitis (better known to most of us as a "cold") is viral in origin, antibiotics are entirely useless for fighting it, and no competent doctor would prescribe them in this situation for a child or for anyone else.  So saying that homeopathic "remedies" are as good for fighting colds as antibiotics is akin to the following claims:

• crystals are as effective as aromatherapy for setting broken bones
• blood-letting has the same success rate as seeing a witch doctor for curing brain cancer
• Tarot cards have the same likelihood of telling you your future as palm-reading
• peanut butter is as effective as chocolate pudding as a window-cleaner

The maddening thing is that you can still find homeopathic "remedies" (i.e., pills or liquids with no active ingredients) being sold for lots of money on pharmacy shelves, despite study after study showing that they are worthless.  The most recent study generated the following conclusion:

The review found no good quality, well-designed studies with enough participants to support the idea that homeopathy works better than a placebo, or causes health improvements equal to those of another treatment. 

Although some studies did report that homeopathy was effective, the quality of those studies was assessed as being small and/or of poor quality.  These studies had either too few participants, poor design, poor conduct and or [sic] reporting to allow reliable conclusions to be drawn on the effectiveness of homeopathy. 

According to CEO Professor Warwick Anderson, “All medical treatments and interventions should be underpinned by reliable evidence. NHMRC’s review shows that there is no good quality evidence to support the claim that homeopathy works better than a placebo.”

Dr. Steven Novella, a vocal and articulate supporter of science-based medicine, put it more clearly:

[The] pattern is now clear – gold standard clinical evidence shows that homeopathy does not work.  Homeopaths do not respond by either producing high quality evidence of efficacy or by changing their views to account for the evidence.  Rather, they whine about the game being rigged against them and try to change the rules of evidence, so that weak studies that are almost guaranteed to be false positive are used, or studies that are not even designed to test efficacy... 

For some reason we cannot summon the political will to do what reason demands (and what multiple systematic reviews by government bodies have recommended) and finally expel homeopathy from modern health care. 

Still there are researchers, either because they are true believers or just naive, calling for yet more research into homeopathy, such as the proposed Toronto study of homeopathy for ADHD.  The demand for more research will never end.  The public, however, should no longer support this profound waste of resources.

What is amazing is that the homeopaths themselves won't admit that the game is up.  How many failed studies do they need?  I realize that this would mean they were out of a job, but for cryin' in the sink, at what point do you say, "Okay, I guess I was wrong?"

I guess the answer to the last question is, "Never."  "Death before admitting we're ripping people off by selling them useless remedies," that's the motto of the homeopaths.  Anyhow, I'm done here.  I've got to go clean my windows.  The last time didn't work out so well.

****************************************

Starve a cold

Today from the Unintentionally Hilarious Department, we have a paper that made its way into PubMed that has the title, "Pharmacoeconomic Comparison Between Homeopathic and Antibiotic Treatment Strategies in Recurrent Acute Rhinopharyngitis in Children."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Here's a quick summary of the objectives and results, as quoted from the abstract:

Objectives: A pharmacoeconomic study to compare, in terms of: medical effectiveness, quality of life and costs two treatment strategies ('homeopathic strategy' vs 'antibiotic strategy') used in routine medical practice by allopathic and homeopathic GPs in the treatment of recurrent acute rhinopharyngitis in 18-month to 4-year-old children. 

Results: The 'homeopathic strategy' yielded significantly better results than the 'antibiotic strategy' in terms of medical effectiveness (number of episodes of rhinopharyngitis: 2.71 vs 3.97, P<0.001; number of complications: 1.25 vs 1.95, P<0.001), and quality of life (global score: 21.38 vs 30.43, P<0.001), with lower direct medical costs covered by Social Security (88 Euros vs 99 Euros, P<0.05) and significantly less sick-leave (9.5% of parents vs 31.6% of parents, P<0.001)... Homeopathy may be a cost-effective alternative to antibiotics in the treatment of recurrent infantile rhinopharyngitis.

What makes this hilarious is that the authors of the article, Melanie Trichard, Gilles Chaufferin, and Nicolas Nicoloyannis, are apparently unaware that because acute rhinopharyngitis (better known to most of us as a "cold") is viral in origin, antibiotics are entirely useless for fighting it, and no competent doctor would prescribe them in this situation for a child or for anyone else.  So saying that homeopathic "remedies" are as good for fighting colds as antibiotics is akin to the following claims:

• crystals are as effective as aromatherapy for setting broken bones
• blood-letting has the same success rate as seeing a witch doctor for curing brain cancer
• Tarot cards have the same likelihood of telling you your future as palm-reading
• peanut butter is as effective as chocolate pudding as a window-cleaner

The maddening thing is that you can still find homeopathic "remedies" (i.e., pills or liquids with no active ingredients) being sold for lots of money on pharmacy shelves, despite study after study showing that they are worthless.  The most recent study, just last year, generated the following conclusion:

The review found no good quality, well-designed studies with enough participants to support the idea that homeopathy works better than a placebo, or causes health improvements equal to those of another treatment. 

Although some studies did report that homeopathy was effective, the quality of those studies was assessed as being small and/or of poor quality. These studies had either too few participants, poor design, poor conduct and or [sic] reporting to allow reliable conclusions to be drawn on the effectiveness of homeopathy. 

According to CEO Professor Warwick Anderson, “All medical treatments and interventions should be underpinned by reliable evidence. NHMRC’s review shows that there is no good quality evidence to support the claim that homeopathy works better than a placebo.”

Dr. Steven Novella, a vocal and articulate supporter of science-based medicine, put it more clearly:

[The] pattern is now clear – gold standard clinical evidence shows that homeopathy does not work. Homeopaths do not respond by either producing high quality evidence of efficacy or by changing their views to account for the evidence.  Rather, they whine about the game being rigged against them and try to change the rules of evidence, so that weak studies that are almost guaranteed to be false positive are used, or studies that are not even designed to test efficacy...

For some reason we cannot summon the political will to do what reason demands (and what multiple systematic reviews by government bodies have recommended) and finally expel homeopathy from modern health care. 

Still there are researchers, either because they are true believers or just naive, calling for yet more research into homeopathy, such as the proposed Toronto study of homeopathy for ADHD.  The demand for more research will never end.  The public, however, should no longer support this profound waste of resources.

What is amazing is that the homeopaths themselves won't admit that the game is up.  How many failed studies do they need?  I realize that this would mean they were out of a job, but for cryin' in the sink, at what point do you say, "Okay, I guess I was wrong?"

I guess the answer to the last question is, "Never."  "Death before admitting we're ripping people off by selling them useless remedies," that's the motto of the homeopaths.  Anyhow, I'm done here.  I've got to go clean my windows.  The last time didn't work out so well.

Sick unto death

New from the Dangerous Nonsense department: there's a new alternative-medicine model out of Germany that claims that viruses and bacteria aren't the cause of infectious diseases.

The website linked above, which was sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, had me muttering imprecations under my breath pretty much right from the first line.  The author, Caroline Markolin, starts with a line from the famous 19th century biologist Rudolf Virchow: "If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat -- diseased tissue -- rather than being the cause of diseased tissue."

Virchow was a brilliant pathologist and cellular biologist, but being good at some things doesn't mean you can't be dead wrong about others.  And the article conveniently fails to mention that Virchow not only disbelieved that pathogens caused diseases, he was also an ardent anti-evolutionist who considered Darwin an "ignoramus."

Be that as it may, we then are treated to quite a confection of nonsense.  Colds and flu, we're told, are actually the same thing, and are both caused by stress, not by viruses:

The common cold is linked to a "stink conflict", which can be experienced in real terms but also figuratively as "This situation stinks!" or "I've had it!". During the conflict-active phase the nasal membrane lining widens through ulceration, which is usually not noticed. In the healing phase, however, when the nasal tissue is being repaired, the nasal membrane swells up. A runny nose (healing always occurs in a fluid environment), headaches, tiredness, an elevated temperature or fever are all typical signs of a vagotonic healing process. If the cold symptoms are more severe, then this is commonly called the "flu". The claim, however, that "influenza" viruses are the culprits, has yet to be proven.

Nor has this claim, of course.  The "germ theory of disease" has over a hundred years of hard data supporting it.  This theory (if I can dignify it by that name) has a few vague generalities, a couple of ten-dollar words like "vagotonic," a photograph of a woman blowing her nose, so q.e.d., apparently.

We then find out that the "Spanish" flu of 1918-1919, that killed between 50 and 100 million people (hard numbers are difficult to come by, since the epidemic occurred during World War I, and many deaths in rural or isolated places went unrecorded), was not caused by a virus, it was caused by "stress."  People were under "territorial fear conflicts" and "death fright conflicts," and sickened from those; the acute, and frequently deadly, symptoms occurred when the body was trying to heal itself and the lung tumors caused by "stress" decomposed.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Oh, and tuberculosis and AIDS aren't caused by pathogens, either.

And don't take antibiotics.  Ever.  Because they cause cancer.  Lung cancer, Markolin tells us, isn't caused by smoking; to hell with the research, which includes a study that demonstrated that 2/3 of the people who smoke will eventually die from conditions associated with tobacco use.  Cancer is caused by "shock," she says.  In a statement that should be an odds-on favorite for the Circular Logic Award of 2015, she states, "We have to bear in mind that every diagnosis shock can potentially cause... cancer," implying that the diagnosis of cancer is what caused the cancer to appear.

But how was the cancer there to diagnose if the diagnosis caused the cancer, you may ask?  To which I respond: stress vagotonic death fight conflicts.  And fear.  Stop asking questions, because you're going to stress me out and give me a cold.

Oh, and viruses, "if they existed," would "assist in the reconstruction of... tissues."  Because evolution, for some reason.  Microbes are our friends; all disease is caused by emotional conflict.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it, how plants get infectious diseases.  Maybe my tomato plants didn't get late blight last year, maybe they were just feeling lonely and unappreciated.

But I'm certain that Markolin would have some sort of bullshit response to this, too.  Probably that humans with all of their ugly unnatural habits are causing the plants to stress out, and so the tomatoes are picking up on our conflicted quantum vibrational states and becoming sick themselves.

Nothing whatsoever to do with pathogens.  Just like colds, flu, AIDS, tuberculosis, and the bubonic plague.

The difficulty here is that there is a germ of truth (rimshot) to what she's saying.  The mind does have a role in health; stress does cause physical manifestations, probably mediated by the hormone cortisol.  But this is a far cry from saying that all disease is caused by stress, and that pathogens have nothing to do with it.

The problem with all of this is not that a crackpot has a website.  Many crackpots do.  It seems to be a favorite hobby of theirs, in fact.  The problem is that naïve people will fall for this, and fail to seek out proper medical care for curable conditions.  So it's homeopathy all over again; a claim that is entirely unsupported by research and evidence, and only believable if you fall for some hand-waving foolishness that the students in my Introductory Biology classes could debunk without even breaking a sweat.  That hasn't stopped the story, however, from being picked up by Spirit Science, so it's popping up all over woo-woo alt-med websites just in the last few days.  (If you go to the Spirit Science article, don't read the comments.  Really.  I mean it.  It will result in your spending the rest of the day curled up in a corner, whimpering softly.  If you ignore this advice, allow me to say simply that, yes, there are people in the world who are this stupid.  And they vote.)

So the caveat emptor principle applies here, of course.  People should be smart enough not to believe appealing nonsense about preventing the flu by becoming less stressed.  But I still feel some sympathy with the folks who are ignorant, or desperate, enough to fall for something like this, and who will suffer the consequences of that ignorance.

And as far as Markolin and her idiotic theory, I'm about done with it.  The whole thing is stressing me out, and we can't have that.