Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century
Defending Choice in Medicine
H:MC21 is a charity established to counter the unfounded propaganda against homeopathy by informing the public of the facts about homeopathy and its historical and scientific relationship to orthodox medicine.
It will do this through research, publication and campaigning.
Clicking on the links below will take you directly to various aspects of our campaign
Follow us on Twitter at @HMC21org
Publications
Charity no. 1124711
Registered address: Poppyseed Cottage,
High Street, Stoke Ferry, Norfolk PE33 9SF
It has been claimed that
In clinical research, the efficacy of a treatment A cannot be assessed purely by the observation of a single group of patients treated with A, because the natural course of the disease and other co-factors can be the reason for the improvement of the state of treated patients. [1]
The randomised controlled trial (RCT) is a research tool developed (in theory) to deal with the particular problems of variability in individuals and disease processes. The participating patients are divided into two groups, with the test group being given the substance being tested (the verum), while the control group is given a substance believed to be inactive (the placebo). The process of random allocation of people to each group is intended to equalise the distribution of unknown factors across the two groups, so that their influences on the result cancel out, leaving clear evidence of what changes are actually caused by the substance being tested. In fact there are important questions about the validity of the evidence RCTs can produce. In tests of treatments the unknown factors and how they are theoretically managed by the RCT include:
Problems
It is important to understand that the RCT compares two sets of evidence rather than testing a theory against experimental evidence, which is the norm for the mature sciences. Furthermore, in practice, clear evidence is still not easy to obtain, and an understanding of the mechanism of action of a drug may not emerge for some time.
The RCT generates a number of questions about its theoretical assumptions when used as a test of curative interventions. For example:
The importance of these questions is shown by the lists of drugs that are withdrawn after a period of clinical use. Such consequences call into doubt the validity of the RCT as a mechanism for providing consistent and reliable evidence of the curative action of drugs. In contrast, it should be noted that the information gathered by homeopaths about their remedies (including those first tested in the late 18th century) is as valid now as it was when the tests were first made.
References
1. Edzard Ernst and Eckhardt G. Hahn (eds), Homoeopathy: a critical appraisal (Butterworth Heinemann, 1998), p.3.
Related pages:
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