Is this the end of homeopathy in Japan?

Question

Homeopathy supporters like to use the oft repeated mantra that 'homeopathy is harmless'. There is however increasing reports of the dangers to those who use homeopathy in neglect of proper medical care:

"The Japanese government is investigating numerous deaths that occurred over the past year resulting from the practice of homeopathy, which has been growing in popularity, particularly among midwives. Several lawsuits are pending.

Deaths include a 2-month-old baby girl born with a vitamin K deficiency, whose mother's midwife administered a homeopathic treatment instead of the much-needed vitamin K injection, well-known to prevent hemorrhaging. The infant died from bleeding in the skull.

As more cases surface, the nation's top science group, the Science Council of Japan, has weighed in, with its president, Ichiro Kanazawa, stating at a press conference on Aug. 24 that "homeopathy's therapeutic value has been scientifically and utterly disproved." Homeopathy treatments are nothing more than sugar pills, he said.

Japan may soon join Switzerland and Germany, where governments have concluded that homeopathy is ineffective""

http://www.livescience.com/health/homeopathy-treatments-dangers-placebo-effects-100901.html

So, do you think Japan will join Germany and Switzerland in concluding that homeopathy is ineffective at best and at worst, has the potential for harm?

Answer 1

Hopefully they will. It must not be forgotten that to delay or avoid proven conventional therapies, thus delaying active medical management, is a risk to health. And while even conventional medicine can be dangerous in incorrect amounts and in the wrong hands, it must be remembered that where homeopathy is concerned there is no demonstrated evidence of efficacy, which just leaves you with the negatives. Conventional medicine saves lives.



Obviously that Midwife was grossly negligent and made an unforgiving error in judgment. Basic high school science should have told her that there is no way Homeopathy could be of any benefit in that situation.



This sort of thing is common in the UK too. And Midwives commonly subscribe to woo more than most other allied health care professions. There is a healing hands brigade at my hospital too.

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Edit: No Avicenna. Homeopathy is NOT a science, it's a scientific fraud and a very dangerous one too.

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Edit: LillyB: Stop lying, your data is incorrect and the point you are making is a fallacious one. With regards to drug deaths, how many would have died anyway? If a diabetic dies from hypoglycemia as a result of insulin, this is technically an adverse drug reaction, but yet without the insulin the patient would die anyway.



And you are quite clearly stupid. Even if conventional medicine killed everyone, this STILL does not demonstrate efficacy of AltMed. You cannot say one is better than the other simply because less people die as a result, water is harmless, but it's useless too. You have to take into account how many lives conventional medicine saves in comparison.

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Edit: Sorry NA but you've used the same fallacious argument fail as LillyB clearly you lack the ability to access risk/benefit ratios.

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Edit @ NA/ok: You've failed your own argument and resorted to ad hominem. Using another account ("ok") to bolster a failed argument makes you look pathetic and desparate.

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Edit: No FlashFlood. Vitamin K is necessary for normal clotting of the blood. Vitamin K deficiency can lead to defective blood clotting and increased bleeding.



Regardless of the cause of hemorrhaging, a defective blood clotting mechanism will more than likely seriously contribute towards mortality in any hemorrhaging event. If you are asking if there is a chance the baby could have died anyway.. yes sure, but this is besides the point. It's highly likely the lack of Vitamin K increased problems. And depending on why she hemorrhaged in the first place, if she had the replacement, an event may have been avoided altogether.



Vitamin K deficiency bleeding, occurs in approximately 1 in 10,000 babies. Many babies die or suffer brain-damage due to the disease, because of bleeding into the brain. It is almost always preventable by giving vitamin K after birth.



Bottom line, this baby had a Vit K deficiency, vitmain K replacement was indicated, the midwife failed to provide it. This is negligence.



Guess you are having a blonde moment.... :)



Edit

@ Gary: I thought exactly the same thing. Its desparate and pathetic and Flashflood in particular does this in every answer, she clutches at straws and STILL ignores the fact homeopathy does not work.



Flashflood, you are a disgrace to the alties, a disgrace to Nurses worldwide and a disgrace to the USA.

Answer 2

what it would take for me is to hear all 'scientific' skeptics say that their own 'double bind , peer reviewed ' studies are all skewed, biased, and would not and do not hold up to the very scrutny that they apply to other modalities of medicine , and that is their own medicine, not even a different modality.

That they just tar , feather and bully any thing they dont want to compete with. Like they do at this site.



You might as well ask the same questions about 'medicine' and homeopathy. You cannot prove 'medicine ' works either.



It doesnt work in the studies done correctly by the scientists, the only time it increases is when placebo is in effect.



If steven hawkins book The Grand Design' turns out to be anything, then i am sure it will be messed up or refuted also one day.

If the concept of 'God' had not been so butchered by man already , then one has little left to believe that there is a real 'god'. I'm sure there will be many step up to take that position , as history proves.

Answer 3

1

Answer 4

Homeopathy is bunk. It got its start in an unscientific era in which poorly-trained doctors were overprescribing all sorts of potentially toxic substances. It's easy to see how water plus the placebo effect might seem like a good alternative.



We have vastly better drugs these days, and we're vastly better at prescribing them. They work. People who were sick get well, and people with incurable problems have their symptoms alleviated. Meanwhile, homeopathic medicines are still just water, and belief in them keeps people from taking effective action. It's time to chuck them out.

Answer 5

It is SO obvious where this all went wrong. The correct treatment a homoeopath should have given is warfarin. This would have caused instant clotting in all the affected places.



Obviously the standard procedure of administering Vit K routinely is much more likely to increase bleeding because it has the opposite effect.



Well something like that anyway.

Answer 6

Lilly B, EW, Avicenna, NA, Flashflood - have all provided the same old fallacious arguments that we see here time and time again, without answering the question. They are all avoiding one thing; HOMEOPATHY DOESN'T WORK.



It fantastic to see Japan cracking down on quackery, but I doubt it will be the complete end of homeopathy there. Lets hope they go after Reiki next - it is Japanese after all.

Answer 7

It certainly sounds like it may be, that would certainly be great. However homeopathy should be long gone, it was disproven a long time ago. Japan has also been looking at changing policy on homeopathy. The major reason most countries have not banned public money from being spent on it or even regulating it is because homeopathy has become more of a political issue than a scientific one. Politicians hate to lose votes and unless a crisis, like Japan and Australia have had (especially when kids die), nothing is likely to happen. But don't count on changes too quickly.



Also keep in mind that many countries like Belgium, Taiwan, most of Canada, and The US do NOT cover homeopathy. There were also great changes in Northern Ireland, and The National Health Service (NHS), The American Medical Association (AMA), The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), even The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of The National Institutes of Health (NIH), and who can forget the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report on homeopathy.

Answer 8

I certainly hope so, all it is is an expensive placebo effect at best.



@Lobbs - Because they often dont take proper medication, take some homeopathy rubbish instead, then can die because they needed certain medication, as in the examples above.



Homeopathy and Horoscopes - we should have evolved out of stuff like that, doesn't bode well for the human race that these things not only exist, but people will defend them, laughable really.

Answer 9

It is not homeopathy that is harmful but one persons decision to take inappropriate action. Surely the midwife was not in a position to diagnose - something which in the UK only a doctor is allowed to do. And why would a mother allow a midwife to treat their baby. Clearly there are other issues here. 10,000 a year die in the UK alone from adverse drug reactions and the medical profession (including drugs) is the fourth most common cause of premature death in both the UK and the USA. The medical profession is right up there with heart disease and cancers yet it is a statistic we very rarely see.

Answer 10

NA is wrong. It is over 33,900,000 over thirty three million entries for 'medicine as leading cause of death'



These studies are being done by 'scientists' of the ilk some of you claim , with the highest of credientials, impeccable, not what we see here, scraping the bottom of the barrel to self aggrandize.



I havent seen one person here that has a clue what real science is about , or healing.



just a lot of hot air.

Answer 11

Speaking of fallacious arguments..........



( per Rhianna) ".......and the point you are making is a fallacious one. With regards to drug deaths, how many would have died anyway? If a diabetic dies from hypoglycemia as a result of insulin, this is technically an adverse drug reaction, but yet without the insulin the patient would die anyway"



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If your analogy used in your argument isn't fallacious itself, then please explain how you know that baby wouldn't have died from a brain hemorrhage anyway? How do you know that this baby didn't already have a congenital blood vessel defect in the brain...which when one talks of hemorrhage...no amount of Vitamin K is going to do any good (adults, not in anyway deficient in vitamin K die of hemorrhagic strokes all the time... )



Oh, I see.... I guess you are saying that the whole point of Dave's "question" is fallacious then?

Answer 12

The 20% - give or take - of healed people will swear on it.

Rain or shine - and that is, what is important!

As I always said before, homoeopathy is a science, which should only be, in the hands of skilled professionals.



Experts who do study this subject for more years than any Bc of medical science does.

The mistakes in homoeopathic treatment are done only by the unskilled amateurs.



And that is the biggest problem.

When anyone with one or two years study course thinks he or she is an expert in this very complex and difficult science.

Same as an acupuncture - only the master of it can heal.



The amateurs will be the downfall of homoeopathy.

Answer 13

Death by Modern Medicine by Dr. C . Dean

Poison for profit by A. simmons]

Raw-wisdom.com/starfieldstudy

12,000 deaths /yr from undessary surgery

7,000 """ "" from medications

20,000'' '' errors in hospitals

80,000 " infections aquired in hospitals

106,000 " FDA approved medications

total 225,000 deaths per year medical cause

low estimate



communicationagents.com 195,000 deaths per year due to hospital error



IAtrogenic deaths per year is 783,936 National Institute of America making 'Medical system the leading cause of death"



Adverse drug reactions 2.2 /year

unnecessary antibiotics 20 million plus

7.5 million unnessary surgery/medical

8.9 million unnessary hospitalizations

Death by Medicine encognitive.com

Journal of American Medical Assoc 3rd leading cause of death, medical

health-care-reform.net/

causedeath.html



There are over 4, 480,000 references to medicine being in the top or top three leading causes of death.



Disease caused by medical system health-science-spirit.com



If Japan wants to mimick the usa , along with other countries and adapt the same mal adaptive health care system and beliefs based in lies, that is their perogative.

There are no 'proven' conventional methods with regard to pharmaceuticals.

EDIT: These are not my own statistics, these are statistics and internal medical studies, done by far higher qualified scientists than you claim to be., or anyone else here.meow



Just the 'diet ' recommended , and eating every couple hours is shown to CREATE insulin dependance. Another few million people and rising as medical 'mistakes'., become high profit.

dearpharmacist.com

EDIT: I am sure the scientists' denomintated ' like crazy when studying all this, given the highly prejudicial conclusions they came up with. The truth is probably that the statistics are much much greater than reported.

You are the one who is .. all the horrible things you put off onto others.

Further , you think 'science' is going to prove or disprove something, it does either one. Science isnt life, or 'god', it is man -made, and it is not perfect. EPIC FAIL Science doesnt prove or disprove anything. It is all fantasy illusion, and delusion. A false print and explanation , placed over the wonderment of inexplicable life and the universe.

I dont advertise my credentials.

Answer 14

Weird game shows (and porn?), anime, great gadgets and toys and now this?



Japan is awesome.

Answer 15

How can you die from tiny amounts of water?