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Homeopathy And Controversies In Science-Based Medicine

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Homeopathy was invented by a German physician, Christian Hahnemann (1755-1843). The idea behind his invention was his dissatisfaction with the medicine of his time. He used a small amount of cinchona tree bark containing quinine (drug used to treat malaria) to develop malaria symptoms. This led him to develop the first law of homeopathy, ‘let likes be cured by likes’. Homeopathy which is based on “like cures like” principle has remained the most controversial medical treatment in the world for a long time. According the principle of ‘like cures like’, diluting a medicinal substance a number of times renders it more potent. Although this concept lacks biological conceivability, homeopathy has been cited as the widely used and most common form …show more content…

all the available evidence concerning the claim should be taken into account. A review of the existing literature such the “Science-Based Medicine, Exploring issues and controversies in science and medicine” supports the homeopathic claims of The Use of Small Doses. There are several published evidences supporting homeopathic claim of small doses. Also, the existing scientific evidences supporting homeopathy’s law of similar is based on the potentization of medicinal substances. Finally, there are various benefits that have been associated with homeopathy such as curing of various epidemics like typhoid, pneumonia, yellow fever etc. Modern homeopaths have made attempts aimed at justifying the law of similar by likening it to the success of vaccines. Vaccines involve administering small doses of an infectious disease with the aim of preventing the occurrence of such a disease later on in life. Conversely, the correlation between vaccines and homeopath is not the same since in vaccines only small measurable doses of attenuated organism is given through a known mechanism to activate an immune response in human bodies unlike homeopathic treatments that lack such an analogy. This means that homeopathic claims concerning the use of small doses satisfy the comprehensiveness tenet of …show more content…

There have been numerous studies such as multiple systematic review of clinical trials and systematic reviews of the systematic reviews. One of such review is Ernest’s “A systematic review of systematic review of homeopathy” published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. This systematic review concluded that the existing evidence does not support claims that homeopathy is anything more than a mere placebo. Similarly, other different systematic reviews elsewhere failed to provide strong evidence in support of homeopathy. These reviews showed that there was no condition that responded better to homeopathic treatment than other control interventions such as placebo. These systematic reviews collectively concluded that there was no homeopathic remedy that demonstrated clinical effects different from placebo. Therefore, the claim does not satisfy the sufficiency tenet of

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