marketing and selling homeopathic medicine for children borders on child abuse.

[cleanhippie]

There is nothing in “Brauer Natural Medicine for Children” !
Posted on April 27, 2011 by Martin

I don’t object or care much when adults take homeopathic “medicine”, i.e. water, because if their pain or symptoms are really bad, they’ll move to real medicine soon enough. But marketing and selling homeopathic medicine for children borders on child abuse. Never mind the false advertising.
So I saw this child at work today, a 6 week old infant, that mum brought in because of it being unsettled and intermittently crying due to colic. Mum had done all the right things already, sought advice from the maternal health nurse, changed the formula feed, and she had gone to a chemist where she purchased, in good faith, this product, Brauer Colic Relief. The package suggests a dosing regimen, so not to overdose the kids:

Infants under 6 months: Give 0.5 mL every half hour for up to 4 doses if required until symptoms abate. May be given 4 hourly thereafter. Infants 6 months and over: Give 1 mL every half hour for up to 4 doses if required until symptoms abate. May be given 4 hourly thereafter. Use only as directed. If symptoms persist consult your healthcare practitioner.

Ok, so what’s in this colic relief, that we have to be so careful with the dosage ? Let’s see :

Contains equal parts of:
Bryonia 30C, Chamomilla 6C, Colocynthis 6C, Mag. phos. 6C.

Oh. No, wait. That can’t be right. That would mean there’s not actually any ingredient in it ! In homeopathic “medicine”, a C means a 1:100 dilution. So 6C is 1: 100^6. But, that makes it likely that in this brew there is not a single fucking molecule of Camomile left! Not that Camomile would help with colic, most likely, even if you overdosed on the stuff, but in this “Colic Relief” preparation, there is actually not anything other than water in there at all ! You get the idea, so you know what would be in a 30C solution of Colocynthis. That’s right, not a single molecule of the stuff.

http://furiouspurpose.me/2011/04/27/there-is-nothing-in-brauer-natural-medicine-for-children/

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Why does anyone think that a product with "nothing" in it will treat or cure anything? WTF?

[MineralMan]

1. No argument from me.

It's all bullshit. Telling people it's not is immoral, unethical, and should be illegal.

[woo me with science]

2. It's fraud, period. It's just as wrong to sell it to adults,

claiming it's medicine.

[HuckleB]

3. Exactly! +1,000,000,000 ....

[eShirl]

4. then there's the homeopathic "medicine" for pets

:mad:

[Ian David]

5. I always hide the homeopathic teething and ear ache "medicine" behind things at the store. n/t

[ZombieHorde]

6. I used to work for a group home company that used placebos on some of

the clients. They worked really well and had no side effects.

Most of the clients did not have placebos, but some did.

When people say they feel better after taking homeopathic water, I believe them. Placebos work for some people.

[laconicsax]

13. "Works" is really an illusion.

The placebo effect is only in the mind--the patient thinks there's an effect where none exists. Give a placebo to treat something and nothing is treated except for the patient's appraisal of their condition.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4304

[ZombieHorde]

16. I completely agree the effect is an illusion, but some people react well to illusions.

Religion is an effective placebo for some.

[laconicsax]

19. And as in that case, "placebo" means "nothing."

Placebos are equally as effective as gods.

[ZombieHorde]

20. I agree. nt

[Richardo]

7. No "borders on" about it

It's criminal negligence at best.*


*Disclaimer: Not a lawyer.

[JDPriestly]

8. Actually, when we lived in Europe, our doctor ordered the import

of a homeopathic medication to sort of immunize my three-year-old from the terrible skin allergies she had suffered since birth. It helped. A lot. I would have to say it worked.

I believe that some of our allergy treatments are actually homeopathic in nature. That is my only experience with homeopathic medicines. But don't categorically dismiss the concept of homeopathy. It's like any other scientific theory. Each application in each category of situation needs to be tested against experience and reality.

[cleanhippie]

10. "It's like any other scientific theory" - No, it is not like that at all.

The scientific method has been applied to homeopathy, and found it to be no better than placebo. If you truly think "It's like any other scientific theory", then you need to revisit just what a scientific theory really is.

Here is a star for you.

Just what is a scientific theory?

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/528971/scientific-theory


What is the scientific method?

http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/appendixe/appendixe.html

[JDPriestly]

14. It helped my daughter. What she had was essentially an immunization

of a tiny dose of what she was allergic to. I think that is the method used here in some allergy cases.

[cleanhippie]

15. Then that does NOT sound like "homeopathy".

I guess more info is need on just what your child was going through. Glad to hear its all worked out.

[JDPriestly]

17. I was told by the doctor that it was a homeopathic treatment for which

she had to get special authorization from the health insurer.

I suspect that a treatment based on the homeopathic concept is no longer considered to be homeopathic once it has been proved to be efficacious through scientific testing. The problem is that most homeopathic remedies either are never tested or fail the tests in that a placebo proves just as effective. That is what I meant when I said that homeopathic medicines have to be scientifically proved just like all other medicines.

[cleanhippie]

18. You said this was in the UK, right?

They recently removed any and all homeopathic remedies and medicines from the NIH program. They conducted a 10 year study and found that homeopathy worked no better than placebo, so they no longer authorize it as its a waste of money.

[JDPriestly]

21. No. The medication was imported from the UK to Austria.

I seriously doubt that a three-year-old could experience a placebo effect when it comes to very serious allergies.

[cleanhippie]

23. You are probably right, which also means that whatever was prescribed was NOT "homeopathic"

but was in fact, a compound with an actual active ingredient. Without more detail on just what this medicine really was, its hard to really discuss it further. As I stated before, i am glad it all worked out.

[JDPriestly]

25. As I think about that medication that was given to my daughter,

I am wondering about what the difference is between homeopathic medicines and conventional medicines.

I thought that a homeopathic medicine was a medicine containing a very, very small part of something that could cause a person an allergy or illness, that the idea is that the person taking such a small portion of it somehow can build a tolerance for it. That is what I understood about what my daughter was given.

But now I am wondering what is the difference between a vaccine that contains a small portion of something, maybe live smallpox or TB or something, and homeopathic medicines. Certainly vaccines are not homeopathic medicines. Do you know about this?

[cleanhippie]

26. This will give you an idea.

Homeopathic products are made from minerals, botanical substances, and several other sources. If the original substance is soluble, one part is diluted with either nine or ninety-nine parts of distilled water and/or alcohol and shaken vigorously (succussed); if insoluble, it is finely ground and pulverized in similar proportions with powdered lactose (milk sugar). One part of the diluted medicine is then further diluted, and the process is repeated until the desired concentration is reached. Dilutions of 1 to 10 are designated by the Roman numeral X (1X = 1/10, 3X = 1/1,000, 6X = 1/1,000,000). Similarly, dilutions of 1 to 100 are designated by the Roman numeral C (1C = 1/100, 3C = 1/1,000,000, and so on). Most remedies today range from 6X to 30X, but products of 30C or more are marketed.

A 30X dilution means that the original substance has been diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. Assuming that a cubic centimeter of water contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth. Imagine placing a drop of red dye into such a container so that it disperses evenly. Homeopathy's "law of infinitesimals" is the equivalent of saying that any drop of water subsequently removed from that container will possess an essence of redness. Robert L. Park, Ph.D., a prominent physicist who is executive director of The American Physical Society, has noted that since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth.


http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html

[trotsky]

22. I think you are confused as to what "homeopathic" means.

Lots of people are.

[Confusious]

12. Homeopathy goes against every scientific theory

It is not any sort of scientific "theory" period. It's bullshit, pure and simple.

[HuckleB]

9. Putting Homeopathy Into Perspective

http://madartlab.com/2011/03/03/putting-homeopathy-into-perspective/

[cleanhippie]

11. You should repost that as an OP.

[HuckleB]

24. Perhaps, in a few days.

:hi:

[Crunchy Frog]

27. Well, I have to admit that I picked up some homeopathic cough syrup

for my kids the other day. I mean, I know that all it is is flavored honey with infinitemimally dilute amounts of various mumbo jumbo, but it's something. They don't reccomend any real cough medicine for kids their age, and there is some evidence that honey itself has some efficacy. So what the hell.

If you want to accuse me of child abuse, then have at it.