Re: They walk amongst us
"Offer some promise..."
The article you cite also points out that the quality of the majority of those studies are essentially crap.
Furthermore: http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)67177-2/abstract
"When account was taken for these biases in the analysis, there was weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions. This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects."
While I understand your frustration with conventional medicine (you certainly seem to have been on the receiving end of a shocking amount of incompetence), your are making a logical faux pas that I see very often. Just because conventional med has failed you, doesn't automatically mean homeopathy is better. Indeed, I am basically your opposite. I had a family member who waffled on proper medical treatment and instead chased after one sham after another. The end result was that he died, painfully and miserably, and put the family into a terrible debt in the process.
(Also, regarding your goat's warts, it's impossible to comment since there's no way of knowing exactly what you gave them. For all we know the warts receded for the simple reason that they got a good wash with clean water.)
Conventional medicine isn't perfect. It never will be. But it *does* improve, because it is real science. Homeopathy is *not* science. It would be just as effective to go on one of those televangelist shows and have the preacher wallop you in the forehead. The problem with placebo is that it is a very real phenomenon. The body is a remarkable machine that can do a surprisingly amount of things, which is why we arn't even close to completely understanding it. And the more we learn, the more humbling the experience. (If you compare attitudes today to attitudes from several decades or centuries ago, the difference in confidence is striking). But it's also why placebo is the benchmark for drug studies. If a drug is unable to do better than placebo, then the drug is classified as worthless, as it should be. This is why homeopathy is considered worthless: Because it does nothing that the body itself can't already do itself. All you are doing is shelling out money for very expensive theatre.
Where my blood begins to boil, is when these charlatans claim that their theatre rivals actual medicine, and people get sick and/or die as a result. Thanks to antivaxxers (which overwhelmingly overlap homeopathists by demographic) efforts to destroy herd immunity , we are now seeing resurgences of diseases that were all but eliminated in North America, such as measles.
This hurts not only the antivaxxer population, but it also hurts the people who are forced to intermingle with them. A virus won't care if you are an antivaxxer or if you have a genuine allergy to a component in a vaccine. All it sees is an opportunity to infect, so herd immunity is critical for these vaccines to protect a population. But there's no way to sue someone for infecting your child with polio, so this nonsense gets to continue. Meanwhile the poor kid gets to be debilitated for life due to no fault of their own.
So yes, placebo "medicine" *does* have a cost beyond the sticker price. Just because you arn't the one that has to pay it doesn't mean there are no consequences.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
