A Fair Trial for Homeopathy?

February 2010

by Louise Mclean

The simple thing that the skeptics seem to find terribly hard to understand, is that we are all individuals, we are all different!  This is how we apply the correct homeopathic medicine, through individualisation - unlike conventional medicine which has a one-size-fits-all approach.

Therefore it would be very difficult to trial a homeopathic medicine by giving for example all people with asthma or hayfever, the same medicine, as they might all need a different one!  There are about 300 homeopathic medicines for asthma and about 80 for hayfever listed in the Homeopathic Repertory.  So it is almost impossible to use the trials of conventional medicine using only one medicine, to test homeopathy.

The ‘Mass Overdose’ of randomly taken remedies for people who presumably were not ill, on 30^th January 2010, could never be a proper test of homeopathic medicine.

You can only give a remedy, carefully chosen, to address symptoms that need to be cured.  Taking any old remedies is probably the worst possible nonsensical approach and I think even the public will view it as such..

You cannot randomly take homeopathic medicines, as they will only work, when carefully selected, for something that needs curing because of the principle of 'Like Cures Like'.  After careful study of a number of different remedies, you are given the one which best fits the description of your state.

The most ideal way to prove the benefits of homeopathy would be to take for example a well known condition and get 50 doctors and 50 homeopaths to treat 10 cases each over a period of say one year. Doctors would give their choice of medicine to the patients and homeopaths would give their choice of medicine to the patients.   Each doctor and homeopath will have a username and password and record the results on an online database, which will be compared at the end of that time.

Noone would know the results until the year is up, not even the doctors or homeopaths.  The patients would sign a consent form before they agree to be part of the study.  Then the whole thing can be published and for data protection purposes, patients could be for example, Mrs. G, aged 46 from Liverpool.  The patients would also have to agree to come forward at the end of the study as proof, if necessary.

It would just be a matter of finding 50 doctors and 50 homeopathic practitioners who would agree to take part.  If a patient is cured within the year, it would be recorded that they were discharged and no further follow up was necessary.  The costs would be for the website and collating the final results.  Doctors and homeopaths would be paid as usual and would merely have to record their treatment online, just as they do anyway in their patient notes.  As long as everybody records their notes honestly, this would be a fair test, which would compare conventional medicine to homeopathic medicine.