If the medicines did nothing, they are thus not the CAUSE of your uncles inability to walk without aid are they?

There is no cure for arthritis, and even many prescription medicines do not remove pain or enable the sufferers to wak without aid do they?

No, they weren't the cause, it was the homeopath's insistence that these medicines "would" provide all these things that was the cause. The homeopath actually said "If we had caught this earlier, we could have cured your arthritis", that should reasonably be assumed to be nonsense, but when heard by a weak, vulnerable old man, its false hope that he happily paid for, and paid through the nose for I should add.
I should also add, that while I accept that conventional medicine may never have helped my uncle, we will never now know. What I do know is that now he has been seeking their help he has been getting pain relief and equipment to assist him, none of this he got from homeopaths.

And yes I do think that if something has no side effects then its either lies or ineffective. The body is a very complex machine, as is life, it is extremely difficult to introduce an outside agent that will have only one effect on the body, another example is that homeopathic medicines are not regulated or tested in the same way as conventional medicine, why? because there's no need to, it has no physical effect on the body, so why should it be tested?

Further, looking at the actual processes of homeopathic medicines, its hard to see how they could possibly have an effect. The idea of "Like cures like" is the idea that whatever causes an effect on a healthy person, will have the opposite effect on an unwell person. For example, in homeopathic terms, the cure for insomnia is Caffeine to help you sleep, because Caffeine keeps a healthy person awake, it will help someone who is "too awake" to sleep. Please explain where the logic is in that? Thankfully, not even the homeopaths subscribe to this notion, because they have another principle, and that is that the more diluted something is the "stronger" it becomes, or what they term as "Potentization".
Following this principle, is the process of making up a homeopathic medicine, which is usually measured in their own way with the "C Scale" as its called. This is the strength of dilution that has been applied to a formula, so for example, Oscillococcinum which is a homeopathic remedy is made to 400C.
In order to achieve 1C, a single active drop of the "Like for Like" ingredient is added to 100 parts water, it is then shaken up for a bit, then a single drop of that is put into another 100 parts of water. You now have 1C on the homeopathic scale, no further active ingredient is added to the mix however you still have to do that 400 times before you have the approved homeopathic medicine.

That is quite a hard thing to visualize, so another fairly popular, but accurate interpretation of that is an analogy as follows:

"As there are only about 10^80 atoms in the entire observable universe, a dilution of one molecule in the observable universe would be about 40C. Oscillococcinum would thus require 10^320 more universes to simply have one molecule in the final substance."

The chance that in any homeopathic medicine, that there is anything except water or substrate is utterly unfathomable. Water allegedly having a "memory" of the things it comes into contact with is equally nonsensical, since you would have an entire library of homeopathic medicines in your tap.

I am very sorry for going off about this btw, it is a subject that I have looked into greatly and whenever I see it, it always gets my attention, if I have derailed things a bit then please accept my apologies.

Unfortunately some do use homeopathy to treat life threatening situations, not least as without qualified medical assessment the seriousness of the situation may not be recognised. I have known people try to treat cancer with homeopathy.

However part of my point was that doing nothing, i.e. avoiding any treatments, can be a higher risk than the x% chance of having a bad reaction.

Some herbal remedies can work in some situations but the strength and so the consistency isn't controlled to the level of licensed pharmaceuticals. E.g. herbs grown in different areas, in different soils will contain different ingredients, and the weather conditions during growth can also affect the end product as can use or absence of fertilisers.

That aside, serious side effects can arise by combining self-treatment active-ingredient forms of homeopathy with conventional treatment, particularly if the vet/doctor has not been informed.

As in my post you quoted (#4), I specifically referred to "misused" remedies and I did point out previously (below) the wide range of treatments lumped together as "Homeopathy", from "harmless memory of water" (where the only risk would be from failure to treat), to other homeopathic remedies containing active ingredients (differentiating these as having potential for harm, unlike water-only remedies) as part of the remedy , or to preserve the remedy;

Although some human medicines work very similarly in dogs and people, dogs do have a different metabolism e.g theobromine poisoning, so it cannot be guaranteed in all circumstances what the appropriate dog dose of something would be, or if it would automatically be safe for a dog if it is safe for a person.

If you need something to calm him, what is the problem?

It you prefer "natural" remedies you could look at Zylkene, a calming milk protein for cats and dogs?

Some people also find pheromone therapy (DAP) helpful.

I have looked into it too in some considerable detail.

If it is a load of bunkum as you claim, why do you think that rational scientists such as vets are also members of the BAHVS, what do you think their motivation is?

Are you saying they that all homoepathic vets are deluded?

Anything can be misused, conventional drugs, food, water, that is what happens when people have freedom of choice.

Because it makes them more money, brings them more patients and sometimes people can just be very misled and can misinterpret what is actually happening when an event occurs.

Yes, I do think that they are deluded, its exceptionally easy to be deluded and to misinterpret things, it happens to us all on a daily basis. Hell, I am just back from the shops and I was fairly convinced everyone that looked at me was judging the fact that I haven't shaved today, that is a delusion.

Yes you are very right, that particular homeopath had a very poor moral compass, sadly he is backed up by homeopathy which also claims it can cure Arthritis. Homeopathic websites, and other homeopaths that I have spoken to fully back his claims and actually say that homeopathy can treat "almost any disease", this kind of misleading information can lead to people making poor choices about their own, or their pet's, health and leaving them worse than they started off under the assumption that this will actually cure their ailments.

In total he visited four, all claimed the same thing and two of them very specifically mentioned "If caught early enough, homeopathy can cure arthritis". This misleading information is my biggest issue with homeopathy in particular, it claims to be extremely "potent" but has no side effects at all, no danger to pregnant women, children, or anyone while being 100% natural? Poisons were concocted from flowers and plants, so how can they use these materials and manage to purge the ill effects while retaining only the good? That makes no sense.

I will always remember watching James Randi taking boxes of homeopathic medicines, one entire box of tablets, or liquid in one go before starting his lectures, in order to show how truly ineffective they are. Hes yet to have any ill effects, or indeed any effects as a result.

Deep sleep therapy caused the deaths of 26 patients when it was first introduced between the 60s and 70s, I may have the wrong therapy, but that is not no side effects. The beneficial effects of sleep in itself are beyond a doubt, there is nothing nonsensical about sleep as therapy and this was one point why I made a point of underlining the distinction of homeopathy versus other therapies that are lumped in with it.

Light treatment does have side effects including damage to skin, cataracts, macular degeneration, headaches, nausea and a host of other things. So yes it does have side effects.

As I did originally say though, the distinction between homeopathy and other therapies is an important one to make because of this very situation which you are highlighting.

Of course, we are human, we are prone to error. We got smoking very seriously wrong when it first became popularized for example. Unfortunately the appearance of something working, is not always a sign of actual improvement. You might take painkillers to ease back pain, does the cause of the back pain disappear? No, your simply addressing the pain, not the issue. The painkillers "appear" to solve the issue, but they don't, the cause is still there but it has now been masked.

Counterintuitive solutions also make sense. They might appear not to when your in the situation and your trying to find a solution, but afterward when you look at them they do make sense and you can see why it worked. There is a reason that they work and it makes sense. The reason it appears wrong is poor understanding of the issue in the first place. The homeopathic process does not make sense, and further the very opposite approach does in fact seem to work.
Conventional doctors claim that using a relatively large dosage of a substance with moderating effects on a particular symptom will help to ease that symptom, homeopathic practices say that using an infinitesimally small amount of a substance which "causes" the symptom will cure it. Which of these approaches makes sense? Do you cover a stab wound with a bandage larger than the would you have received to attempt to stop the bleeding, or do you take a tiny knife and cover up the wound with that and hope that it will get better?

I hope that i've managed to make some sense in what I have posted.

If you do not believe in homeopathy there is no issue is there, you just do not use it.

I think bungee jumping is dangerous, therefore I do not use it, and nobody will persuade me otherwise.

Simples!

I spoke to a lady from the Many Tears website about Bailey and his aggression towards other dogs and she suggested some tactics to help, one of the suggestions was to try homeopathy to calm him as she thinks some of his aggression is due to anxiety and worry.

I was just asking for other people's opinions and experiences and whether it would be worth a try

There are lots of things you can try but in a case such as your dog's why not visit a homeopathic vet? You can ask your vet to refer you.


They will work up a history (you do not just get something off the shelf) and prescribe the correct remedy or remedies for your dog.

FWIW I had great success with a constitutional remedy with a rescue I had with the canine equivalent of ADHD.

http://www.bahvs.com/