Sound Investment?

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Homoeopathic hospitals in the UK are faced with closure as they are deemed an unnecessary drain on NHS resources...

Imagine you’re the shareholder of a large pharmaceutical company...

You’ve invested in that company and therefore in the pharmaceutical industry.

Naturally, you’d like some good returns on your investment. In the 2006 top 20 companies highest returns on assets there are 4 pharmaceutical companies

So, if you were developing medicines how would YOU generate the maximum amount of revenue?

• The medicines would have to be exclusive to the company that developed them for the longest possible time


• The medicines would have to be expensive as well as exclusive


• You would want the medicines to be given to as many people as possible


• You would want the medicines to be taken for the longest possible time, for the rest of someone’s life if at all possible


• You would want them to be given as young as possible especially if someone is to take it for the rest of their life


• You would want any side-effects of the medicines to be treatable by medicines that your company also makes


• You would want to make medicines that people take, even if they have no symptoms so as to ‘prevent’ illness

11 million people in the UK take a cholesterol-lowering drug called Lipitor, which is a statin. This brings in £12billion each year for Pfizer that makes it.

So, hopefully, you can see why it's paramount to the pharmaceutical industry that homoeopathy is proven not to work.

What's also apparent, is that if homoeopathy doesn't work, why do they need to knock it?

Immunisation anomalies

Some of you may already know that I’m of scientific stock and assess problems from an analytical point of view. It’s taken a while for me to incorporate my intuition and hunches into my practice and indeed my everyday life.

Now, vaccination theory and our immunisation programme are alleged to be based on sound scientific evidence. However, some of the theory and execution of the programme does appear to have gaping holes in it…

• When a child is given a series of vaccination injections it is expected that the child will produce a mild fever as a sign of an appropriate response of their immune system. So, why is Calpol routinely recommended to be administered to reduce the expected response? Does it reduce the ‘favourable’ effect of the vaccination? Or worse still, does it increase the likelihood of an unfavourable outcome?

• Although this isn’t an anomaly, I find it just rude… Vaccination comes from the word vaccinia, which is Latin for cow. This stems from Edward Jenner’s use of cowpox to deal with smallpox. But don’t you think that referring to mass immunisation of people as herd immunity is taking it a little too far?

• Smallpox is quite an interesting one actually… Have you heard anyone say “… well, vaccines have eradicated smallpox”? In England, free smallpox vaccines were introduced in 1840 and made compulsory in 1853. Between 1857 and 1859 there were 14,244 deaths from smallpox. After a population rise of 7%, the death rate rose by 40.8% to 20,059 between 1863 and 1865. In 1867, evaders of the vaccine were prosecuted, so very few were unvaccinated. After a population rise of 9%, the death rate rose by 123% to 44, 840 between 1870 and 1872. So, this evidence indicates that the smallpox vaccine increased the severity and incidence of smallpox when all other illness (that at the time had no vaccine) were on the decline.

• Ever heard of scarlet fever? Ever seen any one with it? At the beginning of the 1900s, scarlet fever accounted for the most deaths amongst the childhood diseases, and yet this disease declined in the same manner as measles, whooping cough, tetanus, diphtheria and TB. Ever heard of a scarlet fever vaccine? There isn’t one. If one had been introduced, would we still be using it?

• Tetanus is virtually unheard of in developed countries. It is estimated that 40% of the UK population doesn’t have an up-to-date vaccine of tetanus. In the building industry, where one may expect the incidence of tetanus to be higher due to nature of injuries sustained at work, there is no tetanus. Isn’t it plausible that we may actually have natural immunity that prevents such an illness from taking hold?

• As a physiologist, I learned that about 80% of immune system is on the outside. Very crudely, we are a hollow tube from mouth to… the other end. Our lungs and skin are also ‘outside’ (in the sense that they directly touch the outside world). Our body keeps things out it doesn’t want and utilises the things it does want. So, when we are naturally dealing with immunological challenges, we first deal with it at this level… So why do we by pass all this part of our immune system and inject? Does an unnatural exposure produce an unnatural response? Well, vaccines don’t produce an immunity in the same way as natural exposure to a disease.

• Furthermore, just because you’re exposed to something, doesn’t mean you're going to develop symptoms from it. I’ve been exposed to people with TB and not ‘caught it’ (I’m not vaccinated against TB… My GP said it didn’t work). A particular person for whom I’ve been exposed to who had TB was also vaccinated against it! Whoa!

• So, they had TB antibodies… and got TB. It is assumed that if you have antibodies to a disease you are protected against it. Here in the UK, measles vaccine, part of the MMR vaccine, is quoted as being 90% effective. This translates as 90% of the recipients will produce ‘necessary’ antibody levels. There is no definition of immunity derived from a certain level of antibodies.

• …and finally… Since vaccines don’t produce a lifelong immunity, when will adults need their next MMR booster so they don’t get these illnesses as adults?

When we are unwell

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• Our body throws out symptoms as a reaction
• Our body is trying to heal itself
• When a doctor prescribes a medicine, they wait to see what the medicine does
• When a homoeopath prescribes a medicine, we wait to see what the person does
• We concentrate on the reaction of the patient and not the action of the medicine
• Surely, it's better to promote the healing process of your body rather than to hinder it?

How sick are you?

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What illnesses did you have as a baby or child?

What illnesses do you have now?

Most of the babies and children I see are brought to me for help with skin complaints such as eczema, yet I see this much rarely as a presenting complaint in adults.

How have your previous illnesses been treated?

How are your illnesses treated now?

Eczema, if it's pretty bad, is treated with medicines such as hydrocortisone. This is a steroid and produces its effects by reducing the immune system. The idea is that your skin is over-responding, so to cure it, the immune system is suppressed so that it no longer reacts excessively.

Often, when the treatment is stopped, the symptoms return. This is because the underlying reason as to why your body is producing these symptoms hasn't been addressed by suppressing them. My parents were told I'd grow out of eczema. Superficially, I did. My skin was much better by the time I was about seven. The reality isn't quite so clean cut...

Rather than my skin expressing my over-sensitive immune system, my lungs were doing it instead in the form of asthma. However, as far as the dermatologist was concerned, I was cured.
Eczema and asthma are genetically, and immunologically related. Basically, asthma is eczema of the lungs. Which is more serious? To have eczema or asthma? Unless you've had both you might find it difficult to choose. I'd sooner have eczema because it's a more superficial disorder. Actually, given the choice I'd have neither thank you very much! Thankfully, I'm free of both of them now.

So, where am I heading with this...

Much fewer adults come to me to help them deal with eczema. Eczema is much less common in adults than it is in children, largely because you've 'grown out of it'... or more likely, it's been pushed inwards by the medicines that were used to treat it.

When you have homoeopathic treatment, what was suppressed, can become healed.

Since homoeopathic treatment works with your body, promoting your body's own healing processes, it pushes what was suppressed, back out again, so you get better from inside out!

Essentially, it helps you to be stronger.

This process, where your symptoms go from inside to outside as you get better is called
Hering's Law of Cure.

Dr Constantine Hering 1800 – 1880
Born in Germany
Hering was asked by his superior (who was too busy!) to write a book on homoeopathic heresy. On reading about homoeopathy, Hering was converted!

Hering's Law of Cure states that:

Cure takes place from -

inside to out (ie from deep organs to one's nearer the surface)
in the reverse order of their appearance
and from the top to the bottom of your body.

It therefore stands to reason that:

Progressing illness takes place from -
outside to inside
and from the bottom to the top of your body (ie ascending)

These wise words of Hering provide a very useful tool in practice in ascertaining whether you are getting better or worse with your treatment...

so...

How sick are you?

Is Homoeopathy, a science or an art?

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…or indeed neither… or both?

David Colquhoun Professor of Pharmacology University College London has a bee in his bonnet over this one...

Science degrees without the science

SUMMARY: Some UK universities offer science degrees in complementary medicine. David Colquhoun argues that these are not science but anti-science, and asks who is to blame.
David Colquhoun, Nature 446, 373 - 374 (22 Mar 2007)

This also appeared in The Guardian on the same day headlined:
Homeopathy science degrees 'gobbledygook'

The full article in The Guardian can be found at
http://education.guardian.co.uk/chooseadegree/story/0,,2040111,00.html

I suppose it’s important to first define science and art

Science: systemic study and knowledge of natural or physical phenomena; any branch of study concerned with observed material facts. Collins Gem English Dictionary 1983 edition.

Art: skill; human skill as opposed to nature, creative skill in painting, poetry, music etc.; any of the works produced thus; profession, craft, knack, contrivance, cunning, trick; system of rules – pl. certain branches of learning, languages, history etc., as distinct from natural science. Collins Gem English Dictionary 1983 edition.

My academic route to becoming a homoeopath was as follows –

Physics, Chemistry and Biology A-Level (all grade C)
Physiology and Pharmacology BSc, (Joint Honours), 2:1 from King’s College, University of London.

It’s interesting that when we learned physiology, we studied cells, tissues, organs, systems and then the whole organism and how the systems interact with each other, yet when we learned pharmacology we learned about crude medicines and how those affect lots of systems of the body, producing many side-effects - to the final years where we studied smaller and smaller aspects of receptors – how to block them, get them to stay open for longer.

As pharmacologists go, I wasn’t bad… I had research that I’d carried out, published in the British Journal of Pharmacology (Hay AJ Hamburger M Hostettmann K Hoult JR Toxic inhibition of smooth muscle contractility by plant-derived sesquiterpenescaused by their chemically reactive alpha- methylenebutyrolactone functions.In: Br J Pharmacol (1994 May) 112(1):9-12ISSN: 0007-1188)

…but I moved on…

I then studied homoeopathy at The College of Homoeopathy’s 3 year full-time vocational qualification leading to a Licentiate of The College of Homoeopathy (LCH) and subsequent registration with The Society of Homeopaths (RSHom).

Pharmacology – is that a science or an art? Well, it’s a science I hear you cry. My Rang and Dale’s pharmacology text book initially fuelled my curious mind by describing homoeopathy as ‘absurd’.

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy introduced his equivalent of clinical trials to pharmacology and then homoeopathy at a time when drilling into people’s skull’s, blood letting and the wide use of mercury or quicksilver were commonplace. I’m lead to believe that the term quackery actually comes from the widespread use of quicksilver in medicine when it was found to be pretty bad at healing people but some still practiced using it.

Unwittingly, two comments from a renowned pharmacologist, Dr Clive Page, now Professor Clive Page, an expert in allergies and asthma, fuelled yet more research into homoeopathic thinking by asking - “Why do you never find a person with asthma and eczema that’s getting worse at the same time?”

I don’t know whether he had the answer to this question or not, but pretty much all practicing homoeopaths I know would be able to answer this.

The next cracker he came out with was – “Why do we have fever…It’s our body’s defence… It’s our fight back. It’s our immune system fighting back.” I’d like to add, someone who’s dead with an infection won’t have a fever. He then posed what happens when we take an aspirin to reduce that fever… “you prolong the infection, you’re reducing your body’s fight back. Your body produced that fever as a defence to the infection.” – pure genius.

I feel he’d have made a great homoeopath!

Homoeopathy works with that fight back to health, our fight back is unique to each person, hence the homoeopathic medicine needs to be unique too…

Is that science or art?

Have you considered when someone is vaccinated, especially in children, it’s commonplace to give Calpol soon after that vaccination to reduce the mild fever that is produced. How does that affect the reaction your child has to the vaccine?

– is the application of Calpol after a vaccination science or art?

How a homoeopathic medicine is made from a substance and tested before use is science as defined above.

How that medicine is manufactured is science.

How we elicit symptoms from a client is essentially an art, although it is a skill learnt from observing expert homoeopaths, so it is learnt in a scientific way but perhaps not practiced thus.

Now, here’s something I’d like you to consider…

I have homoeopathic medicines made from sulphur, a snake venom, a daisy, the spit of a rabid dog and one made from gold.

Which one do you think is the most expensive?

Which one would I be likely to prescribe if I had a budget on my medicines that I prescribe?

What would happen if I was encouraged by the people who made sulphur to prescribe more of it?

Is that science or art?

Have a look at the definitions if you need to remind yourself :o)

You may be surprised to learn that in homoeopathy, the sulphur, the snake venom, the daisy, the rabid dog spit and the one made from gold all cost the same.

You may also be surprised to hear they are made by a pharmacist following a scientific procedure… and to be honest, if you wanted to buy a homoeopathic medicine, would you buy it from a chemist shop or an art shop?

My consultations include the price of homoeopathic medicines so it doesn’t influence what is given.

I am never encouraged to prescribe another homoeopathic medicine over another, apart from the principle that it’s the most appropriate one for healing the client as decided by myself and often the client too.

I read about new homoeopathic medicines in homoeopathic journals. This does influence me but this isn’t advertised to me, and the person who submits the articles aren’t paid, neither at the point it is submitted nor do they receive commission when I purchase the homoeopathic medicine for my clients.

Is that science or art?

In my heart of hearts, it doesn’t matter to me whether homoeopathy is classified as an art or science. I studied homoeopathy on a course that was dedicated to homoeopathy, neither BSc nor BA, it was a vocational qualification.

I practice homoeopathy to help people get well again. I do this through my consultations and homoeopathic medicines.

So, if you were going offer homoeopathy at a university, which faculty would you put it in?

The difference between "must" and "will"

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How many times have you said to someone,

"We must keep in touch." ?

How many times have you said to yourself,

"I must paint that wall."
"I must start that book I've always wanted to write."
"I must change my job."
"I must start a pension fund."
"I must stop smoking."
"I must tidy up."
"I must start using my camera."
"I must change that shirt I got for Christmas for the next size up."
"I must eat less and exercise more." ?

How many times did you do what you said you must do?

Wouldn't you be more likely to achieve those goals if you substitute must for will ?

"We will keep in touch."
"I will paint that wall."
"I will start that book I've always wanted to write."
"I will change my job."
"I will start a pension fund."
"I will stop smoking."
"I will tidy up."
"I will start using my camera."
"I will change that shirt I got for Christmas for the next size up."
"I will eat less and exercise more."

By changing that one word, the energy of your intent has changed.
Your sentence has been potentised.

If you have trouble changing your 'must' into 'will', a homoeopathically prescribed medicine will help you achieve this... and then your goals.

To view more visit www.homeopathical.com