Talk:789 - 12. Statement

Andreas:   It is all about the self-healing powers (= Dynamis)
In short The body works!
This is why homeopathy or any medical intervention works - and this is also the reason for placebo.
(There are many good quotes in this from famous people)
I think by having that as the first self evident statement we are on the winning side.
Then we can add.
And homeopathy is one of the best ways of making the body work - and the main reason we are not able to explain homeopathy is the lack of knowledge of the mechanisms and potentials of the bodies own ways of healing it self.
Also allopathy and surgery are dependent on the same mechanisms as homeopathy - but sometimes (rather often) they challenge the bodies own ways of working and add to the problem
And third: This is what we wrongly call placebo. So when somebody says it is placebo - we answer yes Placebo is a name for the bodies intrinsic way of healing and every natural and true healing is based on that - any other way of influencing the body can be harmful.
This way of arguing I believe is a winner - let us next explore the science and the different aspects of placebo etc.
Statements like:   Homeopathy works because the body works!
All kinds of therapy and medicine is dependent of the bodies ability to heal itself - some of them make it harder for the body in the long run.
All kinds of medicine rely on the body - non of them is doing less harm, hitting the bulls eye and supporting the body on its own conditions as homeopathy  

 

Joerg: Medicus curat, Natura sanat. (Doctors treat, Nature heals.), which has been agreed upon through all medical history and by all approaches. So this is very firm ground, to start arguments from. And it is definitely TRUE.  

 

Andreas:  I think by using a self obvious argument that they cannot argue against we have already pulled them on our side of the track
It changes the perspective on placebo (Every time that is used we can just state - it is not placebo it is the self-healing of the body and yes homeopathy helps the body better than any other intervention)
It makes allopathy come forward as a challenge to the system
It gives confidence in the self-healing (which is the main difference between homeopaths and allopats)
It makes it easy to join with ecology-arguments and the finely tuned balance in nature. "Of course you understand that any kind of therapeutic intervention is completely dependent on the self-healing mechanisms of the human body.
But do you understand/can you accept that any intervention that tries to overrule chemically or mechanically is not supporting the bodies own work and might even violate it?
When the body works it produces symptoms, it could be fever, cough, itching etc. Any remedy that produce the same symptoms is actually helping in exactly the same way as the body: Likes cure like. That is the reason homeopathy cures without doing any harm!"
- So you are saying homeopathy is placebo?
"No, we are saying placebo is a term used as an excuse for not seeing the obvious/ for not giving the body the credit it should have/ for not understanding the self-healing mechanism, homeopathy is just the best intervention to support that self-healing mechanism.
We can in the subcetions state things like:
The use of the term placebo is an excuse / shows ignorance or even arrogance (if you want to be more bold)
it is keept from the attitude that humans seems to believe they know better than nature.  

 

Joerg:  I don´t think that there is a difference between homeopathy and allopathy in that in the one method the body heals itself and doesn´t in the other. As I understood Andreas he wanted (or at least I would want) to make the argument that ANY healing relies on the body healing itself, regardless of the method. Allopathy can cut away sick stuff or kill cancerous cells or germs etc with poisons. But it can in no way MAKE the body heal itself. This has to become very clear. Placebo may be one good way of instigating self-healing processes – with the clear advantage that it doesn´t interfere with anything. And homeopathy is an even better way to do so. Allopathy can sometimes help to clear away obstacles (like a flood of bacteria or a huge tumor or the like) that would kill you faster than the self-healing processes can react. But most of the time it has the disadvantage that its chemicals are interfering so strongly with physiological processes, that the self-healing is slowed down or prohibited.
The destructiveness of chemical medicine is so well known that we can easily mention this and stay credible. And those parts of the population that don´t understand such an argument, would never read our stuff anyway, not even the “fast thinkers”.  

 

Spero:  Andreas, you have redefined placebo, but most people do not share your definition. For the average person, placebo implies a trick or a deceit that brings about a healing response. People don't want to pay money to be tricked by homeopathy, especially when it is no better than placebo. In order to make your argument about placebo being natural healing you will need a lot of room to write a logical argument.  

Sources and Links

Self-healing capacities of the body need infections, especially early in childhood. Article in Guardian: Most common childhood cancer 'partly caused by lack of infection'
Prof. Ulrich Dirnagl of the Berlin Charité published a study in 2016: "Where have all the mice gone" (Sag mir, wo die Mäuse sind), watching the "flow of animals" in clinical studies. He found out that in a very large percentage of studies it was not mentioned how many animals were "used" to start with and how many were taken into account for the statistics, which makes these studies virtually useless. Above this the number of animals was generally very low, so that leaving out one or two mice could change the outcome completely. He calls these clinical studies - which are most of the basic research in cancer and stroke - "scientific nonsense". *Holman C, Piper SK, Grittner U, Diamantaras AA, Kimmelman J, Siegerink B, et al. Where Have All the Rodents Gone? The Effects of Attrition in Experimental Research on Cancer and Stroke. PLoS Biol 14(1): e1002331. Jan. 2016. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002331) Constance Holman, Sophie K. Piper, Ulrike Grittner, Andreas Antonios Diamantaras, Jonathan Kimmelman: Where Have All the Rodents Gone? The Effects of Attrition in Experimental Research on Cancer and Stroke; In: PLOS Biology 14; Nr. 1, 4. Januar 2016,  ISSN 1545-7885; S.e1002331; freier Volltext:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4699644/; http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002331[read 16. November 2016].