Homeopathy And The Placebo Effect

9 April, 2013

Homeopathy’s Perceived Effects are the Result of the Placebo Effect

Homeopathy is a paranormal form of alternative medicine that relies on natural remedies to cure illnesses. Much of the current scientific community is skeptic of homeopathy’s effectiveness as it is rooted in unconventional beliefs of healing that do not necessarily involve medical treatment with an active ingredient. Homeopathy is based on the paranormal belief that maladies may be treated by medicine absent of an active ingredient. This means that the results of homeopathy, by reason, are based only on the placebo effect, or the quantifiable and observable improvement in health or behavior that is not attributable to the medication. In this essay I will
It is difficult to find a reasonable explanation for the support that the paranormal practice of homeopathy garners. This essay has shown that homeopathic effect is owed to the placebo effect. Homeopathy is based in paranormal beliefs that have miniscule evidence of being true, if any at all. The law of similars has been proven to be unscientific and is at its core against reason. There is no reason to believe that Hahnemann’s cures would be effective against illness, as they are not based in scientific research and are founded in shallow observations made with poor provings. The absence of control groups in homeopathic provings suggests badly carried-out science and general ignorance of how medicine works in the body, which Hahnemann might be forgiven for, given his place in history, but which cannot be allowed today with our current knowledge of medicine. The actual effectiveness of homeopathy is questionable at best as the dilutions of the medicine would reasonably make it much weaker and therefore less effective. The degree to which the medicines in this practice are diluted suggest that they would be completely ineffective in themselves and that any effect that they might have on a patient would be attributed to the placebo effect, not the medicine. The homeopathic argument for water memory is weak in that science has proven this phenomenon to be implausible. Furthermore, the fact that a homeopath would suggest that the water is able to remember what has been in it, and then claim that the only thing the water remembers is the single homeopathic ingredient, and not all the other possible substances it may have been in contact with in its existence is simply ridiculous. Additionally, homeopathic medicine does not hold up in trials against allopathic medicine, and is in fact shown to be as effective as placebos, which is to say not