Laughing my socks off’s comment on blog entry ‘Socking hypocrisy in anti-cam campaign’ :
“GSK’s Allen Roses says 90% of pharmaceutical drugs are only effective in 30-50% of cases. BMJ Clinical Evidence says only somewhere between 26-34% of 2,500 commonly used treatments have some proven benefit. The Bristol study [Bristol Homeopathic Hospital] concluded 70%+ of patients reported some improvement with homeopathic treatment. The Berlin study came up with similar percentages and concluded that patients using homeopathy had better outcomes than patients using conventional medicine. Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital’s ongoing audits of patient response return similar percentages.
It’s worth emphasising that while controls might be absent in these studies, the patient cohorts tend to have a high percentage (80%+) of chronic complaints of which an equally high percentage (80%+) have failed to respond to conventional treatment. If they failed to respond to conventional treatment, in which the placebo effect is likely to be considerably stronger than in homeopathy, then it’s reasonable to suggest that these are patients who are not particularly susceptible to placebo response. If they failed to respond to conventional treatment, then it’s reasonable to suggest that for these patients, homeopathy proved to be the more effective option.”
