A Letter to the editor of my newspaper on Homeopathy

[GenesForLife]

Well, background first, someone wrote in to the editor saying that homeopathy should be a matter of choice, for it clearly benefits patients even if not backed up by evidence, and the author of that particular letter also made assertions along the lines of " Experts say that most drugs, regardless of the disease, only work for half the people who consume them, only when 50% or more patients who receive the drug shown a response to the active drug is it considered for further evaluation" (see, he talks about clearance for further evaluation, not final approval for regular medical use) and also brings up the specious canard about there being "Complementary (alternative) medicine" in a completely valid sense.

I have written a letter to the editor, which follows, in a quote box...

Sir,

This is a riposte to a letter titled "Matter of Choice" which appeared in the Letters to the Editor section on Feb.26th, 2010, where Mr.Ramakrishna goes on to suggest that homeopathy should be a matter of choice.

First of all, there is a claim he makes about experts saying about the drug working for only 50% of the eventual patients, but also goes on to state that a candidate drug is approved for further evaluation only if is efficacious in more than 50% of the trial subjects, I feel he has missed out on a very obvious point , failing to recognize that the 50% benchmark is for approval to further testing, and that efficacy for final approval and regular medical use tends to be far far higher, none of this, however, does anything to deal with the fact that homeopathy hasn't been shown to work.

That has been documented by several meta-analyses, including those published in the premier medical journal Lancet , and backed up by several more pieces of independent scientific work, a resource list of which is available at NCBI's Pubmed. The perceived benefits to patients that Mr.Ramakrishna is alluding to is called the Placebo Effect, and has nothing to do with the drug itself, but the psyche of the recipients of the therapy, while this may be fine in cases of minor illnesses, it could prevent the administration of therapy that is extremely efficacious by comparison and thus jeopardise life.

He chooses to assert that they do benefit the ill and the indisposed, and also goes on to state "The end point of all treatment is relief from pain and diseases" as his ideal for medicine to work for, but the administration of a less efficacious treatment in place of a far better therapy is denial of treatment , and defeats the very same purpose he ascribes to medicine, another thing I wish to point out is that there are just two kinds of medicines, those that work, and those that don't, and at the moment I suppose the clamour to maintain a certain subset of unproven therapies in the garb of "complementary medicine" is an unwelcome, worrying, and potentially dangerous trend.

Ankur Ravinarayana Chakravarthy

What do you think?

[natselrox]

You could source something more tangible to the Indian audience than the PubMed. Otherwise, it's a well-written letter.


I must say, you look quite angry in that profile-pic!

[GenesForLife]

You could source something more tangible to the Indian audience than the PubMed. Otherwise, it's a well-written letter.


I must say, you look quite angry in that profile-pic!

That's me when I'm thinking calmly

[natselrox]

You could source something more tangible to the Indian audience than the PubMed. Otherwise, it's a well-written letter.


I must say, you look quite angry in that profile-pic!

That's me when I'm thinking calmly

You look like a very intelligent guy with a piercing glance!

[GenesForLife]

You could source something more tangible to the Indian audience than the PubMed. Otherwise, it's a well-written letter.


I must say, you look quite angry in that profile-pic!

That's me when I'm thinking calmly

You look like a very intelligent guy with a piercing glance!

I have a rep for terrorising teachers in class with questions

[Random Mutant]

A great letter, well written and backed by facts.

I would be surprised if it was published however. The best letters to editors in popular newspapers are short, punchy and contain short easily-digestible sentences. Commas are almost unheard of. The audience you write to has average concentration spans shorter than two units of Planck Time but your three main sentences average over a hundred words each.

When you start talking of meta analyses I can see people's eyes glazing over and heads falling forward into morning coffees.

I hope you don't mind I've taken the liberty of a rewrite. Of course my version is only my suggestion and is not meant to be definitive in any way.

Regarding Mr Rakakrishna’s letter of Feb 26th about homeopathy as a matter of choice.

He fails to recognize that the 50% benchmark is for approval to further testing and that final approval for regular medical use has a far higher standard required.

Quite simply homeopathy has not been shown to work. This is well documented in the Lancet medical journal amongst others.

The benefits your correspondent refers to are simply the Placebo Effect which has nothing to do with the drug itself. In cases of serious illnesses where real medicine is available, relying on a possible placebo effect and delaying real treatment is dangerous at best and could jeopardise life.

His statement "The end point of all treatment is relief from pain and diseases" contradicts his wish to deny real treatment to patients by medicine shown to actually work.

The current clamour to maintain a certain subset of unproven therapies in the garb of "complementary medicine" is an unwelcome, worrying, and potentially dangerous trend.

[Edit for grammar]

[Random Mutant]

_________________
I reject your reality and substitute my own!

-Adam Savage, Mythbuster
_________________

Uh, I just realised I substituted my own reality! My sig is more accurate than I thought!

[GenesForLife]

Nice work, Random mutant, let's just say I have my problems with being verbose