Why are post involving medicines (or quackery)on this sub-forum?

[timokay]

Thinking more, this whole issue seems to be a matter of "World's Apart".

Two totally different approaches to disease.
Homeopathy uses a logical principle of finding a substance that produces the very same symptoms as those of the sick person. And that substance can then be used to bring about cure.
But, although unknown, the "disease" has been "logically" associated with the something else (medicine's effects), also unknown.

The logical unknown may be the most complicated thing in the world, yet knowing what it is is actually not necessary, because it is being overcome by this logical cancellation.

But what is it? Because of this principle, Homeopathy sees disease in a completely different way to the scientist. It is unnecesary to look at the chemical or physiological processes inside the body at all, except in the sense of gathering all subjective and objective symptoms from the patient.

REF Post above mentioning synergy. Supposing that physiological processes evolved to a level where these synergistic entities appeared and were used by Nature (thru' evolution) for the overall management of the body's defences. These synergistic entities are very different to conventional biochemical and physiological processes, though they are built upon them and depend on them.

A first conclusion (of sorts).
Symptom patterns associated with illness are associated with synergistic entities, whose actions can be influenced using a logical principle. These entities are a higher controlling influence on the management of disease.
They must direct physiological processes to effect cure at the biochemical/physiological level, yet they don't seem to have a physical location. ??

I need a rest..must have a cup of coffee.

 

[timokay]

Trying again.
That the primative prokaryotic cell of a bacterium could defeat the infinitely more sophisticated cascading processes of the immune system of a person is incomprehensible to me. It does seem, though, that some random mutations of a bacterium could reveal some weakness in one of the many processes of the immune system.

When the system fails, all sorts of other problems occur (system in failure), and these cause the perceived symptoms. The bacterium is probably long gone before the disease has fully developed.

Later.

 

[ElectricFetus]

That the primative prokaryotic cell of a bacterium could defeat the infinitely more sophisticated cascading processes of the immune system of a person is incomprehensible to me.

It may seem incomprehensible to you but unfortunately scientific testing has proven otherwise.

When the system fails, all sorts of other problems occur (system in failure), and these cause the perceived symptoms. The bacterium is probably long gone before the disease has fully developed.

In most infection the bacterium remains present.

 

[Nasor]

Let me be very blunt; most of the people here are scientists and homeopathy has nothing to do with science. Your beliefs appear to be irrational to us. The way you argue in favor of homeopathy is strikingly similar to the way fundamentalist Christians argue in favor of the earth being 10,000 years old, and homeopathy seems about equally plausible. You aren't going to find anyone who is supportive of you or interested in seriously discussing homeopathy here. You're wasting your time and ours, and your posts here are little more than electronic litter to most of us. You would be better off going somewhere where people are more open to ideas that are wildly unscientific.

 

[guthrie]

Ultimately, all you can do is just not reply or discuss with timokay and Hahnemanian, let them post their stuff and see if anyone answers.

 

[Hahnemannian]

That's fine with me.

I make extreme self-sacrifices answering your questions and addressing your issues, but then you constantly prove it was a waste of effort due to your being unable to think either clearly or for yourselves because of the conditioned-reflex brain reactions and presumptions you all demonstrate, which in turn arise because you are unable to identify the modus operandi of cults like exist in the natural sciences and are personified in allopathy and which rely upon people being ignorant of the modus operandi of hypnotism via alpha-wave brain states.

If you doubt that the natural sciences are total cults, you're very ignorant of what identifies cults, for they are nothing but cults.

Moreover, I am quite sure that all of you need mirrors, and I don't just mean euphemistically, for the negative and less-than-independent thinking you all engage in are indicative of no-longer-integral etheric patterns.

----------

And more importantly, Tim and I are here looking for people to help us resolve the enigma of homeopathic pharmacology, not to try to convince the lazy about homeopathy.

Hence, fine with me if you all fail to say anything; I would prefer it.

 

[Persol]

Originally posted by Hahnemannian
I make extreme self-sacrifices answering your questions and addressing your issues
Doubtful, especially considering you are not even willing to conduct a study comparing your methods to others... which science has done.

And more importantly, Tim and I are here looking for people to help us resolve the enigma of homeopathic pharmacology, not to try to convince the lazy about homeopathy.
Well, as should be plainly obvious to anybody with any common sense, you aren't going to find help on a SCIENCE forum without using scientific method. You certainly aren't going to find such help on this forum with the attitude you've been posting with the entire time. Tim has a chance, but nobody takes you seriously any more.

 

[Hahnemannian]

All right, then let me say it again: I do not care what those who're ignorant of homeopathy think; when they can do what I do, then I will care.

And we are here looking for people interested in advancing science, whereas you all insist upon keeping us in a status quo even though your basic asssumptions about medicine are constantly proven wrong by nothing but effete conclusions and practices.

The help I expect to be available from someone with such motives is their awareness of misplaced findings relative to the processes involved in homeopathic pharmacology.

Shiu yin Lo stumbled upon them while doing independent research for a chemical firm interested in patenting compounds or processes.

There simply must be similar research results sitting fallow.

So you have hopefully exhausted all of your questions since you don't take me seriously anymore.

Fine and dandy with me, for that means you will cease asking questions easily answered by reading the ORGANON.

Laziness and carelessness of thought do not impress me.

Again, the help I expect to be available from someone with such motives is their awareness of misplaced findings relative to the processes involved in homeopathic pharmacology.

Electromagnetism involved in water chemistry will possibly be one area worth logging.

But anything having to do with successed high dilutions will be expected to be helpful here.

 

[timokay]

fetus,

fetus wrote:

It may seem incomprehensible to you but unfortunately scientific testing has proven otherwise.

You pasted the first sentence below (without reference to the second).

That the primative prokaryotic cell of a bacterium could defeat the infinitely more sophisticated cascading processes of the immune system of a person is incomprehensible to me. It does seem, though, that some random mutations of a bacterium could reveal some weakness in one of the many processes of the immune system.

The point being that the bacterium has to come up with something remarkable to outwit the immune system. But, it can happen by chance, and Pathology textbooks describe these.

The pathology texts also explain how difficult it can be to actually prove a given bacterium is the cause of a particular disease.
Over 100 years ago, Robert Koch put forward four postulates that must be satisfied to PROVE that the bacterium was responsible for the disease.

But, many accepted bacterial diseases HAVE NOT satisfied Koch's Postulates. Nevertheless Medical Science does accept the significance of Koch's Postulates.

Fetus wrote:

In most infection the bacterium remains present.

Two points:
1. can you prove the bacterium isolated is the cause of that disease?
2. By "remains present", do you mean throughout the course of the illness?

 

[timokay]

PROVING THAT A BACTERIUM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A DISEASE

Medical Science is having problems proving that a certain bacterium IS actually responsible for a particular disease. So, when bacterial disease occurs, how can we be sure that we have correctly identified the causative agent of the disease?

Criteria to answer this question were postulated by Robert Koch over a hundred years ago. All four of these criteria must be satisfied to prove that this infectious agent is the causative agent:

1. the infectious agent should be present in each and every case of the disease, and its distribution in the body should accord with the pattern of the lesion seen;

2. the infectious agent should be recovered from infected individuals, and established in pure culture in the laboratory;

3. inoculation of samples of the pure cultures into experimental animals (or human volunteers) should cause the same disease;

4. when re-cultured from the experimental animals or human volunteers, the original bacterium should be recovered.

KOCH's postulates, although the accepted criteria for proving infectious agents, have never been fulfilled in many diseases. E.g., syphilis and leprosy, because the bacteria cannot be grown in nutrient media in the laboratory, yet these bacteria have been generally accepted as THE CAUSE of these diseases. Many others, like the bacteria causing gonorrhoea and certain types of meningitis will only grow in humans, and have similar problems with Koch's postulates.

Koch's postulates cannot be applied in relation to the importance of factors affecting host susceptibility. Cystic fibrosis patients are uniquely susceptible to damage to their lungs caused by long-term colonisation of their thickened mucus from a bacterium called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Koch's postulates cannot be tested by inoculating the bacterium into the lungs of a normal animal.

One way to summarise the properties of pathogenic bacteria is to regard the bacterial cell as a living delivery system for the various macromolecules which result in its capacity to cause disease.
The structural components, or soluble products, of a bacterium which are involved in its capacity to cause such diseases are known as its virulence determinants.

Bacterial infection is no longer viewed as a process in which bacteria grow and develop in their host in the same mechanical fashion which results in the appearance of a bacterial colony on a plate of nutrient medium.

The survival of the few successful Bacteria in the body depends on mediators which protect them against host defence mechanisms, e.g., mediators against phagocytes and serum lysis.
Some bacterial components damage the host by triggering the body's key enzyme cascades to a pathological extent OR by eliciting harmful immune responses.

The symptoms of malaria are recurrent chills, fever, and sweating. The symptoms peak roughly every 48hrs, when successive generations of merozoites are released from infected red blood cells. The large number of merozoites formed can block capillaries, causing intense headaches, renal failure, heart failure or cerebral damage.

There is a case for the symptoms of malaria being caused, not by Plasmodium itself, but instead by excessive production of cytokines and other immune system products. This illustrates that symptoms are not directly caused by a disease agent, but by immune system processes in the body attempting to deal with it.

 

[timokay]

Persol,

Well, as should be plainly obvious to anybody with any common sense, you aren't going to find help on a SCIENCE forum without using scientific method.

A central issue is the use of scientific method by Homeopathy.

The first step is to repeat the Medicine "Provings" (where each medicine is tested for all the symptoms it produces) under double-blind placebo-controlled conditions.

Do you agree that this use of scientific method might open doors?

Tim

 

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by timokay
PROVING THAT A BACTERIUM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A DISEASE

Medical Science is having problems proving that a certain bacterium IS actually responsible for a particular disease. So, when bacterial disease occurs, how can we be sure that we have correctly identified the causative agent of the disease?

Criteria to answer this question were postulated by Robert Koch over a hundred years ago. All four of these criteria must be satisfied to prove that this infectious agent is the causative agent:

1. the infectious agent should be present in each and every case of the disease, and its distribution in the body should accord with the pattern of the lesion seen;

2. the infectious agent should be recovered from infected individuals, and established in pure culture in the laboratory;

3. inoculation of samples of the pure cultures into experimental animals (or human volunteers) should cause the same disease;

4. when re-cultured from the experimental animals or human volunteers, the original bacterium should be recovered.

*snip*

Century-old rules are not very interesting to science. You are making a straw-man. You are trying to claim that science has difficulty establishing causative relationships based in your straw-man. This is not so.

There are a number of ways to prove that a certain micro-organism (including vira) is the cause of a certain disease. Some of them are as you mentioned, but there are others; antibody generation is considered very important these days. There is no rule that some agent must meet ALL criteria, the validity of the argumentation is evaluated in each case.

To Hahnemannian: Well, I'm in the process of reading Organon of Medicine, and I'm sure there will be a number of points, I'd like to discuss, but apparantly you are not here to discuss? That makes me wonder: How do you expect to receive help, if you do not want to discuss pertinent topics with your potential helpers?

One of my purposes in joining this debate, before everything drowned in name-calling and death-curses, was to try and establish some common frame of reference. One side insisting that whatever they say is Truth, and that everybody else is an idiot, is not fertile soil for a common frame of reference.

Hans

 

[timokay]

Hi Hans,

Century-old rules are not very interesting to science. You are making a straw-man. You are trying to claim that science has difficulty establishing causative relationships based in your straw-man. This is not so.

The continuing value of Koch's postulates is stressed in a very current medical pathology textbook by M.J.Mitchinson.

There is no rule that some agent must meet ALL criteria, the validity of the argumentation is evaluated in each case.

Meeting ALL criteria IS the Koch rule. With that stressed, I agree that there are other ways, in special cases, to obtain the required proof.

To Hahnemannian: Well, I'm in the process of reading Organon of Medicine, and I'm sure there will be a number of points, I'd like to discuss, but apparantly you are not here to discuss?

May I butt in here please. Note that the Organon of Medicine thread is closed.

Hahnemannian IS here, in this thread.

Settle down Hans. Fire away with any Organon questions. It is good that you are making the effort to study it.

You may have some comments on doing medicine "Provings" according to scientific method (DBPC).

 

[ElectricFetus]

timokay,

I'm aware of Koch postulates (Biol 362) yes it is true that many disease have not been "proven" because they cannot be cultured, I stress the point that the only reason they do not satisfy the postulate is because they can not be cultured. Fortunately thanks to modern technology we can prove that a agent is the cause of a disease without growing it, though without the full assurance that satisfying all the postulates. Ok then lets look at this your way because these things cannot be proven without a doubt there for that validates homeopathy? :bugeye: Which is more likely disease: is cause by genetic disorders and infectious organism all following known laws of physic or that disease is cause by a failure of life or vital force energy? Wait I know which one your prefer, why? God I don’t want to know.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by timokay
Hi Hans,

The continuing value of Koch's postulates is stressed in a very current medical pathology textbook by M.J.Mitchinson.

They are of value, but they are no longer paramount.

Meeting ALL criteria IS the Koch rule. With that stressed, I agree that there are other ways, in special cases, to obtain the required proof.

Correct, but the Koch rule is no longer (was it ever?) the only thing we have.

May I butt in here please. Note that the Organon of Medicine thread is closed.

Hahnemannian IS here, in this thread.

I can hardly avoid noticing that, but the question is: Is he interested in discussion or just in yelling at people?

Settle down Hans. Fire away with any Organon questions. It is good that you are making the effort to study it.

I will present Organon questions, when I'm finished. As you know, it is a rather extensive work, so it will require some time.

You may have some comments on doing medicine "Provings" according to scientific method (DBPC).

I MAY have??? I think we have already been through that at great length. Last time I presented some of them, you adviced me to "go milk the cows", remember?

Hans

 

[BigBlueHead]

The Koch postulates are definitely wrong in the case of bacterial genetic interchange. Though it's not common in nature, two dissimilar non-virulent bacteria can, through exchange of genetic material, become virulent through the combination of their factors.
Since bacterial genetic interchange happens all the time in nature (even if the change of virulence is rare) Koch's number 4 is not really supportable.

(I'm trying to find a link for the interchange experiment, sorry...)

I have a minor question for Hahn and Tim...

Hahn says VF is etheric...

Tim says VF is an emergent property of immunological processes...

Are you guys agreeing with each other? Does etheric still mean physical?

Also (second question):

What of the case where a person is clearly affected by an outside vector, like a fungus? There are some diseases which involve a direct and obvious fungal infection that can be seen quite easily; the victim of the infection goes moldy, like a piece of bread. Is this also a symptom?

 

[timokay]

Fetus.

You wrote:

Ok then lets look at this your way because these things cannot be proven without a doubt there for that validates homeopathy?

The Bacteria post above just shows that Medical Science has probs of its own when trying to prove disease cause and mechanism. The problem is the difficulty (impossibility?) in precisely determining interactions between the disease agent and the "in vivo" environment.

Which is more likely disease: is cause by genetic disorders and infectious organism all following known laws of physic or that disease is cause by a failure of life or vital force energy? Wait I know which one your prefer, why? God I don’t want to know.

Making assumptions, fetus. I don't believe that at all.

In the practical environment of studying disease and the cure of disease, Hahnemann knew nothing of the microscopic level, nor any details of what was going on inside the body. He saw only the behaviour of the whole body in disease, and in cure.
His vital force was nothing but a concept that fitted all the observations. It was the behaviour of the body's defences, as a whole. Nothing spiritual, no vital force energy.

Just the body's defences cranking up and cranking down during the course of the disease.
In practise, he found that disease was an individual thing. There were patients who fell ill all the time. Others very rarely, though exposed to the same agents. Then he distinguished another disease BEHIND the one he was treating, which emerged when the first disease had resolved. He called these inherited diseases and even considered them responsible for the primary disease as well....a weakness in the immune system allowed the disease agent to flourish.

What his medicines are doing were simply artificially cranking up specific immune system activities. Things that the patient's immune system should be doing to manage that disease but is failing to do through some fault. But everybody, however sick they get, still has the resources to deal with all disease. Vast resources, and no disease should get as far as presenting symptoms at all (which indicates failure).

That was what Hahnemann found in practise (he started in Medicine in 1775, ended in 1843)...a long time, so an opinion worth serious consideration.

Of course, there are serious epidemic diseases, which stress even the healthiest immune system, but the healthy patient's immune system still has the resources to overcome it. Hahnemann could help these people too, e.g., smallpox....matching their symptom totality to a medicine which produces exactly the same symptoms, is stimulating the immune system activity most required to overcome the disease, and it worked.

disease: is cause by genetic disorders and infectious organism all following known laws of physics (and chemistry)..

Putting genetic disorders first is what Hahnemann was sure about.

Tim

 

[BigBlueHead]

Timokay;

It is normal, and even important for members of a scientific field to disagree with one another, particularly about definitions.

Definitions are the most fundamental part of any investigation and also the most flawed and fragile. This is because definitions are not provable, any more than ice cream is provable.

I believe there's even some pretty strong disagreement in the homeopathy field, if Hahnemannian is to be believed.

When Koch seeks to define the factors for recognizing a disease, he is doomed to failure because "disease" is a human collective term for a series of things which are not the same. Trying to generalize his rules to all bacterial infections is almost guaranteed not to work, because the infections do not care whether they conform to Koch's standards.

This is generally true for all fields of inquiry except for those that are totally unconnected to physical phenomena. Generally, all systems are based in certain fundamental axioms that cannot be proven correct from within the system.

This means that no one can sell the truth, because they don't have it. Inquiry of any kind is destined to be a work in progress until the universe ends.

So don't get on Koch, he's doing his best. He's been dead for a long time, so he may be a little out of date.

 

[timokay]

Big Blue,

So don't get on Koch, he's doing his best. He's been dead for a long time, so he may be a little out of date.

Look above. I haven't "(got) on Koch"! Hans the Dane had a few words to say on it.

It is normal, and even important for members of a scientific field to disagree with one another, particularly about definitions. I believe there's even some pretty strong disagreement in the homeopathy field, if Hahnemannian is to be believed.

Agreed.

When Koch seeks to define the factors for recognizing a disease, he is doomed to failure because "disease" is a human collective term for a series of things which are not the same.

Koch's postulates were formulated for infectious agents (the first being tuberculosis, its cause discovered by Koch), not all "disease".
But note that Koch postulates are also being applied/adapted by the Pathologists to identify the causes of cancer.

Trying to generalize (Koch's) rules...

Rules are made to be broken, but you need to have yardsticks.
Yes, there are exceptions, and this is true in Homeopathy too. I find Homeopathy's treatment of Malaria puzzling because it seems to break one of the golden rules.

Tim

 

[BigBlueHead]

I apologize for my misstep about "disease" rather than "bacterial infection".

Timokay said:

But note that Koch postulates are also being applied/adapted by the Pathologists to identify the causes of cancer.

This is a poor use of the aforementioned postulates, because every different individual gets their own version of cancer. That is, if you culture cancerous lung cells from two different people with lung cancer, you will necessarily get genetically distinct cancer growths. (Unless they're identical twins.) Furthermore, cancer is not generally even caused by an infection, and to refer to cancer as an infection is misleading.

Furthermore, you cannot "inoculate" another human with the cancerous cells because the second subject will reject them just as they would the normal cells of the cancer victim. To "inoculate" one person with another person's cancer cells you would need to administer immunosuppressants to them as with an organ transplant.

Scientific literature that dates back more than thirty years is not a good source of information on any field that is still developing. Even our old buddy Einstein has slipped behind the times pretty badly these days. Being dead is good for your career when you're an artist, author, or actor, but not usually when you're a scientist.