Why does homeopathy get a bad name?

It comes as no surprise that many strong advocates of conventional medicine have a somewhat disdainful regard for homeopathy. The long history of attack stems from opposing views between conventional medicine and homeopathy practitioners on how illness should be treated, especially when it comes to the treatment of disease.

Conventional medicine basically assumes that there is something ‘wrong’ with the patient and treat, inhibit or suppress illness symptoms by using biochemical intervention. Homeopaths on the other hand focus on promoting natural healing abilities, regarding the symptoms as the body’s way of trying to heal itself.

What is homeopathy?

Homeopathy is a 200 year-old holistic European system of healing with a remarkable safety record and a reputation for yielding excellent results. It employs small doses of naturally occurring substances, which are prescribed in accordance with the principle of similars: A treatment is chosen on the basis of a homeopathic medicine’s ability to closely mimic the symptom pattern of the sick individual.

Homeopathic products come from plants (such as red onion, arnica, belladonna and stinging nettle), minerals (such as white arsenic), or animals. Homeopathic products are often made as sugar pellets to be placed under the tongue; they may also be available in other forms, such as ointments, gels, drops, creams, and tablets. Treatments are “individualized” or tailored to each person—it’s common for different people with the same condition to receive different treatments.

The disinformation campaign against homeopathy is centred on two things: money and homeopathy’s threat to the current existing scientific paradigm.

Competition and money

Homeopathy is a thorn in the side of the pharmaceutical industry because of the fact that its unique medicines are FDA-regulated, safe, inexpensive, and can’t be patented.

On the subject of money the bottom line is that the pharmaceutical industry’s real concern about homeopathy is not its health issues but market competition. If big pharma had genuine health concerns they would act more prudently when selling invasive drugs with harmful side-effects.

Threat to scientific paradigm

Because homeopathy falls outside of their limited viewpoint, it has given some dogmatic scientists leverage to try and discredit it. Bearing this in mind, there are a number of ways by which they spread misinformation and propaganda.

Propaganda merchants give homeopathy a bad name by cherry-picking data. They may only select data that goes against it, possibly because the results were due to small subject numbers or anomalous circumstances, while ignoring the many quality scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals that show positive outcomes.

Unlike some allopathic medicines that have been taken off the market after doing a great deal of damage, homeopathy has caused no such harm. Many believe that pharmaceutical stakeholders are conspiring to deprive satisfied consumers of their freedom to pursue the treatment. The truth may only be found by connecting the dots.

This article is part of our new series on natural healing.

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