From Nina Weber
homeopathy is nonsense, its effect is based on imagination - the most scientists think long been proven. Their opponents have a favorite argument: homeopathy work also with children and animals, and could imagine nothing. This could be a mistake be.
On Saturday they did it again: Homeopathy's critics swallowed in the protests, "10:23" mass called globules. The entire contents of a tube full of homeopathic pills they took at once to himself, to prove: "There's nothing in it" - "There is nothing in it." No pharmacological agent, only lactose. Because one of the basic principles of homeopathy, the dilution is: The ingredients are sometimes diluted so that not a single drug molecule, mathematically more in the finished product is. Therefore, the demonstrators could feel safe, the overdose to survive without damage. Last year was take the action in the UK, this year they ran in six German cities.
The protest is an entertaining excrescence of a standing dispute: Did homeopathic remedies an effect that goes beyond the placebo effect? Placebos are dummy treatment with no active ingredient. They are administered in clinical studies to determine whether the tested, made real means a greater impact. The placebo effect can occur with any medical treatment - from doctors to call for surgery.
Numerous studies have the effect of homeopathic treatments studied - efficacy beyond the placebo effect has never been proved. Nevertheless, the debate about alleged cures of homeopathy even more numerous than the studies. And it is always an argument on the part of homeopathy's supporters: the methods work on small children and animals. With them but no placebo effect is possible: you could simply not understand that and how to help them seek treatment.
placebo effect in children than in adults
experts disagree. "The fact that homeopathy achieved in small children and animals, an effect that is not to argue that it has an effect beyond the placebo effect, "says Paul Enck, University Hospital Tübingen, one of the leading specialists in Germany placebo. "From the few data that one has to placebo effects in children, it is evident that he is greater even than in adults."
The amount of data in children is relatively small. In basic research on placebo effects, the subjects often mild pain may be added or nausea is triggered, the work forbids them. Also placebo-controlled studies the effect of drugs are significantly less likely to minors performed. Some investigations are still there. It appears as an analysis of several studies of epilepsy patients that the placebo effect in children and adolescents was significantly greater than in adults.
According to Enck, the effect is based on the expectations of the patients that treatment must be effective, as well as a conditioning: If the syringe has caused the last time that the pain has subsided, it will happen again this time. "This should work even better in children because they doubt less if it's true all that is because just telling them. If the doctors say or parents, that helps a little, then think it, "said Enck.
placebo effect in animals affected farmers being
Even with a treatment of a sick pet can placebo effects play a role that veterinarians believe. Although the data are not as good as in humans, the number of animals in experiments is often much smaller. But there are placebo-controlled, double-blind studies as in human medicine. "Double blind" means that neither patient nor doctor knows whether a placebo or a real drug is administered. In animal experiments, in addition, the owner left in the dark. should
In a study about Dog owners, the number of epileptic seizures of their sick animal for treatment documented. actually had the animals in the placebo group, fewer attacks than before . For another, of Oslo researchers study conducted on 80 dogs owners should assess if their suffering from hip dysplasia in animals suffering less pain - and confirmed that even in cases where the dog had received only the placebo.
is, however, in such studies often unclear whether the placebo effect in animals plays himself - or rather with the owner, whose behavior will cause the animal that it is better goes. "Whether an animal can bring to the treatment related to his medical condition should improve, I doubt it," Ernst Petzinger says of the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen. ". Therefore, it will not be able in the sense of healing heal by suggestion itself" It is more than conceivable that this effect is very sensitive, strongly contributes to the human imprinted pets well-being - especially dogs, in horses and possibly cats when increasing attention and affection is added by the pet owner.
Heidrun Potschka of the Veterinary Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, expressed similar: "The owners are concerned during or after medical therapy experiment with the animal, can improve what his condition." It is also possible that an owner believes perceive a change that do not exist - because he Expects to his pet better.
According Potschka animals, however, can be trained to a placebo effect: "If they get several times a pill or injection with an agent and then a placebo can, which really cause an effect." A dog, it could well bring in context that a tablet or injection disease symptoms alleviate. In some studies was even a similarly high placebo effect has been observed in human medicine.
The protesters, who gave on Saturday globules overdose should, however, be spared from any impact - they will simply not have the required faith.
Source: Spiegel Online
Source: swissestetix Blog
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