From: f1221-AT-cc.nagasaki-u.ac.jp Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 12:23:52 +0900 Subject: Re: Deleuze and redemption..flowers of flight At 8:24 PM 98.12.9, Daniel Haines wrote: [...] > and I wasn't suggesting that there was no scientific documentation, only > that criticisms of homeopathy didn't necessarily follow from such > research, but rather from what people with particular ideas about "how > things work" make of such research... But that is not the case, at least I cannot say so from my experience. When I studied medicine (in Germany), homeopathy classes/courses/lectures were offered and -though not obligatory- attended by about 50% of the students. Also, (again in Germany, I cannot say how this is in America) many doctors practise allopathy AND homeopathy and see no contradiction there. Homeopathy is not criticized by >people with particular ideas< (I shall assume the medical profession ?), because they are a priori against it, but because of two reasons : - many (but not all) studies on homeopathy are methodically flawed and - there is no serious disease where a homeopathic therapy has ever been proven to be more effective than waiting and doing nothing. > [...] also, as on the one hand,there are plenty of substances that have been > around much longer than 200 years that are rejected out of prejudice for > medical use - despite having been proved conclusively to be effective - For example ? > and, on the othe hand, most of the substances used by medical > science/pharmaceutical companies have been in medical use for rather > less than 200 years - on what exactly are you basing the idea that 200 > years is "long enough to have proven what it is worth"? Well, during the last 200 years surgery under anestesia, vaccination, antibiotics, minimally invasive surgery, transplantation, beta blockers, X-ray, to name a few -the list is hardly exhaustive- have been introduced into medicine from various fields of expertise. But none of them from homeopathy. Maybe the assumption at its foundation, the >similia similibus curentur<, is no particularly fertile hypothesis. Medicine probably just is not that simple. [...] And finally, as I recently turned from medicine to economy, I want to make a comparison that may seem far-fetched: For similar reasons, I believe that Keynesianism is much more effective than going by the Monetarist rule. Economy probably is not that simple either. sY -Yamazaki
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