Medical authorities slam 'absurd' homeopathy
Deccan Herald dt 31.8.2010Top Japanese scientists urge,--, health workers to stay clear of the alternative treatment as it grows in popularity.
Medical authorities slam 'absurd' homeopathy
TOKYO, AFP: The physician to Japanese Emperor Akihito and top scientists have slammed homeopathy as an "absurd" medicine, urging health workers to stay clear of the alternative treatment as it grows in popularity.
"I cannot help but feel strong bewilderment" over the recent rise in homeopathy's use as a treatment in Japan, said Ichiro Kanazawa, who chairs the prestigious Science Council of Japan.
"The reason is that it ignores science," Kanazawa, who is also the medical supervisor for Japan's Imperial Household I Agency, said in a statement.
The controversy has been fuelled by reports that a two¬ month-old baby girl died last year of a cerebral haemorrhage in Japan after she was given a homeopathic remedy instead of the norma1 treatmentofvitarninK
Homeopathic medicines use materials derived from flora, fauna and minerals, and their preparation includes the heavy dilution of the raw materials, according to the World Health Organization.
"In some cases, the dilution is so high that it is almost impossible to find one molecule of the original raw material," the WHO said in a February report.
Kanazawa argued that ''because it is only water, of course it has no therapeutic effects, not to mention 'side effects"',
Comment/observation: The above article betrays the anxiety and fear on the part of the Medical Authorities of Japan. They feel that the way in which homeopathy is advancing in the medical field, their system will be in jeopardy. Homeopathy is a recent discovery. The system represented by the "medical authorities" already existed and people were depending on them. If they were satisfactorily discharging their obligation of treatment of the sick and the sick were happy with the treatments they receive, why they should go to any new system? Even then, if the patients were not happy with the homeopathy system, how more and more people go to that system? There will always be a tendency for people to stick to the existing system rather than go to a completely new and strange system, especially in the matter of health. So if the popularity of homeopathy is increasing alarmingly, it is only because of the success rate cost efficiency of the system. Since the homeopathy is making serious inroads in their potential clients they are very much worried about its advancement as their looting and squeezing their clients will be affected.
The "medical authorities" further say that 'because it is only water, of course it has no therapeutic effects, not to mention side effects….'. If it has no medicine how can it be effective and why patients will go for that medicine.
Another observation is that "In some cases, the dilution is so high that it is almost impossible to find one molecule of the original raw material," the WHO said in a February report". Now let us take the case of living things including human beings. A dead body is having everything which a living body has. Still the dead body does not function like a living thing. Why? It is only because the dead body is missing something which the living thing possesses. When that 'something goes out of the living body, the living body becomes a dead body. That 'something' is the life force. Can any instrument or anything can find and define the life force? Still every intelligent person recognizes it. So is the case in homeopathy. Just because we do not understand something, we should not make wild obhervations/charges.