Glass found in homeopathic remadies.

[demi]

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2012/08 ... n-problems


Quote:

"Nelsons, manufacturers of Bach Flower Remedies and various homeopathic products, had their London factory inspected by the the American regulators as they export to the US. The report was damning. They found no control over broken glass entering their medical products, poor production processes resulting in 1 in 6 products failing to receive the homeopathic ingredient, poor labelling and lack of quality control on the products."

[GeorgeSalt]

I doubt they are regulated as a medicine for this type of product, but as a supplement or food stuff they should have a HACCP Plan to identify the potential for things like broken glass and adequate controls in place. If they really don't, then somewhere a regulator isn't on the ball (probably local authority, but has the business registered?).

HACCP is the food version of the FMEA quoted in the letter from the US inspector - the fix required in terms of the HACCP/FMEA assessment isn't too complex, but the actions it may identify could be quite significant judging by the US inspector's comments.

[MKG]

1 in 6? That's good compared with most homeopathic remedies.

OK, my slip's showing

Mike

[the.fee.fairy]

and 'conventional' medicines are being taken off the shelves regularly because of problems.

Anti-psychotics in Ibruprofen, bacteria in antibiotics, dangerous chemicals in paracetamols. Pharmacists giving the wrong doses to people, or mixing up the medicines that they're supposed to be giving to people.

There's errors everywhere, not just in the alternative medicine sector.

[Zech]

As far as I can tell from the article, nobody actually found glass in any remedies, it's just that the procedures guarding against it were inadequate (or perhaps completely absent. When the article's written with such strong bias, it's hard to be sure quite what the original story was).

The 1 in 6 made me laugh, too, but MKG beat me to it!

[GeorgeSalt]

The faults mentioned are just fundementally bad practice, the lack of glass control would be enough to get a kebab shop closed down. I'm not sure that any practising homeopathathist would feel comfortable comfortable with the notion that they're products were being produced to a lower standard than a late-night Friday kebab* and chips.

The article doesn't need to be a dig at homeopathy, whatever the business was making.. if it's for human consumption the premises and process aren't up to scratch on the basis of the problems reported by the investigating team in the letter.



*and at least you can be sure that there is some meat in a kebab, even if it's not always from a named species..

[demi]

and 'conventional' medicines are being taken off the shelves regularly because of problems.

Anti-psychotics in Ibruprofen, bacteria in antibiotics, dangerous chemicals in paracetamols. Pharmacists giving the wrong doses to people, or mixing up the medicines that they're supposed to be giving to people.

There's errors everywhere, not just in the alternative medicine sector.

The thing is that alternitive medicine like homeopathy isnt regulated to the same standards as conventional medicine, because the remadies are only water and therefor harmless. So things are going unchecked. Its a loophole in the law and needs sorted out.

[MKG]

I'm probably repeating what I said in another thread, but ...

Homeopathists are now regulated pretty well. If any one of them now claims "Preparation X is effective in the treatment of (insert disease)" then they're going to be asked to provide clinical evidence of that claim or to desist from making it (unless, of course, they can prove that what they're selling really is just water - i.e. less than one part in 10,000 of active ingredient).

My prediction is that homeopathy as a commercial concern will cease to exist in the UK within the next decade.

Mike

[demi]

Here: http://www.dcscience.net/?p=2855 he has lots of links as refrences and shows advertisements for homeopathic malerial prevention and treatment.

Quote:

"This document contains a direct claim that the treatment "has been successfully been used to prevent and treat malaria . . ."


And here:http://www.cancure.org/homeopathy.htm is a site about homeopathic cancer treatment.

Quote:

"One approach is to use homeopathic remedies to target the tumors themselves. In this case, the homeopath selects remedies which match the symptom picture of the tumor itself (e.g. Conium Maculatum for hard immovable tumors that develop slowly). "

"Often the best selected constitutional remedy will directly affect the tumor. By assisting the body in addressing and resolving the energy that underlies the tumor, it can result in complete elimination of the tumor. "


That last statement is an out right LIE!

[the.fee.fairy]

Whilst I agree that some claims are outlandish, I do believe in the placebo effect for a lot of things.

I suffer from Urticaria and usually have to take around 6 one-a-day antihistamines for a few days to combat an attack.
However, I have found that urtica homeopathic remedies do offer some relief.

No-one knows what causes my urticaria. I wish they did so that I could do something to avoid it. When it attacks, it leaves me looking like a munchkin, my kidneys don't function as they should during an attack and it's a pretty miserable experience.

Does the homeopathic remedy actually have any benefit? Or is it that I believe it will have an effect therefore it works? I don't know. I do know, however, that I'd rather be taking sugar pills than antihistamines.

Therefore, for minor illnesses such as colds I don't hesitate to try to homeopathic remedies first.

As has already been said, the alternative medicine sectors are becoming more regulated. This can only be a good thing.

Remember: Conventional medicine also claims to cure cancer...for 5 years maybe...if you're lucky...and you have invasive surgery and undergo extremely toxic treatments which no-one knows the long-term effects of.

If I had cancer, I would use conventional medicine, but I'd back it up with something alternative too. Quite frankly, if I had something that was going to kill me it'd be an any port in a storm situation.

A lot of conventional medicine treatments/medicines are synthesised versions of natural products used by herbalists. They both work because they both have the active ingredient. I'd rather have a tea of something prepared by a herbalist who knows what they're doing than a doctor who looked at me for a minute and wrote out a generic prescription of tablets made with who-knows-what. There was a discussion somewhere (don't remember where) that asked whether alternative medicine was becoming more popular because the practitioners make time to talk to people and actually get to the root of their symptoms rather than the GP who glances at you, turns to the computer and writes a prescription. The discussion I read was about whether the more personal service of alternative medicine was what made it more effective - did people believe that because their practitioner made time to discuss fully their problem they were getting a better diagnosis?

The thing is, I live in China at the moment and I've twice had Chinese medicine. It got me through swine flu in 3 days, and tonsillitis in 3 days. Much quicker than it's conventional counterpart. Here, the doctors are trained in both areas and will often mix the two systems. For tonsillitis I got antibiotics and a TCM preparation. For swine flu, I have no idea, I was pretty much out of it at the time. All I know is that the doctor made a more full diagnosis based on more than a 'how are you' 'here you go, have some tablets'.

TCM has been keeping people alive for around 2000 years. That's a long term study right there. Looking at the health of old people here who have never touched conventional medicine, it does make you think about which one is the right one to use.

I don't believe that it's right to be against something just because someone tells you you should. Or because it doesn't make as much profit for some big companies. This is the problem that I have. A lot of the stuff against the alternative medicine sector is written by GPs and other people in the pay packets of big pharma. Very few truly independent studies have ever been done. See where the money's coming from and then look at who's really sponsoring the study, and therefore what result is expected.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I don't believe that it's right to be against something just because someone tells you you should. Or because it doesn't make as much profit for some big companies. This is the problem that I have. A lot of the stuff against the alternative medicine sector is written by GPs and other people in the pay packets of big pharma. Very few truly independent studies have ever been done. See where the money's coming from and then look at who's really sponsoring the study, and therefore what result is expected.

Good point. Hardly a week goes by without some story or other exposing flaws and downright fraud in the pharmaceutical industry. Here in France there is a big fuss about a book, written by a couple of scientists, called "4000 medicines that are useful, useless or dangerous," the conclusions of which have really annoyed big pharma. The "science" used within the pharmaceutical industry is looking increasingly flaky.

[demi]

As iv said before, 'Big Pharma' is not without its mistakes ( check out Ben Glodacre's new book 'Bad Pharma' ) But trying to say that all the negitive results for homeopathy come from studies done with alternitive motives is just not true. There has been countless studies conducted on homeopathy, they NHS spends quite a lot of money on it and it would be in their intrest for it to actually work. But it doesn't, not any better than any other placebo. Also, this is where meta-analasis comes in. They pool together all the studies done, and find the all importnant unpublished ones ( thats what they're supposed to do anyway) and they can look at the results overall and draw a conclusion from there. Now problems arise when people dont publish ( hide ) studies with undesired results ( somthing which is second nature in the alternitive medicine scene, but is also done across the board ) but you can spot missing studies by looking at the graph with all the studies and there will be a trademark of very few studies coming up on the negitive side of the graph with all or the majority of the positive ones on the positive side. With real studies you always have a mix of positive and negitive, not an equal mix but its easy to see if you have too many positives and not any negitives and its obvious there is results missing in action.

And......what was i talking about again Have to go though, the kids are calling!

Over to Ben: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qL9tqRE2fI

[The Riff-Raff Element]

....( somthing which is second nature in the alternitive medicine scene, but is also done across the board ) ....

I think what you actually mean is "second nature wherever there is opportunity to make money." An awful lot remains unpublished and effectively buried. Studies are started and terminated early when they show results that are too good to be true (in which case they are submitted) or when they show results that are undesirable (in which case they never happened). Studies are conducted on populations that are too small or are over-selected in the hope that they will show the "right" result.

Homoeopathy may be snake oil (and, frankly, if you paid attention to what I have said in the past, you would know my less-than-chartitable views on the subject), but scientific fraud is as bad or worse.

And Ben Goldacre is not the be all and end all of scientific journalism.

[demi]

Yes, I agree.

There is also Simon Singh and Richard Dawkins.

[Zech]

I've got a bone to pick with that Ben Goldacre. He talks about studies with negative results being "hidden" i.e. not published (and he's been saying this most recently when talking about Bad Pharma). Let me tell you something: It's really hard to get a scientific paper published. Believe me, I've tried. Mostly, they get rejected (and no, that's not just me, honest!) If you've got a null result* you might as well not bother; journal editors just aren't interested. The rationale is this: There's an infinite number of things which might have an interesting effect but don't - we can't publish them all. Just tell us about the things that do have an effect.

Obviously this leads to a massive bias in the scientific literature, but it's a systematic problem, not individual scientists, homeopaths or otherwise, "hiding" unfavourable data.

*Null result means no effect, e.g. no difference between treatment and placebo. I did write "negative result" first, but that can mean something else, such as the results coming out the opposite way round to what you expected, which could either mean you've discovered something really amazing, or you got your labels mixed up.