Mod+ 271. DR. LARRY MALERBA, HOW MATERIALISM FAILS MEDICINE

I did not know this... fascinating.

Oh, yes. Even Wikipedia acknowledges the fact:

In 1543, the geocentric system met its first serious challenge with the publication of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), which posited that the Earth and the other planets instead revolved around the Sun. The geocentric system was still held for many years afterwards, as at the time the Copernican system did not offer better predictions than the geocentric system, and it posed problems for both natural philosophy and scripture. The Copernican system was no more accurate than Ptolemy's system, because it still used circular orbits. This was not altered until Johannes Kepler* postulated that they were elliptical (Kepler's first law of planetary motion)**.

*1571 – 1630
**1619

You could still get by using Ptolemaic astronomy for basic navigation.
 
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I appreciate the thoughtful discussion and I hope you don’t mind me chiming in here. I agree with everything that Michael and Bucky have said. There is an abundance of research that points to the activity of homeopathic doses above and beyond placebo. Much of that research is done on allopathic terms; in other words, it involves methods not ideal and not conducive to successful homeopathic prescribing. And yet, many such studies yield positive results. It is pure skeptic propaganda that there is no confirmative research.

There is no active ingredient in a homeopathic medicine because it is not material medicine. Even if nanoparticles are found in the dilutions, they are not present in quantities that could act at a biochemical level. Therefore, there must be some other explanation. I explain to inquisitive patients that homeopathic medicines do not act like conventional drugs, which usually need to be repeated daily to sustain an effect. That effect is to subdue or suppress symptoms. Take away the drug and the symptoms return.

Homeopathic remedies, conversely, operate according to a stimulus-response model. A microdose of the energy signature of a substance capable of mimicking a patients’ symptom profile is designed to provoke an energetic response from the life force (vital force, Chi, bioenergetic field, etc). An accurate prescription presumably assists the life force to throw off the energetic grip of the illness that had been holding it in place, so to speak. The correct stimulus provokes a healing response. Once a healing response is under way, there is no need to repeat doses unless it begins to fizzle out. For an average patient with a chronic illness, I give a couple doses on day one and then evaluate the response a month later. The doses are not material doses; they are small pulses of energy. The discovery of nanoparticles has been hailed by homeopaths as a means to placate the sensibilities of materialists who need something physical to believe in.

Homeopaths and their patients wouldn’t be so concerned with providing “plausible” explanations to satisfy the rational demands of scientific logic if it weren’t for the fact that the very survival of homeopathy is dependent upon the scientific powers that be. It is the remarkable clinical results that keep homeopaths doing what they do and patients coming back for care. There is an enormous body of literature spanning the past 200 years documenting “cured cases,” which are conveniently dismissed by allopaths as “anecdotal” evidence. To me personally, those first hand experiential reports of doctors and their patients are far more convincing than highly abstract sanitized and homogenized research studies.
You make some great points, and I'm on board with much of what you're saying about the limitations/block-headedness of conventional medicine and how homeopathy is in a better position to transcend these... but don't we need to do a little housecleaning of homeopathy as well?

Look up homeopathy on Wikipedia (the #1 source for skeptical disinformation :)) and the very first paragraph reads:

Homeopathy involves a process known by practitioners as "dynamisation" or "potentisation" whereby a substance is diluted with alcohol ordistilled water and then vigorously shaken in a process called "succussion". Insoluble solids, such as quartz and oyster shell, are diluted by grinding them with lactose (trituration). The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann (1755 — 1843) believed that the process of succussion activated the "vital energy" of the diluted substance,[1] and that successive dilutions increased the "potency" of the remedy.

I think you can see why skeptics lead with this volley as it's pretty hard to defend the logic here. I mean, it's one thing to say, "we diluted the active ingredient down to an extraordinarily low level and yet it was still effective", but it's quite another to suggest that there is some hidden mechanism (very materialistic sounding mechanism) that causes further dilution to make it more potent. If this is what you're saying then I'd like to see the experiments establishing this fact.
 
Watching the Montagnier video, which is extremely wide-ranging and opens up many exciting possibilities for future research, I was struck by the fact that here is a man who, despite his age, has more agility of mind and flexibility of approach than most younger researchers. Time and again, he draws attention to the lamentable lack of imagination of the current generation of researchers, and the way the system is controlled by its ossified leaders. One wonders how much longer this can last.

It may be possible, I suppose, that materialists are correct that in the end, science will reveal all: but if so, it will be a science that is immeasurably more open-minded and that has to recognise the immense improbability of chance playing a pivotal role in evolution. There are so many apparent coincidences, and such immense complexity and intricacy: it goes well beyond even the fine-tuning of universal constants.
 
You make some great points, and I'm on board with much of what you're saying about the limitations/block-headedness of conventional medicine and how homeopathy is in a better position to transcend these... but don't we need to do a little housecleaning of homeopathy as well?

Look up homeopathy on Wikipedia (the #1 source for skeptical disinformation :)) and the very first paragraph reads:

Homeopathy involves a process known by practitioners as "dynamisation" or "potentisation" whereby a substance is diluted with alcohol ordistilled water and then vigorously shaken in a process called "succussion". Insoluble solids, such as quartz and oyster shell, are diluted by grinding them with lactose (trituration). The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann (1755 — 1843) believed that the process of succussion activated the "vital energy" of the diluted substance,[1] and that successive dilutions increased the "potency" of the remedy.

I think you can see why skeptics lead with this volley as it's pretty hard to defend the logic here. I mean, it's one thing to say, "we diluted the active ingredient down to an extraordinarily low level and yet it was still effective", but it's quite another to suggest that there is some hidden mechanism (very materialistic sounding mechanism) that causes further dilution to make it more potent. If this is what you're saying then I'd like to see the experiments establishing this fact.

No disrespect to Dr. Malerba, but I don't think he can. Mind you, I don't think he necessarily wants to. The homeopathic explanation is merely a model, one that is actually quite good even though probably incorrect, just as was Ptolemaic astronomy. It will do until a more refined explanation comes along, at which time its applicability may well be extended. Who the hell cares anyway, if for the time being it works as well as it seems to?
 
His notion that the archetypical vibrations of a homeopathic substance needs to match the individuals' archetypical vibrations and that individuals differ in this respect, is an intriguing one to me. As I've come to understand it, we are first energy beings with energy fields...and sickness first appears in the energy field, where it may later manifest in the physical if we don't do some deep soul-searching and introspection about our own belief systems and emotional orientations to life (that's the simplest paradigm I can come up with). I don't really like the use of "archetypes" in this explanation, but I'm taking it to mean something like an "energy pattern".
 
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His notion that the archetypical vibrations of a homeopathic substance needs to match the individuals' archetypical vibrations and that individuals differ in this respect, is an intriguing one to me. As I've come to understand it, we are first energy beings with energy fields...and sickness first appears in the energy field, where it may later manifest in the physical if we don't do some deep soul-searching and introspection about our own belief systems and emotional orientations to life (that's the simplest paradigm I can come up with). I don't really like the use of "archetypes" in this explanation, but I'm taking it to mean something like an "energy pattern".

That's new -age non-sense , my friend, sorry.
Pseudo-science at best.
Reductionist materialism is certainly false , but the above is no less false.
 
No disrespect to Dr. Malerba, but I don't think he can. Mind you, I don't think he necessarily wants to. The homeopathic explanation is merely a model, one that is actually quite good even though probably incorrect, just as was Ptolemaic astronomy. It will do until a more refined explanation comes along, at which time its applicability may well be extended. Who the hell cares anyway, if for the time being it works as well as it seems to?

It works like placebo does , that is .
That does not make it correct indeed.
 
I'm just leery of this idea that as the active ingredient in a homeopathic medicine is diluted it becomes more powerful. does anyone know if this has been tested experimentally?
Good clue for a look at how some concepts of materialism still have a strong influence on you. :)

That said perhaps a reference can be made with the recent study that concluded plucking hair in certain patterns results in stimulating hair growth. The "more powerful" in homeopathy doesn't mean that the diluted ingredient itself contains a greater force. It means that it catalyzes a stronger response. It's akin to "reminding" the system of state-X and the system responding with a "whoa there's hardly any of that state" therefore making a greater effort to regain that state.
 
How does placebo work?

What ? You don't know how placebo works ? really ?
By believing it would .By taking it for granted as the real thing, while placebo does in fact nothing :
wouldn't work if one would not believe it would.
 
That's new -age non-sense , my friend, sorry.
Pseudo-science at best.
Reductionist materialism is certainly false , but the above is no less false.
You seem very sure of yourself. Where did you buy all this certainty? Or do you merely bluff to hide your own doubts?
 
You seem very sure of yourself. Where did you buy all this certainty? Or do you merely bluff to hide your own doubts?

I am relatively sure about what science is and what science is not : homeopathy is not science .See Karl Popper on the subject , for example.
I don't have time now to elaborate on that , as i am still not allowed to post links,so.sorry.
 
There's plenty of science out there to support this view. You haven't done your homework...noticed you just joined on Monday. Listen to all of Alex's other interviews and the links in the discussion sections (especially the one with Rupert Sheldrake). I'm not willing to get into a long discussion about this here on this thread. Suffice it to say that all things, living and not (see above video about properties of water) have electro-magnetic properties. And it is in this arena (which is largely either ignored or poo-pooed by main stream science) that homeoopathy appears to work.
 
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What ? You don't know how placebo works ? really ?
By believing it would .By taking it for granted as the real thing, while placebo does in fact nothing :
wouldn't work if one would not believe it would.
Truth is ... we don't know how placebo works.
Placebo is mainly related with pain and other subjective measures (such as anxiety or happiness) and it's not documented as providing long lasting effects.
It can be part reporting bias, part suggestion but it can also produce temporary physiological changes (as in Parkinson patients)

Homeopathy often times solves entire long standing chronic conditions. That doesn't sound like placebo.
Often times it causes temporary worsening of the condition before improving it. Again this is very peculiar.

It works for animals and plants... are these subjected to the placebo as well? I doubt it.

See, things are complicated.
And while I understand your anxiety to set everything in logical order, I think we could observe the contradictions for what they are, and be curious about them.
 
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