Homoeopathica April 2003

by Bruce Barwell

Noel O’Hare writes a “Health” column in every second issue of the NZ Listener. Some of his pages are quite interesting and informative, but most convey information easily found on the internet. In fact a suspicious mind would sometimes suspect this page was cobbled together from internet sources and involved little real journalism.

His page on homœopathy in the 1 March issue presents an example of such computer use. The page was triggered by reports in British newspapers, and then sceptics’ websites, saying that a small­scale trial to see if Arnica in 6c and 30c would be helpful to people having carpal-tunnel release surgery had demonstrated by its results that homœopathy was a sham.

Noel O’Hare and many others who joined in the game of knocking homœopathy do not seem to have troubled themselves to have read, let alone analysed, the medical journal’s report that launched the avalanche of ill-informed comment and smart-aleck headings.

If they had read the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (vol 96, Feb 2003) they would have seen how poorly the trial was constructed, how meaningless are the conclusions of those who ran it, and, of course, how it was not even close to demonstrating homœopathy “did not work.” Headings like the Listener one (Bruising evidence: The result of a new clinical trial cast more doubt on the efficacy of homœopathy) would never follow a trial showing that vitamin C failed to correct colour-blindness. “Vitamins proven a waste of money” as a heading? I think not!

Sixty-four people started the Arnica trial, two dropped out (one on Arnica 6c did not have the planned surgery and one on 30c said the tablets made her unhappy and low) so it ended up 20 on Arnica 6c, 20 on 30c and 22 on placebo. The tablets were supposed to be taken three times a day for seven days before the carpal tunnel surgery, continuing on for 14 days after the operation. No responsible homœopath would suggest such a regime! A great many would not even recommend the use of Arnica in this context!

Here are the published figures for Day 14 after surgery . . .

We know statistics are flexible things and can be made to do all sorts of tricks in cunning hands, but to me the figures show that the patients taking Arnica 6c were quite a bit better off than the others. More rational prescribing, not of Arnica but of Staphisagria or Hypericum, would have produced a more convincing display of the benefits of homœopathy I think!
The people who ran the trial made some strange comments in their summing up. Among them: “Homœopathic practitioners identify specific patient characteristics . . . that help predict who will respond to Arnica. The trial did not apply traditional homœopathic principles in this way.” “There was little bruising pain and swelling in any of the groups, so perhaps the skill of the surgeon offered little scope for Arnica.”

Interestingly, a point none of the blinkered critics of homœ­opathy considered is that the good (in my opinion, anyway) results of this trial duplicate an earlier one on the use of Arnica in carpal tunnel surgery. This prior trial (Use of Arnica to relieve pain after carpal­ tunnel release surgery, by S L Jeffery and H J Belcher, of the Department of Plastic Surgery, Queen Victoria Hospital, West Sussex, published in Alternative Therapy in Health and Medicine, Mar­Apr 2002, 8(2):66-68) compared placebo, homœopathic Arnica tablets and Arnica ointment in a group of 37 people.

Post-surgery grip strength, wrist circumference, and pain measured two weeks after surgery found no difference in the groups for the first two measurements but “there was a significant reduction in pain experienced after two weeks in the Arnica-treated group (P less than 0.03)”. The authors concluded that the use of homoe­opathic Arnica “merits further investigation.”
I believe, from these two trials and my own experience, Arnica in the range of 3c to 12c used like this causes a wider area of bruising than would otherwise have been the case, but it speeds up the rate at which the bruise changes from blue/black to red/yellow and greatly reduces pain. It is not a sham!

Another contribution to the O’Hare attack on homœopathy was reference to the Benveniste and Ennis debacles, a matter only connected to the veracity of homœopathy in the minds of journalists and writers to sceptics’ websites. Laboratory experiments involving ultra-molecular “dilutions” seem to be very fickle, sometimes proving activity in such solutions and sometimes not. Two of the more conspicuous “sometimes nots” happened under the scrutiny of the media and James Randi, the American conjuror who has taken a special interest in homœopathy. The trials always flop when Randi has promised to give $US1million to someone able to demonstrate a hyperphysical phenomenon – one hopes sleight of hand is not involved.

Noel O’Hare quotes David Ramey, describing him as a scientist – he is in fact a horse doctor, a Californian vet specializing in equine problems and the author of nine books on the subject. Representing him as someone qualified to assess homœopathy in any depth is misleading, to say the least. But any stick will do to beat a dog.

All in all a sorry piece of writing unworthy of the Listener, the editor of which failed to publish any letters from homœopaths correcting some of the “Health” page errors.

I have complained to the Press Council.