Hi everyone,
Ok....I am a homeopathy user and have been one for more than 30 years. I find it very useful and in fact, sometimes almost miraculous as compared to many other systems.
Of course, I also use Allopathy (modern medicine) and Ayurveda for ailments where I believe those will be more useful. I have no particular allegiance to any one system of medicine. Whatever works for me in the case of any particular ailment I will use without reservation. I have never tried Acupuncture but I have found Pranic Healing useful for some problems. Very often I combine systems if necessary. Some of them are complementary...though Allopathy and Ayurveda should not normally be combined.
About 'placebo'...! No one knows what placebo means or how it works. Placebo is not just mental deception or bluff....its much more than that and far more complex than we imagine. So...I think we should avoid dubbing something as 'just placebo'....as though it is of no significance.
About the NHS......haven't they been threatening to ban Homeopathy for many years now?! I thought it was banned years ago! Anyway many people in the UK use homeopathy (the royal family being most significant)....and it should be available for their use.
Clinical trials are not everything. If they were we wouldn't be having so many drugs withdrawn and so many side effects. Its about how individual patients react to treatments.
I believe that medicine is more than just anatomy and physiology. 'Body is a machine' concept is nonsense. Its all about the mind (the biofield) and how it meshes in with the body. Since we seem to know very little about the mind and its nature and almost nothing about the biofield.....(its existence being denied even today by science)....we aren't likely to make many informed guesses about what good health really means and therefore about how homeopathy works.
Just some thoughts.
Sriram