Homeopathy and Modern Science
Popularity of Homeopathy Incites Modern Science
Homeopathy is under scrutiny this year ever since Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed its regulations and has decided that it should pass the same quality checking as with conventional medicines.
The press was even more excited when the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales publicly showed his distaste against homeopathy, calling it ‘a proven fraud’. Homeopathic supporters, on the other hand, weren’t the ones to just sit back and watch Wales on his rant. A petition was signed by more than 12, 000 members under the title, “Call to action to update Homeopathy at Wikipedia” to which Wales had bravely responded to saying, “What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn't”.
It has, indeed, been a wishy-washy situation for all homeopathic experts as supporters and clients are expected to turn their back from homeopathy with all the complaints against it. However, it seems that the popularity of homeopathy is not declining. Instead, it has risen even more.
Let us start first with Germany where it was first introduced. The government has been so supportive of homeopathy that the German government mandated that all medical school curricula included information about natural remedies. 44% of leukemia patients in the country are even using homeopathy to recover. Acupuncture is also one of the alternative treatments which is famous in Germany.
In United Kingdom, it is known that the British Royal Family has been an avid supporter of homeopathy, influencing the subordinates to follow suit. There are five homeopathic hospitals working within the National Health Service, some of them with a two-year waiting list for non-emergency visits to a homeopath.
In Asia, homeopathy is a mainstream in India followed by China, Indonesia and Malaysia. In Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, homeopathic clinics operate side by side with that of conventional medicine practitioners, much to the displeasure of modern medicine advocates.
In a friendly debate between pro and anti-homeopathic treatment conducted by The Peterson Group, number one source of information for alternative, complementary and integrative medicines, skeptics of homeopathy insists that there all the claims against the practice are due to placebo and that homeopathic experts are only taking advantage of the advert marketing issued by the current conflict in homeopathy to gain popularity. Supporters of the homeopathy, on the other hand, points out that just because American Medical Association has deemed homeopathy as fake does not mean that the rest of the world agrees. They even emphasized that the main reason for its popularity is because of the effectiveness of its treatment.