Matthias Egger is professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Bern in Switzerland, as well as professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.[1] (wikipedia)
But the question is how does it work?
Our study powerfully illustrates the interplay and cumulative effect of different sources of bias. We acknowledge that to prove a negative is impossible, but we have shown that the effects seen in placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy are compatible with the placebo-hypothesis.
We know from studies that these treatments do reduce mortality considerably, but we were interested in whether they work equally well in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
no convincing evidence that homeopathy was superior to placebo, whereas for conventional medicine an important effect remained.
What one would have expected is that large studies of high quality would have shown an effect, which wasn't the case for homeopathy. This means that clinical effects of homeopathy are placebo effects.
What we saw was when you looked at these good, large studies, you did no longer see an effect for homeopathy, whereas you still saw an effect for conventional medicine,
We do know that people do get better with homeopathy,
The launching of these treatments has been quite staggering. At least a million people are now being treated in the South. That's still perhaps only 15 per cent of all people who need treatment, but it's a significant change compared with two or three years ago.
The effect of homeopathy disappears if you look only at large, good trials; whereas the conventional medicines' effect is still there, ... This means there is no difference between placebo and homeopathic remedies.
Conventional medicine interventions did better than placebo, whereas the homeopathy interventions basically did the same as placebo.
