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Homeopathy has predated modern medicine when the earliest men started harnessing natural minerals for medicinal purposes. The practice now looks to be experiencing a resurgence which started in 2007 when sales in the US amounted to over $2.7-billion. But does homeopathy deserve its spotlight in the modern era?
The increased trends in this alternative medicine is directly correlated with themes of returning to nature. After having been bundled up by a highly urbanized lifestyle, people are now reverting back to medicine derived from plant roots and minerals.
This has earned the ire of modern researchers. They perceive homeopathic practice to be unethical as it implicitly discourages scientifically proven treatments. People forego decades of scientific research to instead go back to what they consider as pseudo-science.
Defenders of homeopathic practice recall studies by Cucherat, et. al. (2000) and Caulfield and Debow (2005) which yielded positive results on its effectivity. However, these have been widely discredited today because of faulty research methodologies. Studies by Shang, et. al. (2005) have emphatically declared homeopathy to be nothing but a hoax. In 2017, the UK became the first in the world to blacklist homeopathy from government funding. Switzerland and Australia’s respective national health agencies have gone to assess homeopathy and found it outright ineffective.
Yet today some practitioners still make use of homeopathic treatment across varied fields of medicine. Such countries in which the trend of homeopathy is widely spreading are those whose governments have not yet conducted their own formal investigations in the matter or have declined to act on the information presented. Doctors have different explanations for why this is so. Some wholeheartedly believe in it and say that there is still so much that science cannot explain, some find it appealing only insofar as the placebo effect is real, and others consider the same because it gives their terminal patients a sense of peace. Within its colored history, homeopathy has been present in Ancient Greek potions, part of a global luxury trade in the 19th century, and the stuff of World War 2 science fiction.
As to the population of practitioners’ perception on its impact on the practice goes, there is not much debate of its infectivity as a treatment in itself but there is no denying its impact as a coping strategy. What is sure however is that so long as governments do not move for a proper crackdown on homeopathic treatment or the scientific community becomes apathetic to its trend, homeopathy is an appealing and enticing alternative to what is considered artificial treatment in modern medicine.
Writing should be one part informative and one part entertaining. It's what differentiates a generic piece of text from a well-written article. Rey Palmares dedicates much of his time to fine-tune that craft, juggling the joys and frustrations of writing with those of his law school life outside of the office. He's making it work so far.
