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Thursday 25 February 2016

Homeopathy in the USA. A sign of the weakness of conventional medicine?

The United States and America is where the threat to health freedom, and patient choice, is at its most extreme. In every state the conventional medical establishment is seeking to make vaccination mandatory, taking away the choice of patients.

Yet the people of the USA are great users of other medical therapies, not the least of which is homeopathy.

An important survey has recently been conducted into the usage of homeopathic medicines in the USA, and published in the most respected public health journal in the USA, 'The American Journal of Public Health'. The survey authors are from Harvard’s School of Public Health and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School affiliated hospital, and Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, has kindly outlined some of the more salient facts arising from the survey:

  • The survey noted that homeopathic studies “suggest potential public health benefits such as reductions in unnecessary antibiotic usage, reductions in costs to treat certain respiratory diseases, improvements in peri-menopausal depression, improved health outcomes in chronically ill individuals. And the control of a Leptospirosis epidemic in Cuba.
  • The survey analyzed data from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey for the prevalence and patterns of usage of homeopathic medicines among U.S. adults in relation to other complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) use.
  • Two-thirds of homeopathy users ranked homeopathy as one of their top three CIM therapies.
  • Homeopathy users who saw a professional homeopath were significantly more likely to feel that homeopathy was “very important in maintaining health and well-being” and that it helped their health condition “a great deal” than were homeopathy users who did not see a professional homeopath.
  • Previous governmental surveys in 2002 and 2007 found that homeopathy was used by 1.7% and 1.8% of American adults respectively. This new survey found that in 2012 the usage of homeopathy had grew approximately 15% to 2.1% of U.S. adults.
  • The usage of homeopathic medicines in the U.S. are considerably lower than in other Western countries, such as Italy (8.2%) and Germany (14.8%).
  • The survey, like dozens before it, have found that people who were more educated were more likely to use homeopathic medicines than people who were less educated.
  • The most common conditions for which people sought homeopathic treatment were respiratory and ear-nose-and-throat complaints as well as musculoskeletal pain syndromes.
  • The researchers concluded that “because of potential public health benefits associated with the use of homeopathy, further research on this modality and targeted studies of users are warranted”.

The study abstract can be found here.

Perhaps the growing popularity of homeopathy, alongside the growing resistance to conventional, drug and vaccine based medicine, is the primary reason for the insidious movement towards mandatory medication in the USA. The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to realise that more and more people see their drugs and vaccines as ineffective and harmful, whilst at the same time, growing numbers of people are looking for safer medical therapies. For the drug companies this combination is a threat to their business, their profits, their influence with national health care systems.

Forcing people to have their drugs and vaccines has become a survival mechanism!

Pharmaceutical companies may see this flexing of muscle as a sign of strength and vigour. Actually, it is a sign of weakness and incipient decline.