Homeopathy cures autism

Nah, of course it doesn't! I'm not a total idiot. Obviously you can't make an autistic brain non-autistic with a drink of water. But I get loads of Google hits here from folk interested in the magik water and it's supposed effects on autism. Most of them soon realise from what I wrote on the topic (here and here) that I'm just pointing and laughing at their funny notions, and they click away to more suitable sites where there are lots of flower pictures and glowing testimonials.

Dilute flower juice; brain changing!
Image from stock.xchng

Most of these visitors I know of only via their footprint on my stat counting software. But in the past few days I've received comments from 2 of them. One was upset at my bad attitude to John Melnychuk:

Can someone please explain why John Melnychuk is being harranged liked this when the child in question is %95 less violent and his digestion has improved?
All the snide remarks seem to me to be based on contempt for a system of therapeutics that you have judged long before you have understood it- if you ever have understood it. Ignorantly poking fun at something can hardly have anything to do with a search for scientific truth.

While you continue along these lines of thinking and communication, people all over the globe are using homeopathy to help heal all manner of illness. This has been demonstrated on people of all ages and on animals.

Oh FFS. How can people be smart enough to type a message on a blog (admittedly not a thing requiring much in the way of brain power) and yet unable to see just what a pile of rubbish they're spouting.

Tell me where, anon, Melnychuk has been "harranged"(sic)? How do you know whether the child is "%95 less violent" or that "his digestion has improved", and if he has, how can the changes be attributed to the magik water? You claim that I'm dismissing a system I don't understand, well Anon, I studied enough chemistry to know what Avogadro's number is and how there can be no molecules of the original substance in extremely dilute "remedies". I'm going to go with the whole evidence based thing over some eighteenth century nostrum. Will you be the first person ever to provide proof that there has been any confirmed cure of a non self limiting disease using homeopathy alone? I don't think so.

Why do people look for a cure or sucessful treatment for illness and then scoff when one is demonstrated? If it is so incredible to you that autism can be cured or much improved then why are you even looking at this kind of information? Why don't you just accept your plight and stop reading and searching.

Who do you say is looking for a cure? Not I!
I read about this stuff because I was appalled at the awful treatment an autistic child had suffered at the hands of a quack. I hope to shed some light on the high amount of misinformation and nonsense in Melnychuk's article. I am disgusted that these charlatans think they can treat autism.

I think you might like to rethink your wording of that last sentence: having Duncan in my life is no plight, but a pleasure.

Perhaps some reading on the history of medicine would be helpful. Grossing wrote about the different schools of thought in his book Homeopathy the Great Riddle. I believe it would be somewhat enlightening to one who could read it neutrally- if one could read it neutrally. Much of this is really about two different perspectives- materialism vs. vitalism.
It would be interesting to read the commentary in 100 years from now on medicine in the 20th century. Some of the scare tactics from those promoting the current medical system (especially vaccines) sound like the ones from 200 years ago except that then they ended with something like "if you spare the lancet from your child's mouth"- a reference to bloodletting.
It would be nice to get beyond all this.

Yep, it's about 2 perspectives all right, reality and make believe. Vitalism?! What the heck is that?

So those promoting vaccines describe the risks of infectious diseases, and you call that scare tactics. It'd be nice to get beyond this silliness alright.

So then another one pops up, this time Lyak shares some advice:

Instead of attaching all these labels to your son (ADHD and autism) why don't you try to heal him? Loads of people have helped their children who have autistic symptons and even recovered them. Homoeopathy is a safe theraputic system that has been used for hundreds of years with lots of sucess. It's helped children like your son too.
http://www.impossiblecure.com/autism.html
Good Luck!!

Oh Lyak, you sound all polite and all as you dispense your badly spelt advice. So forgive me, but such tripe doesn't help at all.
But good luck to you too!!

There's word of a film being made about homeopathy and autism, to be called "Saving a Lost Generation". Can't these people think up any new metaphors for autism, surely the whole, lost, trapped, missing, changeling child thing is old now? Anyway, this story is beautifully dealt with by jdc325 here.

I promise, I'll be nice again tomorrow. Probably.