So, Walgreen’s and Express Scripts played chicken this year, and the answer is, we have to move our prescriptions.
The local drug store (“Village Drug” on Division St.) we picked is overloaded pretty badly right now, so I got to spend some time waiting while they processed stuff. And I decided to browse the store. The entire store has a grand total of zero homeopathic treatments for anything.
I do not think I will go back to Walgreen’s later, even if stuff gets sorted out, just because I really hated buying medication from a place that sold such blatantly fraudulent stuff. I found it sort of upsetting.
That said, I sort of wish the FDA would officially approve the use of homeopathic medicines to treat hypochondria.
Comments [archived]
From: Ariel
Date: 2011-12-29 11:31:26 -0600
Homeopathic remedies have a place, and it is in the treatment of symptoms. They don’t treat the illness, but can help in providing relief from symptoms. The issue is that we’ve all been taught that if you can make the pain stop, the injury is healed. They are a bandage, they are not the time, energy, and cell growth that will close the wound.
From: seebs
Date: 2011-12-29 11:39:11 -0600
Well, the thing is: They do absolutely nothing to treat those symptoms. 100% placebo, no other effect, at all. None. Not for any condition. Not with any homeopathic remedy.
This stuff has been tested to hell and back. You have to understand, a technique that let you use under 1% of 1% of an active ingredient would be immensely valuable. It’s been studied and tried and researched and retried, because people have been so sure that they could make it work.
It doesn’t work. It’s a placebo. It makes people feel better because they feel like they’re doing something. You could replace homeopathic meds with plain old sugar pills and they’d be just as effective for anything but diabetes.
From: AshtaraSilunar
Date: 2011-12-29 20:59:51 -0600
They are so harmless, in fact, that people have taken entire bottles without incident.
http://www.ted.com/talks/james_randi.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/29/sceptics-homeopathy-mass-overdose-boots
From: Dave Leppik
Date: 2012-01-03 12:49:26 -0600
Of course they’re harmless. They’re diluted to the point of being tap water. No active ingredients, no inactive ingredients. Except, of course, water.
If they did work, we’d be in trouble. If a single molecule from hibiscus extract could promote alertness, you’d have to worry that a guest had brushed her sweater against a teabag a month ago, washed it, a few remaining molecules got shook off when she walked in, and one of them landed on your toothbrush right before bed. And then another ingredient that promotes sleep landed in your coffee cup in the morning. Because we do, in fact, get these homeopathic medicines floating in the air all the time— at the homeopathic dosages.