Bernardo Merizalde, MD, DHt, president of the American Institute of Homeopathy, writes to the editors of Newsweek about their poor information about homeopathy.

February 1, 2008

by Bernardo Merizalde MD, DHt

Februay 1, 2008

Mr. Jerry Adler    
P.O Box 2120
Radio City Station
New York, NY 10101-2120
    
Dear Mr. Adler:

I read your piece from January 26, 2008 in Newsweek, “No Way to Treat the Dying”, with great dismay. With my greatest sympathy for the Nedlouf family and their plight, I totally agree that they should not have gone through the financial and emotional stress that Mrs. Nedlouf went through in the last days of her life. But my dismay was not just about the Nedlouf’s situation, it also involves how their case, and Dr Nekouzi’s actions, was used as canvas to misrepresent professional homeopathic physicians and their practice.

Dr. Nekouzi’s practice is very far from that of a true homeopath. The great majority of homeopaths do not perform “bioresonance therapy”, “quadrant analysis”, or “autosanguis” treatments; nor probe their patients with electrodes or prescribe 30 to 40 pills and/or supplements; and certainly, would not “sell a cure” when a case is incurable. Homeopathic doctors do not believe that homeopathy is neither a panacea, nor a placebo, though many times it will have a placebo component as do most other medical interventions. Homeopathy has its limitations. Dr. Nakouzi was not a member of any of the recognized professional homeopathic organizations in the country and did not follow standards of homeopathic practice.

It is unfortunate that you have taken on the crusade to stamp out homeopathy with misrepresentation. As a physician, who has explored complementary approaches to help my patients, I have seen, personally and professionally, that homeopathy works beyond the placebo response, a conclusion that took over ten years for me to accept. It is a truly challenging contention, yet I preferred to hold an unbiased reservation until I had enough proof to decide, one way or another. My goal was to find what was best to heal my patients.

Homeopathic medicine offers a tool to medicine which can bring a solution to the current health care crisis and the future crisis in Medicare spending foreseen in the next twenty years. There is enough data to see that there is biological action from substances that have been diluted beyond Avogadro’s number, from research performed by scientists outside the field of medicine and homeopathy, such as materials scientists, biologists and pharmacologists. Such data is rejected by the conventional establishment, not because it challenges “current laws of physics and chemistry” but a cherished mindset; accepting such data would involve a state of cognitive dissonance, which can be the source of unwitting bias.

Several meta-analysis have been published supporting the contention that there can be more than a placebo response in homeopathy. Such studies are considered the second best evidence after “large, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials”. All of them have been published in peer-reviewed medical journals.

Dr. Edward Calabrese, from the University of Massachusetts, and his colleagues, has performed thousands of toxicological experiments challenging the traditional dose response curve in biochemistry. Many of those experiments involve substances diluted beyond molecular measurements. His findings are independent of the homeopathic paradigm, and in fact, he has strongly asserted that he does not see a relationship between his work and homeopathy, a hardly defendable statement in my opinion.

From those studies, and from published reports from homeopaths around the world, through the course of the last 200 years, including epidemic diseases, it has been determined that homeopathy can be useful in conditions such as: acute viral syndromes; asthma; chronic fatigue syndrome; childhood diarrhea; cholera; grief reactions; ineffective labor; menopausal symptoms; toxemia of pregnancy; osteoarthritis; insomnia; otitis media, purulent and serous; scarlet fever; eczema; enuresis; allergies; anxiety disorders; croup; pneumonia; colic; dysmenorrhea; inflammatory arthritis; mastitis; hypermenorrhea; migraine; post traumatic stress syndrome; inflammatory bowel disease; attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder; chronic viral conditions; yellow fever; vaginitis; nausea of pregnancy; recurrent urinary tract infections; premenopausal syndrome, acute or chronic; functional complaints (e.g., irritable bowel syndrome); thyroid conditions; and others.

Several of these conditions are recalcitrant or difficult to treat conventionally and many patients, including those in my practice, have gone to many, well intended and experienced clinicians, without finding relief. These patients put their faith and hope in their doctors but did not recover, until they used homeopathy. I have difficulty supporting such a random appearance of the placebo response, which would appear just when they used homeopathy.

Many conventional treatments do not have, or have not had, an identified mechanism of action for many years while used successfully in clinical practice. Such was the case with aspirin, and is the case with most anticonvulsants, as examples. Rejecting the evidence for the biological activity of homeopathic preparations is negative bias, and hardly consistent with the scientific approach you espouse.

I hope you are able to adopt a truly objective position, which would involve the willingness to weigh the evidence on its own merit, in a totally unbiased way. The true scientist is willing to look at the data open mindedly, whether or not he has to change his world view.

Sincerely yours,


Bernardo A. Merizalde, M.D
President
American Institute of Homeopathy


cc: John Meacham, Senior Editor