Most homeopaths worldwide are fully credentialed M.D.s who went on to study and practice homeopathy. That might tell you something.

I'm not a homeopath but I've been a practicing pediatrician for 20 years, which is long enough to know how much I DON'T know about why people get sick and why they do or don't get better. Saying homeopathy is "just the placebo effect" is a non-answer. As doctors, we use the placebo effect all the time. Call it "laying on of hands", call it "confidence", call it "natural course of an illness", the plain fact is that if somebody thinks a particular treatment is going to make them better, it's more likely that it will. And there are MANY randomized controlled double-blind studies that have shown just that. And major academic medical centers, including Harvard Medical School, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Arizona, are exploring and researching what's become known as CAM, or "Complementary and Alternative Medicine', including homeopathy, herbalism, Chinese medicine, and the so-called "energy therapies", among others. They are using the same standards that are used to judge therapeutic methods in Western medicine, and they are finding a great deal of benefit. Which is no surprise, of course, to those people who have been using these systems successfully for centuries.

There's no question that if, heaven forbid, my spleen is ruptured or I have a life-threatening infection, I'm going to opt for the best of modern western medical technology. But I'm also going to hope that friends are praying for me, and I'm going to use meditation and imagery, and I'll try to find out what herbs or homeopathic remedies might help in addition. And I'll hope my doctors and all other healers remember the adage, "Primum non nocere": First, do no harm.

Aloha,
Mark