Comment Re:I should add that it is improving (Score 1) 713
So maybe a few homeopathic solutions or healing herbs would come in handy to the doctor who wants return business, but doesn't want to prescribe unneeded antibiotics. And who knows, the patient might get well faster because he feels better: the doctor clearly cares about his welfare, he's been given "medicine", all should be well. People aren't machines; they don't respond well to being treated as though they were. Whatever happened to the art of medicine?
It went away with modern medical ethics. A doctor is ethically required to prescribe medicine which he or she honestly believes will address the problem, and tell the patient why that is. It's about informed consent. If a medical doctor prescribed a homeopathic remedy, how do you imagine the conversation going?
"Well, the remedy I'm giving you has no active ingredient--it's actually diluted so far down that it's just water! Nevertheless, I think it will reduce your pain/swelling/etc because of the placebo effect. Which requires that you think this is a real medicine--oops."
This is the same reason that doctors are now taught that sugar pills and other placebos are ethical only in medical trials, in which the priority is the testing of a treatment rather than the actual treatment. Using placebos in place of tested treatments in actual practice is equivalent to lying to the patient.