Modern Homoeopathy

Monthly E-Newsletter December 2007

Homoeoprophylaxis – the Effectiveness and Safety of a Proven Alternative to Vaccination

by

Dr. Isaac Golden

Homoeoprophylaxis (HP) has been used for over 200 years to assist in the prevention of targeted infectious diseases. Mostly this use has been in short-term epidemic situations. In 1985 I prepared a 5 year HP program from long-term prevention, and have collected data since then to assess the safety and effectiveness of the program.

In 2004 I integrated 18 years of data collection from parents of children using my program, with 4 years doctoral research at Swinburne University in Melbourne. The purpose of this article is to share with you the findings of this and other research into the effectiveness and safety of HP.

Background:

The first use of HP by Dr Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, was in 1798, and written up in 1801[1]. He used the remedy Belladonna 30 to successfully treat patients with the disease Scarlet Fever, but fortuitously found that the remedy also helped to prevent the disease. He then used HP to prevent such diseases as Cholera and Typhoid. In the decades following, many of the leading homoeopathic prescribers used HP to prevent a variety of infectious diseases, mainly in acute epidemic situations[2].

The largest trial of the short-term use of HP was against an outbreak of Meningococcal disease in Brazil. The researchers gave 65,826 children the homoeopathic remedy Meningococcinum. 23,539 were not protected. The effectiveness of HP after 6 months was 95%, and after a 12 months follow-up was 91%[3].

There had been very little formal statistical research into the long-term use of HP prior to 1985. The data I have collected since that time provides a useful guide as to the effectiveness and safety of long-term HP. It confirms that the findings regarding epidemic use also extend to long-term use, with an average effectiveness of around 90%, and a very high level of safety. These findings are presented below.

The Effectiveness of Homoeoprophylaxis:

As mentioned above, we have a considerable amount of clinical evidence showing that HP provides a high level of protection against targeted infectious diseases. This is supported by a small number of statistical trials which are summarized in Table 1 below. These show an average effectiveness of around 90%, which certainly is comparable to measures of vaccine effectiveness, which range from 70% to 99%, depending on the individual vaccine[4].

These figures confirm that no method of disease prevention is ever 100% effective.

No statistical study is ever perfect, and of course the reliability of my data is open to question. So as part of my Swinburne research, I applied seven statistical tests to validate the long-term data I have been collecting since 1985. These are described in detail elsewhere[5], and they did show a high level of reliability. For example, my single figure measure of long-term HP effectiveness was 90.4%, with 95% confidence limits of 87.6% - 93.2%, a very strong result.

Table 1: The Effectiveness of HP – Statistical Trials in Humans

* References for these studies may be found in Vaccination and Homoeoprophylaxis – A Review of Risks and Alternatives, 6^th edition[6]

So those in pharmaceutical medicine who state that there is no evidence supporting the effectiveness of HP are clearly wrong. It is not essential to rely only on randomized clinical trials (RCTs) to provide evidence, and in fact the findings of many RCTs are shown to be questionable over time (e.g. drugs such as Vioxx that were tested in RCTs, then later withdrawn from use because of side-effects not discovered or acknowledged during the RCTs).

Thus homoeopaths can confidently say that HP provides a definite level of protection against targeted infectious diseases, which is not 100%, but which is comparable to that of vaccines.

The Safety of Homoeoprophylaxis

Both sides agree that homoeopathic potencies cannot be physically toxic, and so physical safety is not an issue. However, some homoeopaths have expressed concerns over the years as to whether the long-term use of the remedies in my HP program is energetically safe. Many people who are not bound to the pharmaceutical paradigm understand that energy can produce real and tangible effects, and if misused can cause problems. So one important part of my research at Swinburne was to check the long-term safety of HP.

 This was done by examining 5 markers of overall wellbeing in children aged between 4 and 12 years of age -  asthma, eczema, ear/hearing problems, allergies and behavioural problems. These were compared to a range of early childhood markers, including breastfeeding status, birthweight, APGAR scores, as well as to 4 possible immunization methods – vaccination, HP, general/constitutional prevention, and no prevention at all. That gave 20 (5 x 4) possible combinations of health conditions and immunization methods. The data was processed using Odds Ratios and Chi Squared Probability tests.

Once again, the full results are reported in detail elsewhere[7], but the main findings are as follows:

1. In 19 of the 20 possible measures of health, vaccinated children were less healthy than other children, usually by a significant amount (the 1 measure favouring vaccination was not statistically significant). The most dramatic single finding was that vaccinated children have a 15 times greater chance of becoming asthmatic than children using HP, with P>99%, a highly statistically significant finding.
2. Children using HP were generally at least as healthy (and often more healthy) as children who used constitutional/general immunization or no immunization at all. The HP group were not exclusively from people who were extremely health conscious. Regularly, parents using my HP program say that it their first introduction to homoeopathy, and to natural medicine in general.
3. Parental estimates of general wellbeing were very high in the HP group – at least as high as in other groups.
4. Not all HP programs give consistent results. When comparing children using my HP program to those using other HP programs, the levels of both effectiveness and safety were lower in the group using other programs. So it is advisable to check the basis of a HP program before committing to it. Programs using daily doses of low potencies provide less effective long-term prevention than programs using infrequent doses of (appropriately selected) high potencies.

We may conclude from the parts of my data which were statistically significant (P≥95%), that HP is associated with an improvement in general health, compared to other immunization methods (as well as no immunisation at all), and that this figure is significantly better when compared to vaccinated children. Therefore we may conclude that there is no evidence that suggests that the use of an appropriate long-term HP program in any way lessens the health of children, and evidence that it may in fact assist the maturation of the immune system by gently challenging the system in the first 5-6 years of life.

Concluding Comments

What began as a limited study 20 years ago has grown, for me, into an ongoing attempt to make parents, as well as health professionals, aware of the wonderful opportunity that homoeoprophylaxis offers to provide protection against target infectious diseases, without risking the long-term health of their children. It may be safely used by adults.

Not every infectious disease is a dire threat to a healthy infant. I personally don’t believe that immunization against every infectious disease is essential. But I do believe that the right to choose which diseases should be prevented should belong to the parents of each child. We can confidently say to parents that they can provide a high (but not complete) level of protection against targeted diseases, without risk, by using an appropriate HP program.

We can also say to those within the pharmaceutical industry who disparage HP as being untested and uncertain  -  take the time to study the facts available. Criticism without facts is the anthesis of the true scientific method, yet it is the response we continually get from pharmaceutical medicine when it comes to HP.

I concluded my doctoral thesis by saying “that a national immunisation system, where both vaccination and HP were available to parents, would increase the national coverage against targeted infectious diseases, and reduce the incidence of some chronic health conditions, especially asthma”[8]. The data is unambiguous, and it is time that those who run national and international public health services get serious about long-term health, and fully support the use of the best of what natural medicine in general, and homoeopathic medicine in particular, has to offer.

Vaccines offer a level of protection against targeted infectious diseases, but involve a long-term risk that has never been adequately measured. Evidence shows that vaccination is a factor in the increase in asthma (and other chronic diseases) shown earlier. We can achieve a comparable level of protection, without this risk, by using an appropriate long-term HP program. It’s time that those parents who search for facts to inform themselves before vaccinating are encouraged, and not attacked by agents of the pharmaceutical industry. It’s time that parents are supported in their choice of immunisation method, for the benefit of their own children and of the entire community.

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