Synopsis of Harris Coulter's Controlled Clinical Trial

The essence of Harris Coulter's argument is that a so-called Controlled Clinical trial can't really be controlled. For example, if you choose a population that is very homogeneous then the results of the study says nothing about individuals who are not similar to this population (e.g. women and children, who have been left out of most studies, or people who are sicker or healthier or have different symptom patterns or health histories than the study population).

If you choose a population that is very heterogeneous (dissimilar) then it is very difficult to get consistent results. So the drug companies do their studies with very narrowly defined groups so they can get good results. Then they pick doctors who have given them good results in the past and don't use doctors who don't give them the results they want.

So you can see how the Vioxx fiasco occurred. And with billions of dollars at stake these disasters will continue to happen.

There are many clinical trials that have been performed of homeopathic medicine. Homeopathy is an individualized medicine and therefore the treatments for the study patients have to be individualized (although many of the poorly done studies, from a homeopath's view, ignore this). This requires a lot more time and effort than just giving everybody the same drug. As a result, the well-done studies tend to be smaller. Critics discount the smaller studies has being meaningless. The so-called quackbusters want a study to be performed for every single medical condition, which would be prohibitive. Homeopathy is a consistent medical system that is the same for any medical condition.

When a homeopath works with a client who has an acute illness, they may require one, two maybe even three remedies as the symptoms change over time. We have all had enough influenza to know, that the symptoms in the early stages are different from the symptoms in the later stages. But none of the studies, even the ones done by homeopaths, take account for this, because it is considered improper form to "change the treatment" in the middle of the study, even though that is the essence of homeopathy, to individualize the treatment.

So, you can see it’s not as simple as saying "lets just do some double blind studies and be done with it."