Should we be banning treatment that has not been shown to be effective when effective treatments are available?

Should pharmacies be allowed to sell homeopathic preparations?

There is a difference between "alternative" and "complementary " treatment. The courts have forced children whose parents objected to have life saving transfusions.

In this case it was too late.-his heart stopped. Would antibiotics have prevented this? Likely.

Not "likely." Yes, they would have.

There is a difference between a child with a cold and a child that is seriously ill.  I can't imagine thinking that I could treat a child who is listless  at home.  In each case, I have been whisked into a doctor, and in one case, with emergency surgery.

Has the backstory been released in any of those articles? What caused the parents to not respond?  History of mental illness, faith in home medicines , religion, fear of doctors?

Curious...

Maybe she'd read/hearc this CBC story back in April:

--------

Deborah Martin recalls her distress the day she walked into a Kelowna, B.C., hospital to learn her 72-year-old mother had been left lying in bed sheets soiled with feces overnight.

"They couldn't keep up with the amount of time she had to go to the washroom [so] she'd have an accident," said Martin, who lives in Angus, Ont., and travelled to B.C. with her husband last fall to take care of her mother. "I came in one morning, and she'd been sitting in it all night long. She had called for help, and it just didn't come."

Martin's story is disturbingly similar to many of the 3,500 submissions to an online survey about patient experiences done by the fifth estate as part of Rate My Hospital, a sweeping week-long series on the state of Canada's hospitals.

Nearly a third of respondents, who included patients, health-care workers and relatives and friends of patients, said hospital rooms and bathrooms were not kept clean.

Stories shared by respondents from across the country described soiled bathrooms, patients left lying in their own waste and pleas to seemingly harried nurses that went unanswered.

Karl Rinas, 61, who was treated for a bleeding ulcer at a Leamington, Ont., hospital last February, says he ended up wiping down the bathroom himself after his complaints about the dried liquid waste he found on the floor and toilet seat failed to get a reaction, but he worried about older, less mobile patients.

"If I was a little sicker, I would have walked through that slop," he said. "I wouldn't have wiped the seats off. I would have been in the goo, and that's what's so sad."

The father was just said to be estranged from him.  The mother's father insists that she would have taken him to the doctor if he appeared to be that sick.  I'd like to know if she actually sought health advice from someone before treating him with homeopathy.

I also wonder if she consulted a naturopath-and if so is the naturopath responsible?

and I said 'Likely lived" as some folks react so severely to some antibiotics that there are no guarantees.

No guarantees, but a very high probability, vs. using homeopathic remedies that are completely useless except for their placebo properties, which likely wouldn't amount to much for a seven-year-old.

Banning?  Likely not feasible really.  People want and enjoy the right to make choices in our society - and are able to do so, sometimes with tragic consequences.  Is it the role of  government to prevent us from making decisions that may turn out tragically?  That's a huge ethical issue. 

Yeah, I agree Carolla.  I would like to see them out of pharmacies though!

Are we conflating homeopathic preparations with all herbal remedies? There is certainly evidence for some benefit to some herbal preparations.

Natural healing techniques should be supplemental to the best medicine that Western techniques and pharmaceuticals can offer.

I'm not.

Western techniques do include natural techniques.  More research is needed for some, and some doctors are better at viewing someone as a whole person and connecting issues than others.

If not in pharmacies - then where?  

One aspect to having it in pharmacy - the pharmacists (here at least) are often a very valuable resource in terms of education & counselling re selection of product, addressing concerns re side-effects, etc.  And they may have a more balanced opinion than if the product was sold in a 'health food' type store where possibly traditional medical treatments are not well known or well regarded.   Just a thought. 

Time for a nice quote that says it better than I could:

I read this an hour after seeing an article on facebook in which a doctor complained about people coming to the hospital emergency rooms with minor complaints, some of which could be treated with time, fluids, rest.   

We've been told not to bother a doctor with a cold or flu - it's probably viral and shouldn't be treated with antibiotics that just aid in the  production of super-bugs.

So where do we draw the line?   A healthy child comes down with a flu.  His mother keeps him home from school and treats the symptoms.   He seems to be improving; then quite suddenly gets worse.  He is rushed to the hospital but it is too late.   Neglect or poor judgment? 

I grew up in a rural area.  The nearest doctor was 20 miles away over gravel roads, and we didn't own a car.  And it was before medicare.  My mother treated our colds, flu, stomach aches, fevers, cuts and scrapes with home remedies she had learned from her mother (an untrained midwife).  But when I broke my arm, and when my brother burned himself badly, and my sister's ear infection didn't clear up - Mom hired a neighbour to take us to the doctor. 

Living in the city, with medicare, I probably took my children to the doctor more often - perhaps sometimes unnecessarily.  We had a good family doctor - sometimes he just suggested an over-the-counter remedy for minor fever and something for a cough.   It isn't always easy to know how sick a child is - or how fast a minor illness can become serious.

A few hours after a doctor sent my friend home from an office call with a fussy baby, he was rushed back with meningitus.  He survived but with lifelong handicap.  A few years later she tried to get a referral to a peditrician for her daughter with recurring diareah that the family doctor didn't think serious.  She was told that she would be booked in six weeks.  She replied "Don't bother with the appointment - she'll be dead by then."   The specialist then agreed to meet her at emergency and the child was hospitalized with a bad case of Crohns. 

I'm just saying - don't judge.

Should we charge people for neglect or mistreatment?  If so, it's necessary to judge.

Yes, definitely for wilful neglect or mistreatment.  And I guess I shouldn'd have said 'don't judge'.   Rather I would say 'Let the courts decide what is just and merciful, after hearing all the evidence.