Homeopathy works on very different principles from allopathic medicines. Randomised Control trials study only the effect of treatment on immediate symptoms. The disease itself is classified as a cluster of symptoms along with the associated biochemical and pathological findings and/or genetic markers. The theory of homeopathy, on the other hand, is that behind the obvious physical abnormalities that we label as diseases, there are energy imbalances that manifest in different ways. According to this understanding, suppressing (eliminating) the symptoms (say, lowering of Blood pressure or blood sugar) and the reversal of abnormal biochemical parameters is not equivalent to a cure. The root cause, the energy imbalance, simply takes different routes of expression. In simple words, you contain or control one disease and transfer the problem to another form or disease. Well, it is a fact that Allopathy works best as an emergency medicine. For long-term chronic diseases, there is hardly a radical cure. It does, however, control the symptoms and the complications. But that is hardly a cure in the real sense. It is like the police that can control the crime but not change the criminal tendencies. Homeopathy is supposed to dig deeper. Often, the initial symptoms may increase or worsen because it brings out hidden, latent energies into play. Once out in the open then it removes the deeper energy imbalance by rectifying the root error. It is somewhat like the difference between moral control and spiritual.
Quite naturally, it will be extremely difficult to design a study for such a paradigm. Our standard statistical model is oversimplistic in its approach to the truth of things or evidence, as it is called. Hence, the difficulty of proving statistically unless a proper study appropriate to the process is designed.
The other problem is that due to money considerations, hardly people study or practice either allopathy or homeopathy. Studies get tweaked, products are manipulated, statistics are used as a tool to promote. Even homeopathy has taken the allopathic cover as it has started claiming to cure specific diseases, which is never the way how homeopathy works. With money flowing all over, one can hardly expect studies to bring out deeper truths. But it is a fact that there are people, and I have myself known quite a few, some well-known allopath specialists who never took any allopathy all their life and survived on homeopathy alone. Too much of a chance that would be.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
