Do you think people benefit from homeopathy due to the placebo effect or due to something else?

Other benfits of homoeopathy may include rehydration from water based tinctures.

Homoeopaths benefit from the low cost of making the preparations and the high mark ups on the final remedies. Consider the single duck used each year by Boiron for £20m of their remedies. The profit margins must be huge and given that the alternative health market is worth some £60 billion a year the net gains must be excellent. No wonder they don't want anybody rocking that valuable boat.

I agree with Iarus - that is really off topic.

What are peoples thoughts on the placebo effect?

I am fascinated by the area of placebo and believe it should be positively utilised in the administration of treatment protocols. I know that, for instance, in conventional medication for anxiety and depression a colour for a tablet is often chosen so that the placebo response may increase the overall effect of the tablet. This seems to make perfect sense to me.

I know some homeopathic remedies are given in the form of tablets. Do they also use this strategy?

Maybe it would be an idea for companies like Boiron to consider it. Even as a sceptic I can see how practitioners of conventional medicine can adapt the practices of people in CAM for their own use. Why not the other way round?

Thanks Docboz

My main point in my last post on this thread was (if placebo is considered to be an issue in both conventional and homeopathic medicine) whether it should not be used in both to increase the effects of the treatment as far as possible. The colour of tablets appears to be an easily manipulated variable for instance.

"The placebo effect isn't possible in animals..."
Really? So the perceptions of the owner have nothing to do with whether the owner thinks that homeopathy works on their animals?

Just to be clear: you are arguing that the owner's perception of an improvement in the health of the animal given an inert treatment (e.g., a homeopathic remedy containing zero molecules of the active ingredient) couldn't be an example of what is commonly referred to as 'the placebo effect' then?

Symptoms in animals may vary over time for all sorts of reasons. If the owner believes in homeopathy then they will expect to see their pet "get better". Any lessening of symptoms - in fact, any perceived improvement in health at all - will be interpreted by the owner as meaning that the homeopathy is working. (Some homeopaths will even tell you that symptoms *worsening* means the homeopathic remedy is working - and call it a healing crisis or aggravation.)

And I haven't even mentioned the possibility that conditioning may be a part of the placebo effect that can affect animals as well as humans...

Homoeopathic remedies are not 'inert', which means inactive. They contain the molecular energy of the substance which is potentised, and this energy stimulates the body to help itself.
I didn't 'perceive' an improvement in my goats, I saw it with my own eyes. One doesn't imagine the disappearance of pox on a milking goat's udder, nor the disappearance of large areas of excema like patches on areas of skin.
Unlike allopathic medicines which mask symptoms and drive dis-ease inside, homoeopathic remedies actually 'cure'. And yes, there can be a worsening first as the problem is driven out. In this household we took Allium Cepa 3x fifteen years ago when we had sniffling colds, we had two days of worsening symnptoms, and have never had a cold or flu since.
Sorry guys, but Homoeopathy does work, and if you came down from just 'thinking in your heads' and perhaps tried the system (guided by someone who knows what they are doing)you may change your minds. But if you want to carry on trying to rubbish something you have never tried, then you have my sympathy. .

Brigid - you said in an earlier post "Homoeopathy works, whether some of you like that fact or not." However loudly you shout or stamp your feet, your argument is - not an argument. You also say "homeopathic "remedies" contain the molecular energy of the substance which is potentised" (the quotes round remedies are mine). Clearly you bought into this nonsense from some pseudosciency reading you have done. It is strange that you use the internet and a computer, both derived from a long and complex history of use of the scientific method, yet turn out to trust in pseudo-science - with emphatic and strident tones.
Patients who benefit from a visit to a homeopathic practitioner do so thanks to only one thing - the placebo effect - which is both very powerful and affects us all - including scientists like myself and advocates of note - like Peter Hain. The placebo effect is in itself an area of scientific research and understanding. However there is no doubt that the so-called medicines proffered by homeopaths are clinically ineffective - to be otherwise would upturn centuries of scientific research and understanding - and in fact be more surprising than finding evidence that the earth were not a sphere (roughly)after all. Clearly you are not a scientist - neither are the doctors who belong to the British Homeopathic Association. It is easy even for scientists to be fooled; much easier for non-scientists to be so. Evidence and understanding from evidence is the basis and it isn't easy. Please do not pontificate about things well beyond your possible understanding. It is not clever.
Practising via placebo is immoral. Learning why that would work is valuable. It might lead to an understanding of where psychological methods are appropriate and where they are not. Eczema is an example of the latter - Peter Hain - take note - people have been sent to prison for using homeopathy in the treatment of that ailment.