Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
For the record... at my last medical check-up, we discussed several pain-relief methods for birth, and one of the proposal made by the medical team was 100% homeopathy based ...
You can certainly give birth with 100% placebo based pain-relief or no pain-relief of all. Most women throughout time have done so. Even as effective pain- relief became available some religious people were against its use on the grounds that God, in his mercy, had intended woman to give birth with pain as punishment for Eve's transgression. That seems pretty clear from Genesis 3.16:
To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."
Wow! The choice is between accepting the indignities of modern medicine, or accepting that childbirth is God's punishment for being a woman. There are no alternatives because you don't believe in them. That sounds like pretty fucked-up thinking.
Homeopathy is based on an 18th century theory which later discoveries have shown does not hold up. Yet, its adherents often defend it by using a scientific vocabulary. Thus it is pseudo-science.
We all know about your obsession against homeopathy. Even if homeopathic medicines turn out to be inert placebos, placebos still have a level of effectiveness that exceeds doing nothing. It is far too easy to dismiss the powers of the mind in our attempts to build a purely rationalistic model of medical practice.
Ec