When I was just a couple of years out of college, I was working as a holiday locum in Essex, while my parents, with my dog (a cocker spaniel who was about 14 at the time), were on holiday at our house on the island where my Dad was born. I received a worried phone call from my mother, telling me that Garry (the dog) had collapsed. She described a very marked head tilt to the left, and inability to walk.
I considered vestibular syndrome, as the likeliest thing on the probabilities, but the extent of the head tilt also made me wonder about a CVA. (OK, I was very young, looking back I guess vestibular syndrome was very much the preferred diagnosis, but my mother was convinced he'd had a stroke because the head tilt is such a pathognomonic indicator in man.)
The big snag was that there wasn't a vet on the island, and transport off the island to find one was problematic. I said I'd raid the drug cupboard where I was working, and decided that prednisolone and cover with a broad-spectrum antibiotic would be the best thing whichever diagnosis. (Pace, BSM, nobody had invented propentofylline at the time.) I also gave my Mum basic instructions about nursing care.
The thing was, the postal service between Essex and the Western Isles wasn't up to scratch that month. It took nearly a week for my little packet of prescription drugs to arrive. By the time they did, Garry was almost better. By the time I got home a month later he was showing absolutely no evidence at all that he'd been ill.
"CVA"? Yeah, right. Like I said, show me the MRI. Same as "heart attack". The times I've heard people say their pet had a heart attack! My cardiologist friends tell me that they do occur in dogs, very rarely indeed. I've never seen a case. But some vets do have a bad habit of describing a pet's illness in terms they think the owner will find familiar.
Sarah, did you think that telling us a heartwarming anecdote about how homoeopathy cured the poor doggie with a stroke would provide the conclusive answer to the VMD's ruling that using unapproved medicines outwith the cascade is unlawful, and that includes homoeopathy?
Don't be naïve. The treatment that started the argument was EDTA-tris for Pseudomonas infections in ears. I could quote you half a dozen good references testifying to its efficacy (dead easy, because the reference list for the article that drew the VMD's ire was on the back of the same page as Peter Gregory's preposterous homoeopathy article, and I tore it out and saved it). That's not the point. The point is that it's unlicensed. So is homoeopathy.
The difference is that I imagine someone will get a decent product licence application submitted for EDTA-tris before too much longer. Just a pity nobody can produce acceptable evidence for the efficacy of homoeopathy really.
And that's because single-patient anecdotes, especially poorly-understood ones where even the presumed diagnosis is probably wrong, aren't proof of anything. If they were, that skin/ear case of Chris Day's would be solid proof that homoeopathy is completely useless. How come you never like to tell us about the ones that don't go according to plan, Sarah?
Once again, you have to show us that actually taking your prescribd remedy gives you a better chance of getting better than if you didn't take it. So far, you've produced absolutely zero evidence on that one, I notice.
Rolfe.
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