Homeopathy: Diluted and deluded
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By M Parrott
Article ID: 1224
Homeopathy finds its origins in the 18th century with a German named Samuel Hahnemann (we won’t address the honour of his doctorate). This was a time when blood-letting, leeches, mercury and arsenic were utilised in medical practice. Mr. Hahnemann’s idea was to create a less-harsh form of medicine straying away from the dangerous medicines of the day. This seems a good idea. A shame it doesn’t work. We’ll come back to him later.
There are a few basic premises in homeopathy. The first is the “law of similars“. The homeopath starts with a supposed “proving”. It may be a natural ingredient, drug or -most popularly - poison. A test subject is told to ingest the substance for a week or so and record any symptoms. These results are not used to show if the substance is dangerous as in real medicines, but to show what they cure! …What?! The symptoms are supposed to cure diseases and conditions that have the same symptoms! Do you see the problem? This means that homeopathic sleeping tablets include caffeine as the active ingredient. Does this not defy all common sense and modern science, where one treats a problem with something that causes the same symptoms as the problem?
Where did this bizarre belief originate? For that we back-track to our good friend Mr. Hahnemann and chinchona bark extract. Chinchona bark extract was a known treatment for malaria. Hahnemann was messing around with a few drugs and narcotics, supposedly for test purposes. Upon Hahnemann’s taking of the substance he gained the symptoms of malaria, in his eyes proving that the “law of similars” works. However, later studies (after homeopathy had truly taken off) showed that Hahnemann was allergic to chinchona, and this caused the effects of malaria. Okay, so the basic premise of homeopathy is based around someone being allergic to a medicine? Don’t you think that evidence seems just the slightest bit weak? So people are ingesting poisons, possibly on their death-bed, believing these poisons will cure them just because some German doctor was allergic to a medicine.
However, ingesting poison is not a problem: the second rule of Homeopathy is the theory of infinitesimals or potentisation. The process begins with one drop of the chosen poison being put in 100 drops of water; this is called a 1C solution. Yes, that’s right, one in one hundred dilution of the active ingredient. But of course, there is the vigorous shaking and the tapping ten times, ten being the magic number of homeopathy, transferring the “spiritual essence” of the substance. With harmful substances, however, 1 in 100 is still too strong. What to do, what to do? Ah! Dilute it again. In fact, the most common dilution is 30C! That’s a ratio of 1 over 1 followed by sixty zeros!
No wonder homeopathic treatments advertise “no negative side-effects”: there are no bloody positive side effects either! So, how do homeopaths get around this scientific impossibility?
Water has a memory.
Um, what?
One homeopathic researcher is Jacques Benveniste, another supposed doctor. In 1988 he claimed that water has the power to remember the properties of a substance when diluted down to homeopathic treatments, and supposedly had “evidence” to prove it. Naturally, the scientific community met this theory with much scepticism, but the British Medical Journal agreed to publish Benveniste on one condition: he must open his laboratory to a team of independent referees to evaluate his work. At this point, the wonderful James Randi stepped in to investigate. Unsurprisingly, Randi and the referees came back with unquestionable evidence showing that Benveniste’s work was - wait for it - wrong! It’s interesting and telling that a study homeopaths continually quote is one that has been disproven. There is absolutely no credible evidence proving dilute treatments, such as homeopathic medicines, have any affects on the human immune system.
Another homeopathic theory is that the more dilute the treatment, the better. Yep, that’s what homeopaths believe. So, by homeopathic standards, wouldn’t plain water be a better treatment? It’s truly dilute. That’s pretty much the case with homeopathic medicines: these can go up to 1500C, with a dilution ratio far surpassing the known atoms in the Universe at 72 to the tenth power. The best analogy for how dilute these substances are is: Crush up a piece of rice. Take one granule. Drop it in a sphere of water the size of the solar system. Dilute enough for you? Not quite yet: repeat that 2 million times. That’s a homeopathic treatment.
In such a homeopathic treatment, there’s a better chance a drop of the water has passed through Winston Churchill’s body, than the water contains a single molecule of the supposed active ingredient. How did this part of homeopathy come about? Because it’s a valid way to treat conditions? No. Because science has proved it works? No. It’s because our dear friend Samuel Hahnemann realised that some of the poisons he’d be working with were too dangerous for consumption. So this idea of diluting the active ingredient wasn’t an original part of homeopathy, but a modification because of known danger. Modern medicine doesn’t do this. If results come back showing a medicine is too dangerous, we don’t dilute it. We find another medicine!
Much research has been done into homeopathic treatments, showing varied results. Most results showed that homeopathic treatments do nothing in the slightest. Most recently, BBC’s Horizon attempted to prove that homeopathic treatments are more than placebos. This was an attempt to win James Randi’s $1 million dollar challenge. (James Randi and his organisation offer $1 million dollars to anyone that can prove that anything such as homeopaths, psychics, mediums and the such are actually doing what they state.) Unsurprisingly, no one has yet won the money. When Horizon’s results came back, these showed that the homeopathic treatments were no different than a placebo treatment.
You may be wondering what my problem is. What if homeopathy gives hope? This may help people. Placebos have some effect. But, there are perfectly acceptable medicines that actually work. Why reject them for some treatment that doesn’t work? Thousands die each year because they use alternative treatments, when modern science can cure them. But even that’s not my main problem. Three days after 9/11 and 7/7, homeopathic websites were offering homeopathic “cures” for anthrax and radiation poisoning. Yes, homeopaths are preying on society’s insecurities to make some money. It’s low down, disgusting and vile.
Homeopaths are so self-deluded they think homeopathic treatments actually work. I accept that. But even when presented with evidence, they believe without question that homeopathy still works. We’ve looked at the research. You’ve heard the evidence. You now know how much of a placebo homeopathy is. Don’t ever fall into the trap of believing it works. That would be a danger and a disgrace to the many people who have died from homeopathic treatments.
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