Homeopathy - The Water You Can't Afford to Miss
Who doesn’t despise quackery? Well, Anti-Vaxxers for one, but
even more so, homeopathists. For you that don’t know what homeopathy is, its
just pseudoscientific, idiotic ‘medicine’ that actually played quite a large
part of the NHS until the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (SciTech) concluded that it was nothing more than ‘magic’. Furthermore in 2013,
the UK Advertising Standards stated that homeopathy was false advertising,
leading it to them having to state that it is a ‘homeopathic remedy’ on the
containers. Now even the NHS website says 'treatment' in which practitioners claim can cause the body to heal itself and state it is 'scientifically implausible'.
So, what is it?
Dr Samuel Hahnemann, towards the end of the 18th century,
created homeopathy: a time of draining blood to cleanse people. Hahnemann
thought that if he could locate substances that cause the symptoms of disease
in a healthy human, the same substances could be used to treat the ill. For some ill-thought reason, he decided that
it would be beneficial to dilute substances to ‘increase the potency’ of their
ability to cure disease: Even more, the more diluted it was, the better at
treating the disease it became. Now, we are talking a good few years ago,
medicine has moved much further beyond that. Or has it? Over many years,
homeopaths have developed a mass of remedies, which they have ‘proved’ to work
by taking the remedies themselves and noted the ‘cures they have made’. They
also called these ‘clinical trials’.
Where’s the problem?
There are a few problems with this whole thing; the most
fundamental of course being that it doesn’t actually work. Dilutions are
carried out to an extent that there are generally no molecules of active
ingredient left in the final substance ingested. A typical homeopathic dilution
is carried out to 30C. Lets take for example the recent Ebola outbreak.
Homeopathists had managed to find a cure that the CDC couldn’t do – and no, not
the Liberian Bishop who claimed he could fight it off with vimto, seriously.
A homeopathy blog published in August 2014, who has since
removed the article, claimed to have found the cure for Ebola. Even the Daily Mail touted for homeopathy for a cure in the Ebola crisis. For this, you will
need: The spit of a person contaminated with active Ebola, two bottles 2 litre
bottles and a lot of water:
1.
Firstly, fill both bottles up with water and ask
(politely) for the infected subject to spit into one of the bottles
2.
Shake that bottle up and strike it on a hard
surface 30 times (the article recommended a book, I’m assuming not a science
textbook. But the choice is yours).
3.
Then, take a drop from that bottle and transfer
it to the second bottle and strike again.
4.
Repeat the whole thing from step 3, emptying the
bottle each time and topping up with water: - do this 30 times.
As stated, the normal homeopathic dilution is 30C – this is
one drop in 100, 30 times: - they say that this makes the substance less than 1
part per million (ppm). So, the dilution is 1 part to 99 parts water, 30 times.
Or 1060 if you perform the, quite simple, maths for them. Or as Ben
Goldacre put it:
“Imagine a sphere with
150 million Km Diameter – the distance of the earth to the sun –Picture a
sphere of water that size with one molecule of a substance in it”
How do homeopaths put this?
Well, water has memory, of
course. Why wouldn’t it, we have seen this with Dr Masaru Emoto who compares water that has been exposed to negative and
positive words. Every attempt to repeat this ridiculous experiment by Jaqcues Benveniste in 1988, has been met with utter failure – which isn’t really
unexpected (described here if you cannot access the article). So why is it
still being touted? Clearly some people just really, really don’t like
evidence. I mean, think about this claim – water, a simple (if not the
simplest) uniform molecule, with one basic shape, has the ability to REMEMBER
what it has had contact with. Human memory is complex enough, and that has billions of neurons trying to explain it. You don’t see, all to often, a water
molecule with a neuron running through it. Or maybe, they thing an electron is
a neuron? In which case, there are textbooks to help them comprehend that. If
(lets ignore the ridiculousness of that for now) it did remember, and it was
true, what would the water do if it di remember? Change its molecular
structure? No. It’s absurd.
A lovely meta-analysis carried out by excellent physicians
and statisticians; NHMRC Information Paper: Evidence on the effectiveness of homeopathy for treating health conditions found
the following conclusions:
- Homeopathy should not be used to treat health condition
- There is no evidence that homeopathy is effective in treating health conditions.
- Homeopathy has zero effect on anything – except dehydration, as that is essentially what homeopathy is; expensive water.
They also found that papers published by homeopathic 'scientists' (using that term as loosely as possible) use
sample sizes that are way too small, not double blinded and inaccurately
reported. Throwing doubt on already poor results.
Homeopathy is still widely used today, luckily I live in a
country of some sense where it is not as prolific and it has to be advertised
as homeopathic remedy. However, there are still cons. I recall my first year in
university, being taught on ‘Fundamentals of Chemistry’. The, then, respectable
tutor asked ‘Does anybody know what homeopathy is’, when one student shouted
out ‘medicine for crazy people’, she got annoyed and proceeded to waste our
time (and money) by explaining why it works. Of course, when she did her degree
in chemistry, there was ample support for homeopathy, not to mention, degrees
in the subject. But to in 2012, state that it works and there is evidence for
it, in a position of teaching people is ridiculous.
Conclusion
Homeopathic medicine is water. Don’t waste your time. Don’t
waste your money.
