Homeopathy: If you use it, chances are you don’t know what it really is
May 29th, 2009
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If you told someone that you had a medication that was so diluted that it had less than a 50% chance of containing a single molecule of active ingredient, they’d probably decline buying it. After all, the whole concept is not only counter-logical, it’s just plain stupid! One only needs to do a couple of quick thought experiments to realize this is the case. For example, if diluting a medication makes it stronger, does that mean taking less of it makes it more effective? Could diluting it too much cause an overdose? If diluting a substance makes it do the opposite, then does re-diluting a pre-diluted substance return it to the original effect?
Yes, I’m talking about homeopathy. Homeopathy is an idea which is not just bad science, it’s moronic.
So why does anyone buy into it? It might have something to do with the fact that few even know what the products actually are!
Via the New Zealand Doctor Online:
Homeopathy users think it works, but don’t know what it is
92% of users of homeopathic remedies think that the products work according to a survey published in the latest edition of the New Zealand Medical Journal. But only 6% of those surveyed knew that homeopathic remedies did not contain any active ingredient and most thought that homeopathic remedies were either moderately or very concentrated.Homeopathy critic Dr. Shaun Holt said that he was not surprised by the survey findings, and that they confirmed his suspicions that homeopathy remained popular because people did not know what it was. “Two thirds of people think that there is good scientific evidence that homeopathy works, but there is none”, said Dr. Holt. “There’s a US$1 million prize for anyone who can prove that it works that has remained unclaimed for many years.”
Researchers Shaun Holt and Andrew Gilbey surveyed 124 patients in GP surgeries and found that 65% had used homeopathic products. Dr. Holt said that “…almost all of the general public and many health professionals do not understand that homeopathic products are not simply dilute solutions – there is no active ingredient. It is like pouring a cup of coffee into Lake Taupo and then taking a cup of water from Taupo the next day and describing that water as “dilute coffee””.
Dr. Holt said that there were good explanations as to why people thought that homeopathy worked despite the complete lack of scientific plausibility or evidence. These reasons included placebo responses and also confusion between clinical improvements, which are attributed to homeopathy, and the natural history of the illness. In other words, the medical conditions would have improved anyway. “It’s like the emperor’s new clothes” concluded Dr. Holt.
Despite all the confusing information going around and homeopathy being grouped with “natural” or “herbal” medicines or made out to be a “green alternative” or “working with your body,” it is nothing of the sort. Homeopathy is not in any way related to ancient traditions or “natural” anything. Homeopathy is the idea that something which causes one symptom will cure the symptom (effectively doing the opposite) if it is diluted over and over and over until it is not present in the final preparation at all. Thus, cafine is a sleep aid, poison ivy is used to treat itchy skin, acids treat heart burn and so on. These materials are diluted over and over until they are not detectable in the final product.
The claim is that “water memory” somehow makes it work. Yes, that’s right. Water molecules see a caffeine molecule and somehow “remember” that it causes humans to become alert and less sleepy. These water molecules then decide to do the opposite, but only after they are mixed with other water molecules, which are mixed with others and so on. Somehow, these water molecules convey to the new molecules that they are supposed to make a human tired. They also somehow manage to “forget” all the other molecules they’ve come across along the way. As the water is diluted and diluted, mixed with new water, it becomes stronger. Then when a human drinks it, it magically does the opposite of what the original substance does.
Also, not all homeopathic preparations even have water in them. Some are pills or lotions based on waxes or oils. In these cases, it could be that the material is somehow used as the medium for dilution or that homeopathic water is drizzled over the pills and then evaporates, leaving the essence of the “memory” behind.
It doesn’t get much wackier than that. Which is why ignorance is the homeopath’s best friend!
This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Misc, Not Even Wrong, Obfuscation, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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May 30th, 2009 at 12:12 am
On the other hand I would think that homeopathic preparations would be perfect to use in the treatment of Morgellon’s disease, as a prophylactic against electro-sensitivity, and as an antitoxin for chemtrail poisoning.
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May 30th, 2009 at 3:53 am
I hear homeopathy mentioned all the time in the context of medical discussions in otherwise reputable publications as if it were some kind of natural approach or something. It implies that homeopathy is a traditional non-drug method of improving health like nutrition or something. I don’t get it. It’s so obviously worthless.
I’m glad this page comes out and calls it idiotic, because really, that is what it is. Blunt though it might sound, it is a really dumb concept that anyone should be able to see through.
Also, I’ve heard it in use with “green medicine” which is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The entire concept behind that is idiotic. New-age bull**** “live in harmony with earth and use natural ways to improve health”
Homeopathy was invented in 1800 and the medical community rejected it right away and has since then for good reason.
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May 30th, 2009 at 4:01 am
Drinking generous amounts of water is good for your health. Obviously too much makes your brain explode, but you have to go pretty extreme to get that far.
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May 30th, 2009 at 4:08 am
Forgive me if you heard this joke before:
Did you hear about the Homeopath who accidentally drank purified water? He died of an overdose!
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May 30th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Josh said:
Yea, but homeopathy sells water in a tiny bottle that couldn’t hydrate you for even a day and charges 50 quid. that’s no way to get your water when it comes from the tap for free.
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May 30th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Homeopathy is not about drinking good amounts of water since many of the remiedies are not even water (they’re pills that somehow had stuff diluted into them). It’s just a scam. It’s a worthless concept but perfect in that because it contains no active ingredient they can sell a pill or a potion with whatever the cheapest filler they can get their hands on is. It could be saw dust or whatever. It’s all just ridiculous.
Of course they don’t like to talk about it in a direct and to the point way. If it were explained in simple terms it would be obvious to anyone why it doesn’t make sense. That’s why they throw all the crap about working with your body etc etc onto it to try to obscure the plain and simple stupidity of the whole thing.
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May 30th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Your words against homeopathy are insulting and disrespectful. Who are you to call it stupid? That is not a scientific way of evaluation. It is just a prejudicial insulting unfair attack. Homeopathy is certainly not stupid.
Homeopathy is very much based on science and sound reasoning and logic. Homeopathy recognizes that the human body is mostly water and all our cells are filled with water. Homeopathy does not fight the body’s response like other drug based medicine does. Those try to force the body to change, but homeopathy rebalances, so it does work with the body. It recognizes that our bodies lose balance or become needful of correction and works with the body by introducing into the body water which is energized and infused with the proper substances to achieve harmony. It is harmony of the spirit and the body that homeopathy works with, not chemicals.
Please do the right thing and take back your anger. Ask yourself why homeopathy makes you feel angry or threatened and why you would want to respond with such insults or dishonesty to something that is good and helpful to so many. I believe you and I already know the answer to this. You most likely depend on pharmaceuticals for money and you see homeopathy as a threat to your sales and profits. Please step back and realize that medicine is about people and not profits. Harmony and balance of the body is number one and it is not something you can go insult and make such bad statements of.
Just do the right thing. God bless you and God bless homeopathy.
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May 30th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Healer said:
Look, jerk. Homeopathy has no rational basis whatsoever. None. At all.
It’s based on the insane assumption that water can somehow be ‘charged’ by a substance not actually currently present in it. Homeopathic preparations boast dilution values that, given the size of the sample, are completely meaningless.
The entire field of homeopathic medicine is a cruel hoax perpetrated on the gullible by uncaring criminals pretending to be ‘healers’. Of course, if all you’re suffering from is an overloaded wallet, it’ll cure that condition quite nicely.
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May 30th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Finrod said:
The history of homeopathy begins with the ideas of its founder Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). Hahnemann first coined the word “homeopathy” (“homoios” in Greek means similar, “pathos” means suffering) to refer to his principle. It strikes me that it has much in common with another widely spread belief of the time:
transubstantiation.
Transubstantiation is the alleged process whereby the bread and wine offered up at the communion service have their substances changed to that of the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ while their appearance remain that of bread and wine. What looks like, tastes like, etc., bread and wine is actually another substance altogether. How this happens is a mystery and defies logic, and is regarded as a miracle by the faithful.
I submit that once one has suspended disbelief long enough to accept the latter, it’s not hard to see why the former has believers as well.
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May 30th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Healer said:
Good. They’re supposed to be.
Homeopathy is not only invalid, it’s batsh*t crazy and idiotic. It does not deserve to be elevated to the level of legitimate scientific discussion.
There are hypothesizes that are put forward that turn out to be wrong, despite looking entirely logical and reasonable at first glance. There are others which are not, as of yet, conclusively proven one way or the other, but are accepted as at least plausible.
Homeopathy does not even rise to that level. Even at first glance it’s apparent that the whole concept is flawed.
Thus, it is very very stupid. It deserves to be insulted.
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May 31st, 2009 at 5:59 am
“by introducing into the body water which is energized and infused with the proper substances to achieve harmony.”
WTF does that mean? How does the active ingredient infuse or energise the water? Describe the energy level changes, the spin changes, the chemical changes, the nuclear changes.
How does the active ingredient “energise” the water? This is water that is at a higher energy level? Why doesn’t homeopathic water have irradiance from the electrons returning to a lower state? How does the energised water react differently with the chemistry of the body? Why does removing the active ingredient make this energy level rise more effective?
How does the active ingredient “infuse” the water? Are you making new isotopes? New molecules? New what? Is this “infused” water radioactive? Why does dilution make the infusion more effective? It goes against everything we understand of physical chemistry.
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May 31st, 2009 at 8:57 am
Healer said, “You most likely depend on pharmaceuticals for money and you see homeopathy as a threat to your sales and profits.”
This is an objection frequently raised by those who rely on homoeopathy for money and see reality and a well informed public as a threat to their sales and profits. Do you have any evidence that your allegation is true?
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May 31st, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Healer said:
They are well deserved.
Healer said:
If you’ve finished elementary school and can’t tell me why homeopathy isn’t possible your educational system is deeply dysfunctional and your society has betrayed you on a deep level.
Healer said:
Homeopathy has, very undeservingly I might add, been tested numerous times in properly controlled double-blind studies. It just doesn’t work.
Healer said:
2 centuries and none of it’s proponents have come up with a remotely plausible mechanism; it plain doesn’t work if you test it properly and it is flat ridiculous on its face. Calling homeopathy stupid is being too kind to these crooks.
Healer said:
It’s based in equal amounts on science, logic and squashed hedgehogs.
Healer said:
Homeopathy recognizes a lot of things, some of them are completely bat**** crazy, others may be trivial facts known since antiquity.
Healer said:
Unlike actual medication, it’s just water. It doesn’t do anything water from the tap doesn’t do except alleviate that lump in your wallet.
Healer said:
There is no such thing as a spirit. Last I checked water is a chemical and your body is a one big organized pile of chemicals.
Healer said:
Do the right thing and extract your head from your nethers.
Healer said:
Because it doesn’t work, its principles are bat-**** crazy and its practioners callous crooks who are willing to peddle their nonsense no matter who it hurts.
Healer said:
Which god? We have penned many such fictional entities to paper.
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May 31st, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I love this cartoon, Steve.
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June 1st, 2009 at 3:50 am
If homeopathy is just a nothing and in no way helpful, what are you so afraid of? Why do you seem to put so much effort into trying to discredit it? Why does it threaten you? Are you afraid it does work? Do you think you have to convince everyone it does not to save something?
I think this page is likely backed by someone or someones with a lot to lose if alternative and natural methods of healing start to replace the chemical medicines that are being pushed so hard.
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June 1st, 2009 at 3:58 am
Maria said:
What in the world has anyone said here to give you the impression we’re acting out of fear?
The motive I percieve behind the debunking of homeopathy is a desire to help people by revealing the utter uselessness of a scam which all to many people have fallen for, to the detriment of their health. if there is any dominant emotion on display, it is the entirely justified anger felt towards the criminals who perpetrate this fraud known as homeopathy.
As to the charge that opponents of homeopathy have some sort of financial interest in the matter, I can assure everyone that I certainly do not, but I do have an interest in living in a society which uses science, logic and rationality to guide public policy, including the health sector.
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June 1st, 2009 at 6:14 am
Maria said:
Charlatans continuing to take advantage of the gulible and desperate.
Maria said:
Because it’s an evil.
Maria said:
Because I’m a tax payer and the tax payer is getting soaked by charlatans in england, which is close enough to where I call home for discomfort.
Maria said:
No.
Maria said:
Yes. Most people who use homeopathic preparations do not know what they are or how they supposedly work.
Maria said:
Everyone has a something to lose if things that don’t work replace things that do work; except for the charlatans pushing for the former.
Alternative medicine is another name for a method which either hasn’t been proven to work or has been proven not to work. Homeopathy is firmly in the latter category, that’s why you have to resort to conspiracy theories to back your beliefs(or financial interests if you are one of the charlatans).
Nobody knows what natural means, but most people are sure they like it. That’s what makes “natural” so useful to charlatans; it’s legally undefined and you can plaster it on anything. Is it natural to put mercuric chloride into water, repeatedly dilute it until you are statistically unlikely to find a single mercury atom in the preparation? Haven’t a clue but you certainly seem to think so.
Homeopathic preparations aren’t made of chemicals? What are they made of, vacuum?
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June 1st, 2009 at 8:26 am
Maria said:
I think you are Astroturfing for one of the big homeopathic preparation firms, that stand to lose millions of dollars if their products are exposed for the sham that they are.
I can’t think of any other reason someone like you would even find their way to a website like this other than they were being paid to comment on every negative article they could find.
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June 1st, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Homeopathy is actually nuttier than what’s said above. It’s not just a dilution to absurdity. It’s a dilution to absurdity of a *poison*.
The idea behind homeopathy is that if you take a poison and dilute it to a ridiculous degree while shaking it in a very particular way (though actually homeopaths do not all agree as to the specific method), it will actually cure any disease which provokes the same symptoms as the poison. In other words, diluting the substance inverses the active ingredient’s effect.
At least, inverses what you think it’s effect is, since this is only plausible if you have no interest in the underlying physiology of disease processes and toxins. Homeopaths figure that if a particular plant makes you puke, making a tea out of it and then diluting that will treat nausea.
Homeopaths will claim to treat the “whole patient” but they really aren’t interested in what’s actually going on inside their bodies. They’ve latched on to something everybody else discarded as useless over a century ago, and don’t care about anything anyone’s discovered since then. They also claim to treat the real underlying disorder, and deride mainstream medicine (which they call “allopathy”, a nonsense term I’ll discuss shortly) as treating only symptoms. Yet the entire philosophy of homeopathy is to treat symptoms without caring what actual causes them. As if a migraine and a stroke are the same thing, because they happen to sometimes have the same symptoms.
Terminology….
Homeopathy:
The word “homeopathy” was coined because of its basic law, which is not actually the principle of dilution but rather the “law of similars”. According to the law of similars, you treat a symptom by finding a toxin that provokes it and then using that. Similars. But how do you find out which ones provoke which symptoms? By a process called provings.
Provings
A proving is a process whereby a homeopathy deliberately takes poison to determine what its effect is. The effect is then carefully noted in a book which can therefore be referred back to by other homeopaths, sparing them from having to go through the same arduous process. This is how homeopathic drugs are tested. They are not tested against the disease. They are tested to see if their undiluted ingredient will cause the same symptoms as the disease. According to homeopathy’s basic principles, this is all you need to do.
Allopathy
Hahnemann coined this term shortly after “homeopathy” to refer to doctors who didn’t use homeopathy. It’s meant to be derogatory. “Homeopathy” broadly means “same symptom”, so “allopathy” would mean “different symptom”. It basically just means a doctor who doesn’t believe in the law of similars. Though many modern alties use the term “allopath” to refer to an MD, the term would actually encompass most alt med practitioners as well. It is a nonsensical term, of course, since MDs do not treat with the opposite of the law of similars; their practice is completely different and acknowledges that the patient has an actual body that might be worth examining to see what’s actually wrong.
One of the major problems with homeopathy is that it’s so misguided it really belongs in the “not even wrong” category. It’s complete nonsense. It’s so nonsensical that nobody tries to debunk the law of similars, which is so ridiculous that it’s hard to know where to start — and so ridiculous that very few homeopaths even mention it. They know their customers won’t believe it, and will just be happy if the homeopath says “take this and you’ll be fine”.
The law of infinitesimals (the technical name for the dilution thing) *has* been studied scientifically, however. There was one study in France that showed modest results. While utterly ignoring the law of similars, this study did show that bacteria seemed to be affected by the homeopathic preparation under study. However, the data turned out to be contaminated because the chief researcher had removed the blind — the reviewers knew which petri dishes had been treated and which hadn’t, and were unfairly throwing out some negative results. The study has since been repeated several times by other researchers, with uniformly negative results.
In short, there is no plausible reason why homeopathy should work, the premise is absurd, it contradicts a great deal of what we know about chemistry, physics, and disease processes, and it has failed what scientific testing it has been subjected to. It is therefore fitting that it be mocked.
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June 1st, 2009 at 1:06 pm
The World Health Organization (WHO) whose very purpose is to serve the public health worldwide, especially in developing and struggling nations unfortunately has come out supporting this nonsense, officially they say:
“Traditional medicine (TM) is the sum total of the knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness. Traditional medicine is a comprehensive term and it includes various traditional treatment and healing philosophies, practices, practitioners and products. More commonly used systems of treatment are traditional Chinese medicine, Indian ayurveda and Arabic unani medicine, and homeopathy.“
And that:
“In countries where the dominant health care system is based on allopathic medicine, or where TM has not been incorporated into the national health care system, TM is often termed complementary, alternative or non-conventional medicine (TC/CAM). The main objectives of the WHO Traditional medicine activities [is to] facilitate integration of traditional medicine into the national health care system by assisting Member States to develop their own national policies on traditional medicine”
This tacit acceptance has infuriated a group of young scientists and doctors from the The Voice of Young Science Network who have lashed out in a letter saying in part:
“We are calling on the WHO to condemn the promotion of homeopathy for treating TB, infant diarrhoea, influenza, malaria and HIV. Homeopathy does not protect people from, or treat, these diseases. Those of us working with the most rural and impoverished people of the world already struggle to deliver the medical help that is needed. When homeopathy stands in place of effective treatment, lives are lost.
Many people in developing countries urgently need access to evidence-based medical information and to the most effective means of treating these dangerous diseases. The promotion of homeopathy as effective or cheaper makes this difficult task even harder. It puts lives at risk, undermines conventional medicine and spreads misinformation.”
It’s appalling that an organization that acts in many ways as the defacto health ministry for many Third World countries has been so corrupted by political pressure from these quacks that they should not condemn these practices outright. However it is good to see that the people on the ground are prepared to start fighting back.
Via:SkepticBlog
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June 1st, 2009 at 1:56 pm
On occasion, critics of homeopathy like to make the claim that there is no evidence that homeopathy works. The facts are a bit different. Pre-clinical and clinical studies demonstrate there are clear biological effects of homeopathic remedies; multiple international observational studies on thousands of patients are overwhelmingly positive for homeopathic treatment in real world clinical practice; and randomized controlled trials and the meta-analyses based on them show mixed findings, largely due to methodologic concerns.
In fact there have been hundreds of high quality, peer reviewed studies published in journals like Pediatrics, Rheumatology, Lancet, CHEST, and others showing that homeopathy works. Add to that the research findings from laboratories at Penn State University (Roy, et al), the University of Washington, Moscow University, London South Bank University and others and we are beginning to understand how homeopathic remedies work as well. Finally – there are thousands of data points from reliable sources (public health records, hospital records, newspaper accounts, patient records, government records) that show homeopathy’s effectiveness against some of the deadliest epidemics of the 19th and 20th centuries.
To individuals with a limited knowledge of current research, homeopathy seems befudling. The clinical facts show that it works and that it needs to be part of our nation’s healthcare response to pandemics.
For those with an interest in current research into homeopathy – please visit this link for an abridged listing of research papers on the subject: http://homeopathic.org/articles/view,173
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June 1st, 2009 at 3:19 pm
“Pre-clinical and clinical studies demonstrate there are clear biological effects of homeopathic remedies…”
Only if you’re too thick to understand why high quality, double-blinded studies are an absolute necessity.
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June 1st, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Peter said:
Peter I am calling you out as a baldfaced fraud. Do you think you can come to a place like this and snow us under with a list of publications from alternative medicine publications and claim straight-faced that this proves anything?
Papers like Understanding placebo, nocebo, and iatrogenic treatment effects. from the J Clin Psychology (which is a legitimate journal) are not by any means a ringing endorsement of homeopathy.
Peter said:
Just who do you think you’re addressing? Many if not most of us here can interpret research very well thank you, several of us do it for a living. The clinical facts show that homeopathy is no better than a placebo in any properly designed and executed study. To suggest it should form any part of any nations response to a medical emergency is criminally irresponsible.
Clearly you are nothing but a paid PR shill.
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June 1st, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Peter said:
Looks like Doc’s post has come up on their radar. Pity we can’t reach more of the victims, rather than the perpetrators.
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June 2nd, 2009 at 5:33 am
Finrod said:
I think most of the victims would not be victims if they spent very much time looking around on the internet for information on exactly what homeopathy is.
I attribute the fact that the perpetrators are drawn here to the fact that they probably spend more time looking around for stuff about homeopathy and trying to oppose the information that would harm their ability to scam.
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June 2nd, 2009 at 5:48 am
If we go with the idea of homeopathy then we have to basically throw everything we know about chemistry, biology and for that matter the nature of the universe away.
Homeopathy treats “like with like” therefore:
Trouble sleeping is treated with caffeine.
Heartburn is treated with acid.
tiredness is treated with a depressant
eye irritation is treated with something that would irritate your eyes
skin irritation is treated with itching powder
etc etc..
These items are diluted until they do not even exist or are unlikely to exist in the final formula.
We understand how these substances work in the body from a chemical standpoint. Something like caffeine is a stimulant because it can bind to adenosine receptors and can therefore change the rate of uptake of neurotransmitters. Acidic foods cause heartburn because they increase the acidity of the stomach until it can irritate the lining. Various substances can trigger inflammation or irritation by eliciting an immune response.
Homeopathy would believe that these substances don’t have basic chemical actions but instead are charged with some kind of magical property that makes them influence some kind of magic or energy field of the body. They don’t just fit into chemical receptors, but they have some kind of *spirit* or *karma* attached to them. This explanation is necessary because the *force* is somehow opposed by water, so when you dilute them, the water opposes this and remembers their magic influence and then counters it. It grows stronger with each dilution as more water molecules pass on this magic energy to each other.
This is a paraphrase but this is really what homeopathy believes. I am saying this from having looked through a book on it which my sister had at her house. (my sister… she is not the most logical person, but I think even she eventually figured out it was rubbish. I hope so at least, becasue I tried very hard to convince her and she may have lied just to make me stop)
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June 2nd, 2009 at 8:04 am
By a homeopaths logic, if i’m drunk because of an excess of alcohol in my body (lets use vodka as an example), i could immediately become totally sober, by putting a drop of vodka into a bucket of water to dilute it and drinking some. Might not be potent enough to combat a big night out, so take a drop from that bucket, and add it to another bucket of water. Repeat once or twice more for maximum potency, then drink a glass full.
Of course, that’ll sober me right up, why didnt i see it sooner!
Imagine how much more we could drink if each time we order a beer, i add a drop to water, drink the beer, then the diluted one, and i’d never get drunk!
Brilliance!
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June 2nd, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Regarding the term “allopath”: All medical providers in the USA have, or should have, a National Provider Identifier; if you apply as an MD and don’t put any specialty in, you end up under the category of “Allopathic and Osteopathic Physicians”. (The full list is at http://www.wpc-edi.com/taxonomy). So there’s at least one legitimate authority that uses the term in a non-pejorative way.
What I’ve never understood was this. Calle Arcale said above: “The idea behind homeopathy is that if you take a poison and dilute it to a ridiculous degree while shaking it in a very particular way (…) it will actually cure any disease which provokes the same symptoms as the poison.” {SARCASM}Say, this sounds like a really good idea! Let’s say I want to prevent a disease, like for example measles, I can take the etiologic agent that causes the disease, attenuate it until it’s no longer capable of causing that disease, and inject it into the patient, and presto, no more disease! Hey, that’s great! What should we call this new practice, oh I don’t know, maybe “VACCINATION”, that sounds like an impressive sounding name, right?{/SARCASM}
Seriously. *Why* do homeopathic practitioners reject the practice of immunization? They should be trumpeting it as “evidence” that their crackpot theory works, because after all, “like cures like”, right? (Yes, *I* know it doesn’t work that way, but those people who fall for their line of hooey in the first place will believe it.)
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June 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
O yeh, almost forgot to include the joke. Artist rents a gallery, hangs paintings on the walls for ten minutes, then takes them down and opens the gallery to show off the bare walls. Sign outside reads “Special exhibit today: Homeopathic art”
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June 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Shalom (R.Ph.) said:
Christ, Shalom don’t give them any ideas!
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June 3rd, 2009 at 2:17 am
Shalom (R.Ph.) said:
I have actually heard homeopaths compare their nonsense to vaccination and it makes my skin crawl. If creating a vaccine were as simple as taking some active polio culture (or flu or HIV or whatever) and watering it down many times, then we wouldn’t have any diseases. Vaccination is nothing of the sort.
Vaccines are not simply diluted pathogens, the process of safely producing a substance that retains the characteristics of a pathogen to the point where the body will respond to it, while at the same time assuring that it has not retained any infectious potential is a very complex task which is the kind of thing researchers spend years on and win Nobel prizes for.
I’m sure that the commenter understands this, but I’m just saying: the notion that vaccines are diluted viruses really irritates me.
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June 3rd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
30.
Smegging great! Now I have to change my website. I had used the WHO as an authority on the relatively small scale consequences of the Chernobyl disaster (small scale relative to the apocalyptic prediction proffered by the Usual Suspects), but now it looks like they have shot their credibility.
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June 3rd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Josh said:
The sad thing is that it’s getting hard to find any major authorities which haven’t :-/
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June 9th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Chris said:
Okay let me spell it out for you idiots. It’s not just water. How do I make this simple? Just.like.Orange.squash. A.little.orange.squash.add.a bit.of.water.what.do.you.get? That’s right big juice! Bigger results from small orange juice. Okay. A little orange squash goes a long way. Just cause there’s a little bit of orange juice and a lot more water compared to the orange juice, doesn’t mean it’s all made of orange juice and doesn’t serve its purpose. You ask me why I’m talking about orange squash. Homeopathy is kind of like the same concept with the diluting (except you don’t really see them do the whole process and its not so obvious the toxins are not in the water by colour). It’s really not that complicated. I mean I’m like only 14 and I understand the concept. It’s not rocket science or E=mc (squared). I mean you can believe we all came from monkeys easily, but you wont believe this simplicity. *sigh* What has the world come to?
Anywho I’ma get back to my GCSE studies on ideas in context.
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June 9th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Amzy said:
No it’s not rocket science, it’s Simple Solutions and Dilutions which used to be covered in high school chemistry. This states that as the amount of dilution increases, the less change there is of finding the diluted molecules in a sample.
At any rate homeopathy contends that it is some magic change in the water itself, a kind of a transubstantiation, that gives their preparations potency and the more dilute it is the stronger they get. Which means your take on it shows as much lack of understanding of homeopathy as it does of science.
Maybe you should take a little chemistry before you make a fool of yourself again on this matter.
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June 10th, 2009 at 2:06 am
Amzy said:
No, you can’t detect anything by color. You also can’t detect anything by mass spectrometry or neutron scatter or (insert name of whatever hyper-sensitive scientific test you want) because there’s nothing there. Nothing! The probability of there being even one molecule of any active ingredient in the concoction is less than 50% after several dilutions and after enough it becomes astronomically small.
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June 10th, 2009 at 2:23 am
Amzy said:
Try adding that Orange Squash to the Paciffic Ocean, because that’s closer to what homeopathy is about. Besides, it has other bat**** stupid concepts like that the more its diluted the more powerful it gets and “like cures like” symptoms with non regard for the underlying cause.
It’s not always water though. That is what is lost occasionally in this. Sometimes the solvent is something else, like alcohol. At least then if you take enough you won’t care about the what was bothering you. Sometimes it’s also in pill form where you basically buy a pill made out of just pill filler material like corn starch or lactose.
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June 10th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Amzy, let me help you revise with some revision questions.
1) I have 2 litres of a 0.1M aqueous solution. How many molecules of the solute are present in this volume of solution?
2) I then mix this solution with 10^60 litres of water to form a diluted solution. What is the concentration of this solution.
3) I take 100ml of this newly diluted solution. How many molecules of solute are present in this volume?
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June 10th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Don’t be ridiculous. Homeopathic solutions are orders of magnitude more dilute than that.
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June 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 am
why are you all so angry? i wanted to find some factual info on water not having a memory and all i read is you people fighting each other and asking people to take your word for it. what about all the research there is on water actually having a memory? we know molecules can take on energy, we use it daily in our microwaves and lazers so why not homoeopathy? can you point me in the direction of some credited research to prove all the others wrong and you right? let’s all respect one another then we can learn and evolve in harmony together…
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June 23rd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
sez said:
Search homeopathy on the search function on the first page for other posts including some with more research. There have been plenty of studies but I don’t know how you can find factual info on water not having a memory any more than factual info on spider monkeys not having magical powers – it’s about the same kind of thing.
sez said:
What research?
sez said:
Water can take on energy. Any molecule can take on energy. Water can be heated (a form of energy) or it can be heavily ionized. You could even impart an electrical charge to water by using it as one of the electrodes in a capacitor or something. This is not “memory” as such.
The idea of homeopathy is totally ridiculous. We’re not talking about ionizing water or changing its physical state. It’s the idea that somehow adding a substance makes the water recognize the properties of said substances as it would be applied to a human and ‘remember’ this to the exclusion of any other impurity the water had ever encounter and then ‘remember’ this more strongly as it is diluted.
There are peer reviewed studies showing that homeopathy is worthless, but if you want a study to disprove magic then I can’t give you that, because magic, by definition is capable of doing anything and therefore hiding itself from scientific studies. It’s like disproving the statement “I can be invisible but I only have the power to do so when nobody is looking and there are no cameras or anything like that”
sez said:
Respect is meaningless if it is universal. If you respect all things and all ideas then what is respect? It’s something that has no meaning and is just granted without regard to the worth of something. Not all things deserve respect.
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June 23rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
sez said:
This is a textbook example of misdirection which makes me think that this is the work of a pro.
Nowhere on this site have any of us that dispute the effectiveness of homeopathy ever demanded that anyone ‘take our word for it’ on any matter of this issue. It fact we have been of one voice in demanding that those that do contend there is an effect show proof.
I also don’t believe that you can here looking for proof that water has no memory, as simple Google search for those terms yield several pages of sites that dismantle that concept in detail – this site doesn’t show up in the first 100 hits.
To me this shows only that you have read nothing published here and are only attempting to create doubt.
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June 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I have other posts on here that explain it in a more thorough manner. It seems redundant and unnecessary to just post over and over the same info.
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August 17th, 2009 at 2:21 am
hello,I use http://www.invisibleyahoo.net and never was busy.
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