Swines and Birds and Homeopaths, Oh My!

With all that's been going on with Swine Flu and the scare around it, people are looking around for medicines to help protect themselves and their families. Unfortunately, they're being preyed upon by a group whose theory of medicine goes counter to everything that is known about physiology, physics, chemistry, germ theory, and hydro-dynamics. And if you already know that this article is about Homeopathy, than it may not be for you.

Personally, I think that one of the biggest reasons why homeopathy persists is that the general public doesn't know much about it. It sounds good. Homeopathy -- it's a great sounding word. But I think that there are plenty of people out there who hear the word, hear that it's medicine without side-effects, and that's all they need to hear. One of my favorite writers, for example, is Brian K. Vaughn. Yeah, I'm a geek and I like comic books. Anyway, the other day, I'm reading through the final volume of "Y: The Last Man" (by the way, one of the more depressing volumes on my bookshelf), and near the end of it, one character (Beth) tells another (Hero) that she's found some great "homeopathic stuff" to help her voices. Now, I could be reading into the page a bit, but the two characters talking here are a couple lovers living in the Bush, trying to protect the last of the Lionesses, so I feel that the implication is that Beth has found some homeopathic plant, and not that she stumbled on a little bottle of pills. And unfortunately, if Beth did find some sort of herb or plant, it just isn't homeopathic. You could create a homeopathic preparation of it, but the plant itself is not homeopathy. No plant in the world is inherently homeopathic. That just isn't what homeopathy is.

So, you may be asking, what is homeopathy? Well, homeopathy is an alternative medicine hypothesis that was formed a little over two hundred years ago by a man named Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann produced a series of laws to govern homeopathy that have persisted until present day. The first law is that like cures like. Let's explain this with an example. Caffeine is well known to all of us. Personally, I can't actually move without it. The effect of caffeine on a body is to wake them up, and if taken at the wrong hour, you'll probably give yourself a nice case of insomnia. This is the effect of caffeine on a healthy person. Now, let's say that instead of being a person with normal circadian patterns, you are an insomniac. According to homeopathy, if caffeine can give you insomnia when you're healthy, it should be able to cure your insomnia as well. Sort of. See, Hahnemann realized that if he was going to be giving people potential poisons to cure their ills, he couldn't give them a lot of them. So, it's not caffeine that cures insomnia, it's a specially diluted form of caffeine. This is the second law of homeopathy. Pretty much, they take one part caffeine and nine parts water, they mix them together, shake them ten times side-to-side and ten times up-and-down, and that is what they call a 1 homeopathic solution. But homeopathy has another law as well: the more diluted a solution, the more powerful the medicine is. Typical homeopathic remedies are 30. This means that it has been diluted one part of the medicine to nine parts distilled water, with the side-to-side up-and-down shaking 30 times, which means that even if you started with a pure sample of whatever your active ingredient was, there should be about one part of it for every 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts diluted water. I can't even say that number. And here's an interesting note, there's 30 zeroes here. When you get past 23 zeroes, you pass by a special number in chemistry, Avogadro's number (6.02 x 10 to the 23rd). Avogadro's number, if you can remember from chemistry, is the number of molecules in a mole of any substance, it's the key unit of measurement in chemistry. It's the number of atoms of carbon that will weigh about twelve grams. It's an uncomfortably huge number. When you get orders of magnitude bigger than Avogadro's number (in the case of a 30 solution, seven orders of magnitude), you get to the point where it is almost statistically impossible to find a single molecule of the active ingredient in the entirety of the homeopathic solution. And don't forget this fact too: a 30 solution, that's just a standard strength medicine. The extra strength stuff goes all the way up to 100. I don't even know how they make that. There aren't enough molecules of water on the planet to dilute one molecule of the active ingredient that much.

Homeopaths will tell us that water has a memory. That it vibrates in a certain way and thus knows exactly what the homeopath put into it. The thing is, if Hahnemann is somehow right about homeopathy, then it doesn't only fly in the face of all those sciences I listed above (physiology, physics, chemistry, germ theory, hydro-dynamics), it flies in the face of public safety. Because the Florine in our water will have less of an effect than the 65-million year old dinosaur feces that have been naturally distilled for millennia. They say that it has no side effects, and they're right. What they don't say is that it doesn't have any primary effects either.

It's not that homeopathy is by itself dangerous. Frankly, the reason it caught on in the first place was because medicine in Hahnemann's day was still a crap-shoot. Doctors didn't know how the body worked yet, a lot of medicine could kill you, and homeopathic solutions didn't. They were pure water, not a lot of people die from pure water. So though homeopathy isn't going to hurt you, relying on it to the exclusion of effective medicine might. If the stuff makes you feel better, great. Have a ball. But it's important that people know that the biggest victory homeopathy had, Dr. Jacque Benveniste's article in Nature magazine in June of 1988, was swiftly overturned a month later, when an investigation found that all their positive results were really due to improper blinding of the tests, and that it was due to Benveniste's assistants not wanting the man to be wrong that they'd ever found positive results to begin with.

Every positive study of homeopathy, when repeated under more stringent conditions, has shown it to have no more effect than a placebo. Take it if you like, but please don't use it to cure Swine Flu. And if there are any homoeopathists out there who can show proof that my article is bunk, I know a man in Florida with a million dollars for you.

Comments

[bjd219]

I love to hear rational liberals speak up for a change!

Thanks so much Mr. Dickerman!

[Japhy]

Wow! Actual science on the Huffington Post? I knew President Obama is making science and rational though cool again. Let's hope we see more of these types of articles to counter some of the others. The only somewhat disappointing thing to see is relatively small number of respondents compared to the blogs in support of woo and pseudo science. But hey, it's a start, and an excellent start at that!

[avandelay]

As I cannot produce anything original to what has already been posted, I would just like to say thank you.

[Matthew Lake]

Finally, a cogent explanation of homeopathy from a popular "news" outlet. Thank you HuffPo. Please publish more articles from other scientifically literate people who have taken the time to do their homework.

[studio34]

Finally! An article on the HuffPo that isn't ridiculous. Thank you for a post where someone used their brain.

[royniles]

The problem now is to get someone to read articles like this other than those who have already learned the lessons presented. So far the comments are mostly from members of the choir. Let's hear more from the potential converts.

[Miedvied]

It's nice to finally see a post indicating that someone with three brain cells is still alive at HuffPo. I left this blog after the endless parade of anti-vaccine nonsense became your standard idea of "health news." More posts from Mr Dickerman and the like may make the HuffPo worth reading once more.

[Cassie Bowen]

Excellent article! I had left this blog behind after reading the Jim Carey nonsense and other ridiculous "science" articles but this has me back...hopefully. I just hold this author writes more and the Huffington Post blog doesn't continue to publish those crazy article on homeopathy! This guy should be in charge of your science blog department.

[baron army]

About time someone posted something based in reality on this site. I deliberately joined the HuffPo to send Mr. Dickerman kudos and to encourage him to continue shining the light of reason on the, previously, unchallenged woo woo hucksters on this site.

[mleger]

Well, personally I was hoping that if you were going to critique homeopathy, you would do some real journalism and not trot out the straw men:

The $1,000,000: Randi the Clown backed out of his deal. Read here:
http://www.vithoulkas.com/content/view/1973/lang,en/

Avogadro's number - Homeopathy is not based on chemistry. It's based on physics. If you want to attack it, please make sure you've got the right subject.

Succussion: Dilution and shaking are not all there is to the creation of a homeopathic medicine. There is a specific methodology. Otherwise we would all on our way to antibiotic­-intoleran­t, drug-addled fre-for-all. Oh wait, that's already happening:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/10/health/main3920454.shtml
(Sorry to shift the subject, but this is just chemistry. If this stuff was potentized, we'd be in an even bigger world of hurt.)

And if you're going to actually critique homeopathy, how about presenting some of the statistics that at least suggest something is going on? The stats from the 1918 Flu would be a good place to start.
"In the deadly Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, which killed 20 million people worldwide and more than 500,000 in the United States, homeopaths had a death rate of only 1.05 percent compared to a 30 percent fatality rate for those receiving conventional medical treatment. " Perko, S. The Homeopathic Treatment of Influenza...

Turn the straw men into compost. Let's have a real discussion.

[rob2718]

avogadro's number is not limited to chemistry. it is a constant that comes up in many scientific disciplines. for instance, it appears in the ideal gas law in the constant R, which is common to both chemistry *and* physics. i wouldn't be surprised if meteorology didn't make use of it either.

homeopathy is not based on physics. the concept of succussion has more in common with a magician waving a magic wand than *any* principle of physics.

[mleger]

Avogadro's number as applied to chemistry is one of the reason's cited for homeopathy's impossibility.

What is your experience with succussion?

Post below - Randi reneged on his offer after the most serious challenger took him up on it. Vithoulkas et al spent 5 years getting ready. The attempt below is a joke, but applies to Randi's area of expertise - clowns. (Apologies to the real clowns out there)

[rob2718]

also, i checked out the James Randi site. the million dollar challenge is still on.

there are current listings for people taking it. here is the most recent one, from today:

"Patricia Putt Million Dollar Challenge Test Results In!

Written by Alison Smith
Wednesday, 06 May 2009 12:43
Patricia Putt, who claims she is psychic, took the preliminary test for the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge today. The test was conducted by Professor Richard Wiseman and Professor Christopher French. In order to pass her challenge test, Mrs. Putt was required to pen psychic readings for ten volunteers who were then asked to identify their own readings from the group. At least five volunteers would have had to correctly identify their own reading.

None did. Mrs. Putt's readings were correctly identified by zero out of ten volunteers. "

[aidbo]

I will not address your ad hominem attack on James Randi, I don't think I could change your mind there anyway, it seems to be closed on that subject.

Homeopathy is based on neither physics nor chemistry, any reputable chemist or physicist would bristle at that suggestion. it is completely made up magical thinking. He was using basic physics to illustrate the ridiculous nature of homeopathy claims.

I must admit I don't know much about Succussion, except from what I read in the Wikipedia here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succussion#Preparation_of_remedies). To me it seems to be nothing more than shaking and dilution. So much dilution in fact it seems impossible to achieve on the planet earth (not enough water), so once again I'm highly skeptical.

And finally if you are going to present statistics, please actually *present* statistics rather than just a quote from a book that has no supporting evidence. Homeopathy's efficacy has been disproved many times, it's time to move past thinking that there is something there. You can make all the fantastical claims you want, but without any supporting evidence, rational people aren't going to believe them.

[Newcoaster]

Homeopathy is based on neither physics or chemistry, it is based on an unproven philosophy and magical thinking. Physics and chemistry however prove that it can't possibly work.
If homeopathy actually works the way homeopaths claim, then everything we have learned about chemistry and physics in the last 200 years is wrong.

Every single high quality investigation of homeopathy has shown it to be no more effective than a placebo, which is in effect all it is.

[jvarga]

I'm pleasantly shocked to see a science article that's not advocating the typical garbage here. Still not coming back here, but wanted to voice my support for this blogger.

[TazoWolf]

Decent Q&A about Swine flu here, backing up words with scientific explanations people can understand to dispel some fears and explain where the real concerns lie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma7IeWRH7y0

[jsnyd]

Thank you, HuffPo, for allowing this voice of reason on your site. Maybe I'll come back....

[Stevog]

Excellent article Mr Dickerman, exposing Homeopathy for the sham-medicine it is. It's nice to finally read a rational article on medicine on the Huffington Post!

[StephenDarragh]

This was an excellent article. I was definitely please to read this here after all the anti-vaccination rubbish that has been so prominent in Huffington Post.