Homeopathy -just water please!
I’ve never been persuaded that homeopathic “medicine” works. In fact unlike the latest scientific offering reported in the Lancet and abstracted by the BBC On Line, I have difficulty in accepting that it even works by the so-called placebo effect.
What is not in dispute about individual homeopathic treatments is that they contain only water. These substances, I hesitate to refer to them as “medicines”, are usually lactose pills. On each pill is placed a small amount of a diluted substance.
The process usually starts with a 1:10 dilution; that is ten parts water to one part of the ingredient- I’m running out of medicine alternatives. The result is then diluted usually twenty times. That means the 1 in 10 dilution is repeated twenty times. One part of the original substance is swamped in a very, very large amount of water; in fact one with twenty zeros -100, 000,000,000,000,000,000. In other words, the dilution of the original “active” substance is so, so small that to get a single molecule of the patient would have to chew though tons of those lactose pills. And I’m not sure I believe in the curative effects of water.
Of course there’s always a bloke down the pub who swears blind that homeopathy cured his boozing, his asthma or his sick parrot. And I suppose the pub is not the best place to shout over to him “post hoc ergo propter hoc”-after this because of this! I sit down and as I do so Flintoff heaves a ball over the ropes for six. Although the incidents happen together there is no cause and effect between them.
There have been no experiments anywhere that demonstrate beyond any doubt- and remember here we are being asked to assume water is the curative substance-that homeopathic remedies hasten recovery compared with a control group. After all, it’s not possible to exclude the “it would have happened anyway” is it?
posted by Tony @ Friday, August 26, 2005
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