Homeopathy = quackery
At least that’s what a UK group is saying in its campaign to have the Boots chain of pharmacies remove homeopathic products from its shelves.
Their tagline is: “Homeopathy – there’s nothing to it.” And after reading even a little about homeopathy, you realize that the line is quite literally true.
Unfamiliar with homeopathy? It was a school of medical thought founded by Samuel Hahnemann in the 1790s. Here’s a definition from the Society of Homeopaths’ own website.
Homeopathy is a system of medicine which is based on treating the individual with highly diluted substances given in mainly tablet form, which triggers the body’s natural system of healing. Based on their experience of their symptoms, a homeopath will match the most appropriate medicine to the patient.
It works on the principle of “like treats like” – that is, a substance that would cause symptoms in a healthy person is used to treat those same symptoms in illness.
For example, one remedy which might be used in a person suffering from insomnia is coffea, a remedy made from coffee.
Now, even on the surface, does that make any sense? But they must have proof, right? Wrong.
Again, from their own site:
Scientifically it can not yet be explained precisely how it works, but new research in biochemistry and quantum physics is going some way towards shedding light on the process. What we do know is that a carefully selected homeopathic remedy appears to acts as a trigger to the body’s healing processes.
The “like treats like” theory is put into practice through serial dilutions (again, from the horse’s mouth):
The raw extracts (from plants or animals) or triturations (from minerals and salts) are made into a ‘tincture’ with alcohol which forms the basis of the dilution procedure. Dilutions are made up to either 1 part tincture to 10 parts water (1x) or 1 part tincture to 100 parts water (1c). Repeated dilution results in the familiar 6x, 6c or 30c potencies that can be bought over the counter: the 30c represents an infinitessimal part of the original substance.
Let’s analyze that by taking their own coffea example of “like treats like”: cure insomnia by giving something that commonly causes insomnia, only diluted many times. A quick check around the Web finds coffea being sold at 6c and 30c dilutions. A 1c dilution involves a single drop of caffeine in 99 drops of water, creating a 1% solution. A drop of this in now added to another 99 drops of water, creating a 0.01% solution or 2c dilution. So with every single digit rise in”c” we move the decimal point two places to the right. A 3c dilution is a 0.0001% solution, and a 6c (the strongest sold) is a 0.0000000001% solution.
Practically no “like” left to treat the “like” in a 6c dilution. But coffea is also sold in a 30c dilution, and now we’ve entered Absurdistan. Because at 12c, you’ve exceeded Avagadro’s number (the number of molecules in a mole of a substance, approximately 6.0225 × 1023). That means, there aren’t enough molecules in the original drop to survive that many dilutions. Therefore a 12c dilution is pure water. And they sell it in 30c dilutions!
“Homeopathy – there’s nothing to it” makes a lot of sense now.
How do homeopaths get around this insurmountable scientific fact? Again, in their own words:
After each dilution the mixture is vigorously agitated in a machine that delivers a calibrated amount of shaking. This is called succussion. It is thought that this process leaves an energetic imprint of the medicinal substance throughout the body of water.
Get that? The water molecules somehow remember that they once bumped into a caffeine molecule, and will therefore have a theraputic effect. If that doesn’t define quackery, I don’t know what does.
To be fair, homeopathy does not violate the Hippocratic rule of Primum non nocere – First, do no harm. At least not directly. But if prescribing a homeopathic placebo delays effective treatment, harm may very well be done. Also, in Hahnemann’s day homeopathic placebos were probably a step up from leeching, poultices, plastering, purging, and blistering, but there’s no excuse for affording them any credence in this day and age.
So how do homeopathic products get away with their quackery?
Well, back in 1938, a US Senator named Royal Copeland inserted a provision into the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act that exempted homeopathic preparations from FDA oversight. They don’t have to prove any of their claims. (Should I mention that Copeland was a homeopath in civil life?)
No requirement to prove effectiveness or even safety. That exemption is long overdue for revocation.
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
Important to note: homeopathy is NOT the same as over the counter medicines.
Herbal treatments get cut some slack because some of them do have real effects – they are just naturally-produced drugs and many led to the development of modern therapies. (Most famously and simply, ASA is found in willow bark and was developed from the traditional ‘willow tea’ headache cure.)
But Homeopathy, all I can think of is that it IS a free country and if some goofy placebo provides an anodyne for (often imaginary) ailments, society is well-served by the “cure” for their “disease”.
As you say, it’s awful when the placebo delays real treatment for a real disease. But you literally can’t prevent people from getting placebos – forbid homeopathy and they’ll be getting cures from chewing the rhododendrons next.
It is terribly important to stigmatize and ghettoize this nonsense where it belongs, in its own separate stores. Mingling it with real medicine is an insult, like a university having a “Department of Astronomy and Astrology”.
I think they should be available too, but held accountable at least to the same minimal and only sporadically enforced standards as herbals and supplements in regard to the claims they can make. Exempting them is irresponsible.
In response to another comment. See in context »Paul, So you’re saying that since it hasn’t been tested and you can’t provide a reasonable scientific explanation homeopathy must therefore be quackery? Two hundred years ago, if someone had said matter is made up of invisible things called molecules, well, you know where that would have gone.
The real problem is that there are no financial incentives anywhere along the way to conduct tests. Since homeopathy is FDA exempt it also cannot be covered by insurance as a prescription drug. And that means no one can afford to do the research on homeopathy because it’s priced comparably (or even less) than OTC drugs. A few researchers have conducted trials on Oscillococcinum, a remedy for flu. The trials – while imperfectly constructed — showed that Oscillo shortened the duration of flu and the symptoms were less severe vs a placebo. But it’s the exception that researchers conduct those very expensive trials.
In my family we are long-time users of homeopathy. I wish more people would use it. Our experience, of course, is anecdotal; but I know we have avoided surgery, corrected health issues that high-priced specialists had said were things we just had to live with (that’s actually how we came to homeopathy – desperation), and actually raised our expectations for what it means to “feel well.”
I would welcome large scale, double-blind studies to assess the value of homeopathy. But early in the last century, allopathic doctors made sure that homeopathy was drummed out of mainstream medicine. And now it’s making a comeback because as wonderful as allopathic medicine is (homeopathy can’t fix appendicitis), homeopathy has something to offer as well. Whether or not we understand it completely.
Reason can’t combat closely held beliefs. The placebo effect kept rattle-shaking shamans in business and it does the same for psychics and Christian Scientists and the homeopathic industry. The human mind is one of the best doctors on Earth (look at the 60% pain relief in the GAIT trial’s placebo group), and the human body has a tremendous capacity to heal itself.
On the flip side, I think sometimes – sometimes – medical therapy can get in the way of the body’s own healing processes. In a case like that, a 30c dilution might be better for you than a bottle of pills. But it’s still just water that’s being marketed as something more, and bogus is bogus.
In response to another comment. See in context »You’re right, reason can’t make a dent in closely held beliefs. Fortunately great medical and research institutions like Sloan Kettering are quite open-minded about alternative medicine and have begun to welcome homeopathy and other modalities into their systems. Great researchers know that sometimes it is their knowledge that falls short and not the therapies themselves.
Also: I agree the human mind is a powerful assistant in the healing process. And that’s why alternative medicine takes into account a person’s personality or temperament in treatment — something allopathic medicine completely ignores.
In response to another comment. See in context »Nancy,
Can you provide a citation to any properly controlled double blind studies demonstrating the efficacy of homeopathic medications? I can point to quite a few that demonstrate that homeopathy = placebo. Such as
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2805%2967177-2/abstract
For homeopathy to truly work would invalidate everything we know about physics and chemistry. There is a reason that anecdotal evidence is not accepted as empirical.
In response to another comment. See in context »“So you’re saying that since it hasn’t been tested and you can’t provide a reasonable scientific explanation homeopathy must therefore be quackery?”
(Usually) implausible medicinal claims that have no empirical support (or even have empirical refutation) is pretty much the definition of quackery. Homeopathy is an extreme case: it is not just implausible, it is utterly absurd nonsense – a fact which makes testing it extremely problematic, as it happens* – but in fact it has been tested anyway and has yielded results in unsurprising accord with the fundamental laws of nature which it (very amusingly) contradicts:
http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343%2809%2900533-6/fulltext#article-outline
*As I have argued elsewhere, a positive result from any practically achievable (in terms of size and methodological quality) CT of homeopathy could still not be regarded as evidence in support of the homeopathic hypothesis.
In response to another comment. See in context »http://majikthyse.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/72/#comment-140
http://layscience.net/node/825#comment-41045
“A man convinced against his will is of his own opinion still.”
Could I get a Homeopathic beer, please? One of your strongest? I’d like to get nice and tight in a hurry…