Homeopathic remedies are not all-natural herbal supplements. They are not an alternative to western medicine and prescription drugs. They are placebos in the form of sugar pills that are manufactured in such a way as to erase any trace of their original substances. And they are a waste of money and energy.
It doesn’t matter which homeopathic treatment a child takes, she will end up with nothing more than the equivalent of a tic tac. That is because the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann, invented the treatment in the 19th century when leeches were a popular way to treat disease. Not much has changed since his original illogical ideas, which he described as laws. I think that once you read these “laws”, you may want to insist that your cute hippie pregnant wife return the Arnica 30x to the store.
The Law of Similars can best be compared to vaccines and venom antidotes. For vaccines, a live strain of disease is introduced to the human body causing the immune system to build a defense against the disease. Venom antidotes work the same way, except they are injected into animals, and we use the animal’s antibodies to fight the venom in humans.
Hahnemann had the same idea, but instead of using medical science as his guide, he just made it up and hoped it would stick. His thought was that certain natural substances cause symptoms in the body, and that those substances (in a diluted form) could prevent diseases and conditions that have similar symptoms. Confused? Say tree sap gives you a headache when ingested, well that means that tree sap can prevent headaches. Besides being a non-sequitur, the concept is void of logic. You won’t magically cancel out your headache when you ingest substances that cause a headache. The idea is absurd on it’s face, and even more absurd when you think about the fact that Hahnemann tested these substances without using any standards or controls. He put all his answers down in a little black book called Materia Medica, and homeopaths use many of the same remedies to this day.
The Law of Infinitesimals states that the more you dilute a substance the more powerful are it’s medicinal properties. Huh? That is SO counter-intuitive that I can’t even conceptualize how this man devised such a backwards idea. The less there is of something, the more it cures? Of all the failed medical concepts, I find it hard to undestand how this one lasted over a 100 years and is still widely believed by Whole Foods Market shoppers everywhere.
You might find a homeopathic bottle with 30x on the label. That doesn’t mean it is 30 times more powerful. It doesn’t even mean that it is 30 times less powerful. It means that it is diluted 1 to the 30th power.
A 30X dilution means that the original substance has been diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. Assuming that a cubic centimeter contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill a container more than 50 times the size of the earth and a 30C solution would require a container more than 30 billion times the size of the Earth.
Science has told us that there is a limited amount of dilutions a substance can handle before the original molecules are gone. That means that anything greater than 24x is nothing but sugar water. Homeopaths will tell you that magical phantom traces of the original substance are left after vigorous shakings called succusions, but we know this to be hogwash that is unverifiable. Any relief comes from placebo or random natural healing.
Cindy Crawford (what is it with these pretty celebrities?) recently went on the Oprah show to reveal her favorite things, including a homeopathic kit and “bible” that she uses to treat “mosquito bites, bee stings, bruises, etc.” I guess there are worse substances to cure your children with, but there are also better ways to spend your money. Not everyone has the money to waste that Cindy Crawford does. My money goes to the body’s natural immune system and healing abilities, and when that doesn’t work- good old fashioned doctor-prescribed science-based medicine.
April 18, 2008 at 3:21 pm |
It’s always good to mention Oscillococcinum when discussing dilutions. It’s the most popular remedy. It’s made from duck heart and liver, and each pill contains 1×10^-400 grams of duck.
Unfortunately this number is so small, it’s actually impossible to explain to anyone how small it it. It’s more dilute than a drop in an ocean that is billions of times larger than the entire universe.
It’s also made with the Korsakovian method, which involves rinsing out a flask 200 times, then filling it again with pure water, and using that water.
May 29, 2008 at 2:08 pm |
[...] Homeopathy [...]
December 7, 2008 at 4:02 am |
You are mostly right, but missing a couple of things.
First of all, the placebo affect only works if you “believe” in it, so your example of a tic-tac doesn’t hold because no one “believes” that a tic-tac can cure them.
Secondly, there are a number of diseases where the cause is hard to explain with western science-based medicine. Such “psycho-somatic” ailments really have no good science-based cured, so why not use a psychological one?
December 7, 2008 at 1:11 pm |
A tic-tac is a small sugar pill that lacks any curative powers. Homeopathic remedies are small sugar pills that lack any curative powers. My analogy is appropriate because that is how I intended the comparison.
We really don’t know how the placebo effect works, and to speculate that “belief” is part of the equation is premature. For instance, someone can offer me a tonic that they claim cures headaches, and I could take it in disbelief, but the mere suggestion that it cures headaches could cure me on a subconscious level, despite my lack of belief.
I’m not entirely against the use of placebos, but I am against an entire industry that lies about it’s innate ability to cure diseases. That’s how people get hurt… by believing in an ineffective cure, rather than trusting in science-based medicine. Even though your question only covers untreatable diseases, the mere existence of homeopathy allows them to make claims on any disease, including those that can be treated.
March 1, 2009 at 1:49 pm |
“placebo affect only works if you “believe” in it”
This is a popular misconception about the so-called placebo effect. An excellent article on the subject by Mark Crislip at Science Based Medicine:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=158
May 22, 2009 at 11:26 am |
Interesting story on the placebo effect and the uses it can be put to: a young doctor in rural Louisiana found that many of his patients weren’t getting better after he prescribed them medication. He discovered that they weren’t taking the medicine because the people were believers in voodoo or the other related beliefs. So he learned a bit about the religion and started doing faux voodoo rituals over the medicine and then handing it to his patients. Miraculously his patients started having remarkable recoveries:)
This is a true story, although sadly I no longer have the reference for it, thus the anecodotal urban myth type of retelling of it. I’ve lived most of my life around those parts and have personally witnessed similar sorts of uses by doctors to convince their patients to follow their treatments. I have personally heard doctors tell people that God brought them to him so it was the doctor’s God-given duty to treat the patient, thus if the patient didn’t take the treatment, he wasn’t following God’s will (this was usually preceded by a group prayer session).