Homeopathy

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Homeopathy - a Critique

by Rasmus Jansson, May 1997

Last revised: December 11, 2000

Introduction

Witchcraft always has a hard time, until it becomes established and changes its

name.

- Fort

The word homeopathy derives from the greek roots homoios, meaning same or

similar, and pathos, meaning suffering or pain. Homeopathy is an alternative

healing form invented about 200 years ago by the German physician C. F.

Hahnemann (1755?-1843). He believed that disease is caused by either syphilis,

venereal warts, " the itch " , or a combination of the three. (The meaning of " the

itch " is unknown to me.) The cures consist of non-toxic medicaments, usually

alcoholic tinctures or sugar pills treated with special herb or mineral

solutions. The herbs and minerals are thought to assist the body's own ability

to heal. Hahnemann collected his ideas in his magnum opus 'The Organon', which

is still the main book of reference for homeopathists (or 'homeopaths') in both

practice and theory.

Homeopathy first gained popularity during the cholera epidemic of 1832, as it

prescribed totally harmless (and possibly worthless) treatments when

conventional medicine prescribed bloodletting, mercury-based purging, and other

absurdities. Not surprisingly, homeopathy seemed to work. Much has developed

since, but the founding principles remain the same. After an almost total

decline in popularity in the 1930s and the subsequent decades, the trend has

reversed and homeopathy is now growing quickly. For example, Americans 1996

spent 200 million dollars on the trade, India boasted some 100 000 practitioners

and 120 homeopathic schools, and one fourth of the French had at least once used

a homeopathic medicine. In Britain, France, and Germany, these treatments are

subsidised by national health insurance. (Figures according to 'Civilization';

see below.) I will not speculate in depth upon the reasons causing this gain in

popularity, yet one plausible factor to keep in mind is that homeopathy offers a

non-painful " alternative " to needles, scalpels, intoxicating chemicals,

unpleasant side-effects, " frightening " hi-tech equipment, etc., the absence of

which is obviously alluring.

Some parts of homeopathy may very well work. However, most of the claims are

very unconventional and deserve criticism. I will not try to give a balanced

view of homeopathy, for which I'm not knowledgeable enough. Rather, I will focus

the discussion on fantastic and irrational claims. Not to forget, though, is

that the claims I criticize constitute the main difference between homeopathy

and other naturopathic disciplines.

What Homeopathists Claim

Physician, heal thyself.

- Luke IV. 23

Most homeopathic medicines are manufactured by potentizing a liquid herb or

mineral concentrate. At each potentizing, one part of the liquid is diluted with

nine parts of pure water and then mixed well by rhythmic movements (a process

called succussion, purportedly essential to the result). After one dilution, the

potency of the remedy is called D1, after two, D2, etc. ('D' as in deci, meaning

ten. Sometimes the letter 'C' is used, meaning centi, i.e. that the solution is

diluted with 99 parts of water at each dilution.) Most common are dilutions in

the range of D1 to D50. The highest potency I've heard of is D1500. Now to the

magic: the healing powers of the remedies are said to increase with further

dilution - 'the law of infinitesimals' - i.e. that the exact same substance is

more powerful at D50 than at D10! This may seem counter-intuitive, the

homeopathists say, but the water molecules have properties that allow them to

" remember " which substances they have encountered in the past. 'Holographic

projections', and other fantastic misuses of terminology are used in attempts to

explain the " phenomenon " . How this memory is enhanced with further dilution is

something the homeopathists won't tell us, or can't tell us.

Homeopathic medicaments allegedly work in a fashion that makes their effects

virtually impossible to test, or, more scientifically speaking, it is very

difficult to isolate variables. The idea is to activate the body's own immune

system by exposing it to very small quantities of some active substance (or to

the memory of it!). The substance is believed to induce symptoms similar to

those of the disease itself. Supposedly, the immune system is then stimulated to

start the healing process. Hahnemann called this principle simila similibus

curantur - like cures like, or 'the law of similars'. Note that this allows for

the patient to feel worse for a while, thinking it's part of the treatment! Why

the immune system more easily detects and interprets the information-carrying

water molecules than the disease itself is something the homeopathists won't

tell us. Since the response to the treatment is dependent on the immune system

alone, the recuperation time is usually rather long; often so long, in fact,

that there is no way one can exclude the possibility of spontaneous remission.

Double-blind tests thus become impossible to carry out. However, homeopathists

claim they have powerful remedies for acute diseases, too, which definitely

gives homeopathy a chance to prove its efficiency right away. This opportunity

is not used. I would not like to see a homeopathist work on an emergency ward,

but in case (s)he got the chance, would (s)he accept it and take the dire legal

consequences? Certainly not, is my guess. Remember that Hahnemann had never

heard about viruses or bacteria when he founded homeopathy and wrote The

Organon. When such basic knowledge is missing in the central work of a medicinal

discipline dealing with infectious diseases (among many other things), what

credibility does the practice deserve?

Harmless as the homeopathic treatments may seem, they can cause great harm

implicitly. Some practitioners advise their clients to totally abstain from

conventional medical treatments. Antibiotics, vaccins, chemotherapy, etc. are

considered " shocking " and dangerous for the body. The thought of contingent

side-effects of such medical advice is terrifying! What would you prefer in a

worst-case situation, a shocked body or a dead one?

Mathemagical Aspects

En av mänsklighetens största brister är att den inte har någon känsla för

exponentialfunktioner.

[One of mankind's greatest shortcomings is the unability to understand

exponential functions.]

- Chemist and Ph.D. Carl- Boman

The principles underlying the concept of potentizing (diluting) are highly

questionable and deserve nothing but ruthless scrutiny. I will provide a few

thought-experiments for you to ponder, and you will (hopefully) see that getting

things in perspective can be of great value. The mathematics and chemistry

involved is at high school level or lower, so any scientifically literate person

should be able to make the same calculations and arrive at the same results (or

at least come close). I therefore choose not to present the actual busy-work.

Nor do I bother to present exact figures; only the orders of magnitude are of

interest when making such approximations.

a.. Let's assume that the sugar, usually lactose, used for pill-making is

refined to 99,9999%. This means that only one millionth of the substance

consists of contaminants. Then the pill is treated with, say, a D30 homeopathic

solution. Assume the molar masses of the contaminants and the active ingredient

both to be approximately 100 grams. (In actuality it probably lies in the range

of 30 to 500 grams per mole.) Now consider you have one gram of such sugar

pills. This single gram will contain about 1,000,000,000,000,000 contaminant

molecules whereas there is only one chance in a billion to find one molecule of

the active healing agent! This kind of reasoning leads to the conclusion that if

potentizing works, there is indeed something extraordinary going on. Let's now

take a look at the memory of water molecules.

b.. All kinds of various herbs, minerals and metals (e.g. gold, silver, and

arsenic!) are used for potentizing. Consider the hypothetical but likely case

that some little plant with healing properties fell into the ocean, say, in

India a few hundred years ago. Rhythmic movements of the sea (waves) then

decomposed the plant and mixed it with the sea water. Diffusion and water

currents may have spread the remnants of the poor little plant all over the

Earth. Assuming the plant weighed 100 grams and that its former constituents are

evenly distributed throughout the oceans, what is the potency of the sea water

with respect to this plant? Approximately two thirds of the surface of the earth

is covered with water and the average depth may be assumed to be in the order of

one kilometer (3,8 km). This corresponds to the potency of D22, i.e. a not very

dilute solution by homeopathic means. Beware next time you take a swim in the

ocean - you may get healed by some exotic plant or rock that happened to fall

into the ocean a hundred years ago! (Of course, the ocean has a lot of plants

and rocks in it aside from the little Indian plant, but that's another matter.)

Then think of what little kids do when they bathe, or why not a blue whale going

to the restroom (as a politically correct American would say)... But, of course,

the effect would be greater if a toad did the same, as the final concentration

would be lower! Or why not a mosquito? And so on...

c.. How much water is needed to make, say, a D40 solution of a one-milliliter

herb concentrate if you don't want to discard any of the original concentrate?

The answer is astonishing. The required volume of water exceeds the " volume " of

" our " entire solar system! Not convinced? Go home and try for yourself! Only an

infinitesimal amount of the original herb concentrate actually comes to use. The

rest goes down the drain, for good or bad. Well down the drain it may end up

anywhere in due time; in your bathroom tap, for example, only that it will then

be much more diluted and hence even more powerful. I would like to ask the

manufacturers of homeopathic medicines how they know that the water they use in

the process is not already full of other memories, perhaps not at all beneficial

for the patient. Or are there only curative memories, if any at all? Is the

memory hypothesis testable at all?

d.. What if water molecules actually have physical or even spiritual

properties that allow them to remember and pass on information? Then another

scientific implausibility arises. Sugar pills are dry - most of the water

molecules have evaporated! The memory must somehow have been transferred from

the water to the sugar before the evaporation occured. So other molecules can

also carry memories!? This means that irrespectively of the sugar's purity, it

is very likely that the sugar molecules themselves carried information, somehow

intelligible to the body, before the saturation with the homeopathic solution

took place. And what about the air we breathe, the hamburgers we eat (or yucky

algae, if you wish), etc.? What memories do they possess? And what happens if

one ingests an otherwise toxic substance that carries a memory of a potent

healing agent - do the opposite effects cancel one another?

For the mathematically daring: Throughout the ages, people have shown an almost

obsessive predilection for numbers. Connections and symmetries are found

everywhere where numbers are involved, sometimes resulting in obscure theories

and beliefs: numerology (names, birth dates), Christianity (3, 7, 12, 666, and

more), the enneagram, and Dr. Rashad Khalifa's numerology of the Koran (the

number 19 as a proof of Allah's existence), to name but a few. Homeopathy

doesn't ascribe numbers any great sanctity, yet there are instances worth

mentioning. For example, plants are said to respond differently to homeopathic

treatments depending on whether the potency is an odd or even number.

Furthermore, some potencies (of the same medicament) are said to work

synergistically with one another when mixed whereas others don't. Homeopathists

deal with different potencies as if they were slight variations of the same

thing, such as green and red apples, conveniently unaware that the potions are

often entirely incomparable (regarding the memory hypothesis as dismissed for

the time being). For example, comparing D10 with, say, D45 is like comparing a

ball almost 400 times larger than the earth with a speck of dust 0.1 mm in

diameter. Such is the power of exponential functions. D20 is not " twice as much "

as D10, it's one tenth of a billionth of D10 (re concentrations)! The figure

after the " D " refers to the absolute value of the negative power of ten (e.g. D2

= 10^(-2) = 1/10^2 = 0.01) in the factor that is multiplied with the initial

concentration to get the final concentration.

To render some justice to homeopathy, it should be added that the active

chemical content of low potencies, say between D1 and D15-20, do not belong to

the category of fantastic claims. Still, the importance of the rhythmic dilution

process (succussion) indeed does, no matter which the resulting potency might

be.

Occillococcinum, or the Ultimate Duck Quack

[A homeopathic medication is] a soup made from the shadow of the wing of a

pigeon that starved to death.

- Abraham Lincoln

An illustrative example will conclude the discussion about potencies: One of

homeopathy's most popular medicines is called occillococcinum, prescribed for

(or against, if you wish) colds and flus. It is often sold as lactose granules

in little glass or plastic test tubes, suggesting an advanced formula and

boasting the incredible potency of D400. To get this into perspective, consider

the following: D100, or one part in 10,000,...,000 (100 zeroes) corresponds to a

concentration of one molecule in the entire universe! Due to the explosive

nature of exponential funtcions, D400 is, to the human mind, an infinitely

smaller concentration than D100, i.e. infinitely less than one molecule in the

universe. What is left, except for empty wallets, tooth cavities and a

flourishing quack business?

An interesting curiosity adding to the ludicrousness of it all are the active

ingredients in occillococcinum: fresh liver and heart from a duck! One liver and

one heart is needed annually for the the world's total consumption, reaching

sales figures as high as $20 million in 1996. At least homeopathy is an

animal-friendly trade!

A Long Chain with no Strong Links

A chain is never stronger than its weakest link.

- Proverb

To summarize this critique I will provide yet another vantage point for

contemplating and analyzing the claims of homeopathy. At a first glance, the

efficacy of the medicines may seem to depend on the existence of one phenomenon

only, namely that of molecular memories. We shall see that this matter is indeed

more intricate. The existence of a whole series of highly questionable phenomena

is required for the remediation to actually be possible. Consider the following

questions and conditions, which I see as essential " links in the chain " :

a.. The so-called " active ingredient " must somehow be active (a tautology,

perhaps, but I insist!). Gold, or aurum, for example, is a substance where

effectiveness is doubtful. According to mainstream science, gold is rather

inactive chemically (guess why it's good for jewellery, it lasts!). As for the

like-cures-like hypothesis, what symptoms does gold cause when concentrations

are high? Virtually none. The same question is valid in the case of

occillococcinum. Does duck liver cause symptoms of a cold or a flu? I believe

not. (A good foie gras may cure hunger and bad humor, but only in high

concentrations.) The principle of simila similibus curantur seems to be

conveniently abandoned here.

b.. The properties of the active ingredient must be transferred to the medium

in which it is succussed. Also, these properties must not be stored transiently;

they have to be remembered for a long time. According to homeopathy, these

memories are stored indefinitely. The medicines have infinite shelf lives, in

other words.

c.. The dilution process must intensify the memory. Enough said!

d.. The memory has to be transferred to yet another substance, e.g. lactose in

pill making. How do the molecules know in which direction the transfer shall

take place: from the water to the sugar, or from the sugar to the water? Do

different memories have different priorities, and if so, why would water's

memories be superior to sugar's dittos? Furthermore, do memories overwrite or

overlay one another? Is there an upper limit for storage capacity? And what

happens when the water evaporates after the memory transfer--are the memories

kept in the water? If so, how large quantities of gaseous medicines can the

manufacturer inhale before side-effects show up? Lots of questions, as you can

see, but no answers...

e.. Once the medicine is taken, the reverse memory transfer must occur once

again. This leads to the question about memory priorities anew. Why doesn't the

blood--or the water in the blood--transfer its memories to the sugar, instead of

the opposite, or do they exchange memories? Or are the memories transferred

directly from the dissolved sugar molecules to the white blood corpuscles?

f.. The body must be able to detect as well as to interpret the memory. Why is

the memory of a substance better at healing than the substance itself? Is the

body able to differ between a substance and its memory?

g.. Assuming the above conditions fulfilled, the amount of medicine ingested

must contain enough of the healing memories to be effective. I honestly hope

that homeopathists are wise enough not to claim that the lesser the exposure to

healing memories, the more efficient the remedy; then the best way to get healed

would be to stay away from homeopathists at all!

h.. When the body has interpreted the healing memory, the measure taken must

be palpable enough for the patient to notice improvement.

What remains of homeopathy if any one of the above conditions is not fulfilled?

Not much, that's for sure. Perhaps the law of infinitesimals applies here; the

less there is of homeopathy the better!

Conclusion

Nature, time, and patience are the three great physicians.

- H. G. Bohn

Is it possible to prove that something doesn't work? No, to strictly prove a

negative is impossible. By rational thinking and common sense, however, one can

estimate the credibility of an unusual claim (for personal purposes, at least).

But what if there is seemingly supporting evidence, as in the case of

homeopathy? My suggestion is to look for alternative explanations. (See the main

page on post hoc reasoning and 'Occams razor'.) As of homeopathy, the first I

come to think of is a combination of spontaneous remission and the placebo

effect. Other contributory effects could be that the homeopathist gives general

advice on how to improve one's health (e.g. to exercise, avoid junk food, and

reduce smoking and drinking), or that (s)he prescribes food supplements such as

vitamins, minerals or ordinary herb remedies (whose effects do not belong to

this discussion) in conjunction with the miracle drugs. After all, patients who

turn to homeopathists are willing to believe, and to wait long for the remedies

to help.