Amidst vicious attacks on its credibility, the world’s smartest woman has denied it was her her who wrote a letter in response to am article about Swedish authorities accepting homeopathy.
11/14/2011 UPDATE: WORLD’S SMARTEST WOMAN ENDORSES HOMEOPATHY?
Apparently not, at least NOT YET.
After it has been called to my attention, by one of our faithful readers, that the Marilyn vos Savant of “world’s smartest woman” fame has denied writing the letter that appeared under the same name in a comment responding to an online article.
It reported Swedish authorities have accepted homeopathy as a valid referral by non homeopathic medical doctors.
Much to my discredit, I simply assumed, out of hope, that this was the same Marilyn vos Savant I thought it was.
Immediately after being informed of the apparent error, I sent a note through Twitter stating that I was amending the post, hoping she would share her true thoughts on homeopathy.
Fair enough so far?
Hopefully Marilyn vos Savant will be amenable to reviewing the evidence for homeopathy, and rendering an opinion.
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The country of Sweden, has joined Nobel laureates, top material scientists, the heads of state, royalty, countless medical doctors over two centuries, the state of Arizona, Cuba and millions of common people in accepting homeopathy, the world’s fastest growing medicine.
Hopefully, the world’s smartest woman, after reviewing the evidence for homeopathy, will join these luminaries in supporting further research into curative medicine.
Meanwhile, a ruling by Sweden’s Supreme Administrative court has struck down the Swedish Medical Association’s prohibition of homeopathy.
Swedish doctors may now recommend it.
The ruling has drawn the usual spears from its competitor of allopathy (common modern medicine that evokes symptoms other than those being treated). But in a comment following an article on the Swedish ruling, the defense of the embattled curative doctrine appeared to have been joined by Marilyn vos Savant, the woman the Guiness Book of World Records claimed has the world’s greatest IQ for a woman, rated to be as high as 230.
One of the points of the letter signed by “Marilyn vos Savant” pointed out is a noted fact that made it sound like this was indeed a letter from someone who was looking at the argument from an unusally objective point of view, what one would expect from the world’s smartest woman: Criticisms of homeopathy bear little or no references.
At 12:59 on September 24, 2011 the letter signed by Marilyn vos Savant was posted a reply to the announcement that Swedish courts are recognizing homeopathy.
This is actually nothing new. Courts all over the world recognize homeopathy. Homeopathic high dilutes are FDA regulated and approved LEGAL drugs. They argue by numerous medical doctors, as well as licensed homeopaths.
The letter in question endorses homeopathy an asks intelligent questions:
“Personally, I believe in homeopathy. But that is me. The system, developed by a GERMAN doctor named Samuel Hahnemann, is a system based on the principle that a much diluted preparation of a substance that causes symptoms in healthy individuals can cure disease that causes the same symptoms in a sick person. As I said, it has worked for me, but I might be the exception of the rule.
“What is “top thinking” is the statement made by Marie Wedin, chairwoman of the Swedish Medical Association, about the stance of the organism on the matter:
“We believe treatment should be evidence-based, and evidence has shown that the absolute majority of homeopathic cures have not been proven effective.”
“Why doesn’t she provide numbers and/or who made a research about it?
“Marie Wedin is just another bureaucrat, that is, an administrator concerned with procedural correctness at the 
expense of people’s needs. They usually open their mouths, long before they start their brain’s ignition system.
“With due respect
“Marilyn vos Savant”
http://www.thelocal.se/36332/20110924/
YOU DON’T NEED TO HAVE A GENIUS IQ TO UNDERSTAND HOMEOPATHY
The writer is indeed perceptive in calling for references. Every statement against homeopathy turns 0ut to be false, and there really aren’t any exceptions. Critics say homeopathy’s rule of ”like cures like“ has no correlatives in science. This isn’t true. In magnetic fields, like repels like. In chemistry, like dissolves like.
Homeopathy is often indicted as not being evidence based, when in fact it has built its protocols on evidence alone by directly observing the action of its curative substances on human subjects in double blind trials. It has borne the burden of epidemics, outperforming its alloapthic counterpart 10 to one. Recently Cuba administered 4.5 million doses to stop an annual epidemic and saved lives and thousands of dollars.
Even more compelling evidence for the science minded is seen in the action of high dilutes on plants, animals and in vitro biochemical experiments.
Critics say homeopathic remedies have no plausible mechanism of action, that because they shouldn’t work they don’t work. This “implausiblity argument” has been struck down by a team of American material scientists led by Prof. Rustum Roy of Penn State University, who have unequivocally stated that the highly diluted aqueous solutions used in homeopathy do indeed have identifiable physical differences from their inert vehicles.
Recently Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who co-discovered the AIDS virus, used equipment developed by the renowned French immunologist Jacques Benveniste to detect the homeopathic signal, an electromagnetic frequency beginning at one kH, detectable at other higher frequencies throughout the spectrum.
Montagnier speculated that the signal is triggered by the Schumann resonance, the Earth’s background radiation.
HIGH DILUTES RADIOACTIVE
It can now be said that the operative mechanism is most likely radioactivity, similar to tritium, an naturl trace element isotope found in small quantiies in the body.
The experiments by Nobel laureate Montagnier reveal a homeopathic signal at 1kH. Beta scintillation measures observed by Dr. Rolland Conte and his team show that homeopathic high dilutes emit high frequencies between ultra violet an gamma (Theory of High Dilutons).
Opponents of homeopathy have complained that water cannot have a memory as required by homeopathy. But in June 2010, chemistry Prof. Emeritus Martin Chaplin of London Southbank University, who Roy calls “the guru of water,” wrote ”Water does store and transmit information, concerning solutes, by means of its hydrogen-bonded network.” [Chaplin, Memory of Water]
Others have said that all good studies of homeopathy have concluded that homeopathy is merely a placebo. But this isn’t true. Neither is placebo an accurate term of anything other than what we want it to be, and no major metanalysis has ever concluded that homeopathy is a placebo.
Of the five major metanalyses done on homeopathy, only one, Shang, has come close to stating that homeopathy is a placebo, but that study has been soundly dismissed as seriously flawed, and the reviewers of Shang stated conclusively in their results that the data showed that collective trials showed ”Homeopathy had a significant effect beyond placebo” (Ludtke & Rutten).
As one explores the research and testimony of homeopathy and personally experiences it, a second paradigm arises in stark contrast with allopathy: The statements made against homeopathy are always based on assumption, presumption and fallacy.
As implausible as it may be due to the high dilution of intended material substances out of its remedies, it is impossible for this crypto molecular pharmacy of homeopathy to be dependent on the ’”placebo effect,” that its effects are purely psychogenic.
A recent question in commentary asked “why is there this opposition to homeopathy?”
I think it is because of several reasons. Homeopathy is difficult to understand yet it is accessible to lay people for very little cost. Its pharmacy can be created by anyone from anything. It competes with the profit incentive of allopathy, is more effective than allopathy and infuriates the elitism of science.
John Benneth, Homeopath
503- 819 – 7777
Why do you think it really was vos Savant that made comments supporting homeopathy. For the record, vos Savant has stated on her Twitter stream,
“Marilyn vos Savant (@VirtualMvS):
17/10/2011 16:19
Just a note to mention that someone is impersonating me on the subject of homeopathy. I’ve been unable to get the fraudulent posts removed.”
See
Weren’t you even a little suspicious when the “smartest woman in the world” wrote
““Why doesn’t she provide numbers and/or who made a research about it?” given that she is a native English speaker?
Hi 4tis!
Good detective work. I am immediately correcting the blog to read correctly and have sent a messsage to Marilyn. Thanks for your diligence. It will be interesting to see what she says about homeopathy when presented with recent research.
John Benneth, Homeoapth
503 819 7777
Dear Guy Chapman,
You state ” …..homeopathy as practiced today violates laws of Physics”. Firstly you do not state , what laws. Secondly you do you agree from your own statement “as practiced today’ means practiced before was okay.
Considering you have failed to provide the Law/s, I assume you mean “dilutions” This principle has created controversy, since Avogadro’s Number is 6.025×1023 particles/mole. However educate yourself further and you learn that a particle e=4.809×10 -10 electrostatic units=16.021×10 -20 coulombs. So we are speaking of energy. As we dilute more and more potential energy (PE) is converted to kinetic energy (KE). it is this energy which is useful.
As the dilution creates more space for molecules to move around they collide with each other and release energy. In both physics and chemistry, this is known as the “Theory of molecular bombardment”
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Great article and comments John!
As a scientist and user of homeopathy I can attest to its effectiveness. Homeopathy was discovered and developed purely by careful documented experimentation. The phenomena of like curing like is a simple truth as much as gravity is. You can observe it in nature without taking an active role, much like Hahnemann did around the time he decided to run his first experiments, or Jenner did when he observed the relationship between cow pow & small pox. Homeopathy is probably the most scientific complete system of medicine in existence. It is based on reality, that which is actually happening (not why we think this or how we think that). Much of allopathic medicine is based on assumptions, conjectures, and beliefs, with very little good logic.
I think it is hilarious that despite real world experiences and sound logic, western medicine proclaims if there isn’t a study done on a subject matter then it can’t be so. And biological studies by themselves, while potentially informative, can rarely be 100% conclusive. Experimentation is important for data collection, but real science requires deductive reasoning more than anything else and this reasoning can be applied to real world experiences as well.
Furthermore, anyone that argues on a subject matter he knows nothing about is a complete fool & the furthest from a scientist. When I first learned of the possibilities of homeopathy I was incredulous as well. But there was only one way to find out, learn and experiment on my own. This is scientific method, everything else is hot air…
Amen, brother, amen!
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great John. Still wiping my tears away
long before ignition of the brain did it
what about Cuba?? look at their success in the homeopathic treatment of Denghue Fever… They are one of, if not, the largest vaccine producing nation ever and yet they have found the greatest success in reducing the occurence of this disease during their wet season where allopathy has failed…
In the US they have banned certain homeopathic medicines, if it is not a plausible medication then why ban it as a toxic substance if it has no physical measurable qaulity? I am not a homeopath but a homeopathic patient. I have had profound physiological changes bought about by my homeopathic treatment that allopathic medicine has not been able to do. If it does not work then submit yourself to a prooving. Put your own body on the line and try it out for yourself and see what happens. If it doesn’t work then what have you lost? If it does work what have you gained? your health…
Great stuff, John.
I honor you for your willingness to step out and fight for something which is of such value to humanity, despite the outrageous bullying of those who are afraid of changing their little worldviews.
A couple conventional medical treatments to add to your “like cures like” examples, which validate this concept – vaccination and allergy desensitization.
Also, the Cuban leptospirosis trial did not save the Cuban gov’t thousands of dollars. In fact it saved several million dollars and cost only 2% of the conventional vaccine product!!
You can read about it at my blog: http://worldofhomeopathy.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/hello-world/
Keep up the good work
John – do you have a citation for homeopathy being the world’s fastest-growing medicine? I’d love to use it but need the source.
Yes, the Indian Chamber of Commerce estimates that homeopathy is growing at 30% a year.
“
Indian homeopathy treatment market is likely to grow 30% annually and reach a size of Rs. 4,600 crore as the number of takers is growing fast within and outside the country, apex chamber ASSOCHAM said today.”
“Globally, the homeopathy market is estimated at Rs. 26,300 crore with France being the largest contributor, according to the study by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM). Last year, the domestic homeopathy market size was about Rs. 2,758 crore.”
A crore is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to ten million (10,000,000.)
” . . the growth of homeopathy is not only confined to India but world over, its size has gone beyond Rs.263 billion and interestingly the growth rate is almost on par and that is around 25%.”
http://hpathy.com/natural-health-news/homeopathy-industry-likely-to-be-rs-4600-cr-by-2012-assocham/
In dollars then the world homoeopathy market is, according to the Indians, about $5.35 billion. I don’t know if this includes services, is for the sale of remedies items alone, or includes ancillary products. . but if we multiply 5.35 billion by 1.25% annually, without adjustment for inflation, we get a 1.1 trillion dollar market by 2035, which means it will have surpassed current allopathic medicine.
But these are only projected monetary figures, and homeopathy is noted for its great qualities, among them if not its infinitesimal posology, a cost just as small compared to allopathy in the treatment of serious diseases, like cancer.
Other factors are indicators of growth, which means acceptance and general usage. So when I say it the fastest growing medicine, I’m basically comparing it to its dominant counterpart of allopathy, but I’m also making the statement out of my own observations . .
When I first began exploring the literature on pre-clinical testing, I discovered it to be virtually unknown by homeopaths. After receiving a stack of pre-clicnal studies from the DHU and discovery of Stephenson’s bibliography of pre-clincal trials during the 20th century, I assembled a list of 52 of them and was the first to post such data on the Internet in 2000 on marius.net, listed as the first entry off the John Benneth Journal as “Proof for Homeopathy.”
Since that time, when there were few if any websites on homeopathy, the amount of information available on homeopathy has exploded eponneitally. Google now reports 5.4 million “results” when the word is entered into their search engine. Compare this my little website 12 years ago. That’s explosive growth.
Well, admittedly many things have grown as well or even more by comparison to to it. Any celebrity can claim as many hits. But it has been 215 years now since Hahnemann administered the first doses of of a high dilute of Belladonna during the 1796 Scarlet Fever epidemic in Leipzig and stunned his colleagues when it turned out he appeared to be handing out nothing for than little sugar pills, an since then to the present day homeopathy has repeatedly outperformed standard immunizations 10 to 1 or more in epidemics of Poliomyelitis; Chicken-pox; Hepatitis (all types); Japanese Encephalitis; Hib; Influenza; Measles; Pneumococcal disease; Cholera; Smallpox; Typhoid; Typhus; Whooping cough; Rubella (German measles); Mumps; Diphtheria; Malaria; Yellow Fever; AIDS, and Dysentery, and is now addressing diseases such as cncer, diabetes, veterinary, and phytopathological (plant) diseases.
During a Poliomyelitis epidemic in Buenos Aires, homeopaths and medical doctors distributed homeopathic Lathyrus sativus to over 40,000 people. Not one of them developed Polio during the epidemic despite exposure.
You can’t say that acupuncture, chiropratic or Chinese herbs . . Or even standardized,Western allopathic medicine can be as effective as homeopathic in epidemics without the numbers casting doubt on the speaker.
Why is it then that homeopathy is not use exlusively in the treament of infectious diseases. The reason my dear Watson is xenophobia, fear o the strange, ana cheapophobia, fear of anything that is virtually free.
Because of the thinking that because there appears to be no known cause, there is no cause, and so what is seen as the absence of theory becomes the basis for the absence of evidence. The atheist mind finds it difficult to grasp that something tht shouldn’t work does and the loudest opponents of homeopathy are always atheists.
[This is not meant to be a prejudice against atheism, I (John Benneth) have considered adopting it many times, as I believe God prefers atheists . . they’re less bother and more, they don‘t misrepresent Deity and they’re fun trying to convert. Confessing atheism also ensure that my children do not become atheists.]
Although it is difficult to dig up concrete stats on the universal sales of natural and homeopathic related products, newly released data from the National Center for Homeopathy (U.S.) shows sales increasing by as much as 20-30% in 2006, as compared to the year before.”
According to a study conducted in 2005 by Marketresearch.com, $230 million were made in sales of homeopathic products in 2005. http://www.chiroeco.com/chiropractic/news/9655/797/new-sales-data-shows-growth-in-homeopathy-adoption/
There is one final argument I would like to present here for the claim that homeopathy is the fastest growing medicine in the world today (this is my killshot) and that is compared to other systems of medicine . . allopathy, acupuncture, Yoga, herbal, Qi Gong, manipulation, massage . . at its inception, all these other systems of treatment were thousands of years old. (A case could be made for chiropratic being newer, but I would counter by saying that it was a devlopment of what was already self evident, many chiropractic doctors practice homeopathy., chirpratic has no ancillary pharmacy for onsumers, nor revolutionary physics just now being understood)
If this is not explosive growth, then I ask you, how does anyone explain its acceptance by the very same people who were formerly thought to denounce it as delusion? I have lectured at the world’s most renowned laboratory to Nobel laureates on the physico-chemical properties of homeopathy, as reported by top material scientists. Why am I being entertained at the Cavendish by Prof. Josepshon if there wasn’t a desire to know more about homeopathy in the top eschelons of science?
Yet without validation, it has been in constant use by medical doctors for 200 years. The FDCA was sponsored by a homeopath. It outperformed allopathy 10 to one during the 1918 Flu panpidemic. The Cubans recently administered 4.5 million doses of it to stop an epidemic. It is driving crackpot debunkers crazy with doubt. Some have made careers fighting it, and yet they seems to be only throwing gasoline on its fire.
As the physical properties and mechanism of the homeopathic remedies become undertood, how can it not supercharge this industry? If this is not a marker off explosive growth, now and yet to come, what is?
So not only is it the fastest growing medicine in the world today, it is the most modern, and as will be seen, the most scientific, in that it is, for the most part, discovered and developed through direct observation and personal experience by both laymen and professionals alike, unlike the theoretical inventions of mercenary allopathic cobblers, which currently dominate putative thinking as to what “medicine” is.
Most people, including current practicing homeopaths, don’t know how powerful homeopathy can be when properly executed.
In the 20th century it has been relegated to the treatment of self limiting diseases. But there has been a remarkable change in this when it was announced in an internaitonal journal of oncology that in-vivo experiments have revealed that high dilutes, as used in homeopathy, can kill cancer cells, and subsequently was used clinically to cure cancer in-vivo.
From its very inception, homeopathy has had the same abusive, non-sensical opposition by the puppets of allopathy as it has now. In other words, whereas the evidence for homeopathy, the case for it, has grown by leaps and bounds, the argument against it remains the same as it was 200 years, amounting to nothing more than hand waving, name calling and curses.
Anyone with any intelligence can see through that for what it is. All it takes to propel this great adventure ahead is work of the kind found on websites like http://extraordinarymedicine.org
John Benneth, Homeopath
Impressive article,logically laid out.
Incidentally, you forgot to point out that Benveniste’s research was admitted by one of those involved to have been deliberately falsified and Montaigner has specifically stated that his work cannot be extended to the substances used in homeopathy. Since you know both of these facts I’m sure we can rely on you not to continue repeating such blatant falsehoods.
Incorrect, Guy.
You didn’t read this article, did you?
As with most homeopathic critics, no references are given to back up their claims.
Here is Luc Montaigner quoted in Science Magazine (Dec 24, 2010, vol 330):
“I can’t say homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecule…even at 10(-18) you can calculate there is not a single molecule of DNA left. And yet we detect a signal…it’s not pseudoscience. It’s not quackery. These are real phenomena that deserve further study.”
So there it is Guy, blatant and unambiguous evidence of Montagnier’s extrapolation of his results to homeopathy.
Read ‘em and weep.
Ah, the usual fallacies of appeal to popularity, special pleading and reversal of burden of proof. John, the General Counsel for the American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists acknowledged ten years ago that if homeopathic products had to adhere to any of the normal levels of proof, this would be the end of homeopathy. You can’t say “oh, well, some criticisms lack citations” and use that to excuse the fact that the fundamental principles of homeopathy lack any credible evidence base whatsoever, and homeopathy as currently practiced violates the laws of physics.
Equally you can’t claim legitimacy form the results of lobbying and special pleading.
Homeopathy is without any evidential basis. All you have is a bunch of anecdotes all consistent with the null hypothesis of placebo plus observer bias. All your arm waving will never obscure that fact. Go away and come back when you have some actual research that shows real, repeatable, measurable, empirically verifiable effects with durations beyond nanoseconds and which generalise in the way that you claim.
Or alternatively accept that homeopathy will continue to be ridiculed until it dies out.
Guy maybe you should change the tag at the top of your “blahg” – “A tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” One might be able to take your remarks more seriously then.
I suspect that the General Counsel for the American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists would be able to point to a lot more evidence come forward in the last 10 years by new research or better publicised research. Guy try reading “Homeopathy: Good Science: How New Science Validates Homeopathy” by Peter Adams published this year. It summarises the case for homeopathy being in line with recent science research. I think anyone with an objective viewpoint, with no special interests or funding to biase their writing, would find it clarifies the support homeopathy has from recent scientific discoveries and contradicts the statements you make above.
Read the book and then post again please otherwise it’s not contributing to the discusion.
molecular medicine has triple action: placeo (no result), curative (sometime), killer (sometime).
if homoeo is only placebo then it is 33% of molecular
if it does cure sometime then it is 33% of molecular
since it doest not kill it will never be a medicament since a drog has always it dark side!
any how 66% of possibilities 40% of the population takes it: why getting 33% killing risks?