CHEMISTRY OF HOMEOPATHY and the FDA

LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE 

Avogadro’s Constant hypothesis predicts electron pressure and the asymptote at infinite dilution.

Avogadro’s limit doesn’t apply to absence of solute in homeopathic remedies because of electron pressure enthalpy, a measure of energy in a thermodynamic system. its native heat, from the Schumann resonances, the background geomagnetic field, discovered first by Tesla, later by Schumann mid-twentieth century. Ionization of the solvent by dissociation of the solute molecule has been confirmed in the ultra-dilute remedy.

The solute in a dilute homeopathic remedy is not molecular because of de-ionization into electrons, . There are measures within analytic chemistry which prove it, such as conductance tests and transmission electron microscopy  (TEM).

All of the extreme controversy over whether or not the homeopathic remedy is placebo or verum, whether or not these materials are medically effective, and all of these phony money offers to “prove homeopathy”, conveniently avoid this simple, demonstrable fact, a fact that separates homeopathy from fiction: the solute in highly diluted solutions used as homeopathic drugs is ionized and can be physically detected by conventional chemical analysis.

Students and professors of electrochemistry should be well aware of this elementary principle of molecular dissociation, that as the solute presumably decreases, thins out and changes phase fron condensed to plasma, its conductivity increases to an asymptote and evidence of the solute persists in the solvent despite an apparent infinite number of dilutions.

Why or how the solute persists in infinite dilution is not clear, but strange as it may seem to the zenophobic, it does so, no matter how dilute it is in serial dilutions.

According to Copeland, the solute is not completely deionized until the sixth decimal dilution, at which point the aqueous solvent has completely dissociated the molecular structure of the solute by means of hydrolysis.

There are tests of molar conductance that demonstrate this.

The Chemistry of Homeopathy under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

FDA NOTICE FOR HOMEOPATHY
On April 20-21, 2015, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a public hearing at its White Oak Campus to obtain information and comments from stakeholders about the current use of human drug and biological products labeled as homeopathic, as well as the Agency’s regulatory framework for such products. These products include prescription drugs and biological products labeled as homeopathic and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs labeled as homeopathic. FDA is still seeking written comments from all interested parties, including, but not limited to, consumers, patients, caregivers, health care professionals, patient groups, and industry. FDA is seeking input on a number of specific questions, but is interested in any other pertinent information participants would like to share. Please refer to the following documents for more information:
Federal Register Notice
Submit Comments to the Public Docket

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/NewsEvents/ucm430539.htm

PROCEEDINGS STOPPED FOR A VOLTE FACE ANNOUNCEMENT: THE CHEMISTRY OF HOMEOPATHY HAS BEEN DISCOVERED!

As dry as this may seem at first, this is really a fascinating topic, and very wet. A few months ago The Washington Post reported that by analyzing edit changes made by citizen contributors of articles in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, they were able to determine that the two most contentious topics in the Western world are Jesus Christ and homeopathy.

HOMEOPATHY?

Now you might not be surprised to hear that Jesus is still stirring up trouble, but without further erudition . . unless you’ve been in or close to the pot being stirred . . you might be a bit perplexed when told something as innocuous as “homeopathy” is rivaling Christ for the bad boy of the Western world distinction; but I would venture to say that if you  go further East I reckon homeopathy is also kicking Muhammed and Buddha in the skirts for the same title; and get this, it should be even even more perplexing to hear that both doctrines of Christ and homeopathy share atheists as their primary detractors!

“What’s this you say?”

Yes, it pains me to say it, but it’s true. Both Jesus and homeopathy are healers and both kickoveer money tables. The mere mention of the word “homeopathy” can send a malinformed atheist into a fit of glossolalia and make him dance like St. Vitus. There are innumerable high profile atheists, like Richard Dawkins and James Randi, who, when they’re not ridiculing a belief in the Deity and knocking the noses off of marbled saints, are tearing up the well manicured lawn in front of the great doctrine of Hahnemann House, crying a liturgy of shameless pseudoscience, so much so that homeopathy is something of a pariah in the Western mainstream media so slavishly chained to academic science and big money patent medicine . .  which in the case of homeopathy is now itself mouthing pseudoscience!

Now just to make this volte face clear, I’m not accusing homeopathy of being pseudoscience, no! I’m accusing skepticism of it! I’m here in this article doing something that’s never been done before in modern times, and certainly never done to this extent ever heretofore: I’m making the first installment of a presentation where I introduce the chemical principle of what has been thought to be a scientific impossibility, and that my friends is the chemistry of what most material scientists have insisted was a placebo, hoax and fraud, where every man jack of them is a patholgical atheist!

It’s true! And please don’t get me wrong or take me as poe. At times I have found a grudging respect for atheists. I am even inclined to believe they are amongst God’s favorites; they may not be speaking to him, but at least they’re not speaking for him as so many believers do.  But they don’t show this grace for homeopathy, nor in reality do they show it for science, and yes I know, I know, I’ve just thrown more boiling water on the storm troopers by saying that.

I am noting this to reveal an exposition of a pathology that stands in the way of accepting a known chemical principle. Be it because of pride or lacking a gear for reverse travel, they say and will continue to say, as they have said before, incorrectly, that there is no known chemistry to explain the action of the highly aqueous diluted materials used as medicine in the practice of homeopathy . .

WRONG!

. . and so they will still say,  even though it can now be explained to them with a chemical principal to the contrary, that because there’s not one MOLECULE in it of anything but plain water, the homeopathic solution cannot have any specific medical action of its own; therefore homeopathy is without reason and there can be no acceptable evidence for it; all evidence then for the fraud is dismissed!

That is what they say, the rampaging patent medicine engine cheers them on, and they are wrong. There is a widely known chemical principle that supports homeopathy and there are now widely known properties within classical chemistry that prove the action of these drugs. That neither homeopath nor skeptic is aware of the classical chemistry of homeopathy suggests that, as a gesture of compromise with other more insidious reasons, that, lacking finite limitations, the basic underlying chemical principle is sensed by the human mind and rejected . . and this is a premier example of a scientific cognitive dissonance. Both principle and property have been gathering dust in science, and the link between homeopathy and chemistry, once known, has up until now apparently been forgotten, ignored or expelled from classical science for over 100 years. Like a brazen Frankenstein I stand before the torchlit mob and shout “It lives!”

In other words, there is a classical chemistry to explain the potency of what former scientists have been screaming are inert placebos, incapable of intrinsically delivering the effects of their label. Furthermore, and in terms of the FDA, this next piece of information ought to bring everyone still sitting to their feet and the hearing to a halt: The chemistry of homeopathy was first presented by the progenitor of the modern FDA, the chief sponsor of the Food Drug and Cosmetics Act (FDCA)!

INFINITE DILUTION

It should come as a great surprise . . if not shock and disbelief . . to proponent and opponent alike to learn — contrary to common belief and what is taught by putative skeptics, and medical and “homeopathy” schools alike — there is recognition within standard, classical chemistry, that with materials ionized by molecular dissociation in aqueous solutions, the properties of the solute are fixed and remain constantly in “infinite dilution”!

Furthermore, to the even greater distress of homeopath and skeptic alike, at least those who want to continue the obfuscation of supramolecular chemistry [the study of electric properties beyond the molecule] with homeopathy, associating the “homeopathic remedy” with the chemistry of molecular dissociation was done 106 years ago by none other than the medical doctor and professor of academic medicine who became a US Senator and the chief sponsor of FDA denture, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), the man who gave the FDA its teeth, Senator Royal S. Copeland A.M., M.D.

Senator Royal S. Copeland, A.M., M.D.

In a 1909 article entitled “The Scientific Reasonableness of Homeopathy” by Royal S. Copeland, A.M., M.D.  he states:

“. . a chemical, technically an electrolyte, when dissolved, is dissociated into parts or particles smaller than the atoms and known as ions. The more dilute the solution the greater is the dissociation and consequently the atoms are less in number and the ions increased. In a solution infinitely dilute, the dissociation is absolute and the chemical is present only in a state of ionization.”

Read the whole article.   http://www.homeowatch.org/history/copeland.html

Although Copeland goes on to persuade using testimony from Kelvin and other authorities (while most homeopaths will remain paralyzed and silent) Copeland’s article will be dismissed in horror by skeptics, who will use its age and the fact that the author was a homeopath, as excuses for further obloquy of “homeopathy.”
There does indeed seem to be some confusion as to what exactly constitutes an ion, a confusion that persists to this day; but despite cries wishing for the contrary, modern classical chemistry still supports Copeland’s thesis, that the properties of ionized solutes remain constant throughout “infinite dilution.”
Running a search on Google for the number of appearances of “infinite dilution” returns an unbelievable 229,000 hits (search made on June 7th, 2015), and among these, numerous articles that support the principle of an asymptote solute in infinite dilution. Asymptote means approaching but never reaching zero, i.e., due to particle splitting of a solute in aqueous suspension, the concentration of solute ions will approach but never reach zero, no matter how many dilutions are made!

SCIENCE AS AMNESIAC
How is it then that skeptical opinion by professional organizations, engaging the media against homeopathy, can deny what is an orthodox explanation of FDA labeled “homeopathic” pharmaceuticals by modern classical claassical chemistry? They will volley to the end that a belief in homeopathy is delusional, when in fact the scientific principal of the properties of solutes remaining in infinite dilution is a well established fact, to be found online in the literature.

“It may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but infinite dilution is a concept found in chemistry that is applied to the study of solvents — liquids — and solutes, the substances that are dissolved in solvents. This principle is used to test the properties of solutions and extrapolate or estimate their chemical reactions in varying environments.”
Read more : http://www.ehow.com/about_5459313_definition-infinite-dilution.html

What is infinite dilution – Answers.com
“Infinite dilution means such a large dilution so that when you add more solvent there is no change in concentration.”
http://www.answers.com › Wiki Answers › Categories › Science › Chemistry

“An infinitely dilute solution is one where there is a sufficiently large excess of water that adding any more does not cause any further heat to be absorbed or evolved. … The hydration enthalpy is the enthalpy change when 1 mole of gaseous ions dissolve in sufficient water to give an infinitely dilute solution. Hydration enthalpies are always negative.”
http://www.chemguide.co.uk/physical/energetics/solution.html
http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Physical_Chemistry/Thermodynamics/State_Functions/Enthalpy/Enthalpy_Change_of_Solution

Wikipedia

“The law is based on the fact that only a portion of the electrolyte is dissociated into ions at ordinary dilution and completely at infinite dilution.”  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_dilution

PDF: Theory of infinite dilution chemical potential

University of Illinois at Chicago

Fluid Phase Equilibria, 85 (1993) 141-151. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam. 141. Theory of infinite dilution chemical potential. http://www.uic.edu/labs/trl/HamadInfiniteDilution.pdf 

A search in PUBMED for articles containing “infinite dilution” brought up a dizzying 620 abstracts.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22infinite+dilution%22

JERRY BLOWS UP TOM

This one mere fact, expressed as two words: INFINITE DILUTION, exposes this whole cat and mouse game of gotcha antagonism against the practice of homeopathy to be nothing more than ignorant pseudoscience. This is a monumental discovery. Anybody can look it up online and see it for themselves in a plethora of articles on the subject.
If infinite dilution is not a chemical fact that refers to the properties of the solute remaining in the solvent after unlimited serial dilutions, then perhaps one of these self-appointed celebrity spokesmen for science, such as Richard Dawkins, Penn Jillette or James “the Amazing” Randi et al; or caviling professors such as PZ Myers, Edzard Ernst, Joe Schwarc, David Colquhoun or Steven Novella et al can explain to us, in their own pseudoscientific terms, just what it really means.

MYSTERY OF WHY

Why have homeopathic physicians and manufacturers of homeopathic medicine not seized upon this acknowledged principle as an answer to critics who insist homeopathic medicines contain “nothing in them but plain water”? Why isn’t the burgeoning homeopathy industry insisting that homeopathic remedies be redesignated ionized pharmaceuticals?

The mystery of why standard chemistry’s concept of infinite dilution is not applied to the dilution dilemma of homeopathic medicine might at first seem as perplexing as infinite dilution itself. But dwell on it here a little longer and deeper truths emerge.

STUCK ON AVOGADRO

Due to the momentum gained by an incorrect interpretation of “Avogadros limit,” it will continue to be stated by skeptics, posing as rationalists, that by a process of reduction by dilution, the number of molecules of a solute will be reduced past the asymptote to zero by the 23^rd decimal dilution, and this is presented as proof that homeopathic remedies contain none of the ingredient stated on a product labeled “homeopathic” and are therefore fraudulent. But there’s a reason why I italicize the word molecule in the context of Avogadro because this is where skeptic theory for homeopathic remedies having nothing of their labeled materials in them literally falls apart.

First, let’s examine what Avogadros constant, limit or number. Avogadro’s hypothesis as proof of an empty bottle . . is easily rebutted. Avogadro’s number is a constant, the ratio of solute particles to the solvent. It must be for particles, such as ions, not just molecules, in a volume of gas, not water. It doesn’t factor the perpetual production of ions by dissociation.

If a constant such as Avogadro’s, Faraday’s or Henry’s were applied to infinite dilution, it might state that due to repeated expansion and contraction of the ion’s domain within the aqueous host (by enthalpy) and contraction due to dissociation, the number of total ions in solution from the time of complete ionization will remain constant within a sinusoidal range throughout all subsequent dilutions.

The FDA then should address this argument and concern by stating that products registered as “homeopathic remedies” are in reality ionized pharmaceuticals, that they are supramolecular (beyond molecular) and their active constitutuion ionic, not molecular.

Now, this assertion of ionized pharmaceutical calls for a question of assay. How are the properties of the ionized solute detected in what are currently called homeopathic drugs, or remedies? Are there tests, trials or experiments that show the presence of an ionized solute in infinite dilution?

Copeland: “. . the laboratory has proven that the properties of a completely dissociated solution are the sum of all the ions present in the solution. This holds for such properties as conductivity, lowering of the freezing point, refraction equivalent, heat of neutralization, and undoubtedly, for any therapeutic effect possessed by the drug.”

Here then Copeland gives us four physical, non-clinical tests, or assays, from 1909, for ionized pharmaceuticals, tests that promise to separate and identify verum from placebo aliquots of the inert aqueous vehicle:

1. Conductivity
2. Freezing point
3. Refraction equivalent
4. Heat of neutralization

. . and modern chemistry has given us more; transmission electron microscopy (TEM) gives us a fifth assay that detects the actual presence of ions of the starting materials. http://homeoint.ru/pdfs/Extreme%20homeopathic%20dilutions%20retain%20starting%20%20materials-A%20nanoparticulate%20perspective.pdf

If not yet convinced, any real scientist will put aside his drumroll of ignorance or preconceived notions of what the homepathic remedy is when made aware of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) test protocol for infinite dilutions:

“Test 4: Infinite Dilution Test. This is a test for consistency in the limiting behavior of GE/(x1x2/RT) and the activity coefficients γ1 and γ2. The percent deviations in both limits are calculated: http://trc.nist.gov/TDE/Help/TDE103b/VLE-DataSets-ConsistencyTests/InfiniteDilution.htm

In lieu of this newly rediscovered chemistry for the materials used in homeopathy, the FDA should drop the term “homeopathic” and replace it with ionized or ionic as the description for these drugs.

I don’t know how it is that they can fight their way out of this paper bag. They and their secret police now stand accused of pseudoscience, the very thing they accused homeopathy of, and as funny as it is, I don’t know now how it is that they and “skepticism” can be taken seriously anymore.

John Henry Clarke, M.D.

The clinical proof has long been extant. If you really look at the semiological registers, most particularly the FDA recommended literature on the subject, (Dictionary of the Materia Medica by John Henry Clarke, M.D. http://www.homeoint.org/clarke/) you will find alternative answers to problems now being addressed almost solely by over-monetized patent medicine, and we all know, or should know, what a disaster it has been.

Death by Medicine http://www.webdc.com/pdfs/deathbymedicine.pdf
https://www.worstpills.org/

Although I am quite aware of the denials that will follow, with the chemistry of infinite dilution now well established in numerous explanations online, it is time to bring this existing, second, more humane pharmacopoeia of inexpensive, time tested, well documented, FDA sanctioned, effective medical materials out of the shadows into the real world of real medicine. This begins with the FDA recognizing what these materials called “homeopathic remedies” really are: IONIZED PHARMACEUTICALS.

IF YOU STILL DON’T BELIEVE THIS . . 

If you don’t believe that properties of the solute remain in solvents diluted beyond the putative limit . . make the assays for ionic concentration, i.e. do the tests to identify homeopathic remedies from plain water!

PUT IT TO THE TEST! (James Randi, get your wallet out)

Test question: What are the assays for ionized pharmaceuticals?

FOLLOW AND SUPPORT THE JOHN BENNETH JOURNAL FOR COMMENTS
AND MORE INFORMATION ON THE CHEMISTRY OF HOMEOPATHY

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Pharmaceutical Quackery Exposed

by Vaikunthanath das Kaviraj

You might do well with a nice expose of Pharmaceutical quackery that passes for evidence-based.

We then see Drug Watchdog Fraud Investigation and How Poisoning has Become the New Standard

And the recent GSK settlement for $3 Billion because of fraud, deceptive illegal advertising and death of too many people.

Evidence-based medicine?

Yes!

The evidence base is death and iatrogenesis and that is all they have. So let us piss off Big Pharma a little more and show how few clothes the emperor really has!

Such as the amounts of dead people from pharmaceutical quackery in the US is greater than cancer and heart disease combined – it stands at one million each and every year.

Statistically, 16% of the population is sick at any one time. Of these, only the clients of alternative medicine have shorter periods of disease and are healthier and live longer on an all-over basis.

Of those that use conventional medicine from Big Pharma, many end up taking increasing amounts of medicine to combat the effects of the previous medicine, which was prescribed for the effects of the previous, ad-infinitum, all the way to the one for the original complaint and do not feel any better.

Let us talk about the 8% believable reports they can produce, because in 92% of all reports, the placebo is not even mentioned, which makes the report useless, or if so, it is not a placebo and two medicines are compared against each other. That is a biased test.

Let us talk about the only 11% of proof of effectiveness on the disease, apart from producing side effects. Then we see that the evidence is death, and anecdotal for all other parameters, in collusion with the regulators, who approve such crap on such paucity of real evidence.

Pharmaceutical quackery is precisely engaged in doing what they accuse the homoeopaths of.

Those poor skeptics will never be able to wrap their heads or lies around this. Meanwhile, we have 200 years of unrivaled success with the same thoroughly tested medicines and are in little need to change it very much.

Vaikuthanath das Kaviraj is the co-founder of the legendary Magic Bus Company. He has known, such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead.

In 1979 he became sick while travelling in India and could not find relief until he was treated by Dr. Chatterjee a homeopath with 70 years experience, and subsequently Kaviraj became Chatterjee’s student. When Chatterjee passed away a year an a half later, Kaviraj took over his clinic in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, and spent the next ten years treating the locals there.

in 1986 he began experimenting with the effects of homeopathy on plants. In 1990 he moved to Australia and began experimenting on plants on a mass scale.  In 1997 he received a Shamanic Initiation into the fraternity ofnative medicine men in Australia, the Aboriginal Men of High Degree.

In 2006 he published “Homeopathy for Farm and Garden.”

He now lives in London and is working on the Encyclopedia of Agrohomeopathy in twenty volumes.  He travels around the world lecturing an teaching homeopathy.

 

John Benneth, Homeopath
503 819 7777

 

Passionflower of the Skeptic

John Benneth, Homeopath vs. James Randi, Pseudoscientist

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

Herbert Spencer

It’s been said John Benneth carries a grudge against James “the Amazing” Randi because 12 years ago Benneth took Randi’s Challenge to prove homeopathy . . and Randi backed out.

But it could also be said the Benneth carries the torch for Randi, because Randi has been regarded as the King of the Skeptics, a man with a kind of laser like x-ray vision who can see through any kind of deception, detect any kind of fraud, and I, John “the Prosaic” Benneth just keep plodding along in search of the facts.

Take this video for instance. Note the differences in Randi between his stage appearance at TED in 2007 and the video recording done in the JREF library in  2011.  Notice especially his eyes.  It is my suggestion here that Randi’s continued abuse of Calms Forte, which essentially is not homeopathic, but slips past FDA regulations by claiming to be homeopathic, has created irreversible effects, both seen and unseen . . the unseen being intestinal cancer.

Make your own investigation here. Watch the video and then read my commentary below. decide for yourself what is real, what is illusion . .

What follows the commentary is a transcript of the video for your analysis and search engine indexing.

This gets even more mysterious when we examine the item Randi slam dunks . . Calms Forte . . more closely. It isn’t  homeopathic. It may say it’s homeopathic, and by US government standards of the HPUS it may technically may be homeopathic (although I doubt it), but neither are the ingredients of Calms Forte being used homeopathically, nor are they of a truly homeopathic potency! 

That’s right. It only says it is. Because it says it is, the majority of users assume it is.  Homeopathic “drugs” are not subject to the same testing requirements of commercial patent medicines, and so this allows the manufacturer to bring an actual  drug, in it original molecular form, to market without question.

I’ll prove it to you, slowly, inexorably, but with a dogged appetite for reason..

“Why John, why?” you may ask, and the answer is simply this. This is inextricably woven into how we think about what is medicine, healing and cure. This is about a racket, probably the world’s greatest operating sub silentio, protected by illusion, supported by the likes of a confessed charlatan.

Zicam did exactly the same thing, calling a crude molecular concentration of zinc “homeopathic” for its cold remedy, and then got in trouble with the Feds when people began reporting that after using it they were losing their sense of smell . . permanently!

Now how could people lose their sense of smell from something that James “the man with the x-ray eyes” Randi  insists has nothing in it? Because if you read the ingredients, you’ll find that the ingredients are well below Avogadro’s limit, which is the point of dilution where none of the original substance remains, the point where the energetic powers of the solution take over completely, reversing the effect of the diluent, the substance that left its elctromagnetic imprint in hydrogen bonding on the solution used to “medicate” the tablets or pilules, the “little sugar pills” as skeptics love to call them.

Here’ the catch: A substance does not have to be devoid of a molecular substance to be homeopathy. The word homeopathy does not necessarily mean diluted past recognition, as Randi is inferring Calms Forte to be. It is not. Calms Forte has a lot of an herbal sedative in it!

If it seems I’m beating this thing to death, in this case hopefully appearances aren’t deceiving.  I want to make this perfectly clear that Randi is fooling his audience at TED, and anyone else who cares to be duped by this rascal, that he is ingesting an inert susbtance that has no detectable substance of what is listed on the box! And the question that follows should be why?

Why is he gulping something that has a measurable quantity of sedative in it (Passionflower, the main ingredient in Calms Forte), traditionally known for its ability to influence sleep without narcotic effects, when he could just as easily do his demonstration with a homeopathic remedy, indicated for sleeplessness, that is truly without any detectable active substance in it?

“I am satisfied it (Passiflora, Passionflower) is no narcotic. It never stupefies or overpowers the senses. A patient under its full influence may be wakened up and he will talk to you as rationally as ever he did ; leave him for a moment and he will soon be off to the Elysian Fields again. I have tried it, my friend, in all sorts of neuralgic affections, and have usually astonished my more enlightened patients with it. Many times I have them to ask me what in the world it was that had such a sweet influence over them.” Dr. L. Phares, of Newtonia, Miss., States.) from the chapter on “Passiflora” in New, Old and Forgotten Remedies by Edward Pollock Anshutz.

So here is my question to you: Could it be that Randi has found, that repeatedly doing this demonstration  with an actual high dilute as used in homeopathic remedies, has caused long term adverse effects?

It could be possible. The old school medical doctors, who saw the effects of homeopathics on thousands of subjects, reported that too many applications of a remedy of too high a potency could actually graft  symptoms permanently onto the patient!

Perhaps Randi knows this and has found himself to be in too deep, to deep to return tothe Styxxian shore.

Look at his eyes!

The clip of Randi on stage is from TED talks. TED is an acronym for “Technology Entertainment and Design.”  It is a series of conferences, presented globally, produced  by a private non-profit organization . . the Sapling Foundation, which was formed to disseminate “ideas worth spreading.”

The lecture featuring Randi was recorded in February of 2007. The “idea” he presents isn’t worth spreading. It’s a confusion, a menace to the public health. It should either be continued or put into it proper context as it has been done here.

It as worthless as what he claims homeopathy to be.

Two piece of prima facie forensics to note here. One is that Randi explicitly tells his audience to ignore the instructions for use . . the warnings . .  for what are labelled as sleeping pills.

The TED audience seems to think this is funny.

I don’t.

“I’m going to take some medication,” he says, “a full bottle of Calm’s Forte . . ignore the instructions, that’s what the government has put in there to confuse you, I’m sure.”

He then appears to dump the whole bottle of what he just said is medication, a substance used for medical treatment, in his mouth.

Is this a scientific experiment? Entertainment? A publicity stunt? Mass delusion, at $4,000 a throne?

After telling us we need to think critically, he asks us to join him in his assumptions. And the TED audience gullibly swallows it as quickly as he dumps the contents of the container into his mouth.

Randi is a proponent of critical thinking?

What hypocrisy!

“But Pee Wee, what does it mean?”

The word critical is a borderline one-word oxymoron, for it has meanings that are comparatively contradictory . . it can mean expressing or involving an analysis of the merits and faults of something . . or it can mean simply expressing adverse or disapproving comments.

So where’s the science?

What if someone, a young person for instance, who is confused about what is “homeopathic,” repeats this stunt to impress his friends, and in doing so takes something that isn’t as inert as he thinks it is, whether it’s homeopathic or not?

Does he end up with intestinal cancer, like Randi did, two years after this stunt? Or might he  end up dead with little or no idea what caused his final illness?

What Randi is saying, “don’t bother to look more closely at this thing I’m  doing, I’ve got it covered.” In this way it may seem to be a very coherent act, to the impressionable . . which is what magicians want you to be. And Randi is a lifelong magician. And one thing I’ve noticed about magicians, is that they can’t help but eventually reveal the mechanism of their deceptions . . because they’re essentially show oafs, and like most criminals, they actually want to be caught . .

“Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of
the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his
own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of
your son: give me your blessing: truth will come
to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son
may, but at the length truth will out.”

Launcelot, The Merchant of Venice

Magicians want you to keep your seat. They can’t have you wandering up on stage to look behind and deeply into things, spoiling their act.

And so Randi doesn’t want you Googling the ingredients of Calms Forte, even after it seems he’s have impllied TED should use critical thinking, but not invetigation, to do just that, for these people will see only what he wants them to see, when he wants them to see it.

He’s living off your assumptions.

If you attempt closer analysis, without his invitation or approval, he will metaphorically, or by simile, hang an “Out of Order” sign around your neck . . or call security.

“No no no!  Stay away from that! Don’t go there! Don’t look behind the JREF curtain!”

In Randi’s World, you’re not supposed to read the instructions . . THE GOVERNMENT PUT THEM THERE TO CONFUSE YOU!

You MIGHT actually stumble upon the actual ingredients!

Now, all of what has transpired here  is implied by presentation and performance, and here Randi is demanding critical thinking  about things outside of his venue . . but . . not within. Only things other than what are in his own hands are to enjoy the chimera of scrutiny, at a distance, by dint of the moderator.

But time has caught up and passed Randi. Now we have the Internet. We don’t have to pay $4,000 a seat to watch some high school drop out try to pull the wool over our eyes. We can just sit here for free . . and then watch him pull the wool over our eyes . . or we can  let our fingers do the walking and rip off the hoodwink!

Google the ingredients for Calms Forte.

See for yourself what it is made of. 1x means one part in ten! And here they say it is triple strength!  Does that mean that a third of it is the sedative Passiflora?

There is a heavy, measurable crude dose of Passiflora incarnata in Calms Forte . Here is what is listed as the actual ingredient of what Randi is over-ingesting.

Passiflora (Passion Flower) 1X triple strength HPUS
Avena Sativa (Oat) 1X double strength HPUS
Humulus Lupulus (Hops) 1X double strength HPUS
Chamomilla (Chamomile) 2X HPUS
Calcarea Phosphorica (Calcium Phosphate) 3X HPUS
Ferrum Phosphorica (Iron Phosphate) 3X HPUS
Kali Phosphoricum (Potassium Phosphate) 3X HPUS
Natrum Phosphoricum (Sodium Phosphate) 3X HPUS
Magnesia Phosphoricum (Magnesium Phosphate) 3X HPUS

Here Randi can’t demand passivity from his audience given the authority of the stage, the license he’s using to control what he has made out to be an investigation of homeopathy. . but which in fact is a hoax that has more than one layer of illusion.

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Transcript of video:

JOHN BENNETH: My name is John Benneth, honorary post graduate of Hahnemann College of Homeopathy, London,

JAMES RANDI: Hello, I’m James Randi, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation

JOHN BENNETH: And we’re about to have a little discussion about homeopathy.

JAMES RANDI: I’ve used demonstrations to show audiences the importance of thinking skeptically about pseudoscience.

JOHN BENNETH: Good idea. Let’s take a skeptical look at what Randi is claiming, which you will see is in itself a prima facie example of pseudoscience, beliefs and practices that claim to be science without employing the METHOD of science, So in this case instead of an objective experiment, scientific test, or ranom controlled trial, Randi is using a dangerous stunt to try to prove what he wants to be true.

JAMES RANDI: One demonstration I’ve done many times is downing an entire package of 32 homeopathic sleeping pills. (cut to TED lecture) I have to do something uh now which seems a little bit strange, for a magician . . but I’m going to take some medication . . this is uh . . a full bottle of Calm’s Forte . . I’ll explain that in just a moment . . ignore the instructions, that’s what the government has put in there to confuse you, I’m sure.  I will take enough of these  (appears to empty bottle into mouth)  mmh . . indeed the whole cantainer. (Drinks water. Loud swallowing sound) Thirty two talets of Calms Forte.

JOHN BENNETH: Which is an example of pseudoscience. Randi is asking us to think skeptically about pseudoscience and then uses himself as an example to show exactly what it is that he’s talking about.

JAMES RANDI: The recommended dosage by the way is two to three pills. just to show that these scam medications have no effect.

JOHN BENNETH: Oh yeah? Well, look at his eyes, he can barely keep them open. Don’t do what this man is doing until you’ve heard the whole story, or . . you may saddle yourself with lifelong symptoms. I agree with Randi that you’re being scammed, but the scam here is Randi’s. And in this and other videos I prove it to you. Because homeopathic remedies make use of such highly diluted substances, it is understandable that some people may be doubtful as to whether or not these substances can have any biological action whatsoever, but that isn’t any reason to substitute a pseudoscientific stunt of the type Randi is performing here for the scientific method. Plants, for instance, make much better subjects for testing the action of homeopathic remedies, and likewise extensive testing has been done on plants using homeopathic remedies, objectively showing their biological action. There are simple tests you can do yourself. Homeopathic remedies can either accelerate or stunt plant growth, and they can be used phytopathologically , which means they can be used to control plant pests and diseases. If they work on plants, then it stands to reason tht they can also work on other living subjects, such as biochemical subjects. But Randi, who purports to be a proponent of the scientific method, is not talking about the extensive biochemical testing done on homeopathic remedies. This is a powerful form of medicine that is challenging what is thought to be the only treatments for human illnesses.

JAMES RANDI: There’s a warning on the box to call the poison control center .

JOHN BENNETH: There should also be one of the box made especially for him to call a psychiatrist. This man is publically encouraging people to intentionally overdose on substances he knows little if anything about in order to further a dangerous racket. However, the manufacturer of those homeoapthic sleeping pills would probably sell twice as many if they put a picture of him on the box.

JAMES RANDI: But that’s a joke.

JOHN BENNETH: So is James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge, and I will prove that to you too in alater video.

JAMES RANDI: But that’s a joke . .

JOHN BENNETH: Tune in and turn on to homeopathy, real medicine that really works and watch as Randi and I continue go head to head on homeopathy. Two men go in, one man comes out. Listen very carefully to what Randi says. Its been carefully scripted, and I will reveal to you his lies. Subscribe to the Bandershot channel here on Youtube for more about the Million Dollar Challenge to homeopathy, and homoepathy’s trillion dollar challenge to the patent medicine racket.

JAMES RANDI: I’ve overdosed on homeopathic medicine many times and my eyes are still open.

JOHN BENNETH: Toothpicks.

END OF VIDEO

(April 2011)

I Challenge PZ Myers: PUT HOMEOPATHY TO THE TEST!

 

 Like a domestic spat,
or like any argument at all,
where one side is being held to account
for some nasty business,
and violently changes the subject . .
so it is
when homeopathy holds allopathy
to account for genocide.

Man oh man

I’ve never seen such traffic in all my days. I was about to write that yesterdays numbers were the highest ever, ten times that of my most highly viewed blog, one of the most viewed blogs on WordPress — but today’s has already broken that record.

Wow! Wowee!

I’m a star, just like mama used to say.

Fire PZ Myers, in one and a half days garnered over 17,000 views. But judging from the commentary, only a few really bothered to read it. They wrote mostly obscenities for commentary.  If someone did ask a question, it was a leading one, or a question  that was already answered in the article. Or it was complaining about their obscenities in previous commentaries not being published, and then complaints that their complaints weren‘t being published, etc. etc.

But every now and then a gem appeared, like something from Kaviraj, what for him is a scrap, what for the rest of us is a meal.

It just proves my point, that that the only intelligent commentary is coming from the homeopaths, and all the idiocy from the allopaths.

Let me give you a profound demonstration of what I say.

The allopaths say there’s nothing to homeopathy, that it’s a placebo. Of course they don’t define what they mean by placebo, they don’t show any tests that prove placebo either. The next thing we hear from these whiz kids is how powerful the Placebo Effect is. SO does that mean that homeopath , compared to placebo, is powerful medicine? LOL!

The next tact from these acolytes of scientism is to fire off another broadside from the other side of their sinking ship, like “there‘s no science to back it up.”

Okay, so when we show them some clinical trials they say, “they weren’t properly double blinded.”
Okay, so when we show them clinical tests that were double blinded, they say “it wasn’t published in a peer reviewed magazine.”
Okay, so when we show them double blind clinical tests published in peer reviewed non-homeopathy journals, they say “there are no reputable tests published in prestigious, non-homeopathy peer reviewed journals that show the effects of high dilutes to be no greater than placebo.”

Well, here’s one that was published in an AMA journal.

Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 1998;124:879-885.
Homeopathic vs Conventional
Treatment of Vertigo
A Randomized Double-blind Controlled Clinical Study
Michael Weiser, MB; Wolfgang Strösser, MD, MB; Peter Klein, MS

To this the answer has been “it was discredited.”

In other words, somebody didn’t like it because it compared homeopathic treatment against an allopathic drug without a third set of victims given . . placebo.

But wait a minute . . I thought they said homeopathy was the placebo! Oh, bwahahahahahaha!

[Note the interjection of the  word “victim.”  How would you like to be somebody’s science project.  If PS Myers had have a real problem, do you really think that he would take a chance and be part of the placebo group. This is the main problem with clinical testing, which, if you read on, I shall correct]

Here’s an exhaustive collection of references to homeopathic research in a google knol by Dr. Nancy Malik. . Google it.

Scientific Research in Homeopathy
by Dr. Nancy Malik
Triple Blind studies, Double-Blind Randomised Placebo-Controlled Trial, Systematic Reviews & Meta Analysis, Evidence-based Medicines for specific disease conditions, Ultra-molecular dilutions, Animal Studies, Plant Studies
130+ studies in support of homoeopathy medicine published in 52 peer reviewed international journals out of which 46+ are FULL TEXT which can be downloaded

So we’re answering allopathy’s wild shots with pinpoint accuracy, and they’re going down with the ship, sinking under an epidemic of heart failure, diabetes, cancer . . diseases sufferers could be helped with through  homeopathy.

Look, at this point we’re not trying to make assertions about how well homeopathy works, we‘re just trying to show that it does. The problem is that the public is getting that mixed up in their minds. The anti-homeopathy crowd is substituting evidence for how well it works for evidence that it does work. We are avoiding simple decisive tests.

We have extensive records comparing homeopathic with allopathic treatment, both modern (Bracho) and old (Bradford) . . but comparison is a point that should be examined after we see that the substances used in homeopathy have objective indices not found in clinical trials.

Just as no one symptom should be taken alone as the only indicator for which homeopathic remedy should be used, neither should any one test for homeopathy be used to determine its efficacy, and pre-clinical testing should come first in examining homeopathy as a potential clinical modality.

If you’re out in the woods and you’re scrounging around for food and find something that looks palatable but you’re not sure of, you feed it to the dog first. If he doesn’t get sick, then you eat it. That would be a pre-clinical test.

But oh no, the pseudoscientists dive into this subject answers first . . and the questions that support the answer second, without first finding out if these substances have physical, biochemical and biological action.

What the wise will do is first consult the literature on the subject.

This is what James "the Amazing" Randi looks like without his glasses and phony beard, taking my phone call. He accepted my application for his phony "Million Dollar Challenge" 11 years ago and is still running from me to this day!

That brings us to the first real question in this investigation. What do we know of pre-clinical tests for high dilutes?

In 2003 Becker-Witt C, Weibhuhn TER, Ludtke R, Willich SN sought answers to that question in a study entitled, “Quality assessment of physical research in homeopathy” . J Alternative Complementary Med. 2003;9:113–32.
Becker-Witt reports:

“Objectives: To assess the evidence of published experiments on homeopathic preparations potencies) that target physical properties (i.e., assumed structural changes in solvents).
“Method: A suitable instrument (the Score for Assessment of Physical Experiments on Homeopathy SAPEH]) was developed through consensus procedure: a scale with 8 items covering 0 criteria, based on the 3 constructs, methodology, presentation, and experiment standardization.
“Reviewed publications: Written reports providing at least minimal details on physical experiments with methods to identify structural changes in solvents were collected. These reports were scored when they concerned agitated preparations in a dilution less than 10^23, with no other restrictions. We found 44 publications that included 36 experiments (the identity of 2 was unclear). They were classified into 6 types (dielectric strength, 6; galvanic effects, 5; light absorption, 4; nuclear magnetic resonance [NMR], 18; Raman spectroscopy, 7; black boxes of undisclosed design, 4).
“Results: Most publications were of low quality (SAPEH , 6), only 6 were of high quality
(SAPEH . 7, including 2 points for adequate controls). These report 3 experiments (1 NMR, 2 black boxes), of which 2 claim specific features for homeopathic remedies, as does the only medium-quality experiment with sufficient controls.
“Conclusions: Most physical experiments of homeopathic preparations were performed with inadequate controls or had other serious flaws that prevented any meaningful conclusion. Except\ for those of high quality, all experiments should be repeated using stricter methodology and standardization before they are accepted as indications of special features of homeopathic potencies.”

To summarize, Becker-Witt found six different physical tests for homeopathy. Eight criteria were rated, generating a potential total score of zero to 10. Reports for tests that had scores of six or less were considered to be of low quality, which they said constituted most of them.

Seven trials were found positive results were of high quality. Two out of seven high quality studies claimed distinctive features for homeopathic remedies.

What is important about Witt is she reveals more than one method for finding distinctive features which “science,” inplied by the Myers mindset, says does not exist.

Out of NMR 18 studies, only two were unable to get positive results.

The highest NMR SAPEH scores, went to three studies conducted by one name, Demangeat et al.
Since the 2003 Becker Witt review, Demangeat  continued with his NMR investigation
Here is a 2008 report by Demangeat that can be read online.

2008 July 26 Journal of Molecular Liquids, Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci (2009) 1: 81–90
 NMR water proton relaxation in unheated and heated ultrahigh aqueous dilutions of histamine: Evidence for an air-dependent supramolecular organization of water
Jean-Louis Demangeat, Nuclear Medicine Department, General Hospital, Haguenau, France

“We measured 20-MHz R1 and R2 water proton NMR relaxation rates in ultrahigh dilutions (range 5.43·10-8 M–5.43·10-48 M) of histamine in water (Hist-W) and in saline (Hist-Sal), prepared by iterative centesimal dilutions under vigorous agitation in controlled atmospheric conditions. Water and saline were similarly and simultaneously treated, as controls. The samples were immediately sealed in the NMR tubes after preparation, and then code-labelled. Six independent series of preparations were performed, representing about 7000 blind
measurements. R2 exhibited a very broad scatter of values in both native histamine dilutions and solvents. No variation in R1 and R2 was observed in the solvents submitted to the iterative dilution/agitation process. By contrast, histamine dilutions exhibited slightly higher R1 values than solvents at low dilution, followed by a slow progressive return to the values of the solvents at high dilution. Unexpectedly, histamine dilutions remained distinguishable from solvents up to ultra high levels of dilution (beyond 10-20 in Hist-Sal). A signi!cant increase in R2 with increased R2/R1was observed in Hist-W. R1 and R2 were linearly correlated in solvents, but uncorrelated in histamine dilutions. After a 10-min heating/cooling cycle of the samples in their sealed NMR tubes (preventing any modi!cation of the chemical composition and gas content), all of the relaxation variations observed as a function of dilution vanished, the R2/R1 ratio and the scatter of the R2 values dropped in all solutions and solvents, and the correlation between R1 and R2 reappeared in the Hist-W samples. All these results pointed to a more organized state of water in the unheated samples, more pronounced in histamine solutions than in solvents, dependent on the level of dilution. It was suggested that stable supramolecular structures, involving nanobubbles of atmospheric gases and highly ordered water around them, were generated during the vigorous mechanical agitation step of the preparation, and destroyed after heating. Histamine molecules might act as nucleation centres, amplifying the phenomenon which was thus detected at high dilution levels.

“These unexpected findings prompted further investigation, notably in other conditions, in order to rule out artefacts, such as possible interactions of silica with the glass material used for the preparation, or possible misinterpretation of the NMRD data due, for instance, to an unknown dependence of the frequency dispersion on the dilution level. So, the present study was carried out at a fixed frequency of 20 MHz and with histamine as solute, beyond the 4th centesimal dilution, i.e. beyond the known threshold of NMR sensitivity to detect histamine protons or any paramagnetic contaminants of the solute. It will be shown that the variations in R1 observed as a function of ultrahigh dilution in the NMRD study [16] are reproducible with histamine at a fixed frequency, and that these variations totally vanish after heating of the samples.

Here is the most recent and what I think is the best physical test of all:

2009 Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences
Luc MONTAGNIER1,2*, Jamal A¨ISSA1, St´ephane FERRIS1,
Jean-Luc MONTAGNIER1, Claude LAVALL´EE1
1(Nanectis Biotechnologies, S.A. 98 rue Albert Calmette, F78350 Jouy en Josas, France)
2(Vironix LLC, L. Montagnier 40 Central Park South, New York, NY 10019, USA)

Abstract: A novel property of DNA is described: the capacity of some bacterial DNA sequences to induce
electromagnetic waves at high aqueous dilutions. It appears to be a resonance phenomenon triggered by the ambient electromagnetic background of very low frequency waves. The genomic DNA of most pathogenic bacteria contains sequences which are able to generate such signals. This opens the way to the development of highly sensitive detection system for chronic bacterial infections in human and animal diseases. Key words: DNA, electromagnetic signals, bacteria.

Montagnier, being a Nobel laureate, strikes a hard blow for homeopathy, so a lot of pseudonymous posters want to say that Montagnier wasn’t testing the kind of dilutions used in homeopathy.

These criticisms come from pseudoscientists who haven’t read the study carefully enough. The equipment Montagnier used was designed by Benveniste for detecting EM signals in high dilutes.
The Montagnier study is one of the most remarkable scientific studies ever published, for it confirms the Benveniste assertion that homeopathy is a new medical paradigm.
The operative mechanism for homeopathic can be found in clathrate hydrates, nano-crystalline gas inclusion molecules, what Montagnier refers to as aqueous nanostructures. These liquid aqueous structures produce an amplified analog signal of the guest molecule.
Montagnier was able to actually filter them out, and in doing so was able to give them actual physical dimensions.
Once filtered out, the signal stopped.
Read the study, it’s fascinating for these and other anomalies it reveals.

In an article referencing homeopathy (online) entitled “The Memory of Water,” the world’s top authority on water physics, Professor Martin Chaplin, states “water does store and transmit information through its hydrogen bonded network,” once again implying hydrogen bonding as being critical to the homeopathic mechanism.

Exactly what I’ve been saying for years.

John Benneth, self portrait

So here we have two studies that support my hypothesis that the action of homeopathic remedies is electromagnetic and produced by measurable structuring in the solvent, nucleated around clathrates.
Material scientists Roy et al, in their seminal work, . The structure of liquid water; novel insights from materials research; potential relevance to homeopathy. (Roy R, Tiller WA, Bell IR, Hoover MR Materials Research Innovations, 2005; 9-4: 577–608.) confirm polymorphic structuring in water at liquid temperatures as the key to the homeopqthic mechanism.

“This paper does not deal in any way with, and has no bearing whatsoever on, the clinical efficacy of any homeopathic remedy. However, it does definitively demolish the objection against homeopathy, when such is based on the wholly incorrect claim that since there is no difference in composition between a remedy and the pure water used, there can be no differences at all between them. We show the untenability of this claim against the central paradigm of materials science that it is structure (not composition) that (largely) controls properties, and structures can easily be changed in inorganic phases without any change of composition. The burden of proof on critics of homeopathy is to establish that the structure of the processed remedy is not different from the original solvent . .

 

 

[YOU ARE NOW READING THE WORLD’s MOST READ HOMEOPATHY BLOG]

 
“The principal conclusions of this paper concern only the plausibility of the biological action of ultradiluted water remedies, they are based on some very old (e.g. homeopathy) and some very new (e.g. metallic and nanobubble colloids) observations which have been rejected on invalid grounds or due to ignorance of the materials research literature and its theoretical basis. This constitutes an excellent example of the common error in rejecting new scientific discoveries by using the absence of evidence as evidence for absence.”

It is not such a difficult matter to explore this phenomenon, if you’re not PZ Myers, or one the similar horde. If that’s the case, then putting homeopathy to the test becomes impossible.

If you have comet his far in reading this it shows that you have the spirit of inquiry and not take the easy route by fashionably dismissing the evidence. Now that we have looked at the physical tests, let’s take a look at the biological.

Be assured that I’m moving in for the killshot. As tedious as it may seem, it is exploding myths propagated by phony challenges made by people like James “the Amazing” Randi, of whom I’ve included a picture of, sans phony disguise of Darwin like beard and glasses, as I did with my revelation of Myers in a previous blog. This is working up to a challenge to PZ Myers. More specifically, within Myer’s claimed realm of biology, there are more biochemical tests beyond those referred to prior.

After the 2003 review of physical tests, Witt and her team turned their attention to biochemical testing. Here, Myers ought to wake up from his napping.

For the biochemical assessments they used a modified version of the SAPEH test.

Their investigation found six different types of biochemical tests reported for homeopathy: non cellular systems, cultured cells, erythrocytes, neutrophile and basophil granulocytes, and lymphocytes.

(NB: If you think this is tough reading, consider what it’s like to type. But it’s important for this discussion. I haven’t seen this posted anywhere before.)

Witt produced the best and most exhaustive review of the literature for pre-clinical testing of homeopathics.

The WItt review shows that the basophil degranulation test has been done more than any other kind of biochemical test, but nevertheless is still only one type of biochemical testing among six.

Some of the most remarkable biochemical testing was done by William E. Boyd, MD, whose team spent years examining the action of dilute mercuric chloride on starch at Glasgow.

The Boyd experiments were designed by two Barbour scholars and overseen by Professor Sir Gowland Hopkins. The reporting panned 15 years, was extensive and elegant, designed for replication, representing a project that would be cost prohibitive by today’s standards.

Now we’re squarely in the bailiwick of Myers, reportedly an academic biologist who has taken what appears to be a knowledgeable stance on this problem. Neither opponent or proponent would be likely to say that it isn’t a problem.

If you’re looking at this problem objectively, you can see that there is a wide spread in the reported quality of testing  results. However, most reporters, like Ennis, conclude there should be more testing.

Where is the prudence in the face of this evidence, of not putting it to the test?

Since 2007, the basophil degranulation test has been done specifically for replication by two of its finest conductors, Sainte Laudy and Belon.

Homeopathy. 2009 Oct;98(4):186-97.
Inhibition of basophil activation by histamine: a sensitive and reproducible model for the study of the biological activity of high dilutions.
Sainte-Laudy J, Belon P.

Why is it that someone who comments on this subject as an expert witness, as Myers does, not provided us with a greater examination of the available evidence? If Pee Zee Herman here is the expert he makes himself out to be then why . . with his X-ray vision and the mysterious, supernatural ability to make such definitive conclusions about the awesome psychogenic powers of these homeopathic placebos, WHY does he not enlighten us as with the Holy Protocol  for Placebo?

Come on, Jesus of Science, if it truly exists, then give us the Placebo Commandment! Where are the Holy Writs, the double blind studies published in the sacred texts of prestigious peer reviewed journals?

Teach Me!

Why is P MYers not conducting his own biological tests, and proving to us, without a grain of prejudice, that homeopathy, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is NOT what the evidence has led many of his misguided colleagues have concluded it to be . . biologically active.

If this is a scientific inquiry and not a political argument, then why is it that so many people are trying to answer a pre-clinical question with clinical evidence?

The Myers mindset isn’t posing a question, it is merely answering an implied one with evidence that will lead the unwitting away from non prejudicial answers.

Let me answer it first philosophically. The anti-homeopathy argument, the infrastructure of which is atheistic, is based on the concept of non-Being. It is a decided feature of solipsistic thinking that has crept its way past the scientific method into science, to change it from science into scientism, from global skepticism into local skepticism, i.e. pseudoscience, that which masquerades as science, but in reality is serving the masters of capital and fashion.

For in order to believe in non-Being, one has to put Parmenidean logic aside. There is no such thing as non-Being. Placebo or not, homeopathy is a reality.

If this isn’t so in this case, then let us see PZ Myers put homeopathy to a simple yet proper biological test:

There is the literature, here are the methods, now let’s see some results!

And if Pee Wee Myers cannot reasonably find biological indices, then let us see him provide us with psychological indices drawn from trials that test for psychogenic effects, trials that show beyond the shadow of a doubt that homeopathy is nothing more than The Placebo Effect, and all the pre-clinical evidence the result of error and lies.

Let me put it more explicitly:

Professor Myers, do these substances, as used in homeopathy, as defined in the literature, have biological action on subjects not influenced by the placebo effect?

Simple question , simple answer that can be determined thorough simple tests. If Myers isn’t purposely avoiding the question and the literature that addresses it, then why isn’t he accepting that literature as evidence of non psychogenic action or why isn’t he submitting these substances to his own superior testing?

PZ Myers will have so much explaining to do, he’ll have to schedule extra classes in Pseudoscience and Advanced Prevarication!

For instance, we have reports from numerous sources, myself included, that have witnessed the phytopathological action of homeopathics on plant growth and diseases. That’s a simple, biological test any school kid can do. So why is it so far beyond the reach of Myers, reportedly a professional biologist?

The problem here that now confronts Myers, in order to meet my challenge, is that he’ll have to fish the evidence out of the looney bin, and if does find an effect, by his own previous criteria, he’s screwed.

Do you understand? Myers has effectively recused himself from obtaining negative results by having shown his bias.  

The only way for him to back out of this trap now is to collaborate with others who are experienced in biological testing, such as M. Brizzia; L. Lazzarato; D. Nani; F. Borghini; M. Peruzzi; L. Betti at the Department of Agro-Environmental Science and Technology at Bologna University in Italy, workers who have conducted extensive testing on heat, replicating the exhaustive work of Lilli Kolisko.

Professor Myers, I challenge you to commission a design for a simple biological test, done by people who know what they‘re doing, without having a stage magician with a million dollars to lose handling the key to the double blind, as he did with Benveniste.

Put it to the test. That‘s fair enough. Isn‘t it?

And now for our movie!

Prof. Rustum Roy vs. Steven Novella, the Homeopathy Hater

If you watch carefully you will see that the man standing in the shot as Professor Roy is being introduced is homeopathy basher Steven Novella, a professor of neurology at Yale and the President of the solipsistic New England Skeptical Society. Apparently Novella thought he was going to be introduced next. Watch and listen as Professor Roy takes him down a notch or two . .

 Man oh man,

FIRE PZ MYERS!

In light of evidence, University of Minnesota biology professor PZ Myer’s hate campaign against homeopathy just might backfire . 

 “High dilutions of histamine did indeed have biological effects.”

Professor Madeleine Ennis after replicating controversial experiment for homeopathy.

 

 One of the last  John Benneth Journal entries for 2010 , IN ONE YEAR,  has broken all previous viewership records and sparked more commentary and outrage amongst the pharmaceutical company stooges than any previous Journal entry, enlisting the usual fury and nasty responses.

Most notably is PZ Myers, an American biology professor and pharma stooge whose specialty is trashing homeopathic medicine at the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM).

His blog is Pharyngula. In 2006, it was the top-ranked blog written by a pseudo scientist.Myers has called IN ONE YEAR “nonsense.” Other commentary has been”mental straightjacket”and remarks too obscene to be reprinted here. 

It follows a posting by Myers of clips of my controversial video, “The Mechanism,” juxtaposed with scenes from Star Trek to characterize my supramolecular description of the homeopathic remedy as techno babble.
My name is John Benneth. I’m a homeopath.And this is story about biologists, three in particular, who have studied . . it.

It is fashionable with atheists and pseudo scientists like Myers to trash it and its research. It is a compulsion. They can’t help themselves. They have to do it, for it puts everything they hold dear at risk.

Trashing it is like a cheap magic trick, hawked as self working and E-Z-2-DO. It gives the trasher the feeling he’s accomplished something for himself under the guise of protecting society from what they characterize as ineffective medicine. But like the cheap magic trick, when it finally arrives in the mail, you realize it was misrepresented.

Pretty good trick . . on you.

PZ Myers, Pseudoscientist

Really what it is, it’s hate speech, using the same kind of tactics used against minorities by hate groups. It really shouldn’t have any place in academia, but pseudoscience has become the infrastructure of higher education.

What can they tell you that you can’t find out for yourself now through the Internet? It’s not really education, it’s fashion.

What Myers says has very little to do with science and more to do with the politics of self aggrandizement.

Look at the case against it: It’s full of general, vague, contextual accusations and insinuations. But try to find within this haystack of lies a needle of truth. It contains more errors of commission and omission than the invasion of Iraq. It doesn’t state its criteria or identify or it sources for verification. It always ends up being exactly what it complains of, and PZ Myers provides us with a wonderful sample of it.

He wastes our time with anecdotal evidence and fails to adequately explain the etiology of the phenomena. If its effects are psychogenic, where are his proofs for psychogenic? If it’s bunk, what mechanism has made it so popular, where is the proof for the reported action? It’s usually nothing more than a sloppy pudding of self contradicting anecdotes.

“EZ Pee Zee,” a pudding of lies.

Science will always turn against the pseudoscientist.

Read on and watch it slowly turn against Myers.

We have heard repeatedly, over and over again, from people like E-Z Pee Zee Puddin’ Myers, that homeopathy doesn‘t work, but when asked “how do you know?” the best they can come up with is that it doesn’t work because it shouldn’t work.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Nothing more! 

No evidence of biological action is ever admitted without first seeking fault by the homeoapthy hater. Any corroborating tests are conveniently ignored.

I seriously doubt EZ PZ Puddin’ Myers could sustain much of a real explanation of its effects, because somewhere along the way he would have to confront things he didn’t know and doesn’t want to know, because they begin to work against his foregone conclusions.

Criticism by pseudo scientists like Myers is never global. It is always localized against something, like homeopathy. The evidence con is always given greater play over the evidence pro. And it avoids addressing the evidence pro in specificity within the context of explicit criteria.

For instance, the most well known in vitro test for homeopathy is a test on white blood cells, the basophil degranulation test. It was done by renowned immunologist Jacques Benveniste after his criticism of it was challenged. An assistant had found that water exposed to an allergen via serial aqueous dilution, could provoke an in vitro response, as if the allergen were present.
This is called basophil degranulation.
Benveniste, like other investigators, was puzzled by the results. What appeared to be pure water was causing a biochemical reaction.

Benveniste reportedly did the test over 1,000 times.

After he published the results of his testing in Nature, a prestigious science magazine, (to the resounding explosion of the usual outrage) Nature sent a team to investigate Benveniste’s work. The team consisted of Sir John Maddox, the editor of Nature, James “the Amazing” Randi, a notorious illusionist with a large sum of money to lose if proven wrong, and a debunker by the name of Walter Stewart.

According to Dana Ullman, the experiment was first replicated three times for the Nature team without any blinding of the experimenters. These first three experiments performed for the team showed positive results.
The fourth experiment blinded the person doing the counting of the basophils, and the results of this experiment were also successful. But the Nature team deemed this test invalid, claiming that the blinded experimenter knew in advance which test group she was counting.

The Nature team then began to behave disruptively. The next three experiments blinded the person doing the counting and the person doing the pipetting. Randi performed magic tricks during a crucial part of the experiment, making it difficult for the experimenters to perform their work, while Stewart was acting so hysterically that he had to be asked several times to stop shouting by Maddox and Benveniste.

All three of these experiments did not show any difference between the active verum samples and the inert control group. The Nature team immediately deemed that there was no evidence that the microdoses have biological action and reported that the tests failed to show convincing results.

Benveniste had violated the laws of Nature!

What they didn’t report was that the results were just what one would expect if someone switched the active samples with the inert controls.

Some of the samples, coded inert, produced a reaction, whereas some of the samples coded as active were reported inert. A switch had been made.

Randi had sabotaged the test by mixing up the results!

When you’re finished reading here, watch the accompanying video at the end of this article and hear Benveniste describe what happened. And particularly note Maddox, the editor of Nature, confessing that he went to Benveniste’s lab for the sole purpose of discrediting his work as fraudulent.

Skeptics herald this as conclusive proof that homeopathy doesn’t work.

There are some more facts that EZ Pee Zee doesn’t tell you, because without additional information we may be easily led to an incorrect conclusion about in vitro testing for homeopathy . .

What Pee Zee doesn’t tell you is that the basophil degranulation test for homeopathy wasn’t invented by Jacques Benveniste. JB’s test was the fourth replication of it. There have been many replications of it since, most notably a multi centered one that included homeopathy skeptic Professor Madeleine Ennis of the Respiratory Medicine Research Group at The Queen’s University of Belfast.

Here is a mashup of Ennis reporting on the activation of human basophils by ultra-high dilutions of anti-IgE, dilutions of the type used in homeopathy.

ENNIS: “This could be an exceedingly short paper, since in my opinion, from a conventional scientific background, when there are no molecules of the active agent left in a solution there can not be any biological effects. However, a search in PubMed combining homeopathy with basophil revealed 15 items. Interestingly this did not include the now infamous article in Nature or the papers that attempted to repeat the work. Changing the search to homeopath and basophil increased the total to 21. Including phrases such as ‘high dilutions’ or ‘extremely low doses’ only resulted in 33 publications.

“Witt and co-workers used several different databases in their review and found a total of 75 publications and further evaluated 67 of them. One of their sources was the HomBRex database which specialises in basic research in homeopathy and as of February 2009 contained 1301 experiments in 997 original articles including 1172 biological studies. Using the CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) Database and putting in basophil resulted in 95 hits. The question of publication bias is also worth considering – is it easier to publish a paper with negative results or with positive results? Normally, trials or studies with negative results are difficult to publish. However, it is possible that the opposite is true for studies using ultrahigh dilutions.

“In 1988, Poitevin and colleagues published a paper in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology in 1988 which was a follow-up to an earlier paper which had reported that incubation of basophils with high dilutions of the homeopathic drug Apis mellifica was able to inhibit allergen-induced basophil degranulation. In this paper, they reported that very low concentrations of anti-IgE (ca. 10–100 molecules per well) activated basophils and that this was inhibited by very high dilutions of the preparations

“Overall, using the histamine degranulation assays, as standardized by Sainte-Laudy, it was found that histamine at both conventional pharmacological concentrations and at high dilutions inhibited allergen and anti-IgE induced basophil activation. Examining a range of dilutions from 5c to 59c, the response was periodic in form, with maxima at ca. 7c, 17c, 28c, 40c and 52c.”

“This work was pioneered by Sainte-Laudy and colleagues beginning in the 80s and continuing to the present day… I first heard about this work at the 1984 meeting of the European Histamine Research Society where Sainte-Laudy bravely presented his data to a crowd of extremely skeptical and rather hostile scientists and clinicians.

“Apart from the natural scientific objections to solutions containing essentially water having a biological effect, a number of other issues were raised:
(1) the biological validity of the test;
(2) the reproducibility of the phenomenon,’
(3) the subjectivity of cell counts and
(4) that the data nearly all came from the same laboratory. In answer to these points, at that time, this form of examining basophil activation was a recognized procedure. Sainte-Laudy had performed repeated experiments, indeed in a series of 6 experiments he repeated each measurement 16 times and got the same answer.

“In order to answer points (3) and (4), it was decided to perform a multi-centre European Trial and it is at that point that I ‘dipped my toes into the waters’ of homeopathic research. As an ardent sceptic, I was invited to take part in the trial, which involved one coordinating laboratory and laboratories performing the research. This study has been published.

“In brief, all the laboratories were trained in the basophil counting method, with the counts verified by Sainte-Laudy’s laboratory. The dilutions were made in 3 different laboratories and coded by the coordinator (histamine and water solutions made up identically from 15c–19c). All study materials were from the same source and shipped to the performing laboratories. The data were returned to the coordinator and then analysed by an independent biostatistician. When the results for the histamine solutions were compared to those for the water solutions, there was a small but statistically significant inhibition of basophil degranulation caused by the lowest concentration of anti-IgE used in 3 of the 4 laboratories. When all the data were combined together, there was a statistically significant inhibition for the histamine containing solutions. Thus this multi-centre
study indicated that high dilutions of histamine did indeed have biological effects.

“In the multi-centre trial described above, 3 of the laboratories independently examined the effects of high dilutions of histamine and to a varying degree all demonstrated inhibition of basophil activation with these dilutions. Flow cytometric is employed in most immunological laboratories and there have now been a series of independent laboratories investigating the phenomenon. These will be discussed in detail.”
Basophil models of homeopathy: a sceptical view, Madeleine Ennis, Respiratory Medicine Research Group, Centre for Infection and Immunity, Microbiology Building, The Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

The Witt review of in vitro tests for homeopathy carefully analyzed and scored all known biochemical testing, up until 2007. You don’t see the criteria employed by Witt being employed by those who conclude that homeopathy is merely the use of inert substances.

Like Pee Zee, they have to make up their own, unknown, unseen,  OCCULT criteria!

PZ Myers claims to be a biologist. But look at the way Myers approaches the problem before him. Instead of giving you the full story, Myers gives only what he wants you to hear, which is mostly ridicule. Myers doesn’t mention his colleagues who have actually conducted the basophil degranulation test. He hasn’t done it. So how is it that we are supposed to believe Myers over Ennis, Sainte Laudy, Belon, Benveniste and all the others and their staff assistants, and the hundreds, possibly thousands of repetitons of these tests, unless Myers is presenting an answer we want to hear?

I’m trying to think of careers and activities that would be more suited for telling people what they want to hear, other than science. How about politics? LOL! No wonder his blog is so popular! Most people aren’t interested in science for anything more than the status it gives them in the eyes of others.

Being a skeptic gives you that “cachet.”

But when it comes to the real complexities of science . . please! Don’t confuse me with the facts! Let’s just pretend we’re scientists, okay?” 

Ennis on the other hand, rolls up her sleeves and gets her hands dirty. She then, as a real scientist, is compelled to truthfully report what her colleagues are loath to hear . .  the truth about homeopathy. What was it again? Oh yes . . “high dilutions of histamine did indeed have biological effects.”

I hear Myers screaming when he reads this, holding his head, “Noooo! I hate homeopathy!”

Ennis comes up with the same statement that Benveniste, Poitevin and dozens of others have come up with. In the glass the truth about homeopathy has been found.

Benvneiste proposed a whole new biological paradigm. Does Myers have the courage to do the test? Or is he more likely to try to sabotage it with word and censure?

If Pee Zee Myers cannot be a real scientist and meet the challenge of homeopathy head on, as Professor Ennis and others have done, then I say fire him and let him go on writing his stupid blog as the prime example of pseudoscience. Why would anyone but the opposition want a joker like Myers poisoning the minds of our youth? He doesn’t teach biological science, he teaches political science. Look at his useless, mindless deblogatory activities

How embarrassing for such a fine institution like the University of Minnesota! To have such an unscientific voice as Myers blathering away while his hands are doing nothing useful, when there are real scientists, like young versions of Rustum Roy at Penn State, who could be teaching biology at the University of Minnesota.
Education should not be about destroying people, as PZ has made it out to be. It should be about building people up, not tearing them down, and learning how things work in world.

The Threat of Homeopathy

The war over homeopathy is getting hotter. In the last 60 days there have been three devastating revelations about toxic pharmaceutical drug scams of megalithic proportions, which in turn have forced the drug cartels, through their shills, to issue warnings against what will overtake them for it by mere default.