I beg your pardon if by raising an objection I have rocked the Titanic, but the stated recognition that vaccines help develop immunity by imitating an infection, stumbles over a painful stub-toe that bears immediate hindsight to a huge medical stub-toe: it is one of two reasons for rejecting doctrinal homeopathy, a long practiced medical tradition.
Creating immunity from any particular disease by staging an imitation of that disease is the primary strategy of homeopathy in treating, not just infectious diseases, but a wide range of human problems, such as those caused by emotional stress (like peptic ulcers) infection and toxicity and allopathic psychiatry. The broad application of pathological similitude to treat a wide variety of human, animal and even plant, i.e. biological afflictions, is on one count why for over 200 years homeopathy has been banned by standard medical practice.
So this is really an odd conundrum. On one hand, according to the CDC, the use of artificial imitative diseases is the only strategy for conveying immunity, such as using bovine smallpox to eradicate the human strain. On the other hand, its use is rejected. It would appear that one hand is ignorant of the other.
Before you go any further on this errand, this is April 10th, in my opinion the birthday of the world’s greatest medical genius, and there’s a couple of things I think you ought to know in regard to that.
Number One is anyone who is in the commentary on homeopathy, who hasn’t read Samuel Hahnemann’s Organon, doesn’t know what he or she is talking about. I don’t care if he or she is the Surgeon or Attorney’s General, Matlock, Jesus or Einstein, if he or she hasn’t read the Organon and talks long enough about homeopathy, he or she will eventually say something dead [something] wrong about it, a clue that they have made a long habit of using their mental illness as a club, on others, while toasting their KoolAid on other topics, long before they had anything to say about homeopathy.
The second thing I would like to say is that anyone who holds himself or herself out as a practitioner of homeopathy who hasn’t read Hahnemann’s Organon is committing malpractice, and this includes doctors lay, medical and otherwise.
Happy birthday Sam.
CHEMSTRY OF PLACEBO
As I intimated in a previous paragraph, as one hand is to the other, there is a second count to this dialectic, the issue of chemistry. What is the chemistry of the homeopathic remedy? Settled science doesn’t seem to have an answer for that. From my perspective, we could say biochemistry, we could say electrochemistry, we could say physico-chemistry, we could say quantum chemistry, and as Hahnemann was a Freemasons we could even say Geometry, and as skeptics we must decline to answer, as we are forced to say there is no distinctive chemistry to the homeopathic remedy . . but to invoke the truth in the face of the null hypothesis, just asking what it is, is evocative of the truth, the chemistry of the homeopathic remedy is solvent enough, because no one seems to know the answer, and this is why:
The nose of settled science hasn’t been rubbed in the physical assays.
That’s what I’m here to do. This is my God-given task. It is my score to settle, to present the physical and biochemical indices of the homeopathic remedy.
In 1999 I was the first to apply for James Randi’s million-dollar challenge to prove homeopathy. Randi panicked and tried to avoid me by challenging Benveniste instead, who sent him back to me and my triple-blind dielectric strength test. Randi’s been cowering ever since.
Can I prove homeopathy? Yes of course, Dr. Lappin, I can prove homeopathy. So can you if you are willing to lose your job as a pharmacologist. What more proof do I need than James Randi and his million dollars? What more proof do you need than the basophil degranulation test?
———-~————
So as you can see, skepticism immediately not only draws us away from the theme of my previous journal, conflating the homeopathic remedy and the vaccine, it wants to ignore an even uglier truth: Homeopathy and the disease prophylaxis of immunization share a common ancestor in the electronic structure of their chemistry. In quantum chemistry, electronic structure is the state of motion of electrons in an electrostatic field created by stationary nuclei. The term encompass both the wave functions of the electrons and the energies associated with them. Electronic structure is what determines the molecule’s properties of action. It may be a novel presentation of this essay that at the quantum level, the smallpox serum and homeopathic Variolinum share the same electronic structure, and though inverse semiologically, they pose similar triggers and snares.
You may immediately repose a reasonable objection, calling into question the presumed deterioration of molecular properties due to theoretical dissociation by hydrolysis in the manufacture of a homeopathic remedy, unless we assume that electronic structure is holographic, from the solid first phase of matter to plasma, from the molecule to its infinitesimal, the electronic structure remains the same.
So the next question then is how do water molecules in the homeopathic remedy imitate the electronic structure of the hydrolyzed solute throughout infinite dilution?
Every field has a circuitry, streams within it, channels of energy that act as capacitors, so where we find an electromagnetic field we are compelled to seek its circuitry, and so in the study of homeopathic chemistry this is found in the hydrogen bonding of the water molecule, the linkage that allows water molecules to chain together to form recursive fractal antennae. The electronic structure of water can be a rote copy of matter’s grammar, imitating the solute’s communication, at the subatomic level, with organic entities and inorganic elements, to trigger endemic processes, or annihilate exogenic antigens.
This is how water imitates the electronic structure of matter.
The water molecule is tetrahedral in shape, that is to say it has transverse lines drawn from Oxygen input and output ports connecting water molecules around impurities, most notably in homeopathic remedies around impurities such as ethanol, nanoscopic silica and atmospheric cavitation, i.e. bubbles, interstitials that give hydrogen bonds formatting by causing the molecule to go flat, with one port aimed at the center of the bubble, with the other three
Plasma discharge from supramolecular homeopathic solution a
lateral around the sphere. Hydrogen bonding of water molecules allows for chain reactions, molecular self-assembly into an infinite number of shapes, circuitry, capacitors, electromagnetic lenses and fractal antennas. It takes its architectural instructions from hydrolyzed guest solutes, creating a circuitry mimicking the guest, transmitting it’s unique signal to recipient DNA.
A number of scientists, most notably Benveniste, Montagnier and Conte have recorded EMF signals coming off this H-bonded structuring, from the low kilowatt range to high beta. Montagnier found that when homeopathically ionized solutions were mµ shielded from the background radiation (Schumann resonances) the 1kw signal quit, suggesting an external power source, a transduction of biased signals.
This is eyebrow raising. It suggests that matter, irrespective of phase, has within it, in all condensations of HO phase, electromagnetic lensing, fractal antennas and recursive electrograms that transduce the background radiation into a specific, comprehensive signal, emitted throughout the spectrum.
WAKE UP POLLYANNA
How, in the homeopathic dilution process, do these supramolecular solutions maintain properties of the solute in endless dilutions? How do the semiotics of Morbillinum, or Scheherezad, for that matter, persist through infinite dilution?
This is a question easily answered:
In the homeopathic remedy we see evidence of a chain reaction in the H-bonds of water. As electronic structuring is a recursive function that shuns the chaotrope and structures around the kosmotrope, we may assume the seed to be the electron, given it is the smallest genera.
How is the electron extracted from the solute?
I have long pondered the connection between tritiate and triturate. Hopefully it will intrigue you as well. So that you may remember it, in pursuit of the cosmotrope the tritiation of the solute is triggered by its trituration.
This is the subject of my next entry, and with your permission I would like to take this moment more to point out to you that this isn’t just a regurgitation of fact, this is novel in its game. To my knowledge no one has done what it is I am doing here, revealing the chemistry and physics of homeopathy. This should be a great boon to the world will because I feel it is the key to its greater use, especially in its broadest use, a breakthrough in immunology.
____________________
Last night I had a strange dream. I was in my old house with my first wife and we’re having what must’ve been a party, although I’m not so sure that some of the guests were not residents. I was coming under criticism for having spent too much money on preparing Meals on Wheels. How I found myself in this predicament I’ll never know. Among my critics were two attorneys, one, a probate attorney, and the other Robert Mueller. My late, great father was there. He was concerned. But my defense was quite simple, that the meals I prepared for the recipients was lamb.
It seemed to suffice.
Then something very strange happened. The day unexpectedly became night. The moon and the stars came out and the birds went quiet. Somehow I knew that the reason was because there had been a pole shift, the Earth and been turned upside down.
________________________
The main feature will now be followed by a cartoon:
Wikipedia falsifies the placebo claim for homeopathy . . again, shilling for pharma
Wikipedia has been caught for a third time frantically producing false information about homeopathy on a shifting footnote intended to support a hypothesis that homeopathic medicine is a “placebo.” A placebo is defined by Wikipedia as a sham treatment intended to deceive recipients.
The problem is that reviews of clinical tests of homeopathy, published in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet, among others, have all shown that the collective weight of clinical trials shows that the ionized pharmaceuticals used in homeopathic medicine are not placebos.
Wikipedia has therefore had to misrepresent the literature, pretending to quote (1) a systematic review by a defrocked professor of complementary medicine who garnered a reputation as the world’s leading homeopathy antagonist (2) a US government website that says nothing about placebos and (3) currently, at the time of this writing, the leading meta analysis of clinical trials that actually concludes homeopathics are not placebos.
The article is locked down, preventing a rewrite neutral to the facts. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has voiced vituperative opposition to homeopathy, calling it the work of charlatans. The talk session of the article is a jumble of opinions by trolls trying to figure out how to reconcile contradicting conclusions in meta analyses, looking for evidence to support the placebo hypothesis in credible publications, and not finding it.
The scuttlebutt is that whoever wrote the article was hired to keep it in flux by pharmaceutical industry interests, like the Geneva based International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations, (IFPMA) for which Wikipedia admittedly provides advertising space. The use of ionized pharmaceuticals, as used in homoeopathy, could break the strangle hold current conventional pharmaceuticals have on modern medicine, and so must be suppresed.
Footnote number two in the WIkipedia homeopathy article seems to prove it. Prior to the current footnote, footnote number two, which traditionally has been the footnote supporting its placebo accusation, led to an article by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) that says nothing about homeopathics being placebos. The NCCAM article is entitled Homeopathy: An Introduction (click here and read it for yourself if you don’t believe it).
This changed within the last few hours of publication of this article, as if they’re watching my keystrokes. Now it leads to the 1997 Linde meta analysispublished in the Lancet, what homeopathy antagonist Edzard Ernst called “technically superb.” Linde is considered to be the best review of he literature, but is now 17 years old. Linde stated their results were incompatible with the placebo hypothesis, the opposite of what Wikipedia says it said. .
If you’re familiar with Wikipedia’s pseudoscience and fake academic “research” by hired shills for the pharmaceutical industry trying to take attention off their culpability in spawning breasts on boys and two headed girls, then you can imagine pornmeister Jimmy Wales standing in front of a table full of geeks saying something like, “just use any old article, nobody reads the footnotes, I mean you could link it to Bomis and the wikisuckers still won’t check it out.”
The U.S.’s NCCAM article refused to say what Wikipedia wanted them to say, so the Wiki editors probaly had to switch back to Linde, which addresses the placebo hypothesis directly, but contradicts their undying insistence that homeopathic remedies are no more effective than placebos.
Perhaps one of the editors actually read the NCCAM article and then hurriedly kicked some cat litter over it and nervously went back to something more sustainable, to make the placebo claim. Give the appearance of attribution and people will think it is.
But when Linde’s 1997 results are read they say:
“The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are completely due to placebo.”
The reason Wikipedia likes Linde is because in a susequent addendum Linde moderated their results by saying that more rigorous trials revealed less positive results. But Linde never recanted their basic statement that homeopathic remedies are not placebos.
Linde is not the only meta analysis that blows up in the face of those who are desperate to disprove homeopathy.
A 1991 systematic review of clinical trials, published in the British Medical Journal stated:
“The amount of positive evidence even among the best studies came as a surprise to us. Based on this evidence we would be ready to accept that homoeopathy can be efficacious, if only the mechanism of action were more plausible . . “The evidence presented in this reviewwould probably be sufficient for establishing homoeopathy as a regular treatment for certain indications. There is no reason to believe that the influence of publication bias, data massage, bad methodology, and so on is much less in conventional medicine, and the financial interests for regular pharmaceutical companies are many times greater. Are the results of randomised double blind trials convincing only if there is a plausible mechanism of action? Are review articles of the clinical evidence only convincing if there is a plausible mechanism of action? Or is this a special case because the mechanisms are unknown or implausible?” Kleijnen J, Knipschild P, ter Riet G. Clinical trials of homoeopathy, British Medical Journal, 1991; 302: 316–323. tinyurl com/kleijnen
If it’s saying what you want it to say, or, if you know it isn’t true, and you’re motivated to expose the lie, if you have the conviction of your beliefs, it’ll be your red meat, or fakin’ bacon if you’re vegan.
So now who’s administering placebos?
The word “placebo” does not even appear in the NCCAM article, the article that up to a few hours ago Wikipedia listed as its validaiton for the placebo claim. The NCCAM article does not describe homeopathic treatment to be ineffectual or intended to deceive, as Wikipedia suggested it would.
The word “homeopathy” refers to the phenomenon of like cures like, as is seen in the use of vaccines. In an effort to maintain equilibrium, organisms can react intensively to small doses of toxins, especially when dissociated. Hahnemann’s word homoeopathy (meaning same suffering) or the putative word homeopathy (meaning similar suffering) do not refer to the material phase of a pharmacuetical’s content as solid, liquid, gaseous or plasma (ionized). Any phase of matter can induce a homoeopathic reaction. Homeopathic medicines are noted for their use of the ionized pharmaceuticals, created by molecular dissociation when serially diluted in water, but the homeopathic application is not limited to ionized materials.
In the U.S., homeopathic remedies are regulated by the Federal Drug Administration. The original rules covering the use of homeopathics were a part of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act sponsored by Senator Royal S. Copeland, M.D. (D-NY), a homeopath.
That’s right. Your eyes are not deceiving you, you are not hallucinating.
The Godfather of the FDA was a homeopath.
Like the current reference to Linde, the NCCAM article implies the opposite of what Wikipedia claimed it said. The NCCAM article states,
“While many homeopathic remedies are highly diluted, some products sold or labeled as homeopathic may not be highly diluted; they can contain substantial amounts of active ingredients. Like any drug or dietary supplement that contains chemical ingredients, these homeopathic products may cause side effects or drug interactions. Negative health effects from homeopathic products of this type have been reported.”
The NCCAM article was not the first time Wikipedia was caught falsifying the placebo claim. This blog made note of the same charge in its entry on January 29th, 2012. (Wikipedia and the Case Against Homeopathy)
At that time the Wikipedia article on Homeopathy read, “The collective weight of scientific evidence has found homeopathy to be no more effective than a placebo.[2][3][4][5][6]”
“The existence of contradicting evidence is not unusual in therapeutics. One solution to resolve such contradictions is to conduct systematic reviews and meta-analyses of rigorous studies. In 1997, Linde et al did just that. The conclusions of this technically superb meta-analysis expressed the notion that homeopathic medicines are more than mere placebos.”
Not one major meta analysis has been able to effectively conclude that the action of homeopathic remedies is due solely to the placebo effect. Not even Shang, the most popular homeopathy meta analysis among skeptics, was able to clearly conclude that the effect was from chance, iatrogenesis or “placebo,” admitting “a weak effect.” A review of the data by independent analysis of Shang determined that even in this most damning meta of homeopathy, ”Homeopathy had a significant effect beyond placebo.” Ludtke Rutten
The literature for the homeopathic placebo simply doesn’t exist. The urban legend was a badly executed deception popularized by James Randi 14 years ago to support his phony offer of one million dollars ($1,000,000) to prove homeopathy, an offer that his supporters, which includes the pharmaceutical drug industry, are still desperately hanging onto as proof that homeopathy is unprovable.
The question remains, who wrote the Homeopathy article for Wikipedia, and how much were they paid, out of whose pocket?
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 . .
Here we go again. Journal arguer MADGAV writes about “Evidence Check,” the Parliament hearing held last year in the UK, condemning homeopathy:
“As the Science and Technology Committee concluded:
‘In our view, the systematic reviews and meta-analyses conclusively demonstrate that homeopathic products perform no better than placebos.’
“In response to the various submissions from homeopathic organisations they added:
‘We regret that advocates of homeopathy, including in their submissions to our inquiry, choose to rely on, and promulgate, selective approaches to the treatment of the evidence base as this risks confusing or misleading the public, the media and policymakers.’
Okay, that’s definitely a gotcha for the opponents of homeopathy, if it has any creidb ility to it. So let’s take a closer look at it.
Here is the review of the House of Commons report by Earl Baldwin of Bewdsley, of the Upper House , entitled, “Observations on the report Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee,” dated February 2010.
Lord Bewdley writes,
“2.3. The exaggeration by the Committee of Shang’s conclusions is worrying. It is difficult to see how a weakly supported positive effect, for which one explanation (possibly well-founded) is a placebo effect, can be translated into a conclusive demonstration of this effect, with a “devastatingly” negative finding. No such firm claims can be found in Shang, who writes of finding “no strong” evidence, or “little” evidence, and who ends his paper with cautions about methodology and about the difficulty of detecting bias in studies, as well as the role of possible “context effects” in homeopathy.
“2.4. The Committee’s overstatement is not helped by claiming Government support for its interpretation in paragraph 70, based on the Minister’s concession of no “credible” evidence that homeopathy works beyond placebo. If he meant persuasive evidence – and his guarded support for further research [75] supports this – that shows a confusion by the Committee between absence of evidence and evidence of absence. If however he was saying that all evidence was negative, this as Prof. Harper correctly stated [71] runs counter to the
message from most reviews up to and including Shang, which is one of primary studies of insufficient quantity, rigour, size, homogeneity and power to give clear-cut answers.”
In addition, a review of the literature in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education concurs with the Bewdley review. This review says Shang “has been highly criticized for being methodologically flawed on many levels. Of particular concern, the researchers eliminated 102 of 110 homeopathic trials and based their conclusions on only the 8 largest high-quality trials without clearly identifying the criteria by which these trials were selected or the identity of these trials. Odds ratios calculated before the exclusions (on all 110 trials) do not support their ultimate conclusion that homeopathic interventions are no better than placebo.
Google,
Am J Pharm Educ. 2007 February 15; 71(1): 07
Where Does Homeopathy Fit in Pharmacy Practice?
Teela Johnson, HonBSc and Heather Boon, BScPhm, PhD
University of Toronto, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy
Bewdley, supported by Johnson, raises a serious question about the bias in the House of Commons assessment that can be easily seen in unbiased reviews by truly critical reviewers of homeopathy, such as the pharmacists and Bewdley of the Upper House. Why did the Committee rely on a meta analysis known to be spurious? That’s a huge admission. Is that why Evan Harris, who led the the hatchet job, lost his seat in Parliament?
What I, John Benneth, am presenting here is leading to a criminal indictment of Harris, Goldacre, Ernst and a host of others, to be presented in my next blog.
Read on. It gets worse for the homeopathy haters. Bewdley goes on to say,
“5.2. It is not easy to see why a journalist doctor (Ben Goldacre) was invited to appear in preference to some other non-representative contributors to the inquiry. The written submission by Dr. Goldacre [Ev. 8] was notably short on supporting evidence, but contained unqualified statements on the ineffectiveness of homeopathy, forcefully expressed (“extreme quackery” was mentioned). By contrast, the submission by the Complementary Medicine Research Group from the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York presented a wellargued summary with 68 references [Ev. 143]. In this appears the statement
“To date there are eight systematic reviews that provide evidence that the effects of homeopathy are beyond placebo when used as a treatment for [five childhood conditions]”. This claim from a mainstream academic centre, rated joint first nationally for health services research in the latest Research Assessment Exercise, stands in stark contradiction to Prof. Ernst’s referenced claims, noted above, and to Dr. Goldacre’s unreferenced statements. It would have been illuminating if the Committee had probed the Group about this, face to face as a witness, and attempted some resolution before agreeing in unequivocal terms with the two witnesses who were invited to appear and were quoted favourably.
“ The Committee criticised the supporters of homeopathy for their ‘selective approaches’ to evidence [73]. They could fairly be accused of the same.
Unfortunately they did not (presumably) have the scope to solicit the views of Dr. Linde from Germany, which would have differed from those of Prof. Ernst with regard to the evidence.”
Wow! This guy Bewdley paints the anti-homeopathy clowns out to be a pack of sleazy scheming liars.
Of the evidence the Committee reviewed, Bewdsley says in 7.1,
“The Committee however has been less than rigorous in its approach to this evidence. Its choice of witnesses favoured a medical media opponent of homeopathy over a research centre of excellence. It was unwise to rely heavily on the interpretations of one professor of CAM (Edzard Ernst), some of whose statements are unsound or in conflict with other statements of his, and who is not without his critics in the worlds of research and academia whose views were given less prominence. The 2005 review by Shang et al has been inaccurately represented as ruling out specific effects of homeopathy, in a summary statement by the Committee that goes beyond present evidence.
“The Committee’s own statements show confusion between unconvincing evidence of a specific effect and disproof of it. The true risk profile of homeopathy, compared with conventional treatment, was not considered.
“7.2. These limitations make the Committee’s report an unreliable source of evidence about homeopathy. The jury must still be regarded as out on its efficacy and risk/ benefit ratio. Whether more research should be done, and of what kind, is another question. But there can be no ethical objection to it since the principal questions.”
You guys are getting fined billions for the poison you’re peddling,, and you’re busy trying to make some other form of legal medicine look bad? What’s wrong with you? Are they paying you to post the crap you’re writing or are you just naturally stupid?
Madgav, why are you doing this? This is a serious matter. If you really believe in what you’re digging up and writing about, then why aren’t you using your real name in presenting it?
Is “Madgav” what he appears to be, a shill for allopathy?
The oppostion to homeopathy is not about belief. It’s about getting paid.
If “Madgav” is not as stupid as he’s making him or herself out to be, then how does he reconcile these two groups, one a recognized legal doctrine supported by tradition and law, and the other representing opposing interests that rely solely on known fabrications? Real medicine vs. the Evil Empire of racketeers, merchants of death.
Answer in the next blog . .
Sometimes I wonder about how stupid people can be. I mean there are stupid people, there’s a lot of them, I don‘t suppose they‘d be stupid if they weren‘t people.
I wonder if that choice is made in Heaven. Guy says, “God, I want to live this next reincarnation as a really stupid person. I mean anot just dumb, but a real idiot. The kind of person that acts like he knows something, but doesn‘t really. Arrogant, full of assertions, the kind of jerk who makes up his mind not to see the evidence. The kind of guy who takes a job as a night watchman in a day camp. He’s so stupid he’ll ask what wine goes best with Alpo. If I do that I’ll bring joy into the world by making other people laugh at me.”
Here’s a statement I got from someone calling himself ISayISaw. Now I’m not saying that he’s dumb or drunk necessarily, but something tells me that if he had a brain concussion it would probably classify as a minor injury. He starts out by quoting me. (Boy, is that ever a dumb thing to do):
“Kaviraj and I have given them more than enough time to respond to our challenge. All we have asked of the critics of homeopathy, like Edzard Ernst, John Beddington, Ben Goldacre, Andy Lewis and their dopey proxies, is to please show us the evidence that homeopathic remedies are “placebos.”
Show us just one scientific study that proves it.
Please.
Just one.
That’s all.
It’s not too much to ask . .
Here we are, empty handed. After all this complaining from self-made, tall-talking, wide-walking homeopathy bashers about how homeopathic remedies are nothing more than “placebos” as if they know what a placebo really is, we ask for little evidence of that and they all go quiet on us.
These are the kind of people who fail to check to see if the guns are loaded before putting them to their heads and pulling the trigger.
And then he does. Show us a “study,” that is.
And then he surly says: “You’re not empty-handed but you don’t only seem to pay attention of the poorest quality evidence and the unsupported claims of homeopathy’s fanboys.”
Okay, the nasty remarks aside, this is good. I SayISaw actually coughed up what purports to be a real “scientific” trial here , even if it is just one, and out of hundreds of trials of homeopathy the only one, it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen, written by the kind of people who are so dim they’d light a match to read a sundial. But look, it’s a hundred times better than the bluff and bluster we get from everybody else.
And published nowhere.
This particular study by Sarah Brien, Laurie Lachance, Phil Prescott, Clare McDermott and George Lewith implies in its title that the effect of homeopathy is a placebo that come from the homeopathic consultation. And I bet they used to save their burned out light bulbs for their darkroom, too. A dark room is the place where these people used to go to retrieve the contents of their photographic memories, but they gave it up because nothing ever developed.
Well, ISayISaw should be congratulated nonetheless for bringing this up. So let’s give a good hand for ISayISaw on the computer keyboard. Let’s give him another good. Actually he needs more than two good hands on the computer keyboard. Maybe he could take his foot out of his mouth and use that.
Title of the study that presumably “proves” homeopathy is a “placebo” is: “Homeopathy has clinical benefits in rheumatoid arthritis patients that are attributable to the consultation process but not the homeopathic remedy: a randomized controlled clinical trial”
You can read it yourself, but make sure you’re not operating any heavy equipment if you do because there’s a chance that you might fall over laughing, or start beating your head against the steering wheel.
The objective of this mess was, “To assess whether any benefits from adjunctive homeopathic intervention in patients with RA are due to the homeopathic consultation, homeopathic remedies or both.”
Okay, stop right there. Note the word adjunctive. Adjunct means “something added to another thing but not an essential part of it.”
So now we have to ask an essential part of what? What else is going on in this study they aren’t mentioning here?
The report says this was an exploratory double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial conducted from January 2008 to July 2008, in patients with active stable rheumatoid arthritis (RA) receiving conventional therapy.
So in other words, these people were being treated for rheumatoid arthritis using “conventional drugs.”
Just what drugs might those be?
Celebrex? (Pfizer) Yeah, Celebrex. That’s the one advertised on TV showing a smiling young woman flying a kite on the beach, supposedly having a good time.
Here’s the side effects from Celebrex when she gets back from the beach:
“Increased risk of cardiovascular incidents including blood clotting, heart attack and stroke, kidney problems, fluid retention, liver damage, potentially lethal stomach bleeding.”
There’s that young woman again, on her knees in front of the toilet, spitting up blood from lethal stomach bleeding.
Lawsuit!
Or maybe it was Vioxx.
VIOXX BREAKING NEWS:
“Merck & Co., Inc. has agreed to pay $4.85 billion to resolve Vioxx-related claims in which a claimant has suffered a heart attack, sudden cardiac death, or stroke.” http://www.levinlaw.com/practice-areas/vioxx-information
They’d be better off with a bottle of whiskey and a couple of tickets to a good cage fight. Get ’em on their feet to go somewhere other than the doctor’s office. Maybe what this study was all about was to look for something else to blame it on.
The people who wrote this study are the kind of people who would hand a drowning man a glass of water. I think their last study was to see if people swallowed firecrackers their hair would grow out in bangs.
I mean, do I need to explain this to anybody except for the really, really stupid? I’m surprised this guy ISayISaw can read. He probably has a kid read it to him.
And who did the authors explain this to in order to get it all typed up so nicely? That person deserves the Nobel prize for patience.
This isn’t a test for placebo. I’m not sure what it’s a test for. Maybe its a secret IQ test. They sure as hell don’t say. Here’s what they did:
Patients were randomized into five groups. Of the five groups, three received a homeopathic consultation (Groups 1 – 3) and two (Groups 4 and 5) did not. The consultation groups were further randomized to individualized treatment (Group 1), a homeopathic complex for RA (Group 2) or placebo (Group 3).
Non-consultation participants were allocated complex (Group 4) or placebo (Group 5); individualized homeopathy can only be prescribed through a consultation.
This study has not disclosed the homeopathic remedies given to Group 1 patients. it says nothing about (group 6) the pill pushers who organized this debacle.
Or (Group 7) the homeoapths. So here comes the homeopath who’s been asked to participate in a study on the effectiveness of homeopathy, and he finds that every one of these people are on racketeceuticals, and they’re having problems with blood clotting, they’re having heart attacks and strokes, kidney problems, they’re puffy from fluid retention, liver damage, and some are having potentially lethal stomach bleeding.
Did the individual consultations focus on totality of symptoms as presented by the patient or the clinical diagnosis as presented by Group 1, or the clinical daignosis as presented by Group 6? Just what was Group 1 given as a result of consulation? A bottle of whiskey and a couple of tickets to a good cage fight. Or how about a carefully folded note that says, “Run for your life.”
Statistically tt appears that Group 6 had a regression to the mean . . mean spirited that is.
So the challenge to Ernst and the Evil Empire still remains after all this time. Provide one trial that proves homeopathy is a “placebo.”
In the meantime, next time you get rheumatoid arthritis, go to a homeopath before the Vioxx pushers get their hands on you, or you might end up in a study like the one ISayISaw regurgitated here. Unless of course you want your heirs to collect on the settlement.
It might save yo a lot of money, time, pain and an early grave.
You know, I bet the people who wrote the Brien “human science experiment” take rulers to bed with them to see how long they sleep. I bet the real facts in this report could have been written on a piece of confetti. I bet they’re so stupid that if we gave them a goldmedal for it they’d have it bronzed.
They’re so stupid that if . . your thoughts go here:__.
“Could it be the damning words: “We conclude that in the study set investigated, there was clear evidence that studies with better methodological quality tended to yield less positive results.” which do rather undermine the homeopaths’ case.
“Also they said this;
“’The evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis. Since we completed our literature search in 1995, a considerable number of new homeopathy trials have been published. The fact that a number of the new high-quality trials … have negative results, and a recent update of our review for the most “original” subtype of homeopathy (classical or individualized homeopathy), seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results. It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments”
“Homeopathy: never letting the facts get in the way of a good story.
I, John Benneth respond:
Dear I Say,
Bravo for finally ponying up some seemingly reasonable opposition, it certainly is better than most of the other garbage being dumped on us from the opponents of homeopathy. But shame on you for leaving important concluding remarks that put what you have quoted in contrast in context, which reveals your negative bias. The quote actually runs: “We conclude that in the study set investigated, there was clear evidence that studies with better methodological quality tended to yield less positive results. Because summarizing disparate study features into a single score is problematic, meta-regression methods simultaneously investigating the influence of single study features seem the best method for investigating the impact of study quality on outcome.”
But like them all, you’re missing the point entirely, switching criteria away from what is important to what can be made vituperative. The unproven underlying assumption in all opposition to homeopathy is that there is no physical basis for its action, that its action is psychogenic, therefore a medical sham, wrapped up into one vague term, placebo.
Would you be laying the charge of medical sham at the doorstep of psychology because it uses a “talking cure”, attempts to treat mental disorders without psychoactive drugs? The success of psychology, a derivative of hypnosis, is also considered to be a psychological construction. This part of the argument against homeopathy contradicts the second, that homeopathy doesn’t work, for if the terms did not reflect reported benefits, they wouldn’t exist, nor would there be a doctrine such as psychology that is in full support of them.
This may seem a wandering from Linde, but it goes right to the point. The Linde study explicitly asks “Are the Clinical Effects of Homeopathy Placebo Effects?” and then says it is “A Meta-analysis of Placebo-Controlled Trials.” (Linde,1)The results of their meta-analysis, they say, “are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are completely due to placebo. Lancet 1997; 350: 834–43.
The subsequent re-analysis of Linde by the authors does not recant this, it merely says they may have overestimated the effects, and this is prima facie, only within the context of the meta-analysis.
But who can expect Linde questioning placebo effects to be a reasonable investigation when the trials are for verum? Linde has fallen into the common trap of allowing allopathy to set the terms criteria and question. But even so it still favors homeopathy, even in re-analysis.
If we are to ask the placebo question, then we must explore it using a protocol for placebo, not verum, and all testing I have seen is testing for verum. For instance, if we are asking if this is placebo, we would first strip away the psychogenic influence, and using homeopathic high dilutes, perform objective biochemical tests on human products, such as red and white blood cells, in vitro.
It then should come as a great surprise to anyone who believes homeopathics are placebos, to learn that biochemical testing has been done, repeatedly, showing overwhelming results in favor of homeopathy. The majority of results are positive, and they rate higher in methodological assessment than the negative tests. Unless you are willing to believe that the majority of the investigators in biochemical tests for homeopathics, like Prof. Madeleine Ennis of Queens University in Belfast, have psychokinetic powers, or are all making the same unknown error, or are liars, then you have to conclude that it is most likely that the effect of these substances in the subjects they came from are not solely due to psychogenesis. How can the placebos have an effect on blood cells in a petri dish?
Now compare this to human testing in vivo, which is confused by visible results, patient satisfaction and credibility, time, administrator’s skill and influence . . and the placebo effect. How can you expect to get credible results from one thing when it can be influenced by another? An engine mechanic, investigating the cause of stoppage, doesn’t test for lack of fire and fuel at the same time, he reduces the problem by checking oen at a time, such first testing for a spark, then if the spark is getting fuel . That’s what makes him a mechanic, he can make that distinction. But that reductionism isn’t being applied here by Edzard Ernst or anyone else who has intentionally pitted himself against homeopathy, and that is why Ernst is intentionally leaving biochemical testing out of his damning reviews of it. The foregone conclusion of placebo, based on criteria selected for its support of the foregone conclusion, most likely will not be supported by a reductionist approach. If the placebo effect was real, then we would simply be investigating its marvels and how to improve on them, such as in hypnosis. Please belive me when I tell you, many a practitioner of homeopathy is comfortable with the placebo conclusion, it makes him a maven.
One other thing . . and this is the knockout punch. Notice the last name on the list of authors of “ Impact of study quality . .” (Linde, 2) Jonas WB.
This is Dr. Wayne B. Jonas, a medical doctor and practicing physician who still treats members of the US Armed Forces. He was also one of the authors of the Linde 1997 meta-analysis of homeopathy (Linde, 1). He spent 20 years as a military physician. He was the keynote speaker Bastyr University in Seattle .He has conducted serious in vivo epidemiological research, testing prophylaxis against rabbit fever in mice at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Rabbit fever, or tularemia is a serious contagion because it hits humans quickly and hard enough to incapacitate. Tularemia is a potential bio-warfare agent. It is highly contagious but not infectious or especially fatal and can be used specifically against troops without great danger to nearby civilian populations. Given its bio-warfare potential, finding a tularemia prophylaxis should be and presumably is of interest to the government, and so handling this kind of a study requires some extremely strict protocols.
In that he is being cited here in criticism of homeopathy admits him as a good witness for homeopathy. Critical of av past assessments by himself and his colleagues adds to his credibility, and certainly you wouldn’t have quoted his efforts if you did not think them to have some authority. He is also very critical of homeopathic research in other assignments we can see, such as in Wallach’s Research on Homeopathy: State of the Art, which he co-authored (Wallach).
In this report he and his colleagues say. “There is, to our knowledge, no single clinical area where reported effects have been demonstrated unequivocally. Thus, the overall picture of clinical evidence that is emerging is quite disappointing for the homeopathic community.”
They then go on to say, ”Viewed together, the clinical research on homeopathy compared to placebo is not much different from conventional medicine research where approximately the same proportion of studies are positive and negative. Once unpublished studies are retrieved from drug-licensing agencies, well-supported substances, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for depression, show diminishing effects.”
Homeopathy critics should take comfort though in that Wallach qualifies this: “But overall, effect sizes are still statistically robust, even if diminished. This same result cannot be claimed for homeopathy, except in a few clearly delineated areas”
Then all of a sudden, tt gets worse, for the opponents of homeopathy, that is. “Several high-quality reviews of all published or a selection of published studies exist. There is even a comprehensive review of all clinical studies ever conducted, including early studies published in German. This review concluded that homeopathy is clinically effective. In addition, meta-analyses and reviews of several specific diagnoses have been carried out. Most of these reviews and meta-analyses, with some exceptions, reached the conclusion that the effects observed in all trials are not compatible with the hypothesis that homeopathy is identical with placebo but that too few trials exist in any single clinical areas to recommend homeopathy clinically.”
In other words, when you do all the math, homeopathy works. As Wallach says, one comprehensive review of all clinical studies ever conducted concluded homeopathy is clinically effective. Wallach and Jonas do not disagree with this, but qualify their ellipses by saying too few studies exist in single clinical areas to recommend it clinically. But then Wallach goes on further to say that it depends on who you are and who you’re quoting,
“Whether homeopathy is a placebo or not is also dependent on the inclusion and analysis criteria used by a meta-analysis or a review. If the analysis is based on studies retrievable only through MEDLINE® and published in the peer-reviewed literature, the outcome is normally not different from placebo. If all evidence is included, there is a difference from placebo. Hence, the conclusion varies with the decision as to what one is willing to accept as scientific information.”
So, if you cherry pick the clinical data, as Edzard Ernst and others do, you can conclude its nothing more than placebo. Wallach says, “As a result of the bias in the scientific community against homeopathy, it is easier to publish negative results in the peer-reviewed literature than positive ones. The latter are scrutinized more closely for methodological shortcomings than studies with the expected negative outcome, a prominent example being the recently published meta-analysis by Shang and colleagues the reporting of which is unacceptably bad and yet it passed peer-review.”
So much for Shang and peer review. The one study that Edzard Ernst and all critics eventually hold up above all others. Shang, by Wallach’s report, is just flat out “unacceptably bad.”
Now here’s the killshot: Jonas, who is quoted here as not recommending homeopathy clinically, conducted perhaps the most amazing trials of high dilutes as used in homeopathy. It was that bio-warfare tularemia study. What he found was able to reduce the effects of tularemia in mice was . . You guessed it, homeopathy. Tularemia, for which there is no vaccine, only prophylaxis . . Homeopathic prophylaxis.
How do you explain that? (Jonas)
Homeopathy, the story just keeps getting better.
References
JONAS. WB Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 35–52, 2000 “Protection of mice from tularemia infection with ultra low serial agitated dilutions prepared from franciscella tularemia infected tissue. Jonas WB, Dillner D
LINDE 1: The Lancet Vol 350 • September 20, 1997“Are the Clinical Effects of Homeopathy Placebo Effects? A Meta-analysis of Placebo-Controlled Trials Klaus Linde, Nicola Clausius, Gilbert Ramirez, Dieter Melchart, Florian Eitel, Larry V Hedges, Wayne B Jonas
LINDE 2: J Clin Epidemiol. 1999 Jul;52(7):631-6. “Impact of study quality on outcome in placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy.” Linde K, Scholz M, Ramirez G, Clausius N, Melchart D, Jonas WB.
Münchener Modell–Centre for Complementary Medicine Research, Department of Internal Medicine II, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Comment in:
J Clin Epidemiol. 2000 Nov;53(11):1188.
J Clin Epidemiol. 2002 Jan;55(1):103-4.
Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, also denounced homeopathy, but it was on the same grounds as she dismissed allopathy. Professor Edzard Ernst, first chair of Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the University of Exeter in England does not apply such a global perspective to the subject in his argument against homeopathy. His own assertions seep through his dismissals, sweeping aside the evidence with the same dinghy reasoning.
Just as homeopathy competed with her faith healing, it competes with his, the faith healing of the of the hard drug racket of Pfizer, GlaxoSnithKilne and Aventis.
Ernst is their front man.
Professor Ernst says the evidence for homeopathic verum is insufficient, and so it must be placebo. Very well then, where is his evidence for homeopathic placebo?
What? Yes of course. You don’t think acccusations of guilt don’t need to be proven, do you? Then why is the placebo charge that bears with it the appellation of sham sotolerated?
The accuser must prove it, or suffer the same penalty. And Ernst can’t prove it!
Look, do the math. Homeopathy (H) not equaling verum (V) is not proof for H equaling placebo (P). P must be proven for H by the same terms demanded for H proving V.
But it gets even worse. Ernst doesn’t define what he means by placebo!
Edzard Ernst makes no reference to scientific tests for placebo. Edzard Ernst gives us no theory for psychosomatic, psychogenic effects. Edzard Ernst does not even define what he means by placebo, because placebo is not a scientific term. It is a word from another kingdom.
There are multiple definitions for placebo. In Latin placebo means “to please.” Placebo is primarily a religious term, the opening words for the evening prayers of Vespers. A placebo used to refer to someone who would come to a funeral for the free food and drink. They could be spotted as phonies because it would be the first words out of their mouths when they entered.
And so it is with Ernst, coming to the funeral he’s set for something he’s trying to kill.
“Homeopathy’s dead,” announces Ernst as he enters the hall of science “Placebo” is his word for admission, and the pseudoscientists he lords it over bow and pray to their golden pseudoscience calf!.
But homeopathy is not dead.
In the first installment of this series, I challenged Edzard Ernst to a duel. I challenged him to match me, study for study, placebo for verum, head to head, arm and leg, mano a mano. He shows us a scientific study that shows homeopathy is “placebo,” I show one for verum, the opposite of placebo.
In medical jargon, medical means a sham, verum means the truth.
And that is what I’m here to do. My colleagues and I are here to reveal the lie, show the truth, heal the sick, cleanse the leper, dissolve the cancer, stop malaria, end diabetes, cast out demons. And as an added bonus, not only will we do that, I will reveal the classical science behind the homeopathic remedy, its modus operandi, how it works and its physical structure, right down to the atom.
In ten years of study I have met every shape of skeptic and argument that the broad breadths of the world can furnish, and never to date have I lowered my arm. Every argument against homeopathy is based on fallacy and lie, as spread by the likes of Edzard Ernst.
Excuse me. I, John Benneth, have lectured in the world’s most prestigious halls before the most learned audiences, such as Hahnemann College in London, and the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. I have stood before the most discerning audiences. But, as one of the world’s greatest physicists was likened to say, no one has yet proven me wrong. And they won’t. They can’t. I am about to reveal to the world one of its greatest mysteries. the supramolecular mechanics of the world greatest medicine, hitherto unknown.
My testaments are supported . . not by entertainers, magicians, pseudoscientists or journalist doctors nor convicted racketeers, as Ernst’s are, but by real scientists, Nobel laureates and professors of the material sciences.
I don’t draw upon the inhabitants of fantasy land like Edzard Ernst, James Randi, John Beddington or David Colquhoun do. I don’t need to posture and pose as if Avogadro finished this sentence, as Michael Shermer and Simon Singh will do. I don’t need to scribble a column for a white washing newspaper like Ben Goldacre does. No! I look to the hard sciences for my answers.
So I can say, without doubt or wish for more, that the case for the world’s greatest medicine is now complete. And with the help of Edzard Ernst, I will spread the truth about homeopathy.
I speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Listen, there were times when I thought that money and reputation spoke louder than the truth. The problem was I was not listening, there was quite enough to go around for all to enjoy. Someone is always standing about who doesn’t care about the money, and that’s the guy who blows the whistle.
Listen! and you will learn one of the greatest truths ever known to Man.
John Benneth, PG Hom. – London (Hons.)
In “The Disease Only Homeopathy Can Cure” commentary, a reader named Lenny says,
Kaviraj says “Evidence is evidence, regardless how you want to twist it. You have invented the term, now eat it.”
Which is worrying. How someone can dare to engage in a debate regarding evidence-based practice whilst failing to understand the fundamentals is something to make one raise an eyebrow. There are levels of evidence, Kaviraj. From simple anecdote up to the level of meta-analyses. Journals will now use a star-rating to indicate the level of evidence in a particular study.
If homeopathy worked, we’d use it. Even if we didn’t understnad how it worked, even though it confounded all known physics, we’d be all over it like a rash.
But it doesn’t. At least not beyond placebo. For us to state this gets the homeopaths angry. We are questioning their faith, their beliefs, what they stand for, what they hold true. But this is not a religion. It is a supposed medical intervention. And this can be tested. And the more we test it, and the better we test it, the worse it performs. Sorry, boys. Much as it’s painful, you need to read the books, try to understand what we’re on about and realise you’re barking up the wrong tree.
Lenny
IN a response, I answer:
Isn’t it hilarious that everything the anti-homeopathy crowd says against homeopathy ends up being true for them? Look at this comment by Lenny in response to “The Disease Only Homeopathy Can Cure.” He’s so contradictory he even contradicts himself.
He says, “If homeopathy worked, we’d use it.”
LOL! Homeopathy DOES work and we DO use it. Just look at the figures for usage worldwide. It certainly outperforms the gilded crap Lenny’s trying to peddle. Cubans in 2007 issued 2.5 million doses of homeopathics and stopped the leptospirosis epidemic in their highest risk region, while it went up 22% in untreated regions. And this is typical of epidemiological studies comparing homeopathy against allopathy. How does Lenny explain that? Look up the stats in Bradford’s Logic of Numbers if you don’t believe it.
Then Lenny says “Even if we didn’t understand how it worked, even though it confounded all known physics, we’d be all over it like a rash. But it doesn’t. At least not beyond placebo.”
As I’ve pointed out, people in countries that don’t have their media controlled by racketeers like Pfizer, they ARE all over it like a rash, and like a rash it is growing. And it doesn’t confound all known physics. Apparently Lenny didn’t hear my talk at the Cavendish Laboratory.
Well, you can’t condemn a man for being ignorant, but you can for being arrogant, and that’s what Lenny is. He’s arrogant, he makes assumptions about things, he fails to ask important questions, and doesn’t recognize superior intelligence when he reads it.
Here’s the prima facie truth of the Beddington Lunacy. Lenny says it doesn’t work, and then he qualifies it by saying it doesn’t work any better than placebo. But wait . .Lenny! That means it DOES work, you just said so. You implied placebo works, so you believe homeopathy works. So you agree, homeopathy works! And that’s even with hordes like you and 10:23 running around saying it doesn’t! pretty strong placebo!
Does anyone but me and my colleagues see how stupid people have become? Lenny’s not the only one, Professor Sir John Beddington, Chief Scientific Advisor of the Fourth Reich, who wants the Third World to die in an epidemic so they won’t invade Britain, says the same damn thing as Lenny.
“In a recent article in a UK newspaper, it was inferred by this reporter that the Chief Science advisor of the UK government announced to the public, especially those in the Third World countries, (the ones Britain failed to oppress during compulsive b0uts of Anglo imperialism) should not use homeopathy. Homeoapthics, he says, have no science to back them up and are no better than placebo.”
“Doctor, does homeoapthy work?”
“Of course it works, it’s a placebo! The Chief Scientist and a chap named Lenny say so! And if that isn’t enough, it’s been tested on a couple million Cubans and they’re about to invade Britain!”
Given homeoathy’s superior performance in epidemics, it is easy to calculate Beddington’s phobia of homeoapthy in supercharging the Third World to overthrow Beddington’s Fourth Reich. Have you noticed how uppity the Indians have been lately? And they take dilutes by the bowlful.
In fact, from the sound of it, Lenny could very well BE Beddington in disguise. He might as well be. Like Lenny Beddington says, “Sorry, boys. Much as it’s painful, you need to read the books, try to understand what we’re on about and realise you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
Those books would be the “Organon of Medicine” by Hahnemann, and the repertorized materia medica by James Tyler Kent, MD for one, and John Henry Clarke, MD, for another, plus Kaviraj’s works on agrohomeoapthy. And a book with some simle phrases in Hindi like, “Please don’t kill me.”
Professor Sir Lenny Beddington is wrong and Kaviraj, as always, is right.
Unfortunately for the Fourth Reich, homeopathy works.
John Benneth, PG Hom – London (Hons.)
The John Benneth Journal 
