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Just How Dilute are Homeopathic Remedies?
Homeopathy operates on a principle that the more dilute a “remedy”, the more potent it becomes.
Homeopathy makes no sense, and it doesn’t work, but people still cling to it even though it is simply an over glorified placebo effect.
Many homeopathic remedies are diluted to the point that not a single molecule of the original ingredient remains. Just HOW dilute is this?
Steve D wrote a post called “Putting Homeopathy in Perspective” and uses a very pretty visual: Felicia Day.
For example, one such homeopathic dilution is called 3C, which means the remedy was diluted to 1 part in 100, 3 times. This is approximately the number of Felicias in the world who are Felicia Day:
The post is really quite awesome and very well illustrates how ridiculous homeopathy is. Especially since some homeopathic remedies go up to 200C! To have even a single molecule of the original substance still in a sample of a 200C dilution, you would need a sample the size of not only our ENTIRE UNIVERSE, but
100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
ADDITIONAL UNIVERSES! (Thats 10320 in scientific notation).
It boggles the mind.
Show Homeopathy Works, Win A Million Dollars!
On Saturday, February 5th 2011, skeptics from 10 different countries took a mass overdose of homeopathic “remedies”.
Everyone was ok.
It was part of the 10:23 campaign, which I blogged about on Friday. The point of the demonstration was to show that these products are not medicine, and do absolutely nothing.
Concurrently with the demonstration, James Randi of the James Randi Educational Foundation issued a challenge to Homeopaths. The challenge is quite simple:
Show that a homeopathic remedy works better than a placebo for ANY illness, in a double-blind clinical trial designed by YOU, the homeopath, and supervised by reputable scientists. If you can show a statistically significant effect in a study of this kind, you will win $1 million for yourself, or the charity of your choice.
If homeopathy worked, this challenge would be an easy win for homeopaths. If a homeopathic remedy did anything at all, it would show a statistically different effect than a placebo. Of course, this type of study has been done many, many, many times and the results are remarkably consistent: homeopathy does not work.
James Randi gives a very nice explanation about the ideas behind homeopathy, which unfortunately are not common knowledge. My favourite quote from the video is
Many people think that the work ‘homeopathic’ just means ‘herbal’ or ‘natural’ medicine and they are shocked to learn what it really means. It should be a crime for pharmaceutical corporations to profit by denying the public this critical information about the products on their shelves.
It is extremely important that the truth about homeopathy becomes well-known. Particularly now, since I have just read on the Huffington Post (which I read when I am feeling masochistic) that a Doctoral degree is being offered in Homeopathy in the United States.
Those who graduate from the doctoral program will be qualified to diagnose illnesses and treat them with homeopathic medicine.
This is frightening. Many people have been harmed by seeking homeopathic treatment in the place of real medicine. And it just simply doesn’t work.
Homeopathy: There’s Nothing In It
This coming weekend, protesters from 10 different countries and 23 different cities will be overdosing on Homeopathic remedies in the 10:23 campaign.
Don’t worry. They’ll be fine.
The point of the demonstration is not only show that homeopathic remedies are nothing more than sugar pills and are merely placebos, but also to gain some publicity and get the word out that Homeopathy is pseudoscientific nonsense.
There are several Canadian cities participating in the demonstration as well:
- Montreal
- Vancouver
- Toronto
- Ottawa
- Kitchener
- Edmonton
- Winnipeg
For those who don’t know, 10:23 is a reference to Avogadro’s number, which is 6.022 x 1023. It is a number used frequently in chemistry to link the number of atoms of a particular substance to the mass of the substance (specifically it is the number of atoms in 12 grams of the Carbon-12 isotope). In essence it links the microscopic and macroscopic world.
It is a fitting name for this campaign since homeopathic remedies are diluted to the point that virtually (or literally) no atoms or molecules of active ingredient remains. The products are, in fact, only sugar pills.
The event is being organised by the Merseyside Skeptics Society. The event will culminate on February 6th when more than 300 people will overdose on homeopathic “medicine” at the QED conference in Manchester.
This comes at a particularly good time in Canada. The recent episode of Marketplace on CBC about Homeopathy (called “Cure or Con”) has raised quite a stir. In that episode, a small group of skeptics in Vancouver gave a demonstration of an overdose of homeopathic medicine. Nothing happened.
So hopefully this weekend’s events will garner some strong media attention and help expose this practice for what it is: nonsense.
Thanks To CBC Marketplace’s Erica Johnson
A few days ago, I wrote a post about the CBC Marketplace episode on Homeopathy called “Cure or Con?”
I was quite pleased with the episode, and made that known. I also decided I would send my appreciation to the host of the show, Erica Johnson via Twitter.
I didn’t expect a response, but to my surprise she was kind enough to this nerdy little internet blogger a message back.
There certainly is a lot of animosity towards her and the episode from homeopaths, mainly because they are running out of options on how to defend their practice. The evidence is quite clear that homeopathy is nothing but a placebo, and homeopaths are bilking honest consumers out of their money.
Perhaps more importantly, they are putting people at a huge health risk if they choose homeopathic remedies rather than real medicine.
Just know that you have lots of supporters Erica, and don’t let the Homeopaths nonsense get to you!
CBC Marketplace Crushes Homeopathy
Homeopathy is bull. 100% pure organic bull.
And for once, reality TV delivered everything I had hoped for.
An episode of CBC’s Marketplace aired tonight puts homeopathy to the test. I watched it, and I still can’t believe how happy I was with the episode.
I was expecting some science with mostly woo trying to make a “balanced” view for the story. Boy was I pleasantly surprised.
In this weeks episode, CBC Marketplace host Erica Johnson heads out to try and find the evidence of efficacy behind homeopathy. What she finds is excuses, loopholes and shrugging shoulders.
One homeopath even went so far as to warrant the treatment of stage 1 breast cancer with homeopathy. A claim met with (unexpected) skepticism from this TV show. How does it work? “We’re not really sure” she replied. Are you freakin’ kidding me!?!
The episode also featured a piece about a group from the Canadian group from the Centre for inquiry, a skeptic group, who went outside a Vancouver hospital and purposefully overdosed on a variety of homeopathic medicines. The result? Yeah they’re fine.
But as one of them pointed out, the real tragedy would be if someone gave their child homeopathic medicines instead of real medicine. In fact, homeopaths are selling “vaccines” for a huge range of diseases, including whooping-cough and, yes even polio. Are you freakin’ kidding me!?!
Homeopathic remedies have no active ingredient. None, whatsoever. They have been diluted to the point that no single pill has any active ingredient in them. To think that these pills could actually have any effect on the body is ludicrous. Yet because of tradition, these medicines have been given credence and even legitimacy by the Canadian government.
It is incredibly irresponsible of our government to give this kind of credibility to a product that, well, has no credibility! Its crap!
Homeopathy has been debunked time, and time, and time again. It has no credible science behind it, no logic behind it, and now it doesn’t even have the CBC behind it (whom I have criticized of late).
So great job CBC. Hopefully Ontario takes the hint and will get rid of its plans to regulate the sale of homeopathic medicine and call it “witchcraft” like the British government.
Update: You can now watch the full CBC Marketplace episode of “Cure or Con” here.
Homeopathy “Tricks You” Into Feeling Better? *Facepalm*
Homeopathy is a form of Complementary and Alternative Medicine which has been largely discredited by the medical community. At its core, it is the belief that by diluting a substance to extremely small amounts, often until none of the active ingredient remains in the final product, makes the remedy more potent.
It makes no sense, and it doesn’t work. Yet because of tradition and some unfortunate legislation in 1938 in the United States, Homeopathy is still around.
A study was published earlier this week in the journal Rheumatology. Some news outlets are saying that the outcome shows that homeopathy “tricks you” into feeling better. This made me feel like poor Captain Picard here.
The study examined 5 groups of patients suffering from Rheumatoid arthritis. It split these participants into 5 groups:
- Those that received consultation and individualized treatment from a Homeopath
- Those that received consultation and complex treatment from a Homeopath (complex treatment is giving the patient a group of standard homeopathic remedies which are not tailored specifically to the patient).
- Those that received consultation from a Homeopath but given a placebo.
- Those that received no consolation and given complex treatment.
- Those that received no consolation and given a placebo.
The groups were blinded as to whether they received a placebo or a real treatment, but obviously you couldn’t blind them to whether or not they received a consultation.
I won’t go into all the data analysis or statistics, but the results eventually state that there was no difference between the placebo treatment and homeopathic treatment, which is not surprising.
However, the authors go on to assert that there was a significant difference between those that received a consultation and those that didn’t, and that this is evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy.
From the Telegraph:
Dr Sarah Brien, the study’s lead author, said that while previous research had suggested homeopathy could help patients with rheumatoid arthritis, the study provided the first scientific evidence to show such benefits were “specifically due to its unique consultation process”.
There are a few problems with this. The first is that the study is fairly small, therefore the power of their results is not high enough to make any broad stroke conclusions about the efficacy of homeopathy.
Second, the group which received a consultation was not adequately compared to anything. Comparing a homeopathic consultation to no consultation, and then claiming that homeopathy made these people feel better is not a sound conclusion. The authors should have compared the group receiving a homeopathic consultation to a group which received some other form of personal consultation or experience, like speaking with a medical doctor or hell, even a motivational speaker!
Steven Novella gives a good explanation on Science-Based Medicine about the Hawthorne effect which can have a significant impact on a study. Having the personal experience of speakin to a person may make for a better patient outcome, but it certainly does not prove any efficacy of homeopathy itself.
Why Homeopathy is Stupid and Dangerous
There are a lot of quacks out there. People will do, say or sell anything for a buck. And unfortunately, the field of “medical therapies” has long been victim to such quackery.
Homeopathy is one of the more prolific of these pseudosciences. It operates on a principle that by diluting a remedy in water, you can make it more effective. In fact, homeopaths claim that the remedy gets more effective in smaller concentrations. This is what homeopaths call the “Law of Infinitesmals”.
Now common sense should already be telling you that this is bogus. But lets do some history, and then science will blast apart homeopathy.
From xkcd
In the late 1700s a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) developed the underlying theories of homeopathy. He believed that symptoms of disease could be cured by administering small amounts of substances that would cause the same symptoms in healthy people. This is called the “Law of Similars”. He further believed that chronic diseases were caused by the presence of evil miasmas or spirits in the body.
Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)
So, homeopaths have a text called the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia. Within, you will find over a thousand homeopathic “remedies”. Which remedy, and in what concentration, to use on a certain patient is evidently at the discretion of the practitioner. Basically this means you could see two different homeopaths and receive two different treatments for the same illness. Hmmm…..
To show you how dumb this stuff is, consider the following:
A “remedy” called Oscillococcinum is prepared by diluting freeze dried duck heart and liver. The dilution is supposed to be what homeopaths call 200C, which means the concentration is 1 part in 100200
For the non-scientific, this number is a 1 followed by 400 zeros. That this small concentration could have any effect at all is mind boggling.
In fact, the laws of chemistry state that there is a limit to how far one can dilute a solution (about 1 part in 10012, which is far greater than that of Oscillococcinum). Hahnenmann was aware of this, but proposed that by vigorously shaking the solution the water will retain a kind of “memory” or “essence” of the active ingredient. Thus, even if none of the active ingredient remains in the water, the water will somehow “remember” it was there and give the same effect.
Homeopathy has never been shown to do anything greater than a placebo effect. There are many studies and reviews looking at the scientific evidence. One such review noted that:
Homeopathy has been the subject of at least 12 scientific reviews, including meta-analytic studies, published since the mid-1980s….[And] the findings are remarkably consistent:….homeopathic “remedies” are not effective.
In addition, at a meeting of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors in May 2010, Dr. Tom Dolphin, deputy chairman, said:
Homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a disgrace that nestling between the National Hospital for Neurology and Great Ormond Street there is a National Hospital for Homeopathy which is paid for by the [National Health Service]. (emphasis mine)
In should be noted that there has been a small smattering of studies suggesting a statistically significant effect of homeopathy over a placebo. However, these studies have never been shown to be reproducible and are heavily criticized for their poor scientific methodologies. Homeopathy proponents will tout these studies proudly; but a simple bit of research, or even just reading the papers will show the weaknesses in any of these studies.
So why do people continue to believe in this stuff? Well there are a couple of reasons.
The first is that when Hahnemann began developing homeopathy, treatments such as bloodletting were ubiquitous. Bloodletting, if you didn’t already know, is extremely dangerous and ineffective as a medical treatment.
So when someone arrived on the scene offering medical “remedies” which don’t involve opening people’s veins, and sometimes even make the patient feel better (the placebo effect) it garnered a lot of attention.
Secondly, the placebo effect can be significant. And word of mouth is a powerful force. So when one person says they feel better after seeing a homeopath, people start to listen. In fact, studies have shown that people are more likely to listen to a friend than read the scientific evidence.
This is dangerous.
Touting the placebo effect as a medical treatment is wrong and terrible. It causes people to choose pseudoscientific treatments over science-based medical treatment, which can lead to disastrous results and even death.
Furthermore, it leads to unscientific thinking. Once we start believing in homeopathy, whats next? Faith healing? Aliens listening to our thoughts? Its a very slippery slope and it needs to be stopped.
Thirdly, some insurance companies cover homeopathic treatments and some governments cover it in their public health plan. So we are all footing the bill in our insurance premiums or taxes for a therapy that simply does not work.
So my final words? Homeopathy sucks. It doesn’t work. It steals money from sick people who believe they are being treated for their illness. It takes advantage on the hopes of sick people to make a profit, and it is disgusting.
A Quantum of Knowledge 