RENAME THE HOMEOPATHIC REMEDY TO STOP EBOLA

[John Harvey]

Cripes, John B., you're nothing if not brave.

Actually, at first I thought it was Irene thanking me for weighing in on this discussion, and I thought that that was unusual. It was only when I asked myself who the second "cat woman" must be that I thought to check!
My overarching response to your suggestions here, as intellectually stimulating as they are, is that I think that if we're not to jump from the frying pan into the fire, we need to be careful to ensure that our terminology reflects truly, clearly, and unambiguously only that which is both demonstrably true and evidenced convincingly in the literature. Two centuries of laxity in referring to something like Aconite 6x or Pulsatilla M as a "homoeopathic medicine" or "homoeopathic remedy" have left us wide open to criticism of homoeopathy through the back door it's left open: confusion of dynamisation with homoeopathicity. Let's not make such a mistake again.

So: what does the literature tell us about the medicines we use? What do we absolutely know about them?

Well, really, what is most readily evident of them is their history. We know that each began its medicinal career as an identifiable "single, simple substance" with the power (though not necessarily in that form, e.g. silica) to derange human physiology from a healthy dynamically balanced state. Some remain in that form but are dispensed in a vehicle of a liquid solvent (possibly infused into lactose); many are used in diluted form; many are so highly diluted that their persistence beyond a concentration that would occur through blowing in the wind is a matter of statistical probability. This should, we know, prevent them from either deranging or correcting health, but strangely the manner of their dilution -- used as a means of thorough mixing for exact calculation of the dose -- led to discovery of a property not fully researched and understood yet, by which serial cycles of succussion and dilution demonstrably cause the diluent (or eluent?) to retain some of the properties of the eluted medicine. No longer a dilution but an elution (since the medicine has effectively been diluted beyond probably existence in the vial), such materially "pure" samples of water, or water and alcohol, or (in the physics labs) other solvents, or (triturated) lactose nevertheless demonstrate interesting properties; are physically distinguishable from chemically identical samples; and, most helpfully, persist in biological activity in much the same manner as the undiluted medicines that they began their careers as.
What else can we say about these strange nothingnesses that we continue to regard as medicines?

• It's demonstrable that the process we call dynamisation or potentisation in some way activates the substance: that the dynamised medicine's action in deranging health retains the same character of derangement, if not the same degree of toxicity, as its original crude form does; and that dynamisation similarly extends the length of time over which a single small dose may do so.

• It's similarly demonstrable that a medicine that, in a merely small dose, acts (on the basis of its homoeopathicity to his or her condition) for somebody's general improvement for a short period, in "homoeopathic potency" acts in much the same way for longer, thus allowing it to act also more deeply.

• It is sometimes observable that the latter follows from the former. That is, we observe that a medicine acts to cure even in "potency" because, as we observe, even in "potency" its medicinal disease is implanted in the susceptible subject: the subject whose symptoms already sufficiently resemble those that the medicine tends to induce!
These things are, if somewhat surprising, entirely plain and straightforward. Understanding of them requires suspension, pending evidence, merely of one belief: the belief that chemistry fully determines biological activity. And I think that it's a benefit to the discussion for us to acknowledge (as I always do) straight off that these findings are unexpected and strange. To claim that they follow from some "universal law" or that such phenomena are common in life is to invite contempt. These phenomena are not commonly observed; they do not evidently reflect some greater truth or universality; and they are not easy to explain.

That said, in my experience, biological materialism is, in thinking people, easy to dislodge from its perch through a number of observations, including:

• a few of the kind that Irene usefully tossed in, concerning the reality of electricity and magnetism in what may be pure iron and the varying properties of the several states of water;

• the discovery that hot water freezes differently from cold water;

• the uniqueness of liquid water in many aspects, including the versatility and resonating capacity of its bonds and, naturally, the various crystalline structures that it adopts and continues to propagate independent of chemical contact;

• the biological effects of (non-ionising) energies of various kinds, including high- and low-pitched acoustic energy, UV A and (in a quite different way) UV B radiation, and microwaves (e.g. in stimulating cataract formation);

• anything else that tends to demonstrate that chemical identity is not the be-all and end-all, or even a wholly predictable determinant, of biological activity.

All of these things serve to show that the high-school chemistry in which all forms of water are physically and biologically equivalent is way out of date, and that no comprehensive understanding of medicine can ignore that a substance's physical structure and dynamic physical activity are significant factors in its medicinal activity.

Let me recapitulate that. With any of the above examples, you demonstrate to your listener that a substance's physical structure and dynamic physical activity are significant factors in its medicinal activity.
This task -- the task of showing somebody the plausibility of the notion that serially succussed and diluted ultradilutions of a single, simple substance may retain biological activity -- is not at all hard if we stick with the facts. I have no difficulty whatever in face-to-face explanations of this to newcomers to the subject, no matter how highly educated they are -- because I stick to what I know and they can confirm, and I don't ask them to swallow more than is good for them!
The task becomes far more difficult, I contend, if you're forced to bolster your explication of what a homoeopathic potency is with theoretical considerations that are beyond the known. Yes, it's highly probable that clathrates are involved; it's almost certain that bond resonances are involved; perhaps in certain instances beta radiation has suggested tritium formation; but the very uncertainties in these mechanisms calls into question the truth of what they purport to explain. If I'm questioned about how activity in what is, chemically, an ultradilution is possible, I mention a few of these observations as considerations that have been observed and are being studied as possible mechanisms; but the truth is that at this stage we (that is, I) don't absolutely know which of these mechanisms come into play, and that's what I tell my listener -- my emphasis always being upon its actually not mattering, as long as it happens and we can take advantage of it to reduce toxicity.
The task of opening the (fairly) critical mind becomes not merely difficult but truly impossible if you throw into the explanation fairy tales the truth of which nobody is in a position to demonstrate. Such contentions include, to this day, as far as I'm aware:

• that a potentised medicine may operate remotely;

• that a substance exposed to sunlight, moonlight, or mobile-phone radiation and then potentised differs in biological activity from the similarly potentised unexposed substance;

• that the biological activity of a substance in a non-human organism is predictable from knowledge of its activity in humans; and

• that homoeopathic medicines are made of energy.

All such desperate contentions escalate the implausibility of the potentised medicine, the implausibility (and gullibility) of their contender, and -- unfortunately and unfairly -- the implausibility (and ignorance) of homoeopathy, at least of the homoeopathy that such desperate claims seek to "explain".

Even more damage to homoeopathy's credibility, it needn't be said, do express delusions along the lines of successful medical treatment through pocketing a piece of paper naming a potentised medicine, and self-serving beliefs of self-selection by a medicine to act uniquely on a patient who has swallowed some concoction of substances each selected as being "homoeopathic" to a patient's single symptom.
All of this may seem to be off the topic, but I think you can see where I'm heading: toward the proposition that any generic appellation for the potentised substance should reflect no more than we know about it -- at peril of necessitating justification of the frankly unjustifiable.

From that point of view, I think we have to leave alone not only "energy medicine" and other such nonsense, but even "ionised", "radioactive", and certainly "isotopic" -- at least until such time as the matter is settled.

What does that leave us with in the meantime?

• history (i.e. single, simple substance, usually but not always diluted and succussed, diluted and succussed, diluted and succussed);

• effects (i.e., retention of certain physical and biological properties, evidently in connection with properties of ionic solvents and especially powerful in solutions of water and alcohol);

• detectability (i.e., machine-detected differences between potentised substances and chemically indistinguishable solvents).

(Naturally, I'm leaving out of this the matter of a medicine's homoeopathicity to the patient, which is not inherent in any medicine, howsoever prepared.)

I'm not sure we can name anything else that, in describing our potentised medicines, we can say is certainly true.
In all of this, though, let's never lose sight of the critical and first function of the process of potentisation. That function is not to create a homoeopathic medicine, or to make a medicine stronger, or to make it act more deeply, or to make it act for longer. Historically and today, the primary function of potentisation is merely to enable us to use toxic substances in doses low enough to avoid toxicity. The happy discovery that there is no lower limit to the sufficient dose is an accident of history. The creation of dilutions high enough to avoid toxicity while still able to stimulate a response through the homoeopathic relationship remains its primary purpose.

If we bear that fact in mind, we may yet steer ourselves and others clear of the rocks of confusion of two questions: the plausibility of homoeopathy, and the plausibility of predictable biological activity in serial dynamised ultradilutions. These questions are utterly distinct and completely independent, and so are their answers.
Cheers --

John
--
“The job of the press is to speak truth to power… In these times of secrecy and abuse of power there is only one solution – transparency. If our governments are so compromised that they will not tell us the truth, then we must step forward to grasp it… If our governments will not give this information to us, then we must take it for ourselves.
“When whistleblowers come forward we need to fight for them, so others will be encouraged. When they are gagged, we must be their voice. When they are hunted, we must be their shield. When they are locked away, we must free them. Giving us the truth is not a crime. This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it.
“Courage is contagious.”
—Sarah Harrison, Wikileaks journalist in exile in Russia,

[healthinfo6]

Jon Benneth wrote:
As a native NYC-er, I'm bombarded daily on local TV, newsprint, internet ads heavily promoting Broadway shows and theatre which NYC highly depends on for tourism.
I've never had much interest in theatre arts being mainly tech, science, business and non-fiction and have some friends who also act as muses that provide info when needed. A Broadway show ticket I received gratis last month was $169 for last row of front mezzanine, so even when discounted it's now too expensive to attend many shows. I'm told London is a much better bargain.
Never having heard of the cat woman of Chaillot, a Google search revealed Batman TV shows and the play/movie Mad Woman of Chaillot, the play with Angela Lansbury and movie with Katherine Hepburn.
You can read about it, the double entendre is hilarious
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Madwoman_of_Chaillot
May I suggest Irene sing a tune from a more well known Broadway show/movie, South Pacific

BTW, last year I met former Miss America 1955, Lee Meriwether, who played Catwoman in a 1966 Batman movie and has extensive TV, movie credits (Mission Impossible, Barnaby Jones) and had performed on Broadway.
She was singing in a one nite tribute to Joan Andersen, who was in Oklahoma, the movie.
She's now 79, all silver haired and I asked her if she can still purr like Catwoman, she answered "Why, Of Course!"
Susan

[John R. Benneth]

John H. . .
In regards to rebranding the homeopathic remedy, you talk about what it is we know absolutely about the homeopathic remedy . .
I agree with you that that we should be impeccable about our choice of nomenclature . . What I'm asking is that we work on agreeing what the highly diluted (or eluted) materials be called as a genera in regards to their physico-chemical attributes. Currently they are in one way or another referred to as to what's NOT in them, as "dilutes."
In addition to in vitro and in vitro evidence of biological action, there are now two physical indices for dilutes that distinguishes them as verum from their relatively inert aqueous vehicle: supramolecular structure and wide spectrum radiance.
Unfortunately for the position that by association imponderbilia, such as the Light of Venus, makes hard source remedy domains look foolish, remedies made from immaterial radiant sources, such as Sol and X-ray, have provings and long histories of clinical action. Recently, Pollack at the University of Washington demonstrated that sunlight restructures water into H3O, showing that radiant sources, such as the Light of Venus, can indeed create structural differences in aqueous solutions, and I presume they also have unique emissive indices as well, as could be measured by Montagnier and Benveniste.
So the question still remains, how is the remedy to be known?
jb
In a message dated 8/6/2014 8:05:13 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, minutus@yahoogroups.com writes:
John Benneth, Homoeopath
PG Hom - London (Hons.)
http://johnbenneth.com
SKYPE: John Benneth (Portland, Oregon)
503- 819 - 7777 (USA)

[John Harvey]

Hi, John B --

This does return us, in a light way, to our earlier conversation, doesn't it! I take your point about the value of referring to what is rather than to what is not in the medicine; it's a good thought.

It's interesting, too, what you have to say about Sol and X-ray. A good report would offer me greater confidence in the H3O restructure by sunlight, though, than any number of vague clinical assertions have given me in the persistence of any consistent biological effects in potencies of Sol and X-ray. (And the variables entering into a "medicine" that somebody attempts to make from "mobile-phone radiation" hardly bear thinking about!) Has Pollack by any chance shown persistence of this structure through a number of degrees of dynamisation?
To return to the point of what is present in the highly potentised medicine: I think we can easily do this by asking ourselves what we know; listing this as characteristics; and creating a definition from them. We know about a particular potentised medicine:

• Its history.

• Speaking in a deliciously loose way, that the dose of original medicine has become immaterial.

• The number of dynamisation cycles it has endured, and the degree of dilution at each cycle.
• Its consequent (material) dosage, with reasonably high precision.

• Its biological activity, in enormous and utterly relevant detail.

• Its power of penetration and persistence in activity in comparison with its crude form.

• Its detectability by various physical techniques.

• Its structuredness.

• The ease with which its structuredness and certain kinetic activity persist.

• Its biological activity's dependence on its structure (but possibly also on its kinetic activity).

That seems to me to about cover what we know of potentised medicines in general, but if anybody can think of other things that we know (not surmise) of the potentised medicine, please say so.
From these aspects that we know, we could perhaps derive a list of characteristics. A highly potentised medicine created from a medicine (ideally, but not necessarily, one whose primary effects we are familiar with, though we can't apply it homoeopathically if not) has the characteristics of:

• embedding (in every case examined) the biological activity (and certain other properties?) of a particular medicinal substance;

• constituting a precisely calculated immaterial dose of that original substance;

• embedding the known biological activity of the material substance in the structure of the (ionic) solvent.

(For the purpose of keeping this relatively straightforward, let's make the fairly safe assumption that a lactose tablet's ability to retain its potency follows either from its retention of a little of the dynamised aqueous medicine with which it was medicated or from its molecular -- most likely O–H -- bonds' capacity to resonate with the O–H bonds in water and alcohol.)
If these three points substantially embody what it is that we know about a potentised medicine, then one possible way to describe it that sticks to what we know is as:

• a precisely calculated immaterial dose of a medicine whose biological activity is preserved in the structure and kinetic activity of an ionic solvent.

Does that sound fair enough?

Of course, if it is fair enough, then we'll need to reduce it to a shorthand term for everyday use. But does it serve to accurately -- and sufficiently fully -- define for the scientifically literate newcomer to homoeopathy what it is that we know we have in the bottle?

Cheers --

John