homeopathy mentioned in New Scientist article
Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 6:23 pm
http://space.newscientist.com/article.n ... 524911.600
4 Belfast homeopathy results MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's
University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its
claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample
was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet
still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and
for all that homeopathy was bunkum.
In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects
of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved
in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are
under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more.
The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic
solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine
molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the
homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.
So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving
things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then
diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the
level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of
imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes,
it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.
You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no
homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised
placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation
Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are,"
Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting
them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results
turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to
rewrite physics and chemistry.
Œ
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
4 Belfast homeopathy results MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's
University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its
claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample
was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet
still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and
for all that homeopathy was bunkum.
In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects
of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved
in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are
under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more.
The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic
solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine
molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the
homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.
So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving
things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then
diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the
level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of
imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes,
it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.
You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no
homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised
placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation
Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are,"
Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting
them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results
turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to
rewrite physics and chemistry.
Œ
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]