Minutus

I agree with Didi, Irene's detective work is fantastic, but plain repertorization drom three sources conclude the remedy for Ebola is Crot-h, and now here's Didi's telling us that she's actually aware of a case of Ebola being cured by . . Crot-h!
For an empirical science, this is what I've been waiting for, to hear if Crot -h has actually worked on Ebola, and its just as so far suspected. Like Didi says, its' not ever really exclusive of an indicated potential, this is what reportedly has worked.
Which remedy is best is not really the problem. The relevant leap is always the chronic issue for homeopathy, and that's getting people convinced to use it. Homeopathy has become so battered its not even really a topic for discussion amongst the unwashed. It's either "homeopathy, what's that?" or "Homeopathy for Ebola?" BAM! and YOU wake up in the hospital.
It follows the old maxim of not letting them see you work, and not telling them how its done, which is exactly the problem with homeopathy, because the word homeopathy doesn't really tell people the physics or the chemistry of the medicine used in homeopathy are, in addition to telling them how its not so simply applied, it implies that what it is isn't known, which destroys its credibility.
So to sell the use of Crot-h or China or whatever for treatment of serious diseases for which there is no known cure, we need to first stop calling them "homeopathic remedies" and start calling them IONIZED PHARMACEUTICALS. Ionized is exactly what they are when potentized, and this comes from Sen. Royal S. Copeland, M.D., the Godfather of the FDA.

http://www.homeowatch.org/history/copeland.html

What we have to treat Ebola is an ionized peptide anti toxin. If they want to know what that is, it's nuclear medicine, a medical isotope made from a nuclear extract by a process of ionization of specific peptide toxins found in snake venoms.
Now of course this is homeopathic in its application, but so is the small pox vaccine, yet I know of nobody who has administered the small pox vaccine who has ever said that the small pox vaccine is homeopathic, yet that's exactly what it is, and although Hahnemann proved it and Clarke repeated it, most educated homeopaths won't admit it.
RENAME THE HOMEOPATHIC REMEDY
So we have stop telling them how we work and start telling them what to use: IONIZED PHARMACEUTICALS. In other words, we have a potential vaccine.
GET THE RIGHT PERSON TO MAKE THE PRESENTATION TO PRESIDENT SIRLEAF
Second, the right person has to make the presentation, and the best person for that job is the former director of the NIH, homeopathically educated Wayne Jonas, M.D.
Jonas was co author of the Linde meta analysis of clinical studies of homeopathy and other reviews of the literature, and most importantly, he has tested ionized tularemia on mice for successful prophylaxis of rabbit fever for the US Dept of Defense for potential use against bioweapons and diseases for which there are no known vaccines.
Let's get him in front of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, to sell her on the use of ionized peptide anti-toxins to treat Ebola.
Who's with me on this?
John Benneth
503 819 7777
In a message dated 8/3/2014 4:14:08 A.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)

Re crot-h for Ebola, if I am remembering correctly, that is perfectly in line with Irene's description also, since -- if I remember correctly -- part of what rattlesnake poison (crot-h) causes, is the same " DIC, which stands for Disseminated (widespread) Intravascular (inside the blood vessels) Coagulopathy (blood coagulates)" occurring in Ebola.
Whether the person dies from the DIC or from the dehydration *caused* by the DIC, perhaps that is arguing over angels and heads of a pin…?
Shannon

You can not call homeopathy some invented unrelated name like Ionized.
there are no ions involved in homeopathy, and a remedy is not made by "ionizing", much less by any form of jonizing radiation which is a whole different subject area.

There is enough confusion on what homeopathy is, without inventing chemistry that does not apply. That only makes homeopaths look like total fools.

On the matter of ebola's genus epidemicus, it is not known till a remedy has been proved to resolve multiple cases of ebola.

If a hundred people repertorize the same remedy, that does not make it correct. Take FIP for example. At least a hundred people have repertorized APIs for it. But it is wrong. Correctness has to do with logic, not multiple repetition of the same errors.

The latter is what gave us earth as the center of universe, and a flat planet, the impossibility of airplane flight, and other fictions.

If Crot-h helped one case of ebola' then jt belongs on the remedy list of options for ebola.
But no more YET.

Namaste,
Irene

Irene writes:
Most homeopaths already look like total fools due to their refusal, if not inability, to conventionally identify the physical basis of their materials. Our opponents say, "oh, its just plain water," and
I have yet to hear or read ONE homeopath get up on his or her hind legs and respond to that with the analog of ditritium oxide, which is also "just plain water" except that it's become radioactive.
How does that happen? How does water go from being mundane tap water to super heavy water and get a job as the trigger for a nuclear explosion? Does it just jump into a phone booth and strip down to red underwear over blue leotards that sport a red T on a big yellow badge for Tritium on its chest? Where does all this radiation come from?
This is a simple analog, yet its not using being used to illustrate the radioaction of hte homeopathic remedy. SO why would anyone expewct a hjomeopath to come up with a dissertation on ionization of pharmaceuticals by the dissociation of molecules?
Water has the redox capability of self radiolysis to pull apart guest molecules and ionize them.
Now, what I'm saying doesn't invent anything new here. Read this by Royal Copeland, MD, Godfather of the FDA:
Please allow for a moment an interruption of this amazing heretofore unknown discourse by one of homeopathy's greatest authorities, and as chief sponsor of the FDCA it's number one guardian in law, to highlight a sentence here in order to drive home the fact that the ionized pharmaceutical is the motive constituent of the homoeopathic remedy:
To finish this section of his dissertation, Copeland says:
IF someone has a better or more accurate term for the "homeopathic remedy" other than ionized pharamcetuical, TELL US WHAT IT IS.
In a message dated 8/3/2014 7:45:04 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)

I agree, but it does not make it okay to invent some fiction to use. If most homeopath do not know how it works they need to say so. Most allopaths do not know how their drugs work either.
In neither case is it an excuse to be rude and laugh at the professional. That only shows the ignorance of the one doing the laughing, who should be looking it up.
There are plenty of excellent homeopathy texts to explain what is known, as there are allopathic texts. For H, Bellavite and Signorini and Rozencwajg come to mind as starting place authors.
The real issue is that homeopathy works at the nanoparticle level and most humans have no concept much less basic education groundwork, on which to even try to understand the working of anything at that level. It is like trying to explain calculus to someone with second grade math. Worse actually, as the skeptics like to pretend they are math professors and there is nothing more to learn. These are horses (with apologies to real horses) you can not take to water, much less persuade to swim upstream doing backstroke.

IOW... The rudeness of those laughing is nothing to do with genuine interest. It is time THEY were called on it. THEY can go look it up if they are so interested.
We all hear that to the point of nausea. My answer is
"Yes, it is plain water chemically. Just as a magnet is plain iron chemically and a live electric wire is plain copper chemically. What is your point?"
"Are you saying there is no such thing as electricity, magnetism, or homeopathic energy or any other energy? Why are you hung up on the carrier instead of the energy? if you are, what is the research on which your view is based?"
Because that is not a valid comparison.
Deuterium is a totally different molecule than water.
Water is H2O (1 H atom and 2 O atoms)
Deuterium aka "heavy water" is H2O2 (2 H atoms and 2 O atoms)
It is chemically a very differrent substance.
It does not matter. This and other Chemical reactions are nothing to do with homeopathy.
But I like your superman description of chemical reactions.

It is irrelevant to homeopathy so why do YOU expect it?

Only inorganic molecules consist of ions which can dissociate in water solution. So what, half the molecule has positive charge/s and the other half has negative charge/s. So what, the two halves are still there' they gave not undergone any chemical reactions. Table salt is a good example. it is NaCl when solid, but the Na+ and the Cl - separate in water. This is nothing to do with homeopathy.
Most remedies are not simple inorganic molecules like salt. they are complex mixtures like pulsatilla plant and snake venom. No separation into ions is possible with those, and ion separation in water is irrelevant. Just the fact that some inorganic molecules ARE used as remedies and many organic mixtures are also used and BOTH work, shows the irrelevancy of any ion separation of the few remedies that are capable of so doing.

You also have confused separation of ions in water with chemical reactions such as whatever reaction is needed to make deuterium. There are NO Chemical reactions in homeopathy and dissociation of ions is not a chemical reaction.
No that is nonsense. You have confused ionization and radiolysis.
Ionization is the separation of two parts of an inorganic molecule into positive and negative components as in the salt example above.
Radiolysis is the radioactive (using nuclear radiation) breakdown of a molecule into two parts. There is no radioactive activity in homeopathy nor in any water solution made with a remedy. Your suggestion is totally off the wall and does not apply at all.
It sure does. Some very wild inventions and assertions.
You have invented that it matters somehow whether or not sodium chloride and other inorganic molecules that might be used as remedies, dissociate their ions in water solution (which they all do to a lesser or greater extent depending on the specific molecule and its dilution.....there are formal dissociation constants to describe exactly how much a specific inorganic substance can dissociate its ions in water). A very small minority of remedies are inorganic and able to dissociate. Are you suggesting homeopathy works differently for them?
There is no evidence for that at all.

Secondly, radiolysis is part of nuclear reactions, and is irrelevant and not part of homeopathy. There are no nuclear reactions when making a remedy.
If it is as goofy as your above theories....... I shall see how far I get with it...
This happens
This does not.
All remedies follow the same rules.
Only a very small minority of inorganic molecule remedies can dissociate their ions in water, as they happen to have IONIC BONDS and most remedies have no ions to dissociate as they are not inorganic molecules. They use other bonds, such as
COVALENT BONDS,
POLAR COVALENT BONDS OR
METALLIC BONDS.
Only Ionic bonds can dissociate in water. (Chemistry basics at fourh grade level.)
A meaningless statement
In his dreams
Thus an inorganic molecule with positively and negatively charged ions together in a molecule, such as sodium chloride, potassium chloride, etc
Yes
Nonsense.
The dissociated parts are ATOMS and are smaller than the joined parts which are MOLECULES.
(Anyone who cannot tell a molecule from an atom should go back to fourth grade and not be writing such rubbish.)
Yes
No. the MOLECULES are less in number.
NaCl is a molecule
Na+ is an atom and Cl- is an atom.
Obviously when they are together as a molecule the individual bits or molecules, are bigger than when they are separated into twice as many smaller bits.
Oh big deal. So if you dilute the salt in water enough it will ALL dissolve.
So it hangs out as Na and Cl and not as NaCl.
So what?
It is hardly some radical idea to any chemist or cook, and it is irrelevant to homeopathy as most substances used for homeopathy are not inorganic molecules. Remedies a made from sunshine, electromagnetic waves or celphone energy, plants, animal poisons, north pole magnetic force, and you name it,none of them being inorganic with ion dissociation in water.
This is all nonsense.
ONLy inorganic molecules dissociate.
MOST molecules in homeopathy and in chemistry, and on the planet, are not inorganic and are physically and chemically unable to dissociate into ions.
But from someone who does not know a molecule from an atom, one can hardly expect any sense to result from their consequent musings.
(Lord Kelvin's ideas are not applicable or relevant here. )
Complete ionization of inorganic molecules... In other words complete dissolving.....So what?
What about all the substances with zero ionization capability, the great majority of remedy substances?
This story that maybe not all molecules ionize is a so what issue.
Jonizing has never been shown to be relevant and coukd not. Possib,y be relevant inhomeopahry, for the simplereasok that mist remedies cannot ionize no matter how much you dilute them...for the simole rrason at their molecules do NOT have ionic bonds but other kinds of bones, or have NO bonds"
In other words the bonding type of remedy substances is not relevant, as homeopahty works regardles whethe rchemical bonds exist or not, and regardless what kinds of chemical binds exist. mist will be covalent or other complex bonds like benzene rings, phenols, etc. Ionic bonds in inorganic compounds are inthe minority. They can not be assumed to explain how homeopathy works.

The rest is more garbage concluded from garbage.
...
May be amazing but not in a good way!
Oh give me a break
He has not got fouth grade common knowledge
In your dreams too?

Nonsense.
The inorganic-bonded remedies (those with ionic bonds) may well ionize in water, but so what?
WELL ANYTHING IS MORE ACCURATE THAN A FALSE THEORY

At least now I know where you got this weird idea.

Suggest you read the works of Bellavite, Signorini and Rozencwajg
Plus the research on clathrates.
You will get a better idea of the complexity of how homeopathy works.

Any true explanation of mechanism, must explain ALL the things we know that do work in homeopathy, such as:
It works at a great distance.
It works through glass and needs no contact.
It works from remedies made from energy, eg cellphone waves
It works with remedies from any substance or energy.
It works on any living thing....plant or animal (including man)
Cats can detect a remedy, including a high potency remedy, and know if it is one they need.

(Hint: substance is not substantially different from energy...electromagnetic forces may well be involved.)

That we do not know all the answers yet on the mechanism, is not a deterrent to its use. Aspirin has been causing deaths from long before they figured how it works, if they did that yet. With homeopathy the results are more obvious and less dangerous. it is very hard to justify NOT using it.
Any so called skeptic is the one needing their head read.

They never spout their own thinking, they are the ultimate cowards when it comes to actually using their brain. Have you noticed?

So i think we need to turn the tables and MAKE them use it.
Proving homeopathy worth using is not our job .....we know that already.....it is their job to prove it is not worth using. And to do so they need to study it to know what they are talking about first.

Namaste,
Irene

Irene de Villiers, B.Sc, D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom

PO Box 4703, Spokane, WA 99220.
www.Angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/click here.html (FIP Research, Homeopathy Education)
"Man who say it can not be done should not interrupt one doing it"

Irene, you've managed to be insulting about what I feel is a critical issue when you don't need to be. I'm making a sincere effort here to solve a very difficult problem that goes to what I feel is the heart of the matter affecting the acceptance of what I know we both believe to be simply effective medicine, and you're attacking what is essentially theory, put forward by men who at one time were considered to be highly credible people, with your own theory, which is demonstrably more suspect.
Please understand that I am eager to be presented with a correction if one needs to be made in order to find a better nomenclataure for materials used as medicine in homeopathy, and yet you've seemed to have done nothing but attempt to aggrandize yourself at other people's expense.
What makes your assertions so suspect is that your own use of the technical nomenclature is flat out wrong, such as your identifying deuterium as H2O2.
You write, "Deuterium is a totally different molecule than water. Water is H2O (1 H atom and 2 O atoms)
Deuterium aka "heavy water" is H2O2 (2 H atoms and 2 O atoms) It is chemically a very different substance."
Deuterium is not a molecule, it is a hydrogen atom with a neutron added to its nucleus, annotated as 2H, not H2O2. Google it. H2O2 is HYDROGEN PEROXIDE, the same stuff you put on cuts and bleach your hair with, not deuterium. Heavy or deuterated water, formally deuterium oxide, annotated as 2H2O, or D2O, does NOT have an extra hydrogen atom in its water molecule, it has . . ONCE AGAIN . . additional NEUTRONS in the nuclei of its hydrogen atoms.
In the composition of its elements, D2O is the same as H2O
Furthermore, deuterium oxide is not what I was talking about. The analog I am proposing for the homeopathic remedy is ditritium oxide, T2O, (T=Tritium) or 3H2O, superheavy water in which there are two neutrons added to the hydrogen nucleus. T2O is known to be radioactive from its beta "particle" emissions. Back in the '80's Yves Lasne discovered that homeopathic remedies emit beta radiation, indicating the presence of tritium, which puts the homeopathic remedy in the class of medical isotopes. The beta scintillation test was reported in Conte's Theory of High Dilutions, of which Lasne was a co author.
So perhaps isotopic pharmaceutical would be a better term for the homeopathic remedy.
Once again, what does anyone think would be a better term describing the materials used in homeopathy?
In a message dated 8/5/2014 3:28:37 A.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)

I apologize for that, and have a tendency to get angry with approaches that have clearly not been looked into and have even the most basic of science principles violated as I see it. If someone does not have the science to come up with a theory involving it, then how can that be useful? As I see it you just adopted the fiction of some FDA bloke who did not do his homework. Being FDA is not an automatic credential to knowing what they are talking about Maybe that is the lesson here.
I realize that, but spreading imaginary science is likely to make that worse, not better. It takes some in depth homework to check out a theory to at least the common knowledge area of the science it invokes. In this case ordinary chemistry. Anyone who learns any chemistry at all learns that ionic bonds are only one kind of chemical bond out of many. That is not new science but basic science. Mr FDA was not making any sense and needs the wet noodle treatment for doing so when in a supposedly responsible position.
Yes. FOr now we can certainly claim homeopahty is effective medicine with reams of evidence to prove that.
I feel the attack warranted for reason it fails to know or consider absolutely basic chemistry knowledge, known for nearly two centuries and taught in schools. (Faraday explained ions in about 1830.)

What theory? I proposed none in my response, but suggested reading the work of Belavite, Signorini and Rozencwajg, and pointed out some homeopathic actions that need to fit within any theory.
Deuterium oxide is what I should have written, and yes it has heavy isotopes of hydrogen (unlike hydrogen peroxide) but which have no evidence whatsoever for any relevance in homeopathy.
My apologies, I goofed to leave off the oxide.

I was not concentrating on heavy water issues as they do not apply to any aspect of how homeopathy may or may not work. Homeopathy uses water. Plain ordinary water. There is no evidence to suggest any radoactive mechanism involved in homeopathy.
Lots of thigs are radioactive. That does not mean homepathy uses radioactivity or has anythg to do with it.
Theorized you mean
I see nothing to support this.
(and I have read your blog which jumps around with false conclusions much like the FDA guy)

So give me a real scientific reason to even consider that idea.
SHow me a study that proves a remedy is radioactive while a nonremedy of the same thing is not.
In other words show me how a succussed remedy and a nonsuccused remedy (which has no homeopathic ability) of say Lachesis, or Pulsatilla or Plumbum metallicum are different.

Namaste,
Irene

--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

Hello, John B.; hello, Irene --

I've read nothing so far of recent Ebola conversations here except for this short thread, but would like to ask both John B. and Irene some things on this topic, if I may.
John B:

First, I see what you're getting at; but is Irene onto something in saying that not all our remedies (even all those soluble in water) dissociate?
Second, it does seem a surprising thing for Copeland to have mentioned that ions are smaller than atoms rather than smaller than the molecules dissociating; and, in this respect, I'd have said Irene's correct in interpreting him to mean the latter. Any thoughts?
Third, of what Copeland writes there, I'm most intrigued by this sentence --

"The authorities agree that the dissociation increases with the dilution from the most concentrated solutions up to a dilution of about one one-thousandth normal"

-- which seems at odds with the rest of the discussion; in particular, with the sentence immediately following it:

"It is safe to assume that dissociation of the simplest drug is not complete under the sixth decimal dilution". What does he mean, do you think, by the earlier sentence?
Fourth and finally, Copeland's discussion seems implicitly to suggest that complete dissociation is sufficient, regardless of the paucity of ions present, without justifying that conclusion very well. Am I overlooking something? (This is, essentially, a restatement of Irene's "so what" question on the dissociation of NaCl.)
Irene:

First, you suggest that homoeopaths should make homoeopathy's critics do some of the work in explaining the facts of homoeopathy. Good suggestion, I think, in essence. But then, to exemplify what you consider to be "the things we know that do work in homeopathy" that they should explain, you contend that:

(a) "It works at a great distance";
(b) "It works through glass and needs no contact";
(c) "It works from remedies made from energy, eg cellphone waves";
(d) "It works with remedies from any substance or energy";
(e) "It works on any living thing....plant or animal (including man)"; and
(f) "Cats can detect a remedy, including a high potency remedy, and know if it is one they need".

Excepting possibly the first part of item (f), cats' detection of high-potency remedies, how are any of these matters central to showing either (a) that the homoeopathic principle is sound in obtaining curative responses or (b) that highly potentised (ultradilute) medicines have medicinal power? For starters, what do these critics and we understand in common by the word "works"? For that matter, what common understanding do you and other homoeopaths have of what it means for a medicine to "work"? Until your critics know that, they can't begin to address whether the contentions are of any significance whatever, whether they are relevant, or whether they are true, let alone what might explain them.

Just as importantly: if we knew that these things that you claim to be proven phenomena -- that is, items (a) to (f) -- were true and therefore required explanation, then surely we would have some evidence to show the truth of them. What evidence is there that any of these things is true? As far as I'm aware, there's no evidence proving any of these contentions -- though, again, we'd have to know what you meant by "works".

We'd also have to know what you mean by "it" (as in "It works"). Does "it" mean a medicine homoeopathic to the condition of the subject? Does "it" mean a medicine we call homoeopathic? Does "it" mean curative response to a medicine, or to a medicine in high potency, or does "it" include any medicinal response at all to a high-potency medicine?

And even (f), cats' detection of a medicine, even of a high-potency remedy, the one item here that (given good evidence for it) might seem to require explanation by homoeopathy's critics, requires some care. How is a cat's detection of, say, a low-potency (e.g. mother tincture, zero potency) medicine that the cat does not need relevant either to homoeopathy or to the plausibility of medicinal action by high-potency medicines? The obvious answer is that it is not relevant; so we may need to be careful about our claims as to what is truly relevant.
Second, a further clarification on top of John B.'s. In evident response to John B.'s correction of your apparent confusion of H2O2 for deuterium, you say: "Deuterium oxide is what I should have written". Actually, H2O2 is not deuterium oxide but hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen oxide, water, is H2O, as you know; the point John B. was making, I think, is that deuterium oxide is identical chemically to water: it is D2O (not H2O2), in which the D is deuterium, a hydrogen atom with an extra neutron. Is that clearer now?
Third, you say: "Only inorganic molecules consist of ions which can dissociate in water solution".
There are papers concerning the effects (e.g. at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/j100649a003) and rates (e.g. at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 7/abstract) of, and the energies required for (e.g. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 8088803841), dissociation of organic compounds in water. In fact, there's an entire book by Yu-Ran Luo titled Handbook of Bond Dissociation Energies in Organic Compounds, purporting to provide the amount of energy it takes to dissociate a particular organic compound in water. Do you and these chemists have radically different definitions of "organic compound", or is it possible that you meant something else entirely by "organic compounds"? Are you suggesting that though they dissociate, in doing so they do not form ions? If the latter, is there any evidence to suggest that to be the case? (Incidentally, to be pedantic, even inorganic molecules do not really consist of ions, since the ions arise by dissociation. Not that it matters between friends, but, in ranting at critics, it may be as well to avoid as much as possible falling into errors they can use against you as you've attempted to use this subtopic against John B., to demonstrate fundamental ignorance.)
Fourth, what on earth do you mean by your claim that Lachesis, Pulsatilla, and Plumbum have no "homoeopathic ability" when not succussed? I appreciate that it's unwise to use crude Lachesis venom in appreciable quantities or to use crude lead in any quantity at all in medicines, but your contention suggests that both these and Pulsatilla lack all possible curative relationship with a patient simply by virtue of their not having been succussed. Was that your intent? If not, what did you mean by the claim?
Cheers --

John

In a message dated 8/5/2014 9:36:53 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, minutus@yahoogroups.com writes:
Oh God, thank you John, what a relief that someone sane has weighed in on this "discussion." Please, I have too many dangerously ill and failing people waiting for me to attend to them, and I really don't have time to engage in this at any length, so please forgive me for trying to drag this back to the relevant point. This was about what I saw as the key problem for the "homeopathic remedy," that being that it doesn't have a description for what it is physico-chemically. Like Michaael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine yelled at me, "WHAT IS IT?"
I'm reaching out to he homeopathic community to come up with a desperately needed, accurate term for what it is they're dispensing, and the only thing I've got prior to your questioning, John H., are insults by the cat woman of Chaillot who thinks what she's been putting in her hair is heavy water.
And that's it from the Minutus list?
My reply to Shermer BTW was: "IT'S RADIOACTIVE!" to which THERE WAS NO RESPONSE!
Yes! He's referring to the net charge, the loss or gain of electrons . . WHICH ARE SMALLER THAN ATOMS!
I don't know. The question is, can we safely call the homeopahtic remedy an ionized pharmaceutical? Or does isotopic fit better than ionized? What's the technical term for the homeopahtic remedy?
What do you think?
You want to know what I think? I think "molecular dissociation" is a misnomer. I think molecules extrude. What I'm debating here in my own mind is whether the identifying term should refer to the physical, structural distinction of the remedy (supramolecular), what happens to the starting material (ionized) or its action (isotopic) of pharmaceuticals.
I believe that the materials used in homeopathy classify as nuclear medicine. So maybe that's what we should be calling it: NUCLEAR MEDICINE.

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,