NCH Press Release August 26, 2005 - Prominent US Researcher Scientists Counter Lancet Claims on Homeopathy

[Sara Klein Ridgley, Ph.D.]

NCH Press Release
August 26, 2005
http://www.homeopathic.org/pressrelease082505.html

Lancet, the prestigious medical journal of the United Kingdom, has just
published an article questioning the effectiveness of homeopathic
medicines.

The National Center for Homeopathy has taken a strong stand against the
study in question and sought the expert opinions of some of America‚s top
scientists -- Joyce Frye, D.O.,MBA, (University of Pennsylvania); Rustom
Roy, Ph.D. (Penn State University), and Iris Bell, M.D., Ph.D. ( University
of Arizona) in our rebuttal.

This activist effort is part of the „new NCH‰ and its work -- making the
most of your membership dues and gifts by protecting homeopathy. Please
read the Lancet study and the NCH/expert reaction to the study and help us
spread the word on this unfortunate study.

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Prominent U.S. Researcher Scientists Counter Lancet Claims On Homeopathy

Alexandria, VA.: Prominent U.S. scientists today strongly rejected findings
on homeopathic medicine to be published in the August 27, 2005 edition of
the Lancet. The study in question was the work of Aijing Shang and
colleagues from the University of Berne in Switzerland. The U.S.
scientists rejecting the conclusions of the study are Dr. Rustum Roy Ph.D.
(Penn State University), Dr. Iris Bell, M.D., Ph.D. (University of Arizona)
and Dr. Joyce Frye D.O., M.B.A. (University of Pennsylvania).

„Shang et al. have successfully applied a methodological approach to the
articles they reviewed that is highly suitable for drawing conclusions
about conventional medicine but is incomplete in evaluating homeopathic
medicine. They did not include criteria that would apply to high quality
homeopathic research reflecting the nature of homeopathic practice. Such
criteria include consideration of the quality of the homeopathy provided‰,
said Iris Bell, M.D., Ph.D. „Furthermore, a single remedy selection for a
given conventionally-diagnosed condition is not homeopathy, yet there are
numerous conventionally-judged high quality studies that were so designed.
The analogy would be to test the effects of penicillin for all patients
with symptoms of an apparent infection. The quality of the studies would
otherwise be excellent in design. However, penicillin will not work for
patients with viral infections or bacterial infections resistant to its
effects or for persons with fevers from other non-infectious causes ˆ and
it thus might show benefit only for a subset of patients with symptoms of
infections, i.e., the ones with true penicillin-sensitive infections. How
would penicillin fare in a meta-analysis of studies designed to ignore the
intrinsic nature of penicillin in benefiting patients, said Bell.

Joyce Frye DO, MBA commented that the study‚s authors seemed to begin their
work with a bias. „While their analysis clearly showed effects of
homeopathic treatment ˆ they found ways to disregard those. Out of the
millions of trials in conventional medicine, their primary outcome relied
on the comparison of ridiculously small numbers--8 trials of homeopathy and
6 trials of conventional medicine. They began their work with the
assumption Œthat the effects observed in placebo-controlled trials of
homoeopathy could be explained by a combination of methodological
deficiencies and biased reporting‚. Sound research is not conducted from
this starting position.‰

Among other topics, the Lancet challenges the plausibility of homeopathic
effects given that homeopathic remedies are often administered in dilutions
in excess of Avogadro‚s number. Dr. Rustum Roy, Ph.D. distinguished
material scientist from Penn State University commented that the chemistry
argument made in this study and by conventional medicine in general is
false science. „The underpinning of the editorial content of the Lancet as
it relates to homeopathy relies on a quaint old idea from the nineteenth
century that the ONLY way that the property of water can be affected or
changed is by incorporating foreign molecules.

This is the Avogadro-limit high-school level chemistry argument. To a
materials scientist this notion is absurd, since the fundamental paradigm
of materials-science is that the structure-property relationship is the
basic determinant of everything. It is a fact that the structure of water
and therefore the informational content of water can be altered in infinite
ways‰
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