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Homeopathy: Con or Cure?
by RORY CLEMENTS, Daily Mail

ealth Secretary Alan Milburn is looking at moves to regulate herbal medicine and complementary therapies and bring them into the mainstream. Homeopaths will, no doubt, be delighted. But what exactly is homeopathy, and could it really work?

Homeopathy is Greek for 'similar suffering'. The idea is to give patients minuscule doses of something that causes symptoms similar to those they are already experiencing.

So if you have insomnia, you might be given a tiny amount of coffee which in larger quantities would make it even harder for you to get to sleep.The theory is that this minute quantity will stimulate your body's own healing powers without side effects.

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The remedies usually come in doses that have been diluted many times over.They are given in tablets or powders which you dissolve in your mouth, or in liquid form. Many conventional doctors believe the dilution of the remedies is so great that they can't have any effect.

But a team of scientists in South Korea recently found by chance that dissolving a substance in water and then adding more and more water can actually make it more potent. Conventional wisdom has always been that the molecules simply spread further and further apart until none are left. But the new finding is that the molecules tend to cluster together when more water is added. Upon further dilution, the clusters form into even bigger groups.

Michael Hanlon, Daily Mail science writer.

Michael Hanlon thinks homeopathy is a con

Let's get one thing straight about homeopathy. If it works, and, more precisely, if it works in the way its proponents say it works, then almost everything we believe to be true about the science of chemistry is wrong.

We might as well ditch the accumulated scientific evidence of the past 300 years and go back to alchemy.

This is maybe an exaggeration, but it is close to the truth. Homeopathy allegedly 'works' on the principle of 'imprinted memory'. When a substance is dissolved in water, and then diluted, homeopaths say, its effects are magnified.

Thus a few drops of some herbal extract in a vial of water will have little effect; but dilute this tincture a thousand times - to the point where there may be not a single molecule of the dissolved substance remaining - and the homeopath will say the potion is now at its maximum potency.

This breaks an important principle in chemistry - that the more concentrated a dissolved substanceis, the more effect it will have. The saltiness of brine depends directly upon the amount of salt dissolved in it. The stronger the medicine the more powerful it becomes. Homeopaths don't believe this. They believe the opposite.

In 1988, a French scientist, Jacques Benveniste, conducted an experiment that appeared to back up the homeopathic ideas.

He claimed, in Nature magazine no less, that water could contain 'ghostly' imprints of a substance it used to contain.

Never mind that no one has managed to replicate his results. Homeopaths have latched onto this finding like a man hanging onto a twig as he plummets down the cliff.

Now another experiment appears - at first reading - to give more power to the homeopathic elbow.

It was recently reported that scientists in Korea have found that some substances seem to 'clump together' when dissolved, effectively reducing the effects of dilution.

I'm still not convinced, I'm afraid. It seems that all this experiment shows is that some very dilute solutions are not as dilute as we thought they were. Remember, homeopaths think that the most powerful medicines are diluted to such a fantastic degree that they cannot contain anything - clumped or not.

It remains a sad fact that the homeopathic industry sells large quantities of what is no more than distilled water, at a high price, to large numbers of gullible women (males are outnumbered severalfold in their take-up of alternative medicines). The fact that this therapy is available on the NHS is, I believe, a scandal. Doctors might as well prescribe eye of newt or a little light voodoo for all the good it will do.

CURE

 

 

Simone Plaut, 43, is a freelance health and safety trainer who lives in West Hampstead, London.

Simone Plaut thinks homeopathy can cure

Three years ago I suffered a bout of something my doctor called nervous exhaustion. I had been studying for exams and working extremely long hours. It was all far too much - and when I woke up one morning I couldn't get out of bed.

My GP's reaction was 'here's a medical note - stay off work for two weeks. Are you sleeping? Have these sleeping pills. If it's not better come back and see me in a fortnight'.

I ended up being off work for five weeks.

Then, last month, I realised I was heading that way again. I was very, very tired and I was beginning to cancel work.

I knew a homeopath professionally and he had given me a useful tip about a remedy for jetlag. It was so successful that when I flew to Malaysia on a work trip I didn't have problems going there or coming back. So I decided to try him for my exhaustion, though I admit I was a bit sceptical.

He asked me some strange questions about whether I had food cravings and about my interest in philosophy, religion and spiritual matters. It was a broad range of questions and he made notes throughout. Obviously, these were important because he consulted several dusty books and then said: 'Yes, I know exactly what you need.' And he mixed up some little tablets and gave them to me.

As we continued to talk, it was astounding. I could feel my brain clearing, my mental processes speeding up and I started feeling my energy coming back. I've felt better ever since, apart from the odd day when I've been a little tired. Without his help I don't think I would have been able to work for the past few weeks. Being a health and safety practitioner, I'm always wary of medication. If I'm prescribed anything I always look it up in my Which? Medicine book to see what the side effects are - and some of them are horrendous. When I asked the homeopath about side effects, he said: 'There aren't any. The dose we give you is so minute that there could be no side effects.' He explained that the preparation you are given doesn't actually fix what is wrong with you; it simply nudges the body into doing the work itself, so you don't need huge doses of chemicals. It made good sense to me.

I certainly wouldn't go to a homeopath if I was in a car accident or needed major abdominal surgery, but I think the chronic 'don't-feel-terribly-well' type of illnesses can benefit from that kind of treatment. I'm a qualified radiographer. I've worked in the NHS for a long time and I'm not knocking conventional medicine. It saves many thousands of lives every year, but I think it's time we opened our eyes to complementary medicine - it has a very important role to play.

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 'Homeopathy works!'
 

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