Homoeopathy: what’s the harm?
In a recent post I recounted the sad tale of little Gloria Thomas who died from complications arising from untreated eczema. Her only “treatment” had been homoeopathic preparations that had no effect since homoeopathic preparations contain no active ingredients. Unfortunately this sort of neglect of treatable conditions and diseases is very common. Have a look at this list of people, some quite well known, who are victims of non-treatment by homoeopathy.
So taking homoeopathic remedies has to be completely safe then, no? Well in the US, the FDA has disallowed a company called Matrixx from marketing its Zicam products. This follows hundreds of reports of patients losing their sense of smell after using Zicam Cold Remedy Swabs. It appears that this remedy is not benign; it contains actual active ingredients, including zinc which which is suspected of causing the loss-of-smell disbility.
You might have noticed in the what’s the harm list that it included the case where a homoeopath peddled a “homoeopathic” concoction that killed three and blinded seven:
Gundawar was a homeopath who sold a new tonic, recently introduced on the market, that was supposed to reduce fatigue. He himself died, along with several of his patients. Several others were blinded, and other cases occured elsewhere in India.
Clearly this was highly toxic and was most definitely not homoeopathic.
So what’s the confused adherent to alternative medicines to do? There is no protection from independent or controlling bodies, nor any scientific investigation into their toxicity – let alone efficacy. I suppose the best way to be safely duped by a quack is to only consult “reputable” homoeopaths (that is those with a lot of regular patients still living), and with remedies that have been highly diluted, as is the recommended practice. Insist on the best dilutions: a minimum of 1030 going up to a much better 101500 or greater dilution. You will recognise these as 30X or 1500X. Certainly go over 23X, at which point Avogardo’s Number is exceeded and it becomes increasingly unlikely that even a single molecule of the original “active” ingredient is to be found in the dilution. In that way you will know there is absolutely nothing at all in the “remedy” that will harm you. Of course there will be nothing that will help or treat you either, but that’s where faith and the placebo effect kick in.
For a better understanding of how homeopathy works, watch James Randi’s explanation:
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