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Homeopathy


By Tim Gorski, MD

Homeopathy, thanks to the tireless efforts of its promoters, is one of these that has been gaining new popularity in recent years. In the Christmas 1992 The Sharper Image catalog, for example, right there in page 56, are Longevity products. The ad copy goes so far as to say that it's "medical science" and "clinically proven," both of which claims are simply and utterly false.

Many women have also bought the worthless homeopathic remedy intended to cure vaginal yeast infections. And there's a whole line of homeopathic quack products sold under the names Bioforce, Hyland's, and NuAge. Just as effective, though, and lots cheaper, are the doctor kits sold in toy departments that include jelly beans of different colors labeled "heart pills," "kidney pills," and so on.

Invented by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) in the prescientific era of medicine, homeopathy is a self-contained system of theory and practice, which is to say, a pseudoscience. It's based on several fantastic notions which modern quacks, nevertheless, manage to sell to their victims. The first of these ideas is that diseases should be recognized primarily as combinations of symptoms caused by psora, which is to say, an itch. Hahnemann went so far as to argue that in olden times maladies including epilepsy, asthma, and cancer were actually simple skin disorders which, because of their suppression by habits of hygiene, have been driven inside the body, so to speak.

The second is the principle that like cures like, for which homeopathy is named. It's an article of faith, really: homeopathy's doctrine that substances which can cause given symptoms can be used to treat those same symptoms. But how, you might ask, could something like, say, ipecac, which is an emetic used to induce vomiting in cases of poisoning, be used to treat nausea and vomiting_ This is done by making use of yet another homeopathic principle, which is the idea that such active substances have to be administered as very small doses. Not just a small dose, though, and not even a tiny dose or even a very small tiny dose can be used. Rather, according to Hahnemann and the homeopaths, the effective dose is a dilution so extreme that not even one molecule of the substance is likely to be still present! Hahnemann taught that the more diluted a preparation was, the more effective it was, and that a single dose of a homeopathic remedy could exert therapeutic effects a month or more after being given!

Now in a prescientific era during which effective medical measures were few, using smaller doses instead of larger and waiting patiently to see what would happen instead of immediately turning to more purging or leeches or whatever probably did give better results. But today the grave logical and scientific problems of homeopathy are obvious.

The chief difficulty, of course, is how a substance could exert an effect when it isn't even present. The presumably inactive material in which the active agent is diluted (the diluent) would itself become the "medicine." But it would have to somehow transmit the effects of the active agent ... Homeopaths claim that this happens by the diluent being imbued through the process of dilution, which involves a ritual of vigorous shaking which they call "succussion," with "energies" or "vibrations" of the active substance. Never mind that these "energies" and "vibrations" can't be measured and are otherwise scientifically unknown and unnecessary. And never mind that the diluents used can't be shown to be absolutely 100% free of all contaminants whatsoever, even including dissolved atmospheric gases. And especially never mind that whatever diluent is used is unquestionably swarming with the "energies" and "vibrations" of everything that its molecules ever came into contact with.

More importantly, no body of reliable evidence supports the doctrines of homeopathy. One study showed a very small, but statistically significant, effect of homeopathic remedies used to treat arthritis pain. But of course at a statistical significance of P<=.05 (meaning that the results could have arisen by chance with a probability of 1 in 20), one in twenty clinical trials, on average, can be expected to show a variance with the null hypothesis. One study does not science make. And, in fact, other clinical trials of homeopathic remedies have shown no benefits compared to placebo.

In 1988 a French homeopath, Jacques Benveniste, and collaborators at his lab claimed to show that extreme dilutions of an antibody could still cause effects on target cells. A paper appeared in the British journal Nature. which was pounced on by homeopathy promoters as the long awaited "proof" that "it works!" and the study is still so cited. But, miraculously, observers from Nature joined by James Randi and others caused replications of the experiment to show the expected negative results. Another investigator using a similar system published negative results soon after and the whole affair died down except in the minds of homeopathy apologists. But an important feature of Benveniste's original claim went completely unnoticed. And that is that the effect of an extreme - homeopathic - dilution of an antibody should have been the opposite of the usual antibody effect on target cells. So, even if the claim had panned out, it could not have provided the objective support that homeopathy remains so utterly without.

Unfortunately, homeopathic quackery has enjoyed something of an advantage over other forms of health fraud in that the 1938 legislation which created the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recognized the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia. Homeopathic "drugs" are not thereby exempted from having to be shown to be safe and effective but the FDA indicated that it wouldn't challenge homeopathic remedies being sold to practitioners to treat "minor" ailments. Presumably someone at the FDA thought that homeopaths would satisfy themselves with using their placebos to treat hypochondriasis. Instead, the promotion of homeopathic remedies has exploded and the FDA has failed to enforce the law.

If homeopathic remedies are nothing but worthless placebos, of course, they might be assumed to be as safe as their diluents, which are often water or grain alcohol. But if, as homeopaths insist, their treatments actually have pharmacologic effects, they should be held to the same standards of safety and efficacy as other drugs. This same stumbling block has been encountered as part of the European efforts to unite their separate economies since homeopathy is very popular, for example, in France, and regarded as quackery elsewhere.

Simply put, homeopathy is medical quackery. Now you know why.

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