Homeopathic Hokum

Knowing my sceptical nature, someone recently posted the below video on my Facebook wall.



It’s a film I cannot wait to see, containing as it does the following pithy epithet:

“By definition ‘alternative medicine’ has either not been proved to work or proved not to work. Alternative medicine which has been proved to work is called... medicine”.

Along with fortune tellers and mediums, one of my biggest bugbears relates to homeopathic remedies. During a brief spell of sobriety at a recent festival I was almost tempted to confront a hemp-clad hippie peddling her homeopathic hokum and ask her what the hell she was doing flogging her ‘magical’ water to gullible (and inebriated) punters for grossly inflated prices. I resisted. Arguing with crusties is not the done thing in the middle of the Lake District.

What I really ought to have done is to ask her if she knows how homeopathic remedies are produced. If she had been able to answer the question she would have undermined her whole business to the extent that she’d almost certainly have needed to close it down, flee the country and embark on a spiritual journey which may or may not end in her finding her true vocation in life.

You see, homeopathic remedies are produced by the following means:

• You take your ‘ingredient’ (maybe a herb or a mineral) and dilute it in such a vast quantity of water as to render the initial ingredient redundant.

• Homeopaths believe that an ingredient which might cause vomiting (syrup of ipecac) will prevent it when administered in smaller doses – this is not necessarily the case.

• The dilution is usually somewhere in the region of one part syrup of ipecac to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts water - anyone who’s ever made a glass of squash knows that this level of dilution is not gonna make for a tasty beverage.

• Homeopaths circumnavigate this argument by claiming that water has a memory and can ‘remember’ the initial ingredient as it has been in close proximity to it over a period of time.

It can’t just be me who thinks that process of making ‘medicine’ (I haven’t even mentioned the strange procedure of striking a leather ‘saddle’ with the full bottles of brewing remedy) smells a little bit like particularly unsavoury bollocks? A substance which may or may not cure an ailment is diluted in gargantuan quantities of water and imparts its curative properties to each molecule of H2O because water has a fucking memory?!? And in some cases this marvellous magical water can be turned into restorative tablets? Get a grip!

The dilution is a major issue for me – and ought to be for you, too. Essentially, homeopaths are selling you nothing but bottled water. Extortionately expensive bottled water, at that. And if water really does have a memory, why the blue blazes would we need homeopaths to remind said water of its history? Each glass of liquid (or gobful of homeopathic mouth-swill) that you consume has been part of the water cycle for years. It’s likely to have been a cloud, a raindrop, a river or an ocean at various stages in its existence. It could have been part of the apple which struck Newton on the head, the bead of sweat which almost undermines Tom Cruise’s quest in Mission Impossible or part of a piss which your great-great grandfather dribbled into his chamber pot. Why wouldn’t the water remember that as clearly as it remembers its relatively brief dalliance with a miniscule amount of syrup of ipecac?
It would be perfectly possible to argue that despite the complete lack of evidence that it works and the peculiar ‘science’ which underpins it, homeopathy can be beneficial in terms of the ‘placebo effect’. I’ve read around this strange phenomenon and it’s certainly true to say that there is such a thing and that the mind and body can work together in all sorts of strange and wonderful ways to make ill people feel better. But most ill people will feel better at some point – often after they’ve taken a pill/applied a lotion/got some fresh air. They would almost certainly have got better regardless of those activities, but might choose to attribute their recovery solely to what they believed to have ‘cured’ them.

To make this argument is to ignore the fundamental error which supporters of homeopathy would commit: claiming that the potion or pill they provide prevents you being poorly. It does not. It will not. It cannot.

It seems fitting that you can buy 10ml of Gambogia from ABC Homeopathy for £8.35. This remedy supposedly cures diarrhoea by giving you a small dose of the ailment – as homeopaths are keen to point out, like cures like. Purchase this (or any other so-called remedy) and you are literally paying over the odds for a miniature bottle of shit.

This blog owes a debt to Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science: a book which attempts to debunk scientific twaddle, discredit charlatans (step forward Gillian McKeith) and explain why scientific stories are so often misrepresented and/or misinterpreted by the media. It’s an absolutely fascinating read and is easily understandable - even to a layman like me. The chapter on evidence based medicine and trialling of homeopathy versus real placebos is particularly enlightening.