Excogitate Cake

Placeb.. uh I mean homeopathy September 10, 2009

Posted by Excogitate Cake in Humor, Science.
Tags: Funny, Homeopathy, Logic
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This post comes as a result of a discussion I had with some friends regarding homeopathy. Now these people weren’t really well read on the topic and they didn’t fully appreciate the absurdity of the homeopathic practice but they more or less had a general support for “stuff like that”.The discussion certainly made me aware of the ever pervasive haze of pseudoscientific waffle which the overwhelming majority of people accept and don’t get too fussed by those annoying details of evidence or logic.

Ok, let’s get some things straight. If you’re not familiar with the bat s$^@ craziness of homeopathy this post will probably be a good starting point to break down these supposed “medicines”.

First of all.. What is a homeopathic remedy?

Well the short version is that a substance is diluted in huge quantities of water and the water is meant to retain a memory of the original substance.. thereby having an effect on our bodies.

Now when I say dilution I don’t mean and wussy 1 part per million, or the lazy 1 part per billion or even the wishy washy 1 part ber hundred billion. Oh no no.. that’s FAR too weak a remedy (that’s right.. in homeopathy the LESS dilute the substance is the weaker it is) We’re talking recommended dilutions of 1 part drug/herb/substance to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts water.

The base of a homeopathic remedy is first diluted 1 part to 10 parts water. This is shaken around a bit & 1 part is taken from this dilution. The 1 part of diluted substance is then added to another 10 parts water and the shaking around continues.  This dilution is called 2X (1 part to 100 water) Each time the substance is diluted to 10 parts water the X number increases by 1. An easy way to look at the numbers is to look at the number preceding the X as the number of zeros of the water dilution. So a 30X dilution would be 1 part drug to 1 with 30 zeros parts water.

It’s interesting at this point to also add that at the point in human history that these homeopathic remedies were invented people didn’t know about atoms or molecules so they had no idea what the smallest part of matter was,  or how matter by chemical or physical process interacted.

Now we come up against a concept called Avogadro’s number. This number relates to the number of atoms or molecules in a substance and can be used to extrapolate that at 24X dilution a homeopathic remedy has no reasonable chance that it contains any of the original substance. Now homeopathic remedies are generally at dilutions of 60X.. at which point you would need to give 2 billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient.

Now you might this that by this point the homeopathic theory is well and truly the realm of lunacy. But this is where the human ability for excuse making really comes into the fore. The generally accepted theory is that a “memory” of the original substance is retained in the water and that THIS is what has the effect to cure you. In modern times, people wishing to cling to this fantasy are now crediting scientific theories (of which they have no understanding of) like string theory or quantum theory as the explanation for this untestable memory of water.

As you can see the more you delve into the homeopathic theory the more incredibly insane and ludicrously contradictory it gets. Lets continue…

Now that we’ve got the basics down we can delve into the mind boggling contradictions and ludicrous justifications you’ll often hear for Homeopathy (these are the answers I have been given many times during discussions of homeopathy)

Q: If water has a memory, and the more dilute the water is from the original substance the “better” the remedy is… logically shouldn’t all water on the earth no matter what has been done to it have at one point in it’s life been in contact with every good, bad and otherwise substance and therefore have every imaginable homeopathic effect?

A: Actually i’ve never heard an answer for this one.

Q: Also, logically since all water has been at some point in it’s life in contact with every conceivable element, drug, chemical, herb etc.. a person prescribed a homeopathic remedy will be introducing all manner of conflicting “cures” to their body?

A: Again, no reasonable answer has ever been given for this.

Q: Since the logical impossibilities of the homeopathic principle are obvious, I submit that the effect people experience to “cure” them is the well known placebo effect.

A: “Oh but I once gave a homeopathic remedy to my pet which got better who couldnt’ have comprehended the medicine and thus the placebo effect can’t be the explanation”

Flaws in the answer: Now this is what we call “observational bias” where by a person who is looking for a certain effect will see it, or think they see it when it isn’t there. Ever noticed how if you buy a new shirt, you’ll all of a sudden notice other people wearing the same shirt? It’s the same thing.. and this is why double blind scientific studies have been created.

Q: Explain the process by which modern physics, biology and basic logic can’t explain how Homeopathy could EVER work.

A: Well you know how quantum/string theory seems mysterious and seemingly out of the bounds of reach of our knowledge? Well it’s like that, we can’t test that the effect is there, but it is!

Flaws in the answer: Quantum and string theory are very complicated and SEEM mysterious to the layperson however the models these theories are developed on are very specific and rely on testable, logical and consistent evidence. Quantum and string fluctuations DO NOT.. I repeat  DO NOT affect matter or the effects of matter on the MACRO level. Also, if you claim that the effects of homeopathy are undetectable by modern science than the positive or negative effects of the medicine must ALSO be undetectable. If our bodies respond to a homeopathic remedy THEN IT IS TESTABLE.

Q: How is it that the fundamental concepts of physics, biology, chemistry and basic logic contradict homeopathy and all tests performed under reasonable scientific conditions fail to provide evidence for homeopathy past the placebo effect.. yet you still believe that it’s a viable medicine?

A: ………

Long story short.. In our society, for concepts such as gods, mysticism, spirituality, conspiracy theories and homeopathy people have (falsely) created special categories of requirements of proof where people will willingly cling to the most absurd conclusions simply because they WANT them to be true.

Isn’t it time we, as a society grew up?

Corinthians 13:11 “When I was a child, I made use of a child’s language, I had a child’s feelings and a child’s thoughts: now that I am a man, I have put away the things of a child.”