The definition of Homeopathy as a “gentle yet highly effective system of medicine” by The Irish Society of Homeopaths is unaccompanied by an explanation of its guiding principle: that water has a selective memory. The claim is that homeopathy is both ‘suitable for everyone’ and ‘highly effective’ and that is has no side effects. The testimonies of patients like Donna, who attends a north-side Dublin practice supply genuine if not compelling endorsement for the ‘remedy’: “Before Homeopathy I was in very poor health and was a nervous wreck…I was suffering from my nerves, from panic attacks and from a lot of anxiety…I have been taking Homeopathic remedies for nearly a year now and my mood has improved dramatically. I feel more stable and calm and generally a lot better. Now when I get bad days or panic attacks I can manage them a lot better..”.It seems too good to be true, and unfortunately it is.
Homeopathy was devised in the late eighteenth century by Samuel Hahnemann, a German doctor who, existing in a time of inhumane and ineffective medicine (blood purging and unqualified figures of authority calling themselves ‘doctors’), sought an alternative method of medical treatment. His principle that ‘like cures like’ has been described by Richard Dawkins as sounding superficially at least, ‘faintly plausible’. Hahnemann believed that a substance that induced a disease in a healthy person could be used to treat that same disease in a sick one. He himself consumed Cinchona bark, purported to cure malaria and experienced symptoms that he perceived as similar to the disease. Aware of the dangers of administering dangerous chemicals and herbs however, Hahnemann hit upon the principle of dilution, which is now the key characteristic of homeopathy. He found that the more times a dangerous herb or chemical had been diluted, the greater was its potential to cure the disease it induced. The ritualistic process of increased dilution that Hahnemann came up with is still carried out in homeopathy factories around the world. Here’s what happens: with each dilution, the glass containing the remedy is struck ten times against ‘a hard but elastic object’. In Hahnemann’s case, this was a specially-made wooden striking board, stuffed with horsehair and covered on one side with leather.
Modern homeopaths advance the notion that water has a ‘memory’ of the relevant chemical from long, long ago and chooses to forget its time spent in Brian Cowen’s liver, the sewer and in the saliva of your cat. The typical homeopathic dilution is ‘30C’ which means that for every molecule of chemical, there are 100 to the power of 30 molecules of water. That’s 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 molecules of water to every molecule of active ingredient. It’s not even an incy, wincy drop in the ocean and with no molecule of remedy remaining in the sugar/water pills you buy in the chemist, it’s no wonder that homeopathy can guarantee no side effects. After all, water is life.
The question of how water might selectively ‘remember’ is far less important than the question of whether indeed it does. We know that general anaesthetics work, but we don’t know why. If homeopathy could be proven to be effective, the question of how and why would be secondary. To prove that homeopathy works, large-scale, methodologically rigorous trials must be carried out. With adherence to these conditions, there is to date no evidence to suggest that homeopathy works better than a placebo. Meta-analyses are studies carried out by scientists that pool all the data from all the research available together to provide a greater insight into whether a given treatment is effective. Good quality meta-analyses include only studies that have a sound methodological backdrop. For example, a study on homeopathy that is not ‘double blind’ would not be included. ‘Double blind’ studies are those in which neither the experimenter nor the participant is aware of what condition they are placed in. That is, neither the homeopath nor the patient would know whether or not they are administering or consuming homeopathic products. This type of testing illiminates the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy, where patients get better because they believe they will and when doctors treat them differently in the belief that their symptoms will improve. The Lancet Meta analysis of 2005, which followed these strict criteria of testing concluded that it is most likely that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects. Dr Elizabeth Thompson, who is a consultant homeopathic physician concedes that ‘homeopathy is a complex intervention’ and often works through non-specific effects such as the therapeutic relationship and cultural meaning. Dr Peter Fisher of the London Homeopathic Hospital agrees that there ‘is a plausibility problem’ but this does not shake his belief in the effectiveness of the treatment.
It is hard to comprehend the success of such an unfounded science and yet before I began to research the subject, I too had fallen into the trap of knowing little about but liking the sound of this ‘natural remedy’. I may have swallowed the odd sugar-coated ball myself. It is testimony to the attractiveness of the notion rather than its veracity that homeopathic products continue to fly off the shelves. In Britain, taxpayers contributed £10 million, or the equivalent of 500 nurses’ salaries to the refurbishment of the Royal Homeopathic Hospital. In Ireland, VHI is the only health insurance that refuses to cover homeopathy (though presumably the decision is pragmatic rather than a matter of principle). For an industry that relies on the placebo effect, the healing nature of caring, interpersonal relationships and bogus, unscientific claims, the scale of investment is startling. In this context, the appeal by the Irish Society of Homeopathy for Homeopathic books that are to be distributed to an ‘academic’ clinic in Southern Kenya takes on an unpleasant moral dimension. To the 500 million people who claim to use homeopathy and the royalty and celebrities that endorse it, your money may be better spent supplying safe drinking water to the African people than providing them with sugar-coated pills that entrap its long-term and highly selective memory.
