I am writing this blurb because being a Chemistry PhD and my position on homeopathy, I am often asked why I consider homeopathy a fraud (my detailed intro is at the end of this article). In this blurb, I will dwell into the details of homeopathy and principles of chemistry with references on the research and previous attempts to debunk this quackery.
Why is homeopathy a fraud/pseudoscience?
Homeopathy was first invented by a German doctor in 1700s when one day he ate cinchona bark and developed fever. He quickly ran the horses of his imagination and established by himself without any experimentation or scientific confirmation that since cinchona gave him fever and it treated malaria and since fever is a symptom of malaria and cinchona treats malaria, the things which give fever can cure diseases with fever and hence anything that can produce symptoms of a disease can cure that disease. It is like saying that since allergy makes your face red, if someone slaps you on the face to turn it red, your allergy will be cured. It is a logical fallacy from the beginning. Such as, since rain wets the street, so if the street is wet, there must have been rain. This is not true. Street could’ve been wet due to other reasons. And here it is not true at all. Cinchona does not induce fever. Fever is induced by body’s immune system when it is fighting an infection in order to kill the bacteria/viruses. And if body temperature rises beyond a limit, organs can fail.
So you see the fiction from the start. He had no evidence for his revelation. He just thought to himself that this might be the case. Then he developed two rules for homeopathy: 1) like cures like, 2) when you dilute things, they become potent. Why and how? He didn’t say anything. Even if you ask any homeopath quack these questions today, they will have no answer or at best they will refer you to one study by a French scientist and Nobel laureate and "virologist" Luke Montagnier, where he claimed that "aqueous nanostructures (if such things even exist)" derived from DNA sequences produce electromagnetic signals. This paper was published in a new journal and guess what he was himself the chairman of the editorial board of that journal. [1] This study has been debunked many times afterwards due to its scientific flaws as well. [2] And guess what, he is also an anti-vaxxer, which means he is against the use of vaccines, himself being a virologist. He also believed that COVID19 is a man-made virus. [1] Nobel in one field does not make you an expert in other fields. They would also refer you to a paper by French immunologist Jacques Benveniste for his paper in Nature, where he "proved" water memory effect. [3] But they will not tell you that that paper was later extensively and publicly debunked by Nature itself and Benveniste failed to replicate the original results. He also refused to retract the paper and eventually had to return the public funding used on the research. The homeopathic quacks and people defending homeopathy will also ignore thousands of studies that have debunked homeopathy.
Why do the two principles of homeopathy not work?
Let’s find out why these two so-called principles are not just made up lies and go against science (tested and applied knowledge that works) but you can debunk them easily with common sense. The first one is that like cures like. This is not true. Likes don’t cure likes. If you get poisoned by some poisonous gas for example, will you try to take more of it inside you to make it cure you? Nobody will. Not even non-conscious animals will stay at a place where there is more of a chemical that has harmed them in the first place. There is no evidence of like curing like, which means that no experiment has ever confirmed this to be true.
Homeopaths will tell you this is not true because vaccines are an evidence that like cures like. Just on the surface. Vaccines contain biological molecules or dead virus with specific binding sites on their surface that can trigger antibodies production in the body that can kill the same biological molecules and viruses in the future. The antibodies that are produced as a result of vaccination are completely different molecules and are not “like” viruses, neither do homeopathic water creates any kind of antibodies. Anti means opposite, not alike. Besides, physiological ailments like diabetes, cancer, cardiac diseases, muscular diseases, injuries, autoimmune diseases, liver, kidney, eye, stomach, reproductive organs, nose or ear diseases are not caused by any foreign body. They can’t be treated by vaccines. They need medicines which nip the actual problem in the bud. For example, for an ear infection, you need an antibiotic, which would reach to the infection site in the ear and would kill bacteria there. There is no margin for putting more “like” bacteria to kill those bacteria.
This brings us to the second principle; potentiation, where homeopaths claim that dilutions increase potency. Since homeopaths will argue that we do not say that one should take the actual amount of the same thing that causes similar symptoms of the disease but its little amount. They say they dilute those harmful things in order to make them potent/powerful. The more they are diluted, the more potent they are.
It means that if you take a jug of water with one litre or 1000 millilitres and add sugar to it and then take one millilitre (a fifth of a teaspoon) and put it in another glass and then add water to it. The next glass is supposed to be more sweet. Right? Now you are getting the point.
Homeopaths do the same thing. They dissolve one part of a substance in 100 parts of a solvent. They call it 1C. Then they take one part and dilute it in again 100 parts, making 2C, which is 1 in 10,000 parts solution and again to 3C as 1 in a million parts solution. Usually they sell 20-30C solutions. At 15C, the solution is equivalent to one drop in all oceans of the world. At 20C, not even one molecule of the original substance is present in the solution. How can that substance be effective in treating you when it is not even there?
Water Memory Effect, is it real?
This brings us to water memory effect. I remember there was a Pak-China conference in Islamabad in Pak-China center in 2011 or so. There was a homeopathy stall at the conference. After I presented my poster on removal of arsenic from drinking water with the help of nanoparticles, I was wandering around stalls when I came across this one. I have a good knowledge of homeopathy as well because my grandfather and aunt used to be homeopathic practitioners. I thought of asking him some questions just for fun. When I told him that there is not one single molecule of the original substance left in a 20C or 20X dilution, how can they claim the effectiveness. To which he said the water keeps the memory. I said if that’s the case the same water dissolves everything in its way from our poop to urine of animals and humans and all the toxins, what makes the water only keep the memory of your molecules? To which he said because we shake the solution in a specific way. What happens then, I inquired. He said the rays transfer the effectiveness. What rays? There are specific rays (he actually wanted to refer towards the debunked study of Benveniste, mentioned above). I told him I am an expert in spectroscopy and know about all kind of rays. He can tell me. To which he told me to visit their factory and they will arrange my meeting with a bigger expert who could answer my questions. I highly doubted that but I left in peace.
The water memory is another lie to cover the previously told lies and has been debunked by scientists. There was a famous Horizon experiment, where the Benveniste's water memory paper claiming water memory effect was debunked live on BBC (link of the study below). In that study, no difference was found between ordinary water and a diluted solution to have any kind of physiological effect. [4, 5]
Why do people still believe it works?
People believe in all kinds of thinks being effective, from acupuncture to acupressure and magic to salamander’s oil. This is mostly because of Placebo effect. When you believe something works, your brain activates several biochemical and hormonal processes within your body, which can sometimes relieve pains or convince you that you’re getting better. You must have seen doctors often prescribing additional multivitamins to patients in order for them to think that they are taken seriously, especially when there is no specific illness. Similarly, when patients have no specific illness, they get convinced that the thing they believed to be effective was really effective. Sometimes, patients get cured with time on their own and the role of sugary water they call homeopathic medicine is zero.
Homeopaths will also tell you that they have effectively cured kidney stones. This is one thing they gallantly claim. Major reason why homeopathic medicine works is that kidney stones tend to be removed by themselves in 90% cases even if no medicine is taken. In other cases, homeopaths make patients drink a lot of water with their sugary pills that it helps them in washing off stones. I had a detailed conversation with a homeopathy practitioner once on homeopathy and kidney stones, which is present on YouTube (Link below - talk is in Urdu language). [6, 7] Those who have watched House M.D., must remember the episode where Dr. House cures a patient with some candies.
If it is just sugary water and works as placebo, then why is homeopathy harmful?
Homeopathic medicines are usually not regulated or are poorly regulated in third world countries. Sometimes, practitioners sell crushed regular OTC medicines such as paracetamol or aspirin. They maybe fine for a healthy person. But for example, if someone has stomach ulcer, aspirin will be deadly for them, especially when its protective coating has been removed during crushing. Similarly, glucose pills can be dangerous for diabetic patients. I have seen patients losing their eyesight after taking homeopathic pills (essentially highly pure glucose) due to hyperglycaemia (high sugar).
Another harm is that patients having actual diseases turn out to waste money and precious time that could save their lives if proper treatment had been started within time. You must also have seen doctors complaining that when patients reach at a very critical stage, only then they come to us. That is also why you never see people rushing to homeopaths in emergencies. They always end up in ERs in normal hospitals because deep down they also know homeopathy is a fraud. Therefore, this belief that homeopathic formulas have no side effects is more dangerous than few side effects of real medicines.
You may also wonder why homeopaths always claim to be experts of diseases that are chronic and would never claim expertise over acute conditions including injuries, heart failure or brain stroke.
Fun fact: Famous science enthusiast and rationalist James Randy once engulfed a bottle full of homeopathic sleeping pills. Nothing happened. (Gladly, he was not in Pakistan or else there could be real alprazolam instead of homeopathic medicine inside it.)
I am happy to respond to any questions or further details on the matter. You can ask the questions in the comments. If they needed detailed answer, I will post another article. Don't forget to subscribe the blog in that case by writing your email address in the lower left corner. You will get every new post directly in your email inbox.
References:
[1] Luc Montagnier's Journal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier
[2] French Nobelist Escapes 'Intellectual Terror' to Pursue Radical Ideas in China, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.330.6012.1732
[3] Benveniste's Paper on Water Memory Effect, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Benveniste
[4] The Horizon Test, https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathy.shtml
[5] The Horizon homeopathic dilution experiment, https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2005.00109.x
[6] A talk with a homeopathic practitioner - Part 1. https://youtu.be/ACYIbLtdRNQ
[7] A talk with a homeopathic practitioner - Part 2. https://youtu.be/zhftD06I8-0
Further Readings:
- What is homeopathy? https://www.livescience.com/31977-homeopathy.html
- What is homeopathy? https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-homeopathy
- Why I changed my mind about homeopathy? https://amp.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/apr/03/homeopathy-why-i-changed-my-mind
- Does homeopathy work? NHS UK, https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/homeopathy/
- 1,800 Studies Later, Scientists Conclude Homeopathy Doesn’t Work, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1800-studies-later-scientists-conclude-homeopathy-doesnt-work-180954534/
- Why homoeopathy is pseudoscience? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-022-03882-w
- Homeopathy - where is the science? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6399603/
- Why homeopathy is nonsense? http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/04/economist-explains
- Why homeopathy is pseudoscience? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-022-03882-w
About Me: I am a PhD in Chemistry (USTC, Hefei, QS World Ranking 94, Subject World Ranking 36) and have one master's in Chemistry (Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry) from Quaid i Azam University, Islamabad and one master's in Materials Science and Engineering from NUST, Islamabad. I have around 15+ years of experience in research, teaching and industry with around 70 research publications in highly ranked journals of chemistry, physics and materials science (in Wiley Germany, SpringerLink, Nature, American Chemical Society and Royal Society of Chemistry Publishers.) I am also a member of American Chemical Soceity, Chemical Society of Pakistan, Pakistan Vacuum Society, Chinese Chemical Society and Chinese Industrial Chemistry Society. Besides that, I have experience in analysis, quality, research and development of drugs in pharmaceutical industry. Besides that, I have carried out research on diverse areas of chemistry, physics, biology and materials science including artificial enzymes, cancer therapy, wound healing materials, nanomaterials, catalysis, electrochemical energy storage and conversion and water pollution and remediation (removal and effects of heavy metals, POPs, organic pollutants and radioactive metals.) Here are my Google Scholar and ResearchGate profiles.
