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|  |  | | (This debate is closed and is a read-only archive.) | | Practitioners of CAM are closed-minded
[22-Jun-2005]
| Branko Richard Babic, responding to my criticism, claims that 'homoeopathic medicine reports beneficial effects from drinking template seed water' means about as much as Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger saying 'we were the better team but the referee was disgraceful', when they have just lost 4-0. You're much better off listening to someone impartial - John Motson, for instance. And in the game of medical care, John Motson is the double blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial.
| On the 'water memory by hydrogen bond' arguments, you have to assume:
- That the hydrogen bonds formed with other water molecules, while surrounding the homoeopathic preparation, are for some reason stronger than all other water molecule hydrogen bonds in nature.
- That the hydrogen bonds can survive the stress of being diluted.
- That the extreme stresses and acid environment in the stomach won't disrupt the hydrogen bonds.
- That the hydrogen-bonded constructs can hold their shape, as they pass through the gut wall.
- That the hydrogen-bonded constructs will hold this shape as they're pushed through the bloodstream, and that they won't be removed before reaching their target.
- That the hydrogen-bonded constructs will then appropriately affect a receptor somewhere in the body, which usually requires more than simply having a similar shape.
- That in all this time, the water hasn't met anything else that vaguely resembles another homoeopathic preparation. Otherwise, I assume that the water may decide to take the shape of that instead.
This isn't 'passengers sitting in a train, moving from place A, and arriving more or less in the same arrangement at place B'. This is passengers in an aeroplane that crashes into a volcano.
| Is all of this more likely than the explanation that it's simply the placebo effect? If you can't consistently show, in well designed and well executed trials, that a homoeopathic remedy has more efficacy than tap water, then I don't believe that it deserves taxpayers' - that is, my - money. And I don't believe that homoeopaths should be allowed to claim that it does deserves taxpayers' money.
| I'm always suspicious of a new theory that requires that we rewrite the laws of nature. I'm beginning to suspect that there's no possible proof in the world that would convince devotees of homoeopathy that it doesn't work. Alternative medicine practitioners talk about being open-minded, yet they're the ones who close their eyes and ears to the evidence.
| Adam Gent, Australia
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