New Research Supports Homoeopathy

[Guest guest]

New Research Supports Basic

Premise Behind Homoeopathy

By Steve Connor

Science Editor

The Independent - UK

8-19-4

 

To some it is the snake oil of the New Age. To others it is a tried-

and-trusted treatment that has been good enough for the likes of Bill

Clinton, the Prince of Wales, Geri Halliwell and David Beckham.

 

Homoeopathy is big business and getting bigger. Yet there is little

if any evidence to show that it works, and absolutely nothing to

justify its central claim - that highly diluted solutions containing

nothing but water can affect human health.

 

That is until now. Researchers have just published what could be the

first hard evidence in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that

appears to support the central idea behind homoeopathy.

 

The scientists, from Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and the

Netherlands, have chosen the relatively obscure but respected

Inflammation Research to publish what some call the "holy grail" of

homoeopathy.

 

In summary, the study found that extremely dilute solutions can have

a biological effect. Like homoeopathic remedies, the solutions in the

experiments were so diluted that there was no realistic chance of a

single molecule of the substance remaining in the liquid.

 

Scientists have likened this to believing in magic. How could

something that was once dissolved in a solution, and can no longer be

present in that solution, still have an effect? The scientists

themselves are baffled. "We are not yet able to propose any

theoretical explanation of these findings," they write. In showing

that high dilutions exert a biological effect, the findings seem to

break the laws of physics. Surely there must be errors in the

experiment; an accusation the scientists reject. "Despite searching

for artefacts, we have been unable to find any," they write.

 

An editorial in Inflammation Research explains why the journal

published such controversial research: "The authors are unable to

explain their findings but wished to encourage others to investigate

this area," it says. "It is with this spirit of openness that the

journal, after submitting the paper to a rigorous reviewing process,

has agreed to publish the paper."

 

Understandably, the practitioners of homoeopathy have seized on the

findings as vindication. Peter Fisher, of the Royal Homoeopathic

Hospital in London and homoeopath to the Queen, said the findings

were nothing short of groundbreaking. "History may come to view [the

study] as a turning point in the scientific controversy surrounding

homoeopathy," Dr Fisher said.

 

"Of course further repetition is required, but it may be that this

represents the holy grail of basic research in homoeopathy," he said.

 

There are two central tenets of homoeopathy. The first is that an

illness or malady can be treated by administering tiny amounts of a

substance that might under normal circumstances actually result in

similar symptoms - extract of onion for instance to treat hay fever.

 

The second belief is that the concentrations have to be really

minute, so minute that the dilutions involved in effect get rid of

the substance in question from the liquid solvent.

 

Homoeopathic solutions are diluted repeatedly to produce solutions

that are millions of times weaker than they were originally. Often

the solutions are so weak that they are equivalent to dissolving a

tiny speck of something in a volume of water several times greater

than all the world's oceans.

 

Scientifically, this would mean that the chance of just a single

molecule of the homoeopathic remedy being left in the solution is

next to nil. Sceptics say patients might just as well treat

themselves with distilled water - which is cheaper.

 

Science cannot explain how such highly dilute solutions could have an

effect, that is until the French biologist Jacques Benveniste came

along. Working at his laboratory in Paris, Dr Benveniste formulated

the idea that water retains a "memory" of what has been dissolved in

it and that it is this memory that results in the homoeopathic

effect. In 1988 Dr Benveniste published a study in the journal Nature

in support of his water-memory theory. He claimed his experiments

showed that an ultra-dilute solution exerted a biological effect.

 

However, the then editor of Nature, Sir John Maddox, had insisted

that he would only agree to publication if he was able to investigate

Dr Benveniste's laboratory procedures. A few weeks later Sir John

invited an American science fraud investigator, Walter Stewart, and a

professional magician and arch sceptic, James Randi, to watch over Dr

Benveniste as he and his team tried to repeat the experiments.

 

The Nature investigation concluded that Dr Benveniste had failed to

replicate his original study. In subsequent issues of Nature, Dr

Benveniste suffered the professional ignominy of being ridiculed by

arguably the most influential scientific journal in the world.

 

As a result, the idea of memory water was consigned to the dustbin of

science history, or so it was thought.

 

France as a country is a keen advocate of homoeopathy and there were

many French scientists who had not given up on the notion of

investigating the phenomenon. Among them was a one-time collaborator

of Dr Benveniste called Philippe Belon, who now works for a French

homoeopathy company, Boiron.

 

Dr Belon, who fell out with Dr Benveniste a long time ago, has

investigated high dilutions for 20 years and although he works for

Boiron, and has himself tried homoeopathic remedies, he insists he is

only interested discovering the truth about the claims.

 

In the spirit of scientific investigation he organised a

collaboration between four different groups in Europe who all

undertook to carry out identical high dilution experiments at

separate places involving separate teams of scientists.

 

The British end was run by Professor Madeleine Ennis, an established

asthma researcher at Queen's University of Belfast and an avowed

sceptic of all things homoeopathic.

 

In fact Professor Ennis became involved in the project in the first

place because she could not accept what some of her scientific

colleagues were saying. "I told people I didn't believe it so they

said 'why don't you try it'," Professor Ennis said.

 

The dilution experiments they carried out, and now published in

Inflammation Research, involved a substance called histamine which is

released by a type of white blood cell called a basophil. Normally

basophils release histamine, and as levels of histamine rise this

exerts a "negative feedback" which inhibits further release of

histamine.

 

The four teams of scientists tested highly dilute solutions of

histamine to see whether they still exert an effect on basophils in a

test tube. At extreme dilutions, three out of four laboratories found

a statistically significant effect and the fourth found an effect

which just fell out of the typical range for statistical

significance.

 

Professor Ennis emphasised that the research does not prove that

homoeopathy works, nor does it even show that Dr Benveniste was right

because he had used a different test for a high-dilution effect. "The

paper didn't test homoeopathy, it tested high dilutions of histamine.

I know what we tested and I cannot explain the results," said

Professor Ennis.

 

For Dr Belon, however, the research does at least support the basic

premise behind homoeopathy. "Of course it supports it, on the other

hand it is not a demonstration that homoeopathy works," he said.

 

In whatever ways the latest findings are interpreted, they cannot be

ignored. The experiments were repeated by four different teams using

the same experimental protocol that involved a blind code - the

scientists did not know whether they were working with a high

dilution solution or a control sample of pure water until the code

was broken at the end of the experiment.

 

When BBC Horizon televised a similar attempt at replicating the same

experiment two years ago, the results were negative but scientists

such as Dr Belon believe this was trial by media rather than science

by the peer-review process.

 

This time, with a full scientific paper detailing the precise

protocol, anyone can try to replicate the findings - and replication

is the essence of science. Until others repeat the work it will take

a lot to convince sceptics such as James Randi, who has offered $1m

to the first person to prove the scientific basis of homoeopathy.

 

Mr Randi warns about reading too much in a single scientific

paper. "A paper is a paper is a paper. Don't forget, two scientists

wrote a paper, published in Nature, back in 1974, that endorsed the

powers of Uri Geller," he said.

 

But the homoeopathic gauntlet has been thrown down. The question now

is whether anyone will be brave enough to pick it up.

 

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_t

echnology/story.jsp?story=552905