Homeopathy works?

[Guest guest]

From my friend Sepp: I just ran across these two short pieces which, although not new seemquite interesting. This is about the placebo effect and thecontroversy currently raging over homeopathy (especially in the UK).They are part of a longer article in New Scientist about "13 thingsthat do not make sense".http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524911.600Kind regardsSeppBelfast homeopathy resultsMADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, wasthe scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that achemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample wasunlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yetstill have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to proveonce and for

all that homeopathy was bunkum.In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at theeffects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white bloodcells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histaminewhen the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stopsthem releasing any more. The study, replicated in four differentlabs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probablydidn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just likehistamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, butshe admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies bydissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom inethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again andagain. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, theoriginal remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the

water molecules.Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued withthe properties of the remedy.You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains truethat no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a largerandomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something isgoing on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain ourfindings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigatethis phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, theimplications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics andchemistry.The placebo effectDON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, youinduce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until thefinal day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine withsaline solution. Guess what? The

saline takes the pain away.This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot ofnothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. WhenFabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried outthe above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, adrug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shockingresult? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.So what is going on? Doctors have known about the placebo effect fordecades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placeboeffect is somehow biochemical. But apart from that, we simply don'tknow.Benedetti has since shown that a saline placebo can also reducetremors and muscle stiffness in people with Parkinson's disease(Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587). He and his team measured theactivity of neurons in the patients' brains as they administered thesaline. They found that individual

neurons in the subthalamic nucleus(a common target for surgical attempts to relieve Parkinson'ssymptoms) began to fire less often when the saline was given, andwith fewer "bursts" of firing - another feature associated withParkinson's. The neuron activity decreased at the same time as thesymptoms improved: the saline was definitely doing something.We have a lot to learn about what is happening here, Benedetti says,but one thing is clear: the mind can affect the body's biochemistry."The relationship between expectation and therapeutic outcome is awonderful model to understand mind-body interaction," he says.Researchers now need to identify when and where placebo works. Theremay be diseases in which it has no effect. There may be a commonmechanism in different illnesses. As yet, we just don't know.--The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition.Sepp

HasslbergerCritical perspective on Health: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/My blog on physics, new energy, economy: http://blog.hasslberger.com/

[Guest guest]

There is no need to rewrite physics concerning this - E=Mc2.

Energy can be changed into matter and matter can be changed to energy.

 

GB

>

> You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true

> that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large

> randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (

> Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is

> going on. " We are, " Ennis says in her paper, " unable to explain our

> findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate

> this phenomenon. " If the results turn out to be real, she says, the

> implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and

> chemistry.

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