Homoeopathy article from Penn State

[Mojo]

Deja vu all over again?

Nah, deja woo.

 

[arthwollipot]

give it up, you've been defeated.

Pay no attention, folks. I have it on good authority that meow stole the computer he/she is now using from his/her local primary school. He/she is a thief. I provide this information with exactly the same authority that meow has when accusing Randi of being a liar.

 

[RationalVetMed]

Pay no attention, folks. I have it on good authority that meow stole the computer he/she is now using from his/her local primary school. He/she is a thief. I provide this information with exactly the same authority that meow has when accusing Randi of being a liar.

Swine, I hope we haven't already given him/her the million dollars.

Yuri

 

[arthwollipot]

Swine, I hope we haven't already given him/her the million dollars.

Yuri

I think that's pretty unlikely, actually.

 

[TheAnachronism]

yes different ideas, but there is a shared principle if you abstract a layer or two. There was nothing in her statement that indicated she thought the mechanisms underlying the two ideas were the same.

I don't know how you can think they are very similar concepts at all. Homeopathy's claim that "like cures like" is rooted entirely in subjectively recorded symptoms. If you are experiencing headache, homeopaths believe you should be cured by something that causes headache--it doesn't matter if it's elderberry, juniper, witch hazel or hibiscus. If it causes headache, it should work.

In Vaccination, symptoms are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if a strain of influenza causes vomiting or if it causes dizziness -- only an inactive form of that strain could vaccinate against it. Doctors don't go around just injecting you with any pathogens that cause vomiting.

 

[Mojo]

Probing Question: Does homeopathy work?

Plenty of the usual canards, kicking off with a list of celebs.

"I don’t know if it works," says Kelly Karpa, associate professor of pharmacology in the Penn State College of Medicine, "The whole basis of homeopathy is counterintuitive to everything pharmacologists have learned about drug actions. I won’t say that I buy into it 100 percent, but I won’t say that I think it’s quackery either. Having never used it myself, I try to keep an open mind. Some patients are convinced that it has helped them. Perhaps the greatest parallel between homeopathy and conventional medicine is the practice of immunization, which also relies on the principle that small amounts of a substance may protect from disease."

Now being quoted here.

 

[Pipirr]

The article was republished on physorg.com a few days later. All you can see now is the first paragraph followed by these words:

[the article is retracted for investigation, please check back later]

 

[meow]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15105967

RESULTS: High dilutions of histamine (10(-30)-10(-38) M) influence the activation of human basophils measured by alcian blue staining. The degree of inhibition depends on the initial level of anti-IgE induced stimulation, with the greatest inhibitory effects seen at lower levels of stimulation. This multicentre study was confirmed in the three laboratories by using flow cytometry and in one laboratory by histamine release. Inhibition of CD63 expression by histamine high dilutions was reversed by cimetidine (effect observed in two laboratories) and not by ranitidine (one laboratory). Histidine tested in parallel with histamine showed no activity on this model. CONCLUSIONS: In 3 different types of experiment, it has been shown that high dilutions of histamine may indeed exert an effect on basophil activity. This activity observed by staining basophils with alcian blue was confirmed by flow cytometry. Inhibition by histamine was reversed by anti-H2 and was not observed with histidine these results being in favour of the specificity of this effect We are however unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon.


p<.0001

 

[Rolfe]

We asked you to explain it, not to copy-paste it.

Xanta.

Rolfe.

 

[meow]

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15594862


Here we thus show that successive dilutions and succussions can permanently alter the physico-chemical properties of the water solvent. The nature of the phenomena here described still remains unexplained, nevertheless some significant experimental results were obtained.

New physico-chemical properties of extremely diluted aqueous solutions
Auteur(s) / Author(s)
ELIA V. (1) ; NICCOLI M. (1) ;


(1) Department of Chemistry, University ' Federico II'of Naples, Complesso Universitario di Monte S. Angelo, via Cintia, 80126 Naples, ITALIE

 

[arthwollipot]

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15594862


Here we thus show that successive dilutions and succussions can permanently alter the physico-chemical properties of the water solvent. The nature of the phenomena here described still remains unexplained, nevertheless some significant experimental results were obtained.

New physico-chemical properties of extremely diluted aqueous solutions
Auteur(s) / Author(s)
ELIA V. (1) ; NICCOLI M. (1) ;


(1) Department of Chemistry, University ' Federico II'of Naples, Complesso Universitario di Monte S. Angelo, via Cintia, 80126 Naples, ITALIE

Woof woof woof.

 

[meow]

http://www.vhan.nl/documents/Rey.thermoluminescence.pdf

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3817

Icy claim that water has memory

* 19:00 11 June 2003 by Lionel Milgrom

Claims do not come much more controversial than the idea that water might retain a memory of substances once dissolved in it. The notion is central to homeopathy, which treats patients with samples so dilute they are unlikely to contain a single molecule of the active compound, but it is generally ridiculed by scientists.


Yet a paper is about to be published in the reputable journal Physica A claiming to show that even though they should be identical, the structure of hydrogen bonds in pure water is very different from that in homeopathic dilutions of salt solutions. Could it be time to take the "memory" of water seriously?

 

[RationalVetMed]

http://www.vhan.nl/documents/Rey.thermoluminescence.pdf

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3817

Icy claim that water has memory

* 19:00 11 June 2003 by Lionel Milgrom

Claims do not come much more controversial than the idea that water might retain a memory of substances once dissolved in it. The notion is central to homeopathy, which treats patients with samples so dilute they are unlikely to contain a single molecule of the active compound, but it is generally ridiculed by scientists.


Yet a paper is about to be published in the reputable journal Physica A claiming to show that even though they should be identical, the structure of hydrogen bonds in pure water is very different from that in homeopathic dilutions of salt solutions. Could it be time to take the "memory" of water seriously?

Oh well, if Milgrom is involved there's no chance of anyone understanding anything.

Hang on though, what's this in his article? You seem to have been selectively quoting from it,

After his own experience, Benveniste advises caution. "This is interesting work, but Rey's experiments were not blinded and although he says the work is reproducible, he doesn't say how many experiments he did," he says. "As I know to my cost, this is such a controversial field, it is mandatory to be as foolproof as possible."

So, just the same as most of the posters on this thread have been saying really; at least one homeopath understands the importance of blinding.

Yuri

 

[Mojo]

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15594862


Here we thus show that successive dilutions and succussions can permanently alter the physico-chemical properties of the water solvent. The nature of the phenomena here described still remains unexplained, nevertheless some significant experimental results were obtained.

New physico-chemical properties of extremely diluted aqueous solutions
Auteur(s) / Author(s)
ELIA V. (1) ; NICCOLI M. (1) ;


(1) Department of Chemistry, University ' Federico II'of Naples, Complesso Universitario di Monte S. Angelo, via Cintia, 80126 Naples, ITALIE

An interesting comment on pp. 831-832, which doesn't explicitly make its way into the conclusions, as far as I can see (my underlining, at their suggestion):

It is noteworthy that those solutions that underwent the dilution cycle, but not the succussion one, do not differ from the reference solvent. It must be underlined that the iterative procedure of dilutions and succussions works also in the absence of initial solute. The succussion phenomenon thus appears as fundamental in order to activate the different behaviour of the extremely diluted solutions.

 

[Mojo]

Yet a paper is about to be published in the reputable journal Physica A claiming to show that even though they should be identical, the structure of hydrogen bonds in pure water is very different from that in homeopathic dilutions of salt solutions.

Ooh, another "bomb"! Any chance of more details, since you appear to have access to advance info on this?

ETA: ah, I see you are just quoting Milgrom talking about the Rey paper. Any chance of using quotation marks?

 

[amb]

http://www.vhan.nl/documents/Rey.thermoluminescence.pdf

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3817

Icy claim that water has memory

* 19:00 11 June 2003 by Lionel Milgrom

Claims do not come much more controversial than the idea that water might retain a memory of substances once dissolved in it. The notion is central to homeopathy, which treats patients with samples so dilute they are unlikely to contain a single molecule of the active compound, but it is generally ridiculed by scientists.


Yet a paper is about to be published in the reputable journal Physica A claiming to show that even though they should be identical, the structure of hydrogen bonds in pure water is very different from that in homeopathic dilutions of salt solutions. Could it be time to take the "memory" of water seriously?

Yes, as much as we should consider that a rock also retains memory of the little boy who threw it.

 

[Mojo]

Yes, as much as we should consider that a rock also retains memory of the little boy who threw it.

And don't forget that water can remember that it's been in a freezer, at least for a short time:

"On removing the water from the freezer, it will be observed that the block of ice, though now exposed to room temperature, will remain a block of ice for some time. Thus, there exists in water a property which enables it to "remember" for a certain amount of time that it has been kept in the freezer"

Paolo Bellavite, M.D. and Andrea Signorini, M.D., The Emerging Science of Homeopathy: Complexity, Biodynamics, and Nanopharmacology, 2002, pp.68-69

 

[Rolfe]

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15594862


Here we thus show that successive dilutions and succussions can permanently alter the physico-chemical properties of the water solvent. The nature of the phenomena here described still remains unexplained, nevertheless some significant experimental results were obtained.

New physico-chemical properties of extremely diluted aqueous solutions
Auteur(s) / Author(s)
ELIA V. (1) ; NICCOLI M. (1) ;

(1) Department of Chemistry, University ' Federico II'of Naples, Complesso Universitario di Monte S. Angelo, via Cintia, 80126 Naples, ITALIE

Drive-by posting of copy-paste jobs from deeply flawed pubications, with no comment other than the equivalent of "yah-boo-sucks" is something that doesn't impress anyone on this forum. We've seen it all before. And in relation to these exact papers, too, and in pretty much exactly the same words. By posters called, successively, Gold, olaf, QII, nerr and yaw.

None of these people (oops, they turned out all to be the same person, that's right....) ever tried to explain what they found in these papers that was so persuasive. Every request for an explanation was merely met by a re-post of another cut-and-paste abstract, accompanied by the obligatory "yah-boo-sucks".

So, please try to do a little better this time. Please try to explain to people who have genuinely read the publications in question, and who genuinely don't see how the conclusions you post are substantiated, why you feel that they are.

Xanta.

Rolfe.

 

[Mojo]

...nobel prize winning dr rey.

When did he win that?

Hey, meow, any chance of a link to Dr. Rey's Nobel Prize citation? You should be able to find it on this website: http://nobelprize.org/

 

[meow]

http://www.vetpath.co.uk/jref/histamine.pdf

proof that water can be imprinted upon. a fine paper by fine scientists.