Interesting result for homeopathy

[Colloden]

Tests on mice suggest the homeopathic remedy arsenicum album can reduce the liver damage caused by the poison.

"The potentised homeopathic drug Arsenicum Album not only has the ability to help remove arsenic from the body, but these drugs in microdoses appear to have the ability to detoxify the ill-effects produced by arsenic in mice," said Professor Khuda-Bukhsh.

BBC News

Potentised ?

 

[Lothian]

They found that a drop of Arsenicum Album three times a day reduced arsenic levels in the mice dramatically in just 72 hours.

There is no problem with homeopathy fitting in with modern science when the ‘curing’ element remains in the medicinal solution. When it has been diluted out of the potion, traditional science has problems. A lot of homeopathic products rely on the dilution principal, but don’t dilute to extremes. We don’t know how far the “Arsenicum Album “ was diluted in this case.
Perhaps potentised means that the cure was not just ‘water with a memory’

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Here's an abstrat on the original paper.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/2/4

Preparation of the potentized homeopathic drug

The two potencies of Chelidonium, procured from "HAPCO", 165, Bipin Behari Ganguli Street, Kolkata, were prepared as per the standard procedure of homoeopathic drug preparation. The dry drug material of Chelidonium majus (whole plant) was extracted in 44% ethyl alcohol (i.e. the "mother tincture"). 1 ml of the mother tincture was subsequently diluted with 99 ml HPI approved solvent (IP 96/HPI grade ethyl alcohol) and "succussed" 10 times to make the potency 1. The potency 2 was similarly made by diluting 1 ml of potency 1 with 99 ml of ethyl alcohol and giving 10 jerks, and the procedure was repeated to get the microdoses of Ch-30 and Ch-200.

Still no real answer to what "potentised/postentized" really means, and now I need a definition for "successed."

D'oh, I must be tired.

Potentized - giving the homopathic dilution it's "power" by shaking it.
Successed - Shaking the dilution.

I forgot that homopathy comes from Bizzaroworld.

 

[Colloden]

Potentized = Successed = shaking it

Oh, I love science.

 

[CurtC]

Succussed, not successed. The root word is the same root for "concussion," but with a different prefix.

 

[Quasi]

I just read the article (I work at a major medical school, and BMJ of CAM is available online, unabridged.) The article is so short, it essentially reads: Arsenic is a big problem. Mice (no number given,) were divided into positive and negative, and treated series. They measured enzyme activity (ALT and AST) and also GSH level in liver and blood at six intervals. No raw data is given, instead the conclusion is simply

__________________________________________
Results

Both Arsenicum Album-30 and Arsenicum Album-200 ameliorated arsenic-induced toxicity to a considerable extent as compared to various controls.

Conclusions

The results lend further support to our earlier views that microdoses of potentized Arsenicum Album are capable of combating arsenic intoxication in mice, and thus are strong candidates for possible use in human subjects in arsenic contaminated areas under medical supervision.
_________________________________________
Is this vague or what? The author completely avoids any data, and I cannot tell what dilution was used here? Is this 30C and 200C? Anyway, I am a little skeptical about the conclusion considering there is no data to evaluate.

 

[Rolfe]

You may want to look at this other thread from the past couple of days:
Homeopathy receives support.

Sounds as if what Quasi is reading is an abstract of the full paper, which is 27 pages long, and residing on my hard drive in pdf format, and likely to remain undisturbed. It's reasonable English, but it's so long-winded and circutious that it's terribly hard going. One thing I seem to recall is that the groups of mice were very small.

"How many groups of ten did you have to ask before you found the one in which eight of the owners said their cats preferred Whiskas?"

It might be better to bump the original thread rather than start a new one.

Rolfe.

 

[Quasi]

You may want to look at this other thread from the past couple of days:
Homeopathy receives support.

Sounds as if what Quasi is reading is an abstract of the full paper, which is 27 pages long, and residing on my hard drive in pdf format, and likely to remain undisturbed.

Yep, the format of the digital library is a bit confusing- I need to read the full paper.

Quasi