Quack Quack Quack said the Homeopath
Homeopathy is the most controversial yet, the most popular form of alternative medicine. There are thousands of hospitals and clinics, millions of practitioners, billions of patients around the globe. Elders preach its effectiveness and prescribe it to ailing children in their families; endorsements by politicians(including Narendra Modi, Indira Gandhi etc), several Popes and the future King of England, Prince Charles. Students all over the world voluntarily sign up to study the discipline in government and private universities across the globe to become practitioners in the future. All of this and yet, there are zero successful double blind experiments (experiments where neither the ‘doctor’ nor the patient have any idea whether the treatment prescribed and used is the actual treatment or a sugar pill). Every major Science and Health organization has unanimously concluded that Homeopathy is ineffective, has no scientific basis and should not receive any more funding and yet, investment by governments into alternative medical disciplines including homeopathy have only increased in the last decade.
The first principle of Homeopathy laid down by its founder Samuel Hahnemann is the idea of ‘Like cures like’. For the uninitiated, that sounds an awful lot like Vaccines. However, this similarity is superficial at best. Vaccines introduce a diminished form of a virus to provoke the human immune system. ‘Like cures like’ in Homeopathy, makes the unfounded assumption that what causes a symptom, cures that symptom. In Hahnemann’s world, dilute Poison ivy cures a skin rash because undiluted exposure to it causes a rash. By the same logic, Belladonna which causes fever is diluted and used to cure fever, red onion can alleviate watery eyes and snake venom cures stiffness. This, when spelt out should be enough for a reasonable person without any biases to shy away from even considering it viable.
Amazingly, homeopathy gets stranger. The second principle- Potency by dilution defies all reason. Homeopaths and believers claim, that the more one dilutes an active ingredient in water, the stronger medicine it becomes. In short, Dilution enhances effect. This directly contradicts both common sense and scientific logic. The ‘weakest’, least ‘effective’ Homeopathic medicine labeled 1X is a 1:9 solution. That means, taking one part active ingredient and mixing it with 9 parts distilled water or alcohol. This is the most concentrated solution which is labeled as least effective because it is least diluted. If one part of this solution is taken and mixed with 9 parts solvent, it’ll be a much more diluted and hence, more effective 2X potent medicine. A 20 X solution is analogous to one tablet of disprin dropped in the Atlantic Ocean, taking a spoonful of that and calling it medicine. The most commonly prescribed potency is 30 C. How much is that? A drop in a water tank? No. A swimming pool does not provide enough dilution. A lake is inadequate. Even a drop in the sea is not enough. To make a 30 C pill with one molecule of active ingredient, it would have to have the radius of the distance between the Sun and the Earth. The Science just does not add up.
Even Homeopaths acknowledge that there isn’t even one molecule of the substance in the bottle they sell. In an attempt to resolve the paradox, Homeopathy paddles further up the creek of pseudoscience claiming that shaking after every dilution leaves behind a spirit like essence of the substance and that water somehow has a ‘memory’ of the now absent molecule. That would mean, every bottle of medicine has more urine than medicine. If this absurd proposition were true, that would mean every substance that has ever met a drop of water, leaves an essence behind which would lead to unpredictable events when accidentally ingested. Every sip of water would be a supercharged cocktail of homeopathic medicine.
In the 18th Century, modern medicine, still at its developmental stages employed methods which were more invasive and sometimes, left the patients worse off than before. Hahnemann’s new methods were simpler, less experimental and non invasive which led to the popularisation of Homeopathy. Not doing anything seemed better than doing something detrimental after all. However, since then, modern, scientific medicine with aid of modern tools, scientific double blinded studies and diagnostics has progressed and humans enjoy longer, healthier lives like never before. We reject the stuff that doesn’t work and study the things that do. It is dynamic in nature unlike Homeopathy which is rigid and static.
We know now that Homeopathy does not work any more than a placebo would. Therein lies the ‘magic’ of Homeopathy. The Placebo effect is well documented and needs no further elaboration. Irrespective of how smart someone thinks themselves to be, no one is immune to it. Trust on a remedy of a simple rash or illness alone is enough for the body’s immune system to be more functional. Placebo effect can be transferred by guardians to children or pets who are astute observers of emotions in other people. Treatment there is merely observation of the trust that the caretaker has on the medicine, not the medicine itself. Then there is the factor of time. Our bodies are survival machines. Small maladies that Homeopathy claims to cure would have been cured anyway naturally without taking any pill in due course of time. However, time has significance in another way in the story of Homeopathy. Homeopaths sit down and talk to patients far longer than Doctors generally do. The Homeopathic consultations are conversations and do stretch for hours sometimes and for patients an empathetic doctor who spends hours treating their mild fever is a welcome sight than the overworked and stressed doctor who writes a prescription almost mechanically for simple illnesses in a crowded clinic in an average of 5 minutes. This leads to patients being left feeling invisible, scared and alone. Homeopathy meets this need which modern medicine has thus far, left unfulfilled. For the people who believe in it (including, I admit, some doctors and other educated people) it is like a religion. Zero rationale but ‘belief’
Anyone can become a Homeopathic practitioner, it is completely unregulated. Any person can be a ‘doctor’ as it does not require a degree or credible licensing. If I, after writing this project wish to earn some money, one of the easiest ways I can adopt is to sell Homeopathic medicine, call myself a doctor, fool the ignorant and make easy money talking to people and dishing out water (although I would have to contend with my inner voice calling me a fraud and a hypocrite for the rest of my life). The natural question then, becomes the following. If a person goes to another person to buy water solution, what harm does it cause anyone?
The answer is trivial yet, not very obvious. Homeopathic medicine manufacturing industry likes to play the gentle alternative to “Big Pharma”. Ironically, Homeopathy itself is big pharma. Billions of dollars are made with extremely high profit margins (cost of producing small vials of water is tremendously low). The industry has its own lobby organizations. Globally, the market is projected to reach 17 billion dollars by 2024. However, the more sinister argument is that relying on Homeopathy erodes the trust people have on Medicine. This does no harm to medicine itself, the principles are completely scientific and logical, what it does harm is public health. Patients who have actual diseases choose to ‘cure’ the symptoms using what they think is medicine and because of this distrust on medicine, people die by the hundreds as infections spread and affect people. When after months or years of ‘trying to cure’ the serious remedy by Homeopathy, patient comes to the doctors, it is often too late and the doctors bear the brunt while Homeopaths walk scot free. This distrust leads to movements like anti vaccination (a significant correlation exists between Homeopathy believers and anti vaccinating parents) and use of weirder alternative medicines. All of this is funded by the taxpayer while Healthcare runs in deficit and isn’t expanded. If Government investment in Homeopathy (AYUSH) is struck down, high quality Universal adult, childhood and neo-natal scientific and effective healthcare covering dental, auditory and visual care is possible in India.
Public outrage against Homeopathy is a hilarious yet, stark display of how useless it is. People used to commit mock mass suicides made popular by James Randi who overdosed on Homeopathic sleeping pills before delivering lectures. Colleges regularly discontinue courses for Homeopathy and groups regularly mock overdose on sleeping ‘pills’ just to prove how useless it is. Homeopathy is a fraud; a quack sold by cooks to earn quick money and should be rejected outright for a better, efficient and ultimately public and personal healthy life.
