Saturday, August 27, 2005

End of homeopathy?


Jacques Benveniste, a French researcher, was awarded the IgNobel prize in Chemistry (you will have to scroll down to the year 1991) "for his persistent discovery that water, H2O, is an intelligent liquid, and for demonstrating to his satisfaction that water is able to remember events long after all trace of those events has vanished".

Guardian reports:

Homeopathy, favoured medical remedy of the royal family for generations and hugely popular in the UK, has an effect but only in the mind, according to a major study published in a leading medical journal today.

According to this report, this leading journal, Lancet, wrote a hard-hitting editorial against the use of homeopathy.

It is hardly surprising that homeopathy does badly compared with conventional medicine, it [the Lancet editorial] says - it is more surprising that the debate continues after 150 years of unfavourable findings. "The more dilute the evidence for homeopathy becomes, the greater seems its popularity."

Emphasis added by me.

Let me end this post with this memorable quote from David Deutsch:

As I understand it, the claim is that the less you use Homeopathy, the better it works. Sounds plausible to me.

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