Science begins to tumble to homeopathy
John Benneth
http://johnbenneth.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/science-begins-to-tumble-to-homeopathy-2/
The previous blog reported on amazing discoveries revealed by Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier. This blog reports on attempts to debunk them. Jeff Reimers is a theoretical chemist at the University of Sydney, Australia. Regarding the Montagnier experiments he says, "If the results are correct, these would be the most significant experiments performed in the past 90 years, demanding re-evaluation of the whole conceptual framework of modern chemistry." It was the bomb that threatened to destroy conventional "medicine" 200 years ago and so it remains, and as the audience sleeps, the young ingenue of homeopathy, the understudy quietly terrorizes the old diva of allopathic medicine quietly from the wings. She waits to go on. Time is on her side. Attempts to defuse the quantum bomb by medical and biological hacks, such as America's first woman flight surgeon (now retired), Harriet Hall, MD, auguring in, and blustering University of Minnesota Morris biology professor PZ Myers, blowing up in his face, have failed, miserably. It threatens to breed countless bomblets, grow a million legs walking into every biology and chemistry class, hospital and clinic throughout the world, demanding from them what they cannot provide: Homeopathy. WARNING: If you are a pseudo scientist, drug company shill, medical hack, RUN, run for your life. Find a new profession. Your old one is headed for the scrap pile. Opponents like Hall continue to desperately insist that the Montagnier study has nothing to do with homeopathy. Hall is a habitual homeopathy basher for Michael Shermer's Skeptic Magazine. She writes, "A recent study is being cited as support for homeopathy. For instance, the Homeopathy World Community website says the 'Luc Montagnier Foundation Proves Homeopathy Works.' Hall denies it. "Nope," she says, succussing her head side to side. "Sorry, guys, It doesn't. In fact, its findings are inconsistent with homeopathic theory." Nope, sorry Harriet. Denying it doesn't make it go away. It must be troubling to know anti-homeopathy buffs like Hall to know that homeopathy is now FDA regulated. It sends them into strict denial. Who wants to break that news to the homeopathy denialists? And the way Montagnier processes his materials is in accord with the FDA regulated manufacture of homeopathic remedies. Aqueous structuring from dilutes is the stated title of the Montagnier study. He states that the filtrates were serially diluted 1 in 10 in medical grade sterile water. Aqueous structuring from serial agitated dilutions reported by numerous scientific studies now confirms claims for what constitutes FDA regulated homeopathic medicines and how they are made. So let's take a closer look at what the denialists are saying: Hall writes, "Homeopathy postulates effects at most dilutions, with increasing effects as the dilutions become greater. In this study, there were no effects at low dilutions." That's partially right. The lowest dilution did not, but neither did many of the higher ones. Hall is confused! She has already stated that Montagnier's work has nothing to do with homeopathy. If this is true then why is she compelled to point out that because EM emissions at the lowest dilutions were not detected by Montagnier, that this is significant in the case AGAINST homeopathy? If EM can be detected at any dilution, an this is suspected to be the mechanism for biological action, then why deny it, unless it opens the door wider to the argument? Homeopathic remedies are not used in every dilution strength. Hall admits two things in her criticism of Montagnier: One, high dilutes are structured and two, these structures, at some dilutions, can produce EM signals. Case closed Harriet, we win again. But Hall desperately continues on: She writes, "They talk about water structures and polymer formations, but acknowledge that these associations appear to be very short-lived. In this study they found that the effects lasted for several hours, sometimes up to 48 hours - but not longer. Wow! If Hall were up on her homeopathy hating talking points, she'd be arguing that because of the short duration of the hydrogen bond, liquid aqueous structuring cannot theoretically last any longer than 50 femto seconds. Montagnier blows this all to hell by saying that he was getting a signal from liquid aqueous structuring that lasted as long as two days! Now here's a killshot. Hall writes, "Homeopathic remedies are not administered within hours of their preparation. They supposedly remain effective for long periods. Most homeopaths say that homeopathic remedies do not require expiration dates and will remain effective indefinitely as long as they are properly stored." That's right, Harriet. Homeopathic remedies are not administered within hours or days of manufacture, they are kept sometimes for years. In fact, it is said that some of the first homeopathic medicines ever made, those by Hahnemann in his old kit, still work just fine. And there is a reason fo this, why homeopathic remedies last indefinitely. If Hall were up on homeopathic pharmaceutical preparation procedures, she'd know that homeopathic remedies are prepared with ethanol. Ethanol is what keeps liquid aqueous structuring, exemplified in clathrates, from dissipating. If Hall finds this hard to believe, then she should take a look at an international study done by Moscow State University and the University of Cincinnati that confirms ethanol preserves clathrates. Structurability: A Collective Measure of the Structural Differences in Vodkas The international team observed differences in hydrogen-bonding strength among vodkas using H NMR, FT-IR, and Raman spectroscopy. Component analysis of the FT-IR and Raman data revealed a water-rich hydrate of composition E·(5.3 ± 0.1) H2O prevalent in both vodka and water-ethanol solutions. They reported that the composition was close to that of a clathrate-hydrate observed at low temperature, implying a cage-like morphology http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf100609c The team went so far as to suggest that you can taste the difference in clathrate structure. One researcher claims that double Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling believed that clathrates are what give alcohol it narcotic effect. Poor Harriet Hall. Now she has to add some more names to her blacklist of people to bash for being "unscientific," including yet another Nobel prize winner, this time a chemist, Linus Pauling, who was the only laureate to win 100% of a Nobel TWICE. Without preservation by ethanol, internal tension from hydrogen bonding aggregates the clathrate hydrates (the aerogeneous nucleators found in homeopathic solutions) and dissipates their structures. Polar water molecules are self assembling and will order themselves around the guest substance. If self-assembly isn't stopped by fixing it with a second medium, such as ethanol, structuring dissipates. Note the persistence of methanol clathrates in the BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Ethanol separates the aerogeneous aqueous structuring into fixed domains, stopping interference with one another. Montagnier produced biologically active "aqueous nanostructures" through the time honored process of homeopathic medicine, the serial agitated dilution in water, the same process used to create homeopathic remedies. Look at what Montagnier has done: His research on detection of electromagnetic signals in the plasma from patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis verifies what we homeopaths have been telling the deaf world of science for years. What Montagnier found was that the stimulation of the dilute by an electromagnetic background of very low frequency was essential. The background was either produced from natural sources (the Schumann resonances [4] which start at 7.83 Hz) or from artificial sources. Homeopaths such as myself have seized on this study as further proof, from highly credible sources, that homeopathic remedies have distinct supramolecular structural features that emit electromagnetic signals that can affect biological entities. It is also providing further insight into the physics of homeopathy. Now read how Hall finally caves in on the argument as she contradicts her previous denials, admitting more evidence for homeopathy.
"There were a series of positive effects at high dilutions but the effect size did not increase progressively as the dilution increased. At the highest dilutions, the effect vanished." That's right too. In the first part of her critique Hall said the Montagnier study had nothing to do with homeopathy. Now here's she's puzzled because "high dilutions," used both in homeopathic medicine and Montagnier's experiments, are emitting EM at some frequencies, but not at others. This is concordant from what I've seen in other experiments of this kind. The sinusoidal wave is a common graph for results in almost all homeopathic studies, be they physical, in vivo or in vitro. At some dilutions they don't seem to work, or they produce opposite effects. The wave also seems to be rising as if there is actually a longer secondary wave. Allow me to make a suggestion. As dilutions rise there could be changes in amplitude and frequency. Note that the most commonly used dilutions in homeopathic remedies sold OTC are 6C (100^6), 12C (100^12) and 30C (100^30). A keen mathematical eye might spot what the relationship is between those three numbers: They fall upon an advanced Fibonacci scale, which mathematically defines the spiral. I'm sure this will be as much a cause of interest for homeopaths as it will be ridicule for people like Hall, Shermer, Myers and Randi, but I'm used to that, and I know that eventually they're going to suffer either the embarrassment of the same kind of obloquoy they've been dishing out, ridicule and ignominy that has caught up with similar critics. For every man who was made famous for his practice of homeopathy a hundred years ago, what man was made famous for his criticism of it? I couldn't tell you a one. Likewise I'll wager that the name of the great homeopath George Vithoulkas, for instance, will outlive that of Harriet Hall. Certainly we can admit that Montagnier is not directly testing the biological effects of these remedies on anything but themselves (the crosstalk experiments), but he is proving the major point of contention in favor of homeopathy, the memory of water, and its biologically specific effects, which Hall has found herself inadvertently accepting. In the next blog, further discussing and complimenting this new insights, I will answer some questions posed by a JBJ reader, raised by the Montagnier experiments. John Benneth, PG Hom. - London (Hons.)
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