Dana Ullman response to the totally lame article on homeopathy by Popular Science
In due respect, the above article is totally lame, especially for a POPULAR SCIENCE article.
This article is totally theoretical and doesn’t choose to cite any of the many (hundreds!) of basic science or clinical trials, most of which have found biological activity and/or clinical effects of homeopathic medicines as distinct from placebo.
First of all, using market samples of metal-derived medicines from reputable manufacturers, scientists at the Department of Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology have demonstrated for the first time using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction by Selected Area Electron Diffraction (SAED), and chemical analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES), the presence of physical entities in these extreme dilutions in the form of nanoparticles of the starting metals and their aggregates.
The # of nanoparticles remaining in EACH of the 6 samples were considerably higher than the # of many hormones that circulate in our bodies (which are often in extremely low doses!).
I assume that your magazine will next assert that the atomic bomb was also a placebo because those exceedingly small particles could not “possibly” have significant effects. Well, so much for theory. Please refer to RESEARCH next time.
As for Avogadro’s number, such important concepts are not relevant when dealing with complex systems such as water and vigorous shaking in glass vials (do you understand that 6 parts per million of silica fragments fall off the glass walls from shaking?)(do you understand that the shaking creates bubbles and “nano-bubbles” that dramatically change the water pressure?)(is it possible that these factors influence what is being diluted?…the answer is CERTAINLY!).
Source: Is Homeopathy Really As Implausible As It Sounds?
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