Scientific Explanation of Homoeopathy

By Dr. R.R.Sharma,

Retd. Prof. & Head, Biophysics Dept., Postgraduate Institute of

Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh. Mailing address: 615, Sector 10, Panchkula,

Haryana-134113, INDIA Phone : 563949

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Introduction:

Even over two centuries after its birth in 1790, Homoeopathy is still ahead of times and beyond the contemporary sciences. New scientific phenomena, concepts & sciences need to be recognized to elucidate its science. New controlled tests, other than the Double Blind Drug Trials, are required to be conducted to establish the efficacy of high potency homoeo medicines having no molecule of the original drug. Self contradiction in the World Health Organisation’s definition of health needs to be pointed out and a fresh appraisal of Homoeopathy’s curative & preventive potentials has to be undertaken to reorganise the Health Care Delivery Systems for globally improving the quality of health and for reducing the uses of costly allopathic drugs and incidences of advanced, dangerous & iatrogenic diseases. This paper addresses these and other important issues scientifically.

Avogadro’s Law & High Potency:

According to Avogadro’s law, a gram-mole (molecular weight W in gram) of a substance contains N= 6.022×1023 molecules and the probability of finding one molecule in a patient dose of centesimal potency x is1 p = (6.022/W).10 -2(x – 10) . For instance, this probability for Natrum muriaticum ( Sodium Chloride, W=58.46) is nearly 1 in 105 at the potency 12c, 1 in 1041 at 30c, 1 in 10381 at 200c, and 1 in 101981 at 1000c. In other words, the 12c and higher potencies do not have any molecule of the original drug in the dose. But in actual homoeopathic clinical practice, the potencies used are 30c, 200c, 1000c ( or 1M) generally and 10M, 50M, CM occasionally. Then there are 50 millesimal potencies having 50000-fold dynamized dilution at every step of potentization. And all are found to have observed curative action2. Moreover, according to the Law of Mass Action, the rate of chemical reaction or activity of a compound is proportional to its molar concentration. However, the more diluted higher potencies of homoeo medicines are observed 2 to produce more profound curative effect. Homoeopaths’ such claims are not supported by controlled Double Blind Drug Trials. That is why high potency homoeo medicines are taken by some scientists as placebos, their action as placebo-effects and Homoeopathy as scientifically implausible, violating the natural scientific laws like the Avogadro’s law and the Law of Mass Action3-8.But a “scientist” is open minded and logical, willing to be convinced and change his views if the relevant information or evidence presents itself logically afresh. I, like any other scientist knowing the Avogadro’s law and the Law of Mass Action, used to discard and disregard Homoeopathy as ‘unscientific placebo therapy’ till mid 1960s when a homoeopath actually cured an “obstinate” eczema of my wife. This aroused my scientific curiosity. I decided to acquire the ability to prescribe for seeing these medicines act in my own hands, and then to explain their action within the framework of contemporary sciences. More than a decade’s hard work, studies and thought convinced me that the homoeopathic art of cure is valid but its science is beyond the modern sciences. This marked the end of my search in one direction and eginning in another, as presented herein. Controlled drug trials not applicable to Homoeopathy. Homoeopathy can only be tested by those methods which are consistent with its philosophy and practice. For Allopathy, the terms like diabetes mellitus and rheumatoid arthritis are quite diagnostic of the disease and also suggestive of the treatment. But in Homoeopathy, these are only part of the larger “whole” disease portrayed by the totality of subjective symptoms and objective signs, and as such cannot indicate any specific medicine for treatment. An allopath combines a medicine each for nightly fever, iritis, burning of piles relieved by heat, facial discolouration, appetite loss, anxiety & disturbed sleep, but a single homoeo medicine Arsenic album covers them all. Since the patients of one and the same pathology, say pneumonia, invariably differ in the symptom totality, they need a different homoeo medicine each although Allopathy treats them all with the same drug.

Different patients with different pathologies but having the same 4-to-8 p.m. aggravation are given the same homoeo drug Lycopodium. Therefore, such single medicine vs placebo trials as ‘Rhus tox. in arthritis’ have no validity. The selection of a homoeo medicine is highly dependent on the subjective symptoms and mental state, which for modern Scientific Medicine are of little diagnostic value. The Double Blind Drug Trials, in which the the patients are randomly assigned to the treatment and placebo groups and the therapist, the patient and the outcome evaluator do not know whether the administered dose is the active medicine or a similar looking inert placebo, are mandatory for all allopathic drugs to satisfy before their release in the market for public use. Such trials eliminate the subjective biases because the disease status is monitored via objective laboratory tests. However, these drug trials cannot be carried out in Homoeopathy because here the ‘diagnosis’ is made of that single medicine which is most similar to the ‘individualised’ “whole” patient descibed by the totality of symptoms with their variation modalities. But no two patients of the same nosological pathology are exactly alike due to biological differences in personalities, diatheses and in the composition, patency and population size of the strategic enzymes. So the patients under homoeopathic treatment cannot be divided into treatment and placebo groups randomly. Moreover, the homoeo physician must know the “total” symptoms before and after every dose of the known medicine, so as to check that the cure is rightly proceeding from center to periphery, the symptoms are disappearing in the reverse order of their appearance and the aggravations, if any, are under review. Dose intervals, potencies and even medicines, if need be, are adjusted with the changing symptom totality. All these considerations make the Double Blind Drug Trials inapplicable and irrelevant to Homoeopahy. The drug trials and their meta-analyses, as conducted in the past, without properly appreciating these basic points, will always is inform, bringing bad name to Homoeopathy unjustly3-5.

Controlled drug trials applicable to Homoeopathy:

I, therefore got interested 1, 9 in the homoeo treatments of those well worked out but in a way given up (by modern Scientific Medicine) cases which could serve as their own controls and whose cures could by no means be explained away as mere coincidences with natural remissions. That is, those which, though small in number, could be strikingly decisive enough to dispel the disapproving misinformation about Homoeopathy. These are the cases which for the modern Scientific Medicine are: (i) incurable/fatal, (ii) difficult-to-cure, even with long treatments under Scientific Allopathy, (iii) requiring surgery, (iv) viral infections, where Scientific Allopathy has nothing to offer, (v) children diseases, where placebo does not work.

The cases of Indian Childhood Cirrhosis were diagnosed on liver biopsy, liver function tests, clinical history and physical examination, and discharged from the referral hospital with hopeless prognosis, short survival and with a whisper advice to take the child quick lest he should die on the way. But all showed definite signs of improvement within three days of the start of homoeopathic treatment. Since ICC is known to occur with a high frequency in the siblings, it is interesting to report that the prophylactic treatment of the mother during pregnancy and then of the child after birth succeeded in three couples, one of whom had earlier lost five sons to ICC. His Excellency President of India Dr. Radhakrishnan’s ADC, who had suffered migraine for over 20 years and resigned in disgust when he did not get relief even with the treatments in Germany & U.K., was cured with Homoeopathy. A number of cases with confirmed diagnosis of psoriasis were homoeo treated satisfactorily. The MD in Pharmacology & Dean of Dharwar Medical College

in Karnataka, after reading Molecular Homoeopathy came all the way by air for treatment of psoriasis and experienced relief within an hour of the homoeo dose and “euphoria” on overnight crust shedding. An army Colonel had to fly in non-pressurized aircraft’s during 1947-48 Indo-Pak war and developed labyrinth vertigo. Ever since he suffered giddiness & reeling sensation whenever he layed down in bed, turned on side or bent down. A number of E.N.T. experts were consulted and all sorts of tests done without relief. He took homoeo medicine from me in August 1974 on a Friday and did headstand on Sunday. A four-year girl child was treated in the advance institute of Scientific Medicine for acute Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura in 1993 with 2mg/Kg-body weight prednisolone and later with 9 gm/day for 5 days immunoglobulin Ig G, then with Chinese medicine. In April 1997 she again had an acute episode, with platilet count <5000. The homoeo-treatment raised the platelet count gradually through <10000 on third day and then 33000, 79000 to 120000 tested weekly. She has been Symptom free so far. A teacher in our Nursing College lost her fiancy in the 1971 Indo-Pak war and developed Thyrotoxicosis complicated with Exophthalmos & Amenorrhea. The treating endocrinologist advised her to learn to live with it. But after homoeocure she married and had two children. Out of the several cases of arthritis and spondylosis the most striking one was that of general spondylosis threatening extremeties and requiring urgent ortho-surgery. The Homoeo-cure gave her permanent relief. A senior executive was admitted for surgical removal of a solitary thyroid nodule. On learning of the possible homoeocure he left the hospital and was actually cured. The prolapse uterus in the third stage advised Thomson correction was rectified homoeopathically. Several cases of renal stone and of viral hepatitis with jaundice were also homoeo-treated; the Australia antigen test undertaken in one case became negative after a week’s homoeo treatment. Potencies used were 200c, 1M generally and 10M & CM occasionally. These, few of my personal convincing observations obtained under the natural constraints of noncooperation in an allopathic institute corroborate the overwhelmingly huge mass of persuasive observations of innumerable homoeopaths all over the world during the past over two centuries that homoeo medicines do act curatively even in high potencies with no molecule of the original drug in the dose. Obviously, some molecules of the diluent solvent (lactose, water, ethanol) are mimicking the chemical specificity of the solute drug molecule. As opposed to Langman’s remark5: “the advance of Scientific Medicine has not been matched by a withering of alternative methods of treatment”, a need is justified for “homoeopathic clinical & research units” in advance institutes of Scientific Medicine to encourage open-minded inter-modality cooperation for the good of Science and patients. But really informative were the controlled drug trials on laboratory animals. Controlled animal experiments. To allay the objections that the action of high potencies with no molecule of the original drug provides artificial sense of relief due to faith in the physician10 and is speculative11 , we conducted controlled animal experiments 1,9,12-14 which also provided much sought after vital information on the role of the homoeopathic potentisation processes.

1. Alloxan induced diabetes in rats Diabetes mellitus was induced in Albino Wistar rats having 180 – 340 gm body weight, 80 – 120 mg/dl blood sugar and zero urine sugar with intraperitoneal injection of 100 – 150 mg alloxan per Kg body weight after over night fast. The diabetic rats were divided into four groups of five each for treatment with : (a) 20m millesimal (equivalent to 30c centesimal ) potency of alloxan with 100020 fold dynamized dilution, (b) 100020 fold undynamized dilution of alloxan, (c) nothing , or ’sham’ treated with ethanol, since the first two dilutions were in it . Blood sugar in (a) group returned from the initial Mean  S.D. 308  129 mg/dl (range 179-501 mg/dl) to 90.1  4.0 mg/dl in the normal range of 80-120 mg/dl after 44 days’ treatment and remained so without any treatment upto 144 days of observation. In group (c) the Mean  S.D. 276  82.2 mg/dl (range 189-389) first rose to 344  65.6 mg/dl, then showed a delayed slight fall but always significantly ( t – test, p < 0.001) above the normal range. The (b) group showed no fall with 100020 fold undynamized alloxan dilution from day 7 to 25 nor with 20m potency of Streptozotocin from day 28 to 55. But the treatment with 20m alloxan potency from day 58 to 116 showed significant curative fall from 325  148 mg/dl to 176  51 mg/dl. Probability of finding a molecule in the dose is 1 in 1041 in all the cases. Rastogi et al. 15 have confirmed and extended these findings.

2. DMBA Induced toxicity & cancerogenesis in miceUnlike alloxan, DMBA(Dimethyl-Benz-Anthracin) is not a primary pathogen since its metabolites, not itself, induce the pathology. Its incubate with microsomal enzymes of mouse liver, instead of DMBA itself , was the starting material for preparing the test solutions of 20m potency and 100020 fold undynamized dilution. The DMBA pathology in Swiss albino mice was induced by subcutaneous injection of 0.75 mg of it. The 50% survival period SP-50 ( period for half the mice in the group to die and other half to survive) was 144 days for the group of 20 treated with dynamized 20m potency as against 36 days for the 20 mice group treated with undynamized 100020 fold dilution. The 10% of mice in the latter group, but none in the former, also developed a fibrosarcoma at the site of DMBA s.c. injection .New scientific phenomenon discovered and Avogadro’s law bypassed These animal experiments alongwith the above homoeo treatments of human patients establish that the dynamized homoeo medicines do cure even in high potencies when no molecule of the original drug can be present in the dose but undynamized simple dilutions of the same extents have no curative effect. The inescapable conclusion is therefore thrust on us that the agitating mechanical dynamization processes of forceful triturations and impacted succussions, which are unique only to Homoeopathy and not investigated by orthosciences, induce the molecules of the diluent solvent medium to acquire and later mimic the chemical specificity of the solute drug molecule, to thereby themselves act as the therapeutic agent. The dose therefore contains plenty of medicinally active diluent molecules, removing for good the perennial conceptual impasse created by the Avogadro’s law1,9,14,16,17.

The new science of Inductive Chemistry:

The modern sciences recognize the induction of magnetism and electric charge but rule out the induction of chemical specificity of one molecule in another, which is suggested by, and required to explain, the homoeopathic potentization. The newly proposed science of Inductive Chemistry deals in this new phenomenon as also in the preparation and properties of the “induced molecule” carrying the chemical specificity of another molecule1, 9,16,17. For the basic mechanism, one has to revise the physical basis of chemical specificity and consider the only commonality in the diluent media (lactose, water, ethanol) traditionally used for preparing homoeo potencies, namely the -OH group(s) in their molecule. New physical bases of molecular chemical specificity and positive recognition. The generally recognized Spectrophotometry fixes the spectral identity of a molecule by the spectrally exchanged energy E (= hn) via the uniquely characteristic frequency n. Similarly, its chemical specificity is determined by the chemically exchanged energy dE with the other reacting moiety. It is a new plausible hypothesis that the chemical and biochemical discriminatory mechanisms positively recognize a molecule in two steps: First, of physical bonding via omlementary 3-dimensional structures and second, of exchanging the energy dE specifically characteristic of the recognizer-recognize pair. The first step exercises a negative recognition and the second constitutes the positive recognition. The first step can be definite only to tell that the molecule not binding to the receptor for the molecule A is not-A, but the Second step identifies positively via the chemically exchanged energy dE particularly specific of the molecule A. That is why the energy and length of a chemical bond depend on both the participants. For example, the same atom Cl should be in four different energy states within the intact molecules Cl2 , NaCl, AgCl & CH3Cl . This is against the prevalent concepts in modern Physics & Chemistry to assign the same energy state to Cl in these and any other chloride1,9,16,17. But it can be tested , say by Laser Raman Spectrometry. If a molecule B is induced to carry the exchangeable energy equal to that of A, the chemical and biochemical discriminatory machinaries can be “fooled” to treat B as A. The shape, size and 3-D structure of the small molecule B play insignificant role. Its close proximity near the recognizing site on the recognizer molecule(s) is all that is necessary and also sufficient for exchanging the characteristic energy. The initial step of physical fit for negative recognition is not required.

Mechanism of homoeopathic potentization:

The oxygen atom in the -OH groups of the molecules of diluent medium (lactose, water, ethanol), due to sp3 hybridization has four equivalent valency orbitals. Two of these have bond pair electrons and the other two unshared lone pair electrons. The latter have no definite higher energy levels vacant and can be raised, in small steps , to any desired energy level.During forceful triturations and impacted succussions or agitations the outermost electron shell of the solute drug molecules comes repeatedly in close proximity with those of the diluent molecules. This induces resonant promotion of the lone pair electrons of the diluent -OH groups, in small steps, to energy levels of the chemically active electrons of drug molecules. The diluent molecules thus acquire the chemically exchangeable energy and hence the chemical specificity of the drug molecule. During serial dilutions of potency preparation the original drug molecules get eliminated and the diluent molecules resonantly promoted by them take over the resonant promotion of the unpromoted diluent molecules. This dynamized dilution is a limitless process and can be continued ad infinitum. See detailed discussion and presentation in refs. 1, 9, 17.Supportive experimental evidence Smith &Boericke19 studied the CH3-, CH2- and -OH peaks in the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectra of ethanol, unsuccussed and succussed dilutions of sulphur in ethanol. Only the -OH peak of only the succussed potency spreads and reduces in area under the curve. No modern science can explain this observation which in our theory however, follows quite naturally from the resonant promotion of lone pair electrons of -OH groups in the potentized ethanol.The Laser Raman Spectral peak 20 of diluent alcohol disappears in succussed dilution of Potassium Bichromate and reduces in height in that of Ammonium Nitrate but a new peak of the solute appears in both cases. These results cannot be explained by modern science, but follow easily from the resonant promotion of the lone pair electrons of -OH groups of the potentized alcohol.Controlled animal experiments on the alloxan induced diabetes in rats and DMBA induced toxicity & cancerogenesis in mice showed that 20 stages of 1:1000 dynamized dilution of the pathogen acted curatively, whilst undynamized dilution of the same extent had no effect. Thus the dynamization induces the diluent medium to acquire the chemical specificity of the pathogen which it later mimics to act as the therapeutic agent.

Power of high potencies & bypassing of the Law of Mass Action:

The therapeutic action of potencies higher than the 12th centesimal is exercised by the diluent ethanol resonantly promoted with the original drug. These medicinally active alcohol molecules can easily cross the water and lipid channels in biological barriers like blood-brain barrier, placenta membrane, cell & nuclear membranes to produce profound therapeutic effects. Large crude drug molecules of the low potencies cannot easily cross these barriers. This may be the basis of the homoeopaths’ empirical observation that higher potencies are more powerful. It could also explain why high potencies could cure even some of those conditions which for the modern Scientific Medicine were incurable, difficult-to-cure or requiring surgery (see above). This also bypasses the Law of Mass Action according to which the chemical or therapeutic activity of a drug is proportional to its molar concentration, and hence the high potencies with no drug molecule should have no therapeutic action. Basis of the homoeopathic Law of Similars All biological functions and phenomena in health or sickness are mediated via molecular mechanisms. Disease, being a state of altered health, is caused by an unnatural substance or “xenobiotic” affecting the strategic target biomolecules, thereby changing the rates and/or routes of biochemical reactions and producing unnatural biochemicals, tissue changes and organ pathologies. The chemical specificities of the affecting xenobiotic and affected biomolecule togetherwith the exact physiological role of the biomolecule in health, determine the totality of signs and symptoms and their modes of variation with modifying factors to provide the “portrait of primary disease” which can serve to identify the xenobiotic causing the disease, natural or artificial (of homoeodrug proving). The symptoms, being effects of disease, coexist with it. The new science of Xenobiology studies the total biological response, including objective signs and subjective symptoms, of healthy subjects to xenobiotics1, 21. This comprehensive science includes as its particulars the Toxicology, Parasitology, Immunology &c. It provides the Materia Medica to the new scienec of Inductoxenopathy which uses “induced xenobiotics” beyond the Avogadro’s limit of 12c as medicines working on the homoeopathic Law of Similars 1, 9 , turning killers as saviours.

Allopathy, Ayurveda, Unani, Sidha &c form a group operaing on the ‘Principle of Opposites’. Their medicines oppose i.e. suppress, neutralise, block or remove the products, effects and results of the disease process. Homoeopathy alone is a group by itself, working on the Law of Similars. Here, a high potency of that drug is given whose large doses in healthy subjects creat symptom totality similar to the patient. For example, digitalis is known to lower the heart rate in healthy persons. Its large repeated doses are therefore used in Scientific Medicine to control tachycardia. However, potentized digitalis is a homoeo-medicine for bradycardia. The symptom totality of a disease, in fact, indicates the total biological response of the healthy subject in the patient to the causative xenobiotic. It has two components: activation of the defence mechanisms against the antigenic determinants on the xenobiotic molecule, and the pathophysiology of the affected biomolecules, cells, tissues & organs. The potentized homoeo-medicine Dx prepared by resonantly promoting the diluent molecules D with the crude drug molecules X contains a mixture of diluent molecules resonantly promoted with the antigenic and pathogenic determinants of X. The xenobiotic X, crude drug X and the homoeopotency Dx carry similar chemically exchangeable energies and chemical specificities, hence elicit similar symptom totality. The homoeocure has two pronged effect: one of stimulating the immune response, and second of dislodging X from the disease complex MX formed with the biomolecule M, through competitive chemical exchanges:MX + Dx  MD x + XMD x  M + D x X  biodegraded/ bioeliminated D x  depromoted to  D, the diluent molecule  metabolized. Competitive chemical exchanges between the pathogenic and curative xenobiotics are thus basic to the omoeopathic drug action on the Law of Similars. For example, Wurmser22 found that dynamized potencies of Arsenic and Bismuth increased their elimination from animal tissues. I have treated1 a case each of Arsenic toxicity with Arsenic album 200c, Opium toxicity with Opium 1M and Belladona toxicity with Bell 10M. The control of Alloxan induced diabetes in rats with 20m Alloxan and of DMBA toxicity in mice with 20m DMBA, presented above, are also supportive.

Deficiencies in WHO’s definition of health:

According to World Health Organisation’s definition “absence of disease is NOT health”. This internal inconsistency or self contradiction arises because for diagnosis under the Scientific Medicine, a disease has to be advanced enough to create laboratory detectable biochemical abnormalities and/or biopotential variations and/or pathologic tissue changes out side the “normal range”, and there is no way of asceratining the normal value of the dignostic parameter for the particular patient before sickness. In the pre- or sub-clinical stage, the clinical laboratories report N.A.D. (no abnormality detected or no appreciable disease) but the patient suffers some subjective/mental & physical symptoms on which a curative homoeo medicine can be given to nip or abort the disease. Therefore, Homoeopathy can serve as an effective Preventive Community Medicine. Its scope of preventing diseases from progressing further to advanced dangerous stages is all-inclusive 23.The other deficiency in WHO’s definition is that it does not recognise the existence or achievability of the “supra mental health”. No organised attempts at its promotion have therefore been made under the Scientific Medicine based Health Care. However the Yoga practices of pranayam (breath control) and dhyan (meditation) have been shown24 to induce the rare abilities like intuition, self control on thought, assuming alpha and theta brain states at will, etc. Homoeopathy and dhyan help attenuate anxiety and other psychological components of disease. The “similar medicines” of Homoeopathy working on the law of similars and the “opposite medicines” of Allopathy/ Ayurveda &c acting according to the principle of opposites can be given together intercurrently with advantage to the patient because their modes and planes of action are different. The Yogic pranayam and dhyan help control the psychological components of disease. A judicious combination of these three with other supplementary and complementary modalities of restoring and promoting health constitutes the new integrated holistic therapeutics Navayurveda 1, 9, 25, 26. Here allopathic medicines are given not to suppress the morbid symptoms but make the basic homoeocure comfortable by controlling the symptoms within the tolerable limits which varies from patient to patient. With the progress of homoeocure the allopathic drugs are tapered off. Thus the need or use of allopathic drugs is drastically reduced but the curative and preventive potential are greatly enlarged. The general quality of community health is significantly improved by nipping the diseases in their early pre-clinical stages. The incidences of advanced, dangerous as also iatrogenic diseases are reduced, and so is the need for expensive centres for bypass and organ transplant surgeries. The national governments even with limited resources can well afford to assume the responsibility of public health to provide “health (care) for all” under this cheapest yet most effective Homoeopathy based Health Care Delivery System. The rich advanced countries presently under the health care of Allopathy or Scientific Medicine have to actually experience, to believe in, the better quality of health achievable via Navayurveda. The basic idea is supported by the simple observation that homoeopathically treated tonsilitis avoids tonsilectomy which is not infrequent if antibiotics are used for treatment.

Concluding Remarks:

Homoeopathy is complete and comprehensive medicine therapeutics still ahead of times. It has so far been disregarded as unscientific placebo therapy due largely to the inappropriately conducted drug trials and conceptual inadequacies of the contemporary sciences themselves. Chemically exchanged energy as the new physical basis of molecular chemical specificity, new scientific phenomena of the induction of chemical specificity of one molecule in another, and new sciences of Inductive Chemistry, Xenobiology & Inductoxenopathy are required to elucidate itsscience which also enrich the modern sciences. World Health Organization and national governments, in a thought revolution of sorts, may reorganize the Health Care Delivery Systems to maximize the therapeutic potentials and minimize costs, limitations and deficiencies. Advanced institutes of Scientific Medicine may include units for Homoeopathy to be followed by full-fledged Navayurveda institutes. The homoeopathic science has to be developed and elucidated enough to put it alongwith other major sciences under the same cover. This is expected to felicitate its scientific recognition.

Interview with DANA ULLMAN, M.P.H. by Louise Mclean, Editor, Zeus Information Service

INTERVIEW with DANA ULLMAN, M.P.H. ,Author of The Homeopathic Revolution:

Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. www.homeopathicrevolution.com

Dana Ullman has written numerous articles for magazines, academic journals, authored many books, organized conferences for homeopaths (for 20 years he organized the annual conference for the National Center for Homeopathy in the US) and is often quoted in various media and internet sites.

His main website is: www.homeopathic.com

14th August 2008.

By Louise Mclean,

Editor, Zeus Information Service www.zeusinfoservice.com

 

Early on Sunday morning, 3rd August, I rushed out to Heathrow Airport to meet Dana, who was flying home to San Francisco after his summer holiday in Italy. Despite a little mix up, we nonetheless found each other and managed to fit in a breakfast interview. Dana was full of energy and enthusiasm and here is what he had to say on a multitude of topics concerning homeopathy.

LOUISE: How long did it take you to research your book, The Homeopathic Revolution?!

DANA: I’m laughing because it is something that I have been working on for several decades! In fact I have always collected what I consider fascinating facts and figures about homeopathy. So I have collected the historical and present day information in various files about famous people. Good writing is weaving together bodies of information but the actual writing of the book went relatively fast, over a year’s period of time. I also admit to experiencing a fair amount of magic on a regular basis. What I mean is that whenever I would start working on a chapter on politicians or peacemakers, corporate leaders or philanthropists, I would actively seek, read books, go online and then all of a sudden someone would email me some vital information which would just happen to be about the chapter that I was working on!

Amazing synchronicity!

Yes, even beyond synchronicity. I am just always amazed at the regular experiences of ‘coincidence’. It is remarkable and it also let me know I was on the right track. The 16^th century French essayist, Michel de Montaigne, once wrote: “No wind blows on a ship without a port of destination.” When we are doing good work, the Universe ultimately supports it. A wind seems to come to help one’s journey. That’s not to say there aren’t obstacles. To me part of the hero’s journey is accepting the obstacles and not being put off by them but seeing them as steps on the way and then all of a sudden some gift would be given to me of yet more evidence that I should consider.

The idea for the book came shortly after Coretta Scott King (Martin Luther King’s wife) passed away and the media in America highlighted the fact that she died in an alternative medicine hospital in Mexico where she was seeking out homeopathic treatment. As soon as I read that, I literally threw down the gauntlet and said to myself, ‘That does it! Here’s yet another person people know and respect who sought out and/or appreciated homeopathy.’ Maybe it was too late in her life but at least she sought it out. And I said I am going to connect the dots of all the most famous people who had some kind of treatment or experience of homeopathy.

At first I wasn’t certain that I was going to have enough information for a book. Well the book ended up being almost 400 pages! I had more than enough information. It is like the work that Sue Young http://homeopathy.wildfalcon.com/ is doing on a regular basis which I appreciate greatly. She has been running with a lot of this historical information and the internet certainly makes our lives a lot easier in terms of finding it.

I never expected to find stories of 7 different Popes, let alone 11 American Presidents and so many other Heads of State. I never expected to find so many literary greats and so many cultural heroes, names we all know and respect.

I will tell you a personal story about my father who was a paediatrician and an allergist. When I got into homeopathy he was sceptical because he didn’t know what it was. In the 1980s I mentioned to him that Yehudi Menhuin was the President of one of the top homeopathy organisations in the UK. My father had once had the opportunity to become a professional violinist and he had always had the highest regard for Yehudi Menhuin because he was not only a great musician but also a wonderful philanthropist and so he was very moved to hear that this man was an advocate of homeopathy.

Sometimes a person needs convincing about homeopathy by research, others need a personal experience and other times people need to know that someone they have heard of and admire uses it. I simply try and tell people whatever they need to know to convince them that they should investigate it or try it.

I have written a lot about research in homeopathy and I’ve written a lot about how people can use the medicines at home to treat themselves and their families.  The third strategy is to simply show that so many of the most successful, most respected and even most famous people in the last 200 years have been advocates. This is all part of a body of evidence that will encourage people who may not be familiar with homeopathy to consider becoming familiar with it.

And so have you found a lot of outlets for the book or is it mainly on your website and on the internet?

I have to admit that it is challenging getting the word out. There is a lot of noise we all experience from the news, various medias and the internet. So although the book has gone into its second printing, I expected it to be into its eight printing or tenth printing by now. I expected this book to really hit a nerve in a profound way and even possibly be on a best sellers list. So it has not reached my personal expectations. It’s a very popular book but I expected it to be more of a breakthrough book.

Are you able to get it into bookshops?

One never knows where a book is. You see it on Amazon, you see it on various sources, I don’t know where it is in the world.

I feel there is a kind of media censorship with homeopathy.

Sadly the world doesn’t know much about homeopathy, so I have some sensitivity to bookshop stores that may not want to sell the homeopathy books because they don’t sell that well. The difference with The Homeopathic Revolution is that whether one is interested in homeopathy or not, we all have an interest in knowing what successful people do to help them become successful. How they become healthy is an integral part of someone’s creativity and/or success so I thought this book would touch a nerve in people. It has begun to but of course we have a long way to go.

I think that homeopathy has just started to have a revival in America since the days when the AMA contributed to making it almost die out. I am very pleased to see that homeopathy is taking off there at the moment. Mike Adams who runs www.naturalnews.com and Dr. Joseph Mercola www.mercola.com have both recently been putting out articles on homeopathy which they didn’t do in the past and they have huge email lists reaching millions. It’s great because we’ve got to get it promoted which you and I are both in to. Get the word out: ‘It works, it works, it works!’

But what we are worried about at the moment over here, is that via EU regulation, they might say only people who have state registered qualifications will be allowed to practise. That will mean the qualifications gained at our private colleges may not be recognised. But EU regulation can only be imposed when all 27 member countries have ratified it which has not happened yet.

I think one of the reasons why the attacks are getting stronger is also because the professional homeopaths are stronger here in Europe. So they are going after them here.

Homeopathy is still quite small in the US. I think what is happening in England is interesting in terms of all the attacks. I think the attacks are taking place because of homeopathy’s integration within the mainstream, that it is being taught in various Universities and the medicines are being sold in Boots and various mainstream pharmacies. So that is threatening. To be candid, I look forward to the time when homeopathy is attacked in America because that will mean that homeopathy is achieving some degree of integration that is threatening.

It’s almost like there’s no such thing as bad news. If it’s attacked in the newspapers, then people will ask ‘what’s this?’ and want to know about it. Before that, they may never have heard of it.

I don’t want to say the attacks homeopathy is experiencing is good news and I don’t think any bad news is good news. I am just saying it is a symptom of a disease and it’s a symptom of homeopathy’s successes that it is being attacked and that it’s worthy of attack.

What they do is first they completely ignore you. For years there was nothing in the media at all about homeopathy in the UK, nothing. They kept it out. Homeopathy has become so popular and they don’t know what to do, so then they have to attack it.

The media is funny because they will cover you to bring you up and they’ll cover you to bring you down – this sells in newspapers, magazines and TV.

Are there any restriction for homeopathic practitioners in America – I suppose it depends upon the state you live in?

Every state has its own laws. California and Minnesota are the freer states. Most other states are not enforcing restrictions because the medical board are investigating doctors doing dangerous medical practices, which is a higher risk problem than a natural healer. I do predict there will be some district attorneys who might go after homeopaths if they think that they are dangerous, charging a lot of money, making exaggerated claims or if someone complains. I also predict that some of the spooks, as you call them, will create these bogus complaints just to get more investigations going.

They do that and make a big thing in the newspapers, holding one practitioner up as an example, in order to send a clear message to the rest of us. Fortunately there are few legal cases against natural practitioners.

I read that great book by Martin Walker, Dirty Medicine http://www.slingshotpublications.com/ I love him. When his book came out I bought 100 copies from him and I sold some and I gave a bunch away. He is one of these people who has a backbone and he really showed how the quackbusters are so much more livid in England compared to anywhere else. These guys are just crazed, they are so certain of their limited point of view. They diminish anything. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You point to research and they want more. I’m all for more but you just have to acknowledge what’s there. When you look at the body of evidence – all the basic science, all the empirical work, all the historical work. I think one has to be very sceptical to believe it is all psychic abilities and placebo response. When these spooks say homeopathy is for the birds, I agree with them it is for the birds and every other living creature on the planet!

Ultimately in the 21^st century, I strongly believe that homeopathy represents the very modern if not futuristic medical paradigm because to me it is a form of nano-pharmacology. I like that word because nano is the only word in our language which means both very very small AND very powerful. I encourage my colleagues to use it too and use the word nanodoses. Part of its definition means one billionth but its real origins comes from the word which simply means very small and so I don’t think of it as simply a billionth. It is very small and very powerful.

If you think of what an ideal drug should do, to me an ideal drug should be something that augments immuno-competence and that’s what homeopathy does. I don’t mean simply strengthen the immune system because the immune system doesn’t always need strengthening. Sometimes it’s too hyperactive and that is what auto-immune disease is all about. In other words homeopathic medicines can and will augment immune response when necessary and they will tonify it when it’s overactive … and that’s what we are seeing again and again in the clinical practice of homeopathy.

Balances out the system.

In fact there is a new study that is coming out shortly which is a re-analysis of the 2005 Lancet review of Shang. The researchers got it accepted in a major international journal of research. What they have finally done is what Shang didn’t do. He didn’t review ALL of the high calibre research but only a small part of it. He ignored comprehensive analysis entirely. I think he knew exactly what it was but he didn’t want to report on it, as it was too positive. Instead he only reported on trials with very large numbers of subjects because when you do that, most of those studies use one remedy for everybody without any degree of individuality.

We individualise.

We do individualise but sometimes the single remedy or the formulas will work for a broad number of people.

Like Mixed Pollen for hayfever.

That’s right or Oscillococcinum. But for some reason they did not include any of David Reilly’s research. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/321/7259/471

I don’t know why they ignored it.

It was too positive.

In fact they had a remark in the Shang article published in the Lancet, where they specifically made reference to trials on respiratory ailments and that the results were robust, but they said they couldn’t trust them because there were only 8 studies. But then again they based their entire analysis on 8 homeopathic studies and 6 conventional ones. So they can’t have it both ways and this new journal article in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology which is ranked as one of the top international journals of reviews of research, has accepted the new studies.

I also want to let you know there have been a number of new plant studies that some Swiss and Italian researchers have conducted, showing powerful effects of homeopathic doses on plants.

I don’t think that’s the Placebo Effect!!  So did you meet the researchers when you were on holiday in Italy?

No, I met them two years ago in London at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital conference. Stephan Baumgartner is a leader in the group.

Very interesting.

There was a group of mostly physicians and scientists who I also met in London 2 years ago at the same conference. They came with a large contingent of researchers.  If you have read the journal Homeopathy of the UK Faculty of Homeopathy, it is the best academic journal with the best information on research.

I heard that Professor Edzard Ernst is on the Editorial board of Homeopathy.

Yes, he is on their editorial board but I don’t mind having dialogue with our critics.

He used homeopathy and he thought it was great and now he is saying the opposite.

It is a tad ironic that one of his own studies in 1990 tested a homeopathic formula in the treatment of people with varicose veins, and it showed positive results!

This thing about plants is interesting as a homeopathic practitioner in the US, Phyllis Geordic, was also telling me about this and how they use it in their garden and how their plants grow so much better.

There is a book that has come out called Homeopathy for Farming and Gardening and I want more people to investigate and read it and expand upon it further to see what works and what doesn’t. I believe that homeopathy really is going to be one of the important technologies for the future, not just for medicine but for planetary health, plant health, for ecological disasters even. I wonder what we can do there?

It’s amazing and once we start proving how it works in the garden, they really do have to shut up about the placebo effect!

One of my other bodies of information that I am very proud of, which alot of people are not familiar with, is the ebook I wrote called Homeopathic Family Medicine.

http://www.homeopathic.com/store/hfm/ebook_hfm.jsp

This is the most up to date and comprehensive body of information on clinical research verifying the efficacy of homeopathy and it is an ebook because I update it every 3 or 4 months. I have several hundred clinical trials that are referenced. Each of them is referenced according to the disease for which they are known to treat. As an ebook, it is organised according to a disease, so you can read about what research has been done to treat people with asthma or allergies or arthritis or ADD or whatever. There is over a 100 ailments provided in this ebook.  There isn’t research on every one of them but it is amazing how many for which there is research. It is usually double blind, placebo controlled trials, though sometimes there are other types of studies that are done that have been published in peer reviewed journals which are worthy of reference.

Because a number of people really do need convincing through seeing the research, I am always shocked about how few homeopaths know anything about our scientific evidence. It is not that homeopaths need this information for their own convincing, they don’t. Even the patient in front of them doesn’t need it but the patient’s spouse does, the patient’s neighbours do, the patient’s in-laws do. We are all surrounded by certain people who are sceptical for whom it is good to have this information.

I have been disappointed many times at the ignorance of homeopaths about our body of scientific evidence. It’s almost as though most homeopaths don’t give a damn about what evidence there is or isn’t. Some homeopaths even say that research is impossible with homeopathy because the medicines have to be individualised. They don’t understand that you can do research that allows for individual treatment. It’s tricky to do that but it’s all doable and more important, it has been done. There have been studies of some of the single remedies and some of the formula products which have shown beneficial results. Not all research is positive and you can do a trial in a tricky way so it fails and there have been plenty of those studies done but still the bulk of research on homeopathy has had positive results.

And even when you put all that evidence to the Quackbusters on these websites and blogs, they still ignore it, don’t they?

Yes, absolutely (laughs). I have in front of me a very powerful statement by one of the world’s leading skeptics of not just homeopathy but of other alternative stuff. It’s a man named Martin Gardner and it comes from a magazine called The Skeptical Enquirer – one of those magazines full of articles published by skeptics. They have a special article about Sir Arthur C. Clark, the science fiction writer who wrote the book which became the movie ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’. Martin Gardner quotes Clark and I love this quote: ‘A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.’ I fully agree.

Ultimately many of our skeptics insist that homeopathy is magic or that it is completely placebo but guess what, you can’t do what we do in homeopathy through placebo. Besides all the body of scientific evidence, when one does even a cursory review of homeopathy’s history, you cannot explain so many of the successes that we’ve experienced – in treating infectious diseases, epidemics, treating people with very serious chronic illness and life-saving conditions that would normally kill people and having such good results with homeopathy.

Absolutely and when you see a child’s high fever go down within minutes or a haemorrhage stop practically instantly after the right remedy, you have to see it to believe it. In acutes, that’s when you really see the magic happen. Do you have a busy practice?

No, I don’t. I don’t see patients. I spend all my time writing about homeopathy, teaching homeopathy, publishing books.  You may or may not know it, my company Homeopathic Educational Services has co-published about 35 different books with a Berkeley company called North Atlantic Books. I usually bring the books to them and we co-publish them together. North Atlantic and my company have published some of the best modern homeopathic books, ranging from a couple of books by Whitmont, Bailey’s Homeopathic Psychology, Paul Herscu’s The Homeopathic Treatment of Children, Hamilton’s Homeopathic Medicines for Cats and Dogs, Peter Chappell’s Emotional Healing with Homeopathy . These are an integral part of the modern body of information and if you notice, all these books are extremely reasonably priced. So I have always been committed to making information available at as reasonable a price as possible. To me that is part of my own personal ethic.

In a way you’re more into promoting homeopathy, which is really good, because that’s what we need to do.

I myself took it seriously and at the same time found the means of providing information about it. I think there’s a tendency among homeopaths to talk to themselves and to talk to the already converted and just expect people to come to them when they’re ready. I think sometimes you need to rattle the bushes and wake people up who may not initially have a prediliction towards homeopathy – to at least have them consider it.

I also found in writing the book The Homeopathic Revolution that not only were there 7 different Popes that used or advocated for it but I found a whole host of other clergy and spiritual leaders ranging from leading Muslim clerics and Rabbis to Eastern gurus and so my hope is that homeopathy becomes one of the means for common ground that can be used to realise that we are all in this together. Even if we have different beliefs, we can have some agreed upon understandings about health and healing which we can share with each other and benefit from each other and heal each other.

Yes, unite the religions a bit.

Boy, do we need that one!

Is there anything else that you would like to say?

I hope that homeopaths will consider the importance of supporting homeopathic companies first. If a homeopathic company has a product, buy it from them. Support our own organisations. Support our own companies before rushing off to Amazon and some of the other discount websites. I have also read that some people use machines to make homeopathic medicines as a way of not having to buy them from the pharmacies.

Radionics machines.

I really hope that people realise how damaging that can be to our industry and I do believe that it is important that we support our industry in order to achieve the success that we’re due.

Keep it alive. I agree.

I do devote a lot of my time and effort in getting the word out for homeopathy.  However, due to all of my volunteer efforts, I need support from fellow advocates for homeopathy.  I need people to consider donating money to these active media efforts.  If, by chance, someone could come forward with some significant financial support, I would hire a professional PR person with whom I could create an active media response team that would make homeopathy a "household word." 
If your life (or someone close to you) has benefitted greatly from homeopathy, I sincerely hope that you reach out to me and/or to other individuals or organizations who are really making a difference.  It is amazing how a reasonable little amount of money can create a significant effect.  I hope that someone out there reaches out to help me put homeopathy on the map.

Copyright Louise Mclean 2008

Author’s Note: Interviews are conducted to present the opinions and ideas of people who are doing important work to further the cause of Homeopathy.  The views expressed may not always necessarily reflect those of the Author.

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