The tide washes away memories, according to an ancient proverb. Contrary to timeless wisdom, scientists said last week they have proof that water maintains its own memory.
This bizarre claim, beyond the known laws of physics, supports a strange healing tradition called homeopathy, which is beyond the laws of reason. Scientists claim that water can memorize a substance mixed in it after the substance has been removed and hence the water becomes therapeutic.
This assertion is the subject of a plenary press in the current issue of the journal. Homeopathydevoted to the theme of “water memory” with nine articles on theory and laboratory experiments, as if to prove to the remaining 99.99% of the scientific community that there is still something in all that.
The general medical consensus is that there is nothing to be done about it and that homeopathy involves nothing other than placebo effect.
The illusion of dilution
Homeopathic medicines – crumb-sized pills sold in small bottles – look like real medicine because they are often sold alongside over-the-counter medications at high-end and mainstream pharmacies, from Whole Foods at CVS, with various medications offered at reduced prices. common illnesses such as the flu or headaches.
Homeopathy, a 200-year-old German tradition, is based on two principles: “like cures like” and the “law of the infinitesimal,” according to which medicine becomes stronger the more it is diluted. Tiny amounts of, for example, poison ivy can heal nappy rash; Snake venom can cure joint stiffness.
There is nothing inherently wrong with “like cures like”. Vaccines use a similar mechanism. The idea of dilution is, however, illusory.
Homeopathy was developed before the knowledge of molecules. The “medicine” is added to water and is mixed and diluted over and over again. A typical homeopathic treatment may be diluted 30X, which means one drug molecule in a million billion billion (10^30) water molecules.
At this dilution level, you would need to drink 8,000 gallons of water to get one molecule of the drug. Other homeopathic treatments are at 30°C, or 100^30. There is not enough water in the solar system to adapt to this dilution.
Plan B, water must remember
Faced with the pesky laws of chemistry, homeopaths turned to the laws of physics. Water, they reason, must remember the shape of the medicine and somehow engrave it onto a pill.
In the current issue of Homeopathyscientists present evidence not so much of water’s memory as of the potential for water have memory. The authors say that diluting the drug — by vigorously shaking and cutting the mixture repeatedly — imparts something to the water.
What exactly it conveys is unclear. Perhaps the silica from the bottle is leaching into the water, one article suggests. Another author discusses the possibility of quantum entanglement, a poorly understood property of quantum physics in which two particles, placed large distances apart, can remain synchronized as if they were side by side. (The maxim of alternative medicine: When in doubt, go quantum.)
But does it work?
It would be helpful to come up with some bold theories to explain how homeopathy might work if homeopathy worked. Systematic reviews carried out for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine have found no evidence that homeopathy is an effective treatment for anything.
Similarly, a major homeopathic analysis published in The Lancet in 2005 found that the more effectively a homeopathic study is performed, the more clearly it becomes clear that positive health outcomes are due to the placebo effect.
Dr. José Teixeira of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), a physicist who wrote the only critical article on the memory of water during Homeopathysaid Live Science the “characteristic times of liquid water are well known in physics”. Water molecules can change orientation around another molecule, he said, but “the longest lifetime of any structure observed in liquid water is on the order of a picosecond “.
Teixeira said water memory research is being done by serious homeopaths hoping to find a biological mechanism for a healing art they honestly believe in. charlatans. Many, particularly those based in Europe, complete a three-year degree or postgraduate medical training.
The therapeutic benefits of homeopathy could be attributed to the care that homeopaths devote to their patients. Homeopaths regularly spend an hour with their patients, compared to ten minutes for most of us in a traditional doctor’s office. Traditional doctors have much to learn from homeopaths.
As for this quest for how the ghost of a toxin can heal the body, perhaps in another generation we will no longer remember it.
Christopher Wanjek is the author of the books “Bad medicine” And “Food at work.” Do you have a question about bad medicine? Send an email to Wanjek. If it’s really bad, he might answer it in a future column. Bad Medicine appears every Tuesday on LiveScience.
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