[...] effects of homeopathic remedies are all down to the alcohol content. Just like Frenkel et al. (see Dr Rachie’s post and Orac’s [...]

[...] biologia avrebbe potuto accettarne la pubblicazione), se volete potete leggervi un ottimo debunking qui. Vi basti però sapere che questo paper è stato pubblicato con un numero di esperimenti pari a [...]

[...] of them I happen to know very well, since I spent the better part of a Saturday back in February debunking the entire paper. The reason I did this was because Richard Saunders had received an e-alert from [...]

[...] him if he’d read  the (deeply flawed) scientific paper that it quotes and pointed him to a  critique of the paper. In short, I warned, the study is seriously flawed and the results in the paper are not to be [...]

speaking of homeopathic nonsense, you’ve gotta listen to this incomprehensible drivel on the homeopathy world community website, which is a response to the 10.23 campaign:

http://www.homeopathyworldcommunity.com/video/masshomeopathicoverdosemov-1

Nice work.

The abstract of the paper analysed
Frenkel M, Mishra BM, Sen S, Yang P, Pawlus A, Vence L, Leblanc A, Cohen L, Banerji P, Banerji P. Cytotoxic effects of ultra-diluted remedies on breast cancer cells. Int J Oncol. 2010 Feb;36(2):395-403.

can be read here.

If you do not have a private or institutional subscription to the Journal, it’ll cost you 20 euros for the pdf file.

What can I say Dr Rachie!! … other than to tell all those who are reading this to google the expression “Complete and Total Legend” and you will get only ONE result … a pic of a smiling Dr Rachie! … keep up the great work!

But what can be done about this? There will almost certainly be some credulous women who will die because of this paper.

87% alcohol = non-toxic??? It’s hardly a healthy indulgence.

One would have thought that, in the intervening years, this study would have been replicated or developed. A casual search of Google Scholar reveals 9 papers citing Pathak et al, yet, despite the call for further investigation, I don’t see a follow-up study.

Am I expecting too much, too soon? Clearly, the homeopathic community have already accepted this paper as incontrovertible evidence in their cause.

I would appreciate a professional comment on whether this observation is true, and if so why (beyond the analysis given on this blog).

To RN,
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Does the oncologist and hospital “pay” for the conventional treatment or get reimbursed for it? I am not defending the science of this particular paper. But I am acutely aware that, by and large, trials can only be afforded by entities that stand to make money. If you scour the literature, most research starts with a natural component that is helpful, then they proceed to patent the idea, create a synthetic (sometimes stronger) version of the natural compound that they can own, create a research and development drug company and pitch their idea to investors, hoping to get $$ to do more advanced preclinical on bigger and better animals and then human trials and sell the rights somewhere along the line. All this so a treatment can be deemed FDA approved and reimbursable in an oncology clinic or hospital. There is even arguably a hesitancy of oncologists to steer patients towards oral medications since the reimbursement is far less. In other words, institutional cancer treatment is not solely a battle of ideas. There are definite financial necessities and incentives contorting the process.
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Sometimes NIH or NCI will fund a study oustide of the financial box. But not very often, it seems.
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As the oft repeated refrain of studies goes: further studies are warranted.

I fully agree with the views of Rich.

I also agree with views of dt. There is no need for in-vitro studies to prove the truth of homeopathy. Homeopathy has withstood the test of CLINICAL OBSERVATION for more than 200 years. Anyone in doubt should take the trouble of visiting Kolkatta (India) and interview new patients and successfully treated patients in the clinics of that city.

Homeopathy is very popular in India. India is a country which is not controlled by FDA. Neither does it have its indigenous pharmaceutical lobby. Homeopathy is as popular in India as its own ancient system of medicine (Ayurveda). Hoemopathy has evolved to be an integrated system of medicine and includes in its line of treatment herbs from Europe, North & South American herbs, Chinese, East Asian, Australian, African and Indian herbs. These herbs are given in both material and ultra-diluted doses.

There may be holes in the report. But they are important for those who have personally experienced and witnessed the TRUTH of HOMEOPATHY.

how many centuries did it take to accept that the earth was round.

martin luther called copernicus a fool.

galileo was placed under house arrest.

that what copernicus and galileo were for astronomy, Hahnemann is for medicine.

my sincere advice to all skeptics is : read this URL

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathic-medicine-euro_b_402490.html

a tiny portion of the above article is extracted below :

Numerous surveys over the past 150 plus years have confirmed that people who seek homeopathic treatment tend to be considerably more educated than those who don’t (1).

What is not as well known is the fact that homeopathic medicine is the leading “alternative” treatment used by Europeans.

And despite homeopathy’s impressive popularity in Europe, it is actually even more popular in India where over 100 million people depend solely on this form of medical care (2).

Further, according to an A.C. Neilsen survey in India, 62 percent of current homeopathy users have never tried conventional medicines and 82 percent of homeopathy users would not switch to conventional treatments (3). (3) A C Neilsen survey backs homeopathy benefits. Business Standard. September 4, 2007.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/a-c-nielsen-survey-backs-homeopathy-benefits/295891/

“The chromatogram of the untreated and treated solvents appeared identical, indicating that succussion did not cause chemical changes in the solvent.”

“Okay, but don’t some homeopaths claim that succussion does have an effect on the chemical structure of the water/solvent? Isn’t this how they explain that homeopathy works?”

No, you have completely changed the meaning of this by the addition of one word that wasn’t in the original quote from the paper – “structure”.

The authors note that there were no chemical changes, and any homeopath would agree with you, that after Avogadro’s constant there cannot possibly be any ‘chemical’ changes. However, there is also no ‘chemical’ difference between carbon, graphite and diamond – the difference lies in the change in their properties, their ’structure’. Potentising a homeopathic remedy is not simply diluting the substance out of existence, but at each stage ’succussing’ it vigourously- during which pressures of around 10 kbars can be generated on the water droplets. The work of Rustrum Roy (‘Materials Research Innovations Online’) for example, and many others clearly shows how the process of epitaxy (the transmission of structural information from the surface of one material to another – usually a liquid) takes place without any chemical transfer whatsoever – a common practice in the production of modern semi-conductors.

dt: “I thought the whole point of homeopathy was that it worked…”
Stop there!

Popular, ancient, controversial? So the Catholics must be right and every other religion is just a conspiracy to silence them!
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As for carbon, graphite and diamond, I’m sure some people could tell the difference without them having to be labelled first. Is there any way to distinguish one 30C remedy from another? Any way at all – without labels?

I see Orac has finally jumped on this study too – with kudos to Dr Rachie.

coughs politely:

This would not get past me. It is accepted scientific convention that experiments are done at least three times (not two) and also in triplicate, giving you a final “n” number of 9.

No, your n is only three. The triplicates are not independent samples, so have have to do statistics on the means of each independent triplicate. This is a common error which I try to gently dissuade in my biostatistics lectures (and my chemistry collaborators). That said, the n value for this homoeopathic study is 2. It’s what we in the trade call “wishful thinking”, you can’t do stats on just n=2, and it way very well change in the next run (We have a rule of thumb that we don’t begin to believe any result until we have n=3, and even then we are sceptical). My cell lines are PC12, SHSY5Y, A549 and a whole host of leukaemia cell lines and we regularly run cytotox and studies similar to the one above (except, like you, we do it right).

As noted, Orac has already weighed in, but as you point out basically this is an unanalysable study of the effects of alcohol on cancer cells.

As an unintentioned co-author on this study, I feel obligated to respond, particularly since I asked to not be included because I did not think it was a sound study that would add to confusion.
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The reason was that I was not convinced it was a sound study. I chemically analyzed the homeopathic medicines, using direct infusion MS, a technique 10 folds more sensitive then the published HPLC. My work was not included.

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Outside of me not finding the argument for homeopathic scientifically plausible, I had one major concern with this study scientifically, if assuming I was completely wrong in not believing in homeopathy (keeping the most open mind possible, because I do not believe that water has memory, or if it does then I’m getting homeopathic doses of everything just by breathing in and drinking tap water, nor do I believe that likes-treating-likes makes any rational sense etc. etc.).
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That concern was the alcohol content. It is common knowledge with cell based assays that even small amounts of ethanol (talking about smaller than 5%) dosed directly onto cells in culture has profound cytotoxic effects. So, since these medicines contained ethanol, I felt that unless they contained the same EXACT amount of ethanol (which they did not), the study was irrelevant. Some medicines were created with different percentages of ethanol and considering they were put in plastic tubes (a source of phthalate esters, a cytotoxic compound found in plastics), not made on the same day, and sent across an ocean, then small differences were inevitable.
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The negative control was made after I requested a negative control to be made in the same manner, but all of the samples should have been made in the same manner, at the same time, with same amount of shaking between multiple dilutions. This is important because ethanol is a good solvent for phthalates and is volatile. Since large percentages of ethanol was used, a change of a couple of percentages could easily occurred during the many stages of preparation and during the cell studies..

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Therefore, I believe this study demonstrated changes in alcohol percentages on cells rather than the efficacy of homeopathic medicine.

I agree, write a letter to the editor pointing these facts out. As it stands I am sure this study will now float around and be used as evidence for years to come but coming out and showing these problems might limit the effect. Also, it might help as it is criticism coming from one of the authors.

way to go, Herr Docktor. Gives a whole new meaning to homophobia…

We will have to change the quote: Lies, damned lies, and no statistics!

Dr Peter Dingle also supervises Judy Wilyman, PhD student at Murdoch, anti-vaxer and friend of Meryl Dorey.

Search The West for up to date stories on the Penelope Dingle inquest.
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Warning – it’s not pretty.

“Counsel assisting the coroner told the court her condition was not diagnosed until two years later at which point her homeopath told Mrs Dingle her cancer could be cured with alternative therapies.

Mrs Dingle then refused treatment from doctors who told her she had a reasonable chance of recovery if she underwent chemotherapy and an operation”.
Please note the homeopath and Mrs Dingle not Peter Dingle!

You wrote: “The paper examines the effects of ultra-dilute remedies (read:homeopathy)…”

I recommend not to equate the – hoped – effect of ultra-diluted remedies with homeopathy in this simple way. The reason is twofold. At first there ARE homeopathic remedies that not so ultra-diluted and possibly still contain molecules of the “active ingredient”. The second is that the system of homeopathy is much more than using ultra-diluted remedies. Its other main point is the simile rule. And that is at least as unscientific than the dilution rule.
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Time-by-time we will see “positive” studies about biological, biophysical effects of ultra-diluted solutions and no-one will be able to explain those. That is the life of doing experiments. If there would be a real scientific theory behind it, one would be able to adjust the experiment and finally figure out if the positive results are real results or artifacts. But here the simile effect and other rules of homeopathy do not help. Who knows why this remedy works and the other does not. Are they doing those type of trials? Why do the effect does not follow a clear pattern related to the degree of dilution?
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If one would like to use these type of experiments as proof of homeopathy, he does not only have to show that there is an effect. The effect should follow the rules of homeopathy. Otherwise the effect is indistinguishable of a potential error in the setup – even if possibly will never know what that error was.
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A respected physicist spent many years with the sophistication of the Michelson-Morley experiment and finally he came up with a clear, statistically positive result! Speed of light was different in different directions. Does that mean that special relativity is void and there is ether? No! It was most probably an artifact, an error in the experiment, but no-one know what it could be. That was an anomaly.
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This is the same as with the “proofs” of acupuncture when using needles causes release of adenozin or endofins etc. It is NOT the proof of acupuncture as acupuncture is not ONLY puncturing needles anywhere anyhow. It should be placed into specific locations and in specific depth. Thus those positive results could mean something and they might even be relevant in some cases, but they are clearly not proof of acupuncture itself.
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In the same way these experiments are either artifacts or really proofs that ultra-diluted remedies could have effects. It can not be decided. But we could have good guesses based on our general knowledge. It is most probably an artifact. It is not our duty to find the error in the experiment. It is the duty of the advocates of homeopathy to prove that these results are relevant in the aspect of homeopathy. Because it is not at all clear for me. The results does not follow the patterns that are predicted by the rules of homeopathy – plus they contradict with all known chemical, physical knowledge.
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Do not give them a high ball to simply denying these results. These experiments shows something. They show the same for 30 years. There was no progress at all.

Peter Dingle has a PhD thesis in indoor Air Quality titled
Personal exposure to formaldehyde (1995)

Book Bib ID 634476
Author Dingle, Peter

Description 1995.
xv, 185 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.

Notes Thesis submitted to the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences.

Thesis (PhD)–Murdoch University, 1995.

Bibliography: leaves 151-170.

Subjects Formaldehyde – Environmental aspects. | Formaldehyde – Toxicology. | Indoor air pollution.