Home » Health » Homeopathy: for the pleasure of buttering one more layer | Science | News | The sun

Homeopathy: for the pleasure of buttering one more layer | Science | News | The sun

Lhe regulars of this blog know all the admiration I have for homeopathy. No, really: distill water to dilute goofy ingredients to completely absurd degrees, then pretend that water has a “memory” and remembers all-alone-as-a-great of these goofy ingredients even if there is no trace left, then pour it on sugar pills (which must also have a “memory”, it must be believed) and sell everything to anyone who is gullible enough to pay, while always doing everything to prevent the effectiveness of its products from being evaluated like the world, it’s … how to say … it’s a whole business plan, gentlemen-ladies, a whole business plan.

And when this kind of plan manages to cross the centuries, which is more the most scientific centuries of human history, well, hats off! This is a beautiful, albeit involuntary, demonstration of the fact that the “post-truth era” may have started earlier than we thought.

In short, all this to say that as soon as I saw le Pharmachien, alias Olivier Bernard, everyone’s talking about it (offline, I admit it) this very beautiful investigation by Philippe Mercure, from La Presse, I was seized with a violent desire to add another layer. No doubt my sadistic side that wakes up. And as the segment on homeopathy seemed to me to lack a few concrete examples, probably cut to the editing, let me tell you a few words about the “oscillococcinum”, alleged flu-busting which is one of the biggest sellers (if not the largest) of the homeopathic pharmacopoeia.

These are extracts of duck heart and liver diluted to “200C”, we read on the boxes of the product. In the homeopathic scoring system, this means that the ingredient has been diluted 200 times to the hundredth: for a portion of duck, we find 100200 parts of water (or if you prefer: 10400, ie a “1” followed by 400 zeros). Now, in his interview, Mr. Bernard spoke of “a drop of water in all the oceans of the world” to illustrate the degree of dilution of homeopathic products. In general, the image is well chosen, and it is even reasonably accurate for many of these things. But when it comes to the popular oscillococcinum, ladies and gentlemen, that’s an understatement.

Even if we took only one atom of duck and mixed it with all the oceans of the world, we would not arrive at 10-400, and we wouldn’t even be close. In fact, it’s estimated that there are around 1080 atoms throughout the observable Universe. Yes yes, you read that right: we take all the stars, all the planets and all the other objects contained in the Universe, we count each of their atoms, and we arrive at about 1080. The “dilution” of oscillococcinum therefore essentially amounts to multiplying the Universe by 10320 (just that) and add a single duck atom to it. Then, it seems that it is important to stir well, homeopaths call it “energize” the mixture.

It is obvious, of course, that the said “mixture” sold in pharmacies is (apart from an extraordinary stroke of luck from the manufacturer) completely free from the slightest trace of duck. But it would be overestimating the scientific and factual basis of homeopathy to believe that this is the worst in all this history. I swear.

“Oscillococci” is the name that a French doctor and homeopath of the early XXe century, Joseph Roy, gave a bacterium he discovered in patients with the infamous Spanish flu at the end of the First World War. The creature, Roy described, seemed to wiggle or “wobble”, hence its name. As the theoretical basis of homeopathy wants that one can treat the symptoms of a disease by making the patient ingest minute amounts of toxins that cause the same symptoms (which is, in itself, totally mind-boggling, but let’s move on) , Joseph Roy saw it as an interesting vein for influenza. And as this same Joseph Roy also managed to isolate this oscillococci in duck tissue, we easily understand the origin of this alleged flu breaker.

But there is a little problem here. No, it is not the “mode of action” without tail or head that claims to have homeopathy. No, it’s not the fact that there are no more ducks left in the preparation. No. It is rather that apart from Joseph Roy, no one else has ever observed an oscillococci. Per. His. Born. Never. Despite the ultra-powerful microscopes available today and the armies of microbiologists who describe hundreds of new bacterial strains each year, no one has ever seen this famous bacterium.

It is almost to believe that it grows only in the hair of the yeti, the saliva of the fur trout or the intestinal flora of the Loch Ness reptiles.

You still have to do it, huh? For reasons that do not stand up, we dilute to nothing a bacterium that has never existed anyway. I think I will never come back from that one.

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