A Tipping Point For Homeopathy? Part II

 Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

Last week I began a discussion of the very important new paper on homeopathy and cancer from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDA). I conclude, with references, this week.

Phytolacca’s 200C dilution takes us into a realm of the bizarre. 200C means that there would be a single molecule of pokeweed in “10 to the minus 400″ molecules of solvent. However, there is a total of “10 to the 80th power” atoms in entire known universe. So a 200C dilution would require “10 to the 320th power” more universes (yes, whole universes) in order to simply deliver one single molecule of Phytolacca in the final substance!

Is it any wonder that many scientists regard homeopathy as logically impossible and ascribe any therapeutic benefit to the placebo effect? There is no end of critics of homeopathy on the Internet and elsewhere, who consider homeopathy to be quackeryand believe it is their bounden duty to expose this fraud whenever possible. They have trouble stretching their minds and imagining that there are other possible explanations for the action of homeopathic remedies—in other words, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy.

One such innovative theory is of “water memory,” which was proposed by the French scientist Jacques Benveniste to explain the purported therapeutic powers of homeopathic remedies (Benveniste 1994). With this MDA publication, open-minded scientists may need to revisit Benveniste’s original claims.

I think the real question is whether science is a set of dogmatic “facts” determining in advance what is possible or impossible, or a methodology for rigorously testing hypotheses and following the data wherever it leads. I applaud Moshe Frenkel, Lorenzo Cohen, and their coworkers for taking the second path. To me, they have performed a great service to science, at considerable personal risk to their own careers.

MD Anderson is ranked (by U.S. News) as America’s number one cancer center and so it will be particularly interesting to see if the professional skeptics will try discredit this study with their usual sort of personal attacks. I hope that this outstanding paper will be a tipping point, wherein conventional science is finally forced to re-evaluate its rigid opposition to this puzzling but fascinating mode of treatment.

“Homeopathy has been a very controversial system of care, commonly practiced in Europe, but not commonly used in cancer care,” Frenkel recently told me. “This is the first scientific study that investigated the effect of homeopathic remedies on breast cancer cells. This study raises the exciting possibility of a window of therapeutic opportunity for preferentially eliminating breast cancer cells with minimal damage to the surrounding normal mammary tissue by using homeopathic remedies.”

–Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

References

Benveniste J, Ducot B, Spira A. Memory of water revisited. Nature. 1994;370(6488):322.

Frenkel M, Mishra BM, Sen S, et al. Cytotoxic effects of ultra-diluted remedies on breast cancer cells. Int. J. Oncol. 2010;36(2):395-403.

Frenkel M. Personal communication, Feb. 20, 2010. 

Maxim LD, Harrington L. A review of the Food and Drug Administration risk analysis for polychlorinated biphenyls in fish. Regul. Toxicol. Pharmacol. 1984;4(2):192-219.