Why treatment with homeopathy is not effective

Homeopathy is a kind of alternative medicine, involving the use of highly diluted drugs, which, according to homeopaths, cause symptoms in healthy people that are similar to those of the patient's illness.At the core of the concept of homeopathy lies the completely unscientific principle of "treating like-like".Now homeopathy has turned into a multimillion-dollar industry that generates profits for large corporations, but at the same time remains an unrecognized official medicine and representatives of the world scientific community.In February 2017 the Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences to combat pseudoscience and falsification of scientific research recognized homeopathy as a pseudoscience.The relevant memorandum is posted on the Commission's website. Doctors are advised to inform patients about the ineffectiveness of homeopathy, to pharmacists - not to recommend these means, and patients - to refuse to purchase and use homeopathic remedies.

Senior Researcher, Institute for Information Transmission Problems,A.A.Kharkevich RAS, PhD in biology and blogger Alexander Panchin in one of his interviews gave very clear answers to the question "Why can not homeopathy, a priori, work?"

In this article we will try to briefly convey the essence of the main theses of A. Panchin, in which the scientist debunks the myths about the effectiveness of homeopathy.

Treatment with water

When Alexander Panchin was only 6 years old, he came up with a very interesting game and called it "Water Doctor".At that time, Alexander's father worked in the laboratory of the University of California - there were found various tubules, syringes and decommissioned plants made of plastic for water filtration.It was this "set" that enabled the future candidate of biological sciences to filter the water by running it through several connected filters.

"I gave the water to infuse," energize the sun ", mixed various" samples "of water - and eventually received" the best magical water "with special properties»

Alexander Panchin is sure that if he did not become a biologistCould do homeopathy, especially since he invented medicinal water before he became acquainted with the theory from the founder of homeopathy Samuel Hahnemann.

Two principles of homeopathy

What are homeopathic drugs in general? These are preparations that fully comply with two principles:

1. Treat similar with similar. The active substance, which is part of the drug, should cause the person symptoms identical to the symptoms of the disease being treated.
2. Multiple dilutions. Dry matter from the category of homeopathic products is diluted and thoroughly shaken( moreover, it needs to be done in a strictly defined direction!).Then the resulting solution is again diluted and again shaken, then the procedure is repeated again.In general, there are a lot of such dilutions in homeopathy, as a result, there is no initial substance in the resulting solution.

The dilutions are decimal( they are marked with the letter D with the figure corresponding to how many times this preparation has undergone a tenfold dilution) and the hundreds( marked with the letter C with the number corresponding to how many times the preparation has undergone a hundredfold dilution).The high dilutions include the indicators C30-C100 and higher.

"Perhaps you did not know this, but homeopathy treatment is the treatment of water on sugar pills"

If you understand the information about homeopathic preparations, then there will necessarily be questions - if such funds are, according toEssence, water and sugar, then why do they differ in very high cost, can such drugs in general work?

Why treatment with homeopathy is ineffective

The National Council for Health and Medical Research of Australia conducted relevant studies and analyzed the effects of homeopathic remedies. And, the work of experts was carried out in two stages:

• , first the expert commission carefully studied all available literature on homeopathy and drafted a preliminary report;
• were invited to cooperate with practicing homeopaths who were asked to provide evidence of the effectiveness of their treatment methods.

"The committee evaluated all studies on the quality of scientific methodology.Only works of high methodological quality were considered, and only those studies where control groups were present, that is, where the homeopathic remedy was compared with the dummy preparation.57 systematic reviews of homeopathy, 176 individual studies related to 61 diseases were included in the analysis. "

report on the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies was shared. This was done so that everyone could study it carefully and make itConclusions for yourself personally.This is the conclusion: there is not a single disease that homeopathy cures better than an ordinary dummy.

There and then there is a question - how to be with those people who are treated exclusively with homeopathic remedies and convince in the received effect?Accuse them of lying?

Alexander Panchin, Candidate of Biological Sciences, gives clear answers( quote):

"Many people know people who were ill, and after the course of homeopathy they recovered.I also know these people - and I do not suspect them of lying.The problem is that such testimony has little to say about, and this is due to a number of mistakes inherent in our thinking, as well as through the existence of alternative explanations for the apparent effectiveness of homeopathy.

1. The survivor's error. When homeopathy is praised, we hear the voices of those who have recovered, but do not hear the voices of those who are unlucky.That's why you need to compare a group of people who received homeopathy and a group of people who did not get homeopathy to understand if there is an objective improvement associated with taking the drug.It is these studies that have been included in the aforementioned Australian report.
2. After does not mean due to. If the rooster prikokarekal, and then the Sun rises, does this mean that the Sun has risen thanks to the cock?Of course not.Recovering after taking a homeopathic remedy does not mean that the drug has helped.The person could recover and itself, the blessing such often happens.
3. Return to the middle. For a person, the state of health is the norm.Many diseases go through the action of the immune system.Rarely, but there are cases when even some very serious diseases, such as cancer, go without any specific treatment.True, you should not count on it.It is better to see a doctor.Placement effect.
4. Placebo effect. If a person is sure that he is taking an effective remedy, then in response to the expectation of an improvement in the state of health, his brain can be given endorphins.And here they actually improve health and ease the pain.In this case, it does not matter what is in the preparation.It is important only that we think about the effectiveness of the drug.
5. Other changes. Homeopaths often not only prescribe pacifiers, but give advice on lifestyle changes.Such advice can be useful, but for some reason the effect is attributed not to them, but to the pacifiers.
6. Erroneous diagnosis. No comments are needed here.
7. Some homeopathic preparations may contain components not listed on the package. For example, recently in a number of homeopathic preparations antibiotics of penicillin have been found.Such drugs can work, but they can also have undesirable side effects, which are thus hidden from the patient. »

In detail about how( NOT) worksHomeopathy, says the scientific journalist Asya Kazantseva, who, like A. Panchin, is a member of the Council of the Evolution Fund:

Why water does not have memory

The water has a memory - this is claimed by ordinary people, far from science and medicine, and even journalists from TV screens.But Alexander Panchin immediately asks a question about the sclerosis - because if the water has memory, then it can suffer and develop sclerosis.Water should remember the urine that was present in it - is this the case?Many people talk about a certain structure of water, but scientists have proved that all connections in the water are mixed in a fraction of a second!If we adhere to this truth( the fact is proved by numerous studies by scientists!), Then we can safely say that there is no memory of water and can not be!

"The myth of the memory of water goes back to Jacques Benveniste, who twice received the Nobel Prize, parodying the Nobel Prize.The first time was in 1991 for the discovery that "water is a sensible liquid and has a memory" and a second time in 1998 for the discovery that "water not only has memory, but the information stored in it can be transmitted over the phone orInternet »

An experiment on water was conducted - people were offered to use ordinary water and" homeopathic "for treatment, but this experiment was stopped - they accidentally found out that the subjects knew what vessels contained what.And when they were transferred to a closed laboratory, the abilities of "homeopathic" water immediately disappeared somewhere.

The religion of homeopaths

It is interesting that Alexander Panchin compares homeopathy with religion, and in fact gives this a simple and logical explanation!

First, in the homeopathy there are obvious magical rituals - take at least the process of diluting the active substances.Take 1 gram of the substance, add to it 99 grams of water and everything is shaken thoroughly.Moreover, homeopathists are sure that shaking should be done correctly, in a certain order and only in this case it is possible to get really curative water.Needless to say that after such dilution of active substances in solution, there is nothing left of the drug at all?And true faith in ritualistic rituals is very characteristic of religion.

Secondly, homeopaths often perform treatment with magical water.Remember, in religions, there are also references to healing water - Holy water, ritual ablutions, water baptism.Most often, rituals are quite harmless, but in the Ganges( India) hundreds of believers annually undergo the rituals of ablution and "purification", after which they die from cholera.And they continue to believe in the wonderful properties of water!If we take bathing in the Ganges as a basis for bathing with water, then the use of homeopathic water in general against this background looks absolutely harmless.

Thirdly, in homeopathy there is a prophet and even his teaching!It's about Hahnemann( the founder of homeopathy) and his book / textbook.Meanwhile, none of the principles of homeopathy has scientific justifications and explanations, just as the principles of religion can not be confirmed scientifically.

Do not forget that homeopathy is similar to religion because of belief in paranormal phenomena.Nobody knows how to explain the healing power of homeopathic medicines, but all of this is unconditionally believed.

Fans of homeopathic treatment often argue as follows: a competent homeopathist will appoint a drug to each patient only according to the principle of individual selection, and this approach can not be checked by scientific research. And this statement is also controversial:

• if the homeopath does not know about the level of effectiveness of a particular drug, what kind of a doctor has the right to prescribe it to his patient;
• if you collect people and divide them into two groups, one to give homeopathic remedies, and another a pacifier, then no efficacy of homeopathic preparations will manifest itself - such an experiment was put.

Instead of concluding

In the end, I would like to summarize.How much can homeopathy be harmful / dangerous?Trying with the help of homeopathic "dummies" to treat any diseases, patients lose time and do not receive the necessary medical care.This process can be compared to playing in Russian roulette: if you are lucky, the body will cope with the disease on its own, no - you will have to treat complications.