A remedy against pseudoscience

I've got a medication for you to take.  Here are the ingredients:

• nux vomica -- the seed of the plant Strychnos nux-vomica, the natural source of strychnine.
• belladonna -- Atropa belladonna, also called deadly nightshade.
• hydrastis -- another toxic plant, Hydrastis canadensis, better known as goldenseal.
• kali bichromicum -- chemists call it potassium dichromate, and it's carcinogenic and causes contact dermatitis.
• ephedra vulgaris -- an extract of the plant of the same name, which contains the dangerous stimulant ephedrine.
• histaminum hydrochloricum -- the organic compound produced by the human body in response to an allergic reaction, which is responsible for much of the misery of allergies and colds.  (Thus -- antihistamines.)

If by this point you're getting worried that anyone would suggest ingesting any of these, much less a combination of all six, fear not: the manufacturer takes them, dissolves them in water, then dilutes the combined solution by a factor of ten, six times in a row.  By this time, what's left has one millionth the concentration of the original.  And in fact, the advertisement for this "remedy" reassuringly tells prospective customers that it "contains no ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, or alkaloids."

So, for twenty-five bucks, you too can purchase a spray bottle filled with a liquid containing no active ingredients whatsoever.

Oh, and I didn't tell you what it's supposed to cure; snoring.  It's called "SnoreStop," and you're supposed to squirt it up your nose.

People in the know (and certainly regular readers of Skeptophilia) will recognize this as a prime example of the pseudoscientific horseshit known as homeopathy, which -- for some reason -- is still a lucrative business.  You can find homeopathic "remedies" on pharmacy shelves pretty much everywhere; they come in liquid and tablet form, and are recognizable by the presence of a number like "10x" on the label (that's the dilution factor; 10x would be diluted to one part in ten billion).

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Dr. Moumita Sahana, Homeopathy globules, CC BY-SA 4.0]

But what sets apart SnoreStop from even the common run of homeopathic "remedies" -- which aren't going to cure anything, but at least won't make you sicker -- is that SnoreStop nasal spray has been found to contain potentially dangerous numbers of pathogens, including yeasts, molds, and bacteria like Providencia rettgeri, which can cause pneumonia and bacterial meningitis.

The company that produces SnoreStop, Green Pharmaceuticals, was notified of this back in 2022, but did nothing to fix the problem; in fact, why this comes up now is it just came to light that instead of destroying the contaminated lots, they simply relabeled, repackaged, and sold them.  They've also been charged by the FDA for selling an unlicensed and unregulated drug designed to treat a specific disorder, without going through the approval process.  (I guess they forgot to put the "This product is not intended to treat or cure any disorder, disease, or ailment" disclaimer on the package, which seems to be some kind of Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card for these charlatans.)

The problem is, even if SnoreStop is taken off the market -- even if Green Pharmaceuticals goes out of business -- it's only the tip of the iceberg.  Homeopathy scams people for millions of dollars yearly.  And despite my previous statement that at least most of these "remedies" don't make you sicker, there is real harm done, when people refuse conventional (i.e. effective) medical treatment for illnesses in favor of homeopathy and magical thinking.  (There's good evidence that computer entrepreneur Steve Jobs significantly hastened his death from cancer by foregoing medical treatment for "alternative medicine.")

I know, caveat emptor and all that sort of thing.  People are gonna make ill-informed decisions, and you can't legislate away stupidity.  But what the producers of homeopathic remedies are doing -- as well as homeopathic "doctors" -- is deliberately misleading sick people into risking their health by taking a thoroughly discredited pseudoscientific concoction that relies on nonsense like water molecules having a "memory."

The only remedy against pseudoscience is science.  Learn some -- preferably before you need to make decisions regarding your health.

Just remember what the inimitable Tim Minchin said, in his wonderful diatribe against alternative medicine called Storm: "There's a name for alternative medicine that works.  It's called... medicine."

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Astrohomeopathy

Because there's no idiotic idea that can't be made even more ridiculous by blending it with another idiotic idea, today we consider "astro-homeopathy."

If you're thinking, "Wait... that can't mean what it seems to...", unfortunately, yes, it does.  There actually are people who are prescribing homeopathic "remedies" based on your astrological sign.

As we're told over at the the site Ashwini Homeopathy Holistic Healing:

Each planet and its sign have certain characteristics, which may be weak or strong, depending on their placement in the horoscope.  By matching these characteristics of the planets and their signs with the symptoms of Homoeopathic [sic] remedies, it is possible to connect them in order to select the right medicine.

It's explained even more fully over at the site Mystic Scripts:

Astro homeopathy is based on a very unique idea of relating homeopathy with astrology.  Many people follow the astrohomeopathy principles and lead a healthy life.  You can also try astro homeopathy healing methods so that you can lead a life free from health hazards and fitness problems.

Astrology and homeopathy are bridged in astro homeopathy.  An astrohomeopathy reading for you finds out your sun sign and the body parts related to your sign of the zodiac, and tells you the health problems you have the possibility to suffer from (if, of course, there is [sic] any).  In addition, you also come to know the homeopathic remedies for the health problems.

On this site there is a link where you can get your own free astrohomeopathy reading, so of course, I had to do it.  So I entered my birthdate, and this is what I got:

You are intense and ong [sic] willed people who have a very determined nature.  You are powerful and full of energy.  You may seem very calm on the surface but inside, you have a lot of latent aggression. You are very thoughtful and good company, but you are more than that meets the eye.  You seem to be detached from events but actually keep a careful track of what is happening.  You are very sensitive, which leads you to being short tempered.  You have great will power and will achieve your goals if focused.  You are highly motivated individuals who are very resourceful and passionate in your dealings.  You have ong [sic] powers of reasoning and if put to the right use, you will reach the top in no time.

Man, if being short-tempered and having latent aggression are my "positive traits," I can barely wait to see what my negative ones are.  At least I'm a very "ong" person.  That's good, right?

L'homme zodiacal from Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry (ca. 1410) [Image is in the Public Domain]

Now, for the bad news -- my "negative traits:"

Your bluntness may hurt a lot of people.  You may get too involved and probe into issues, which doesn't concern them.  You may be temperamental, making them very difficult to get along with.  You believe you can achieve a lot in life, but just talk and don't do anything as you may have become over confident.  You may be arrogant and jealous of others' achievements.  You do no [sic] trust people and are always suspicious.  Your secretive nature may create problems.  Also you may turn violent at the blink of an eye.

If wanting to flip a table when I'm reading paragraph after paragraph of horseshit constitutes being "temperamental and violent," then guilty as charged.

Then there's the homeopathy part.  Apparently, given my birth sign, what I need is a "remedy" made from plaster of Paris.  I shit you not.  And wait till you read why:

CALCAREA SULPHUREA (Sulphate of Lime, Plaster of Paris) -- Scorpio exerts influence over the sexual organs and as such the pure Scorpions are prone to suffer form infections and problems in their sex organs.  They are susceptible to skin eruptions on the genitals, cystitis and diseases of the urinary tract along with venereal infections.

I don't know about you, but that's enough to make me walk around in a protective crouch for the rest of the day.  The remedy, by the way, "has no side effects," which is a relief, although a more accurate way to put it is "has no effects whatsoever."

Oh, and my lucky numbers are 2 and 4, my lucky colors are burgundy and black, and my lucky day is Tuesday (which is today!  Yay!).

I'm also told that famous persons I'm supposedly similar to include John Keats, Julia Roberts, Bill Gates, and Pablo Picasso.  And I'm sure you can see immediately how alike those four are.

Anyhow, I'm off to take my plaster of Paris pills so my sexual organs don't erupt, and so my arrogant and overconfident nature doesn't cloud my powers of reasoning and bring to the surface my latent aggression.  I hate it when that happens.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

Diluted nonsense

Every time I think homeopathy can't get more ridiculous, I turn out to be wrong.

I thought they'd plunged to the bottom of the Crazy Barrel with their announcement of a remedy called "homeopathic water."  This is, unfortunately, exactly what it sounds like.  It's water diluted with water, then shaken up, then diluted again and again.

With water.

So I thought, "This is it.  It can't get any loonier than that."

I was very, very wrong, and found out the depth of my mistake at Frank van der Kooy's site Complementary Medicine -- Exposing Academic Charlatans, wherein we find out that watering water down with water is far from the nuttiest thing the homeopaths make "remedies" from.

Here are a few things that van der Kooy found out form the basis of a homeopathic remedy:

1. Black holes.  Yes, I mean the astronomical object, and yes, I'm serious.  An amateur astronomer put a vial of alcohol on a telescope aimed at the location of Cygnus X-1, the first black hole to be discovered.  My guess is that said astronomer had consumed a good bit of the alcohol first, and that's how he got the idea.  But after the vial had sat there for a while, and gotten saturated with the Essence of Black Hole, it was diluted to "30C" (known to the rest of us as one part in ten to the thirtieth power).  The homeopaths say if you consume it, it causes you to have a "drawing inward" sensation (because, I'm guessing, black holes pull stuff in).  One person who tested it said it felt like her teeth were being pulled backwards into her head.  Why this is supposed to be a good thing, I have no idea.
2. Vacuum.  I'm not talking about the machine, I'm talking about the physical phenomenon.  I don't have a clue how you would mix a vacuum in water, nor what "diluting a vacuum" even means.  The "practitioner," however, says it's really good for treating the flu.
3. The note "F."  Why F and not C# or Ab or something, I'm not sure, but apparently this is made by playing the note F at some water, then diluting it a bunch.  After that, it's good as a "tranquilizer" and "cardiac regulator."
4. The south pole of a magnet.  Again, I'm not sure what's special about the south pole, but if you somehow introduce south-poliness into some water, you can use it to treat frostbite, hernia, dislocations, ingrown toenails, and "levitation."  (I feel obliged at this point to state again for the record that I'm not making this up.)
5. Dog shit.  Supposedly, consuming diluted dog shit helps you get over feelings of self-disgust, which you would definitely need if you're consuming diluted dog shit.  It also helps if you dream about dogs, or "feel like your arms and legs are getting shorter," which I didn't know was even a thing.
6. The Berlin Wall.  A remedy made from a chunk of the Wall -- and not to beat this point to death, but the Wall piece was shaken up in water and diluted a gazillion times -- is good for treating despair.  I could use some right now, because after reading about how many people believe this kind of thing works, I'm inclined to agree with Professor Farnsworth.

Van der Kooy has other examples, and some really amusing commentary, so I urge you to check out his website, as long as you don't mind further declines in your opinion about the general intelligence of the human species.

Once again, I'm struck not by people coming up with this nonsense -- because selling nonsense to make money has been a pastime of humans for a long, long time.  What gets me is that apparently people read this stuff, and don't have the response that I did, which is to snort derisively and say, "You have got to be fucking kidding me."  Instead, they pull out their credit cards and start buying.

So here we are again, shaking our heads in utter bafflement.  At least I hope you are.  I hope you haven't read this and said, "What's he pissing and moaning for?  This all makes perfect sense."  If that was, in fact, your response, please don't tell me about it.  Now y'all will have to excuse me, because I'm going to go take my anti-despair Berlin Wall remedy, mixed well into a double scotch.  That might actually have some effect.

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This week's Featured Book on Skeptophilia:

This week I'm featuring a classic: Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.  Sagan, famous for his work on the series Cosmos, here addresses the topics of pseudoscience, skepticism, credulity, and why it matters -- even to laypeople.  Lucid, sometimes funny, always fascinating.

Closing the books on homeopathy

There comes a point when there is absolutely no reason to continue investigating a claim for which there is no evidence (or significant evidence against).  Pursuing it beyond that point is a waste of money, time, and effort, and can only be explained by people's desperation not to have their pet idea proven wrong.

That point has been reached by homeopathy.  It is useless, unscientific horseshit.  Case closed.

But if by some chance you still were unconvinced, consider the paper that was withdrawn last week from the journal Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  The title of the journal itself makes me wince a little; to paraphrase Tim Minchin, when alternative medicine has the support of evidence, it is thereafter known as "medicine."  But setting that aside for a moment, the paper in question was written by father/son team Aradeep and Ashim Chatterjee, and claimed that the homeopathic remedy "psorinum" was effective in treating cancer.

Without even knowing what "psorinum" is, any claim that a homeopathic "remedy" can cure cancer is about as close to medical fraud as you can skate without committing an actual crime.  If you don't know how "remedies" are created, the quick explanation is that you take a substance of some kind and dilute it past the point where there is any of it left, and then use the resulting water to treat whatever condition has symptoms like the ones created by ingesting the original substance.

For example: the homeopathic sleep-aid "calms forté" is made by diluting caffeine.  I shit you not.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

In the case of "psorinum," however, we have an additional level of "what the fuck?" to add; the "remedy" is made by diluting...

... wait for it...

... fluid from the blisters of someone who has scabies.

I feel obliged to say at this point that I am not making this up.  The site Homeopathy Plus, which is the source of the link above, says the following about "psorinum:"

Those who need Psorinum usually lack vitality and are prone to mental disturbances.  They catch infections easily, especially colds, and recover slowly.  Skin complaints are common and if unattended will be dirty and offensive but these days with frequent bathing and access to steroids, are less likely to be so.  The person is also likely to be anxious about health, work, poverty and the future which leads to depression, despair and sometimes, suicidal thoughts.

You read that right.  If you're depressed because you're poor, the treatment is to ingest serially-diluted scabies pus.

Anyhow, the Chatterjees wrote a paper suggesting that "psorinum" could treat cancer, and evidently that was too much even for Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  When it was found that (1) the "ethics board" that cleared the study the paper was based on was identical to the Board of Directors of a clinic the Chatterjees owned, and (2) both the father and the son were practicing medicine without a license, it was too much for the authorities, too, and the pair were arrested.

This, unfortunately, is not a unique occurrence.  Papers supporting homeopathy have, one and all, been shown to be cherry-picked, if not outright fraudulent.  100% of the controlled scientific studies of homeopathic claims have resulted in zero evidence in favor.

So enough people-hours and research grant money has been wasted on this.  Homeopathy was a ridiculous claim from the get-go, but it was only fair to test it.  The research community did so.  It failed.

Case closed.

Now, the next step is to get those useless sugar pills off the shelves at CVS and other pharmacies.  I know the principle of caveat emptor applies, and if you're choosing to waste your money on fake treatments, you deserve what you get.  But the companies that make this stuff are profiting off the general public's gullibility and ignorance, people are taking quack remedies for serious conditions instead of seeking out legitimate medical help, and the Food & Drug Administration needs to put a stop to it.

As far as the Chatterjees go -- to quote a friend of mine, "I hope they bring them some 'psorinum' sugar pills in jail to cure their 'anxiety about the future.'"  To which I can only add: "Would you like some highly-diluted skin lotion for that burn?"

The walls come tumblin' down

If you needed any further evidence that homeopathy is complete lunacy, take a look at this page wherein we find the description of a homeopathic "remedy" made from chunks of the Berlin Wall.

At first, I thought this was a spoof.  Tragically, it isn't.  But if you would rather not (1) give these people further hits on their hit tracker, and (2) subject your delicate brain cells to truly devastating amounts of derp, allow me to give you a brief summary.

Kees Dam, the person who wrote the piece, states that he (at least I think this is a male name; my apologies if I'm incorrect) was at a homeopathy conference and heard a homeopath named George Vithoulkas say that "the sake and credibility of homeopathy was not served by using remedies like Berlin Wall."  And initially, Dam agreed.  It seemed ridiculous that taking a chunk of concrete, grinding it up in water, and diluting it until there was none of the original concrete left would result in a remedy that was good for curing anything except thirst.

[image courtesy of photographer Jorge Royan and the Wikimedia Commons]

But despite his doubts, Dam decided to "prove" it for himself.  In homeopathy, a "proving" is where you give volunteers undiluted materials (here, swallowing pieces of the Berlin Wall) and seeing what symptoms they develop.  Those symptoms then are what highly-diluted "remedy" (a.k.a. "water") is useful for treating.

It is why, for example, the homeopathic "remedy" used for insomnia is made from diluted caffeine.  I'm not making this up.

Anyhow, after eating powdered concrete, there were a bunch of emotional symptoms -- depression, hopelessness, feelings of being trapped -- and a variety of physical symptoms as well.  These included both narcolepsy and insomnia.

Which induced me to shout at my computer, "Okay, which is it?  It can't be both."

So will powdered and diluted Wall keep you awake, or put you to sleep?  The website was unclear on that point (one of many that it was unclear on).  Maybe it will put you into that obnoxious half-awake state where you can't really fall deeply asleep, but you're too tired to get up.

If that's what it does, keep it right the hell away from me.  I hate that.

Anyhow, we then move on to a long list of quotes from volunteers who participated in "provings" and tests of the "remedy" itself.  Many of them are what you'd expect from people who believe this stuff -- claims that taking homeopathic dilutions of the Berlin Wall helped you with metaphorical walls in your life ("Sensation as if there is a wall, an incredible distance between the people I really love and me. I cannot go to the people I really want to be with. It is a big suffering.").  Another person said that taking it made her very suspicious of men ("Absolutely no sex," she says.)

The most bizarre one is someone who got symptoms simply by holding the "remedy" in her hand: "Holding the remedy for a while gives a tremendous rise of grief and sadness, so huge you would drown in it."

So what does this mean, now you don't even have to swallow the stuff, it's equally effective to absorb the curative powers directly through your skin?  I suppose that's true, actually, given the fact that 0 = 0.

It only gets weirder from there.  Here are a few more symptoms people developed after swallowing pieces of the Berlin Wall:

• There is a big heap of sand before my house-door, it is so high that it is on window level. Anybody could walk in by the window. This gives me a very unsafe feeling.
• Together with my father I am in a barren, flat, empty meadow landscape with as many ditches as land, the water in the ditches is just as high as the land, a very disagreeable landscape. There is no horizon. My father says that he doesn't believe in God or that he thinks he doesn't believe in God.
• Last night I had the feeling I was blind, I opened the curtains a little and realised/saw I was not.
• Vision: two astronauts and a UFO with very modern equipment especially in relation to eye-technique (laser/photography).
• Weepy, with the speed of one tear per hour, but still ameliorating.
• I am drawn to buy light yellow clothing during this remedy proving. 
• I desire pepper salami.

Apparently after reading through all of this (for want of a better word) data, Dam didn't have the reaction I did, which is to say "What the fuck?" over and over again.  No, Dam was convinced.  Any of his previous reservations about the usefulness of diluted Berlin Wall were clean gone.  He writes:

I must confess that the same controversial feelings were elicited in me when I heard of Berlin Wall as a homeopathic remedy for the first time.  My "Berlin Wall" was broken down when I trusted and believed my eyes seeing the effects of Berlin Wall as a homeopathic remedy.

So there you have it.  This isn't the stupidest thing I've run across in homeopathic literature; that honor goes to homeopathic water, which is water diluted in water.  (I'm also not making this up; the link is to a previous Skeptophilia post where you can read all about it.)  However, if this isn't the dumbest "remedy" I've ever seen, it is certainly the strangest.

Anyhow, if you have a chunk of the Berlin Wall, you're probably better off hanging onto it and not grinding it up and diluting it a bunch of times.  Since what it apparently cures are things like craving salami and imagining that there are heaps of sand in front of your house, it probably wouldn't that useful in any case.

Quantum homeopathy

In response to my post a couple of days ago about the tendency of people to believe loony ideas if they're couched in ten-dollar vocabulary, a loyal reader of Skeptophillia sent me a link to a paper by one Lionel Milgrom, of Imperial College (London), that has turned this phenomenon into an art form.

The name of the paper?

"'Torque-Like' Action of Remedies and Diseases on the Vital Force and Their Consequences for Homeopathic Treatment."

ln it, we witness something pretty spectacular: an attempt to explain homeopathy based on quantum mechanics.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I'm not making this up, and it doesn't seem like a spoof; in fact, the paper appeared in the open-access Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.  Here's the opening paragraph:

Within the developing theoretical context of quantum macroentanglement, a mathematical model of the Vital Force (Vf) has recently been formulated.  It describes the Vf in terms of a hypothetical gyroscope with quantized angular momentum.  This enables the Vf's state of health to be represented in terms of a "wave function" derived solely from secondary symptom observables produced in response to disease or homeopathic remedies.  So far, this approach has illustrated the biphasal action of remedies, resonance phenomena arising out of homeopathic provings, and aspects of the therapeutic encounter.

So right out of the starting gate, he's talking about using quantum interactions of a force no one has ever detected to explain a treatment modality that has been repeatedly found to be completely worthless.  This by itself is pretty impressive, but it gets better as it goes along:

According to this model, symptom expression corresponds to precession of the Vf "gyroscope."  Conversely, complete removal of symptoms is equivalent to cessation of Vf "precession."  However, if overprescribed or given in unsuitable potency, the curative remedy (which may also be formulated as a wave function but this time derived solely from changes in Vf secondary symptom observables) may cause the Vf to express proving symptoms.  Thus, with only observation of symptoms and changes in them to indicate, indirectly, the state of a patient's Vf, the safest treatment strategy might be for the practitioner to proceed via gradual removal of the symptoms.

When I read the last line, I was lucky that I wasn't drinking anything, because it would have ended up splattered all over my computer.  Yes!  By all means, if a sick person comes in to visit a health professional, the health professional should proceed by removing the sick person's symptoms!

Because proceeding by making the symptoms worse is kind of counterproductive, you know?

His talk about "overprescription" made me chuckle, too.  Because if you'll recall, James Randi has demonstrated dozens of times that the result of consuming a whole bottle of a homeopathic remedy is... nothing.  On the other hand, since the homeopaths believe that the more dilute a substance is, the stronger it gets, maybe "overprescribing" means "prescribing less."

Which reminds me of the story about the guy who forgot to take his homeopathic remedy... and died of an overdose.

And if this isn't enough, Dr. Milgrom (yes, he has a Ph.D., astonishingly enough) has also published other papers, including "The Thermodynamics of Health, Healing, and Love" and "Toward a Topological Description of the Therapeutic Process."

What's next, "The Three-Body Problem: A Classical Mechanics Approach to Handling Love Affairs?"

I have to admit, though, that there's something almost charming about this guy's attempt to bring pseudoscience under the lens of physics.  His blathering on about imaginary "vital forces" and the precession of microscopic gyroscopes as a mechanism for disease is, if nothing else, creative.  While what he's claiming is complete bollocks, Dr. Milgrom's determination to keep soldiering on is kind of adorable.

The good news, of course, is that his papers are unlikely to convince anyone who isn't already convinced.  The only danger is the undeserved veneer of credibility that this sort of thing gives homeopathy in people whose minds aren't yet made up.  One can only hope that the thorough debunking of this fraudulent practice that has been done by actual scientific researchers will prove, in the end, to be more persuasive.

Pharmacies, the FDA, and homeopathy

It seems like mostly what I cover in this blog is bad news.

People believing crazy stuff, bizarre actions people take (or refuse to take) because of their superstitious beliefs, mind-bending cases of illogic.  But today, I want to deliver some good news to anyone who thinks that rationalism and evidence should carry the day:

The FDA is finally moving toward taking a stand on homeopathy.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Next Monday and Tuesday, April 20 and 21, 2015, from 9 AM to 4 PM Eastern Daylight Time, the FDA has actively solicited input from stakeholders regarding the preparation and sales of the preparations that homeopaths refer to as "remedies" but the rest of us call "water" and "sugar pills."  These stakeholders include, but are not limited to, "consumers, patients, caregivers, health care professionals, patient groups, and industry."  The hearing is to be held at the FDA White Oak Campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, and required preregistration (which unfortunately closed two days ago; I didn't find out about this until yesterday).  However, you can watch a live webcast of the proceedings if you're so inclined (information about how to do this can be found here).

Even if the opportunity to present publicly has passed, you can still voice your opinions to the FDA review board in writing until June 22.  Here are the questions they are trying to resolve:

• What are consumer and health care provider attitudes towards human drug and biological products labeled as homeopathic?
• What data sources can be identified or shared with FDA so that the Agency can better assess the risks and benefits of drug and biological products labeled as homeopathic?
• Are the current enforcement policies under the CPG appropriate to protect and promote public health in light of the tremendous growth in the homeopathic drug market? Are there alternatives to the current enforcement policies of the CPG that would inform FDA’s regulatory oversight of drugs labeled as homeopathic? If so, please explain.
• Are there areas of the current CPG that could benefit from additional clarity? If so, please explain.
• Is there information regarding the regulation of homeopathic products in other countries that could inform FDA’s thinking in this area?
• A large majority of human drug products labeled as homeopathic are marketed as OTC drugs. These products are available for a wide variety of indications, and many of these indications have never been considered for OTC use under a formal regulatory process. What would be an appropriate regulatory process for evaluating such indications for OTC use?
• Given the wide range of indications on drug products labeled as homeopathic and available OTC, what processes do companies currently use to evaluate whether such products, including their indications for use, are appropriate for marketing as an OTC drug?
• Do consumers and health care providers have adequate information to make informed decisions about drug products labeled as homeopathic? If not, what information, including, for example, information in labeling, would allow consumers and health care providers to be better informed about products labeled as homeopathic?

If you are a medical researcher or health care provider, it's crucial to get information to the FDA that would give them leverage to remove these worthless "remedies" from pharmacy shelves.  It's critical, however, that any submissions not be simple rants.  Make them evidence-based, and specific to the questions for which the FDA is seeking information.  Sharon Hill, over at Doubtful News, directs you to frame your responses thusly:

If you are in the medical profession, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU SPEND SOME TIME TO SUBMIT COMMENTS.  If you have pertinent info as an educator, parent, or consumer, your voice is needed also...  You can submit either electronic or written comments to http://www.regulations.gov or Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852.  Organize your comments to identify the specific questions or topic to which they refer and be sure to reference the docket number.

Let me reiterate what I've said before: there is no scientific evidence that homeopathy works, and no logical mechanism by which it could work, given that the dilutions involved result in there being not a single molecule of the original active ingredient left by the time the preparation is sold.  There is no reason these quack cures should be sold in pharmacies, even with any number of disclaimers on the label, given the potential for uninformed or misled consumers to take them rather than seeking out legitimate medical help.

And high time for the FDA to take a stand on this.  Let's make sure that they get the information necessary for it to be the right stand.

Healing the ocean with syphilis

I think the homeopaths have reached some kind of Derp-vana this week with the announcement by British practitioner Grace DaSilva-Hill that we need to administer homeopathic preparations...

... to the ocean.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I'm not making this up.  In a story broken by Andy Lewis on Quackometer, we find out that DaSilva-Hill is lamenting the state of the world's oceans, a sentiment with which I have to agree.  But what she proposes to do about it is to treat it with homeopathic "remedies:"

Thanks in advance to all of you who have already agreed to participate in this initiative of sending a homeopathic remedy to heal the oceans. 

The remedy that has been selected is Leuticum (Syph) in the CM potency. 

Just mix one or two drops in some water and offer it to the ocean wherever you happen to be, on 21 November, with pure love and intention...  If you live close to a river that can be done, too, or even just send the remedy down the toilet wherever you happen to be.

Well, I can't argue with the value of flushing homeopathic "remedies" down the toilet.  In my opinion, that should be done right at the factory where they're manufactured.

And what is "Leuticum," you may be wondering?  According to a homeopathy website, Leuticum is a "nosode" -- a "remedy" made from diluted bodily discharges.  And if you're not sufficiently disgusted yet, the bodily discharge involved in Leuticum is infected material from someone with syphilis.

Oh, but wait!  Leuticum is good stuff!  According to the site, it's useful for treating people who:

• are afraid of the dark
• are in chronic pain
• suffer from hair loss
• smell bad

In addition, we find out that you can use it to treat "persons with pale, fine textured skin, who are slender, having graceful movements," and also people with oral cancer.

What this has to do with the ocean is beyond me.

Of course, since the whole idea of homeopathy is that the more dilute the stuff gets, the more powerful it is, dumping it in the ocean is sort of the right approach, isn't it?  You might want to know what we're starting with, though.  What is a "CM potency" -- the strength of the original remedy?  Well, I looked it up on the Wikipedia page on homeopathic dilutions, and therein I found that a CM dilution represents a dilution of 1 part of the original substance in 10 to the 200,000th power parts of water.  If that's a little hard for you to visualize, it amounts to taking a milliliter of the original substance, and diluting it in a sphere of water about 100 light years in diameter, then taking a drop of that and diluting it again by the same amount, and repeating the process 4,000 times.

So what she's saying is to take a drop of that, and throw it in the ocean.

Or in a river.  Or down the toilet.  Or, she says, if you can't even manage that, just take some regular old water and think happy thoughts at it:

Even if you do not have the remedy in a physical form, you can still speak the name of the remedy to a glass of water, and the water will memorise the energy of the remedy (Dr. Masaru Emoto's work).

Dr. Emoto, you may remember, is the Japanese nutjob who thought that if you swear at water and then freeze it, it will form ugly crystals.

But like I said, maybe this is a good thing.  Keeping the homeopaths busy chucking their "remedies" in the ocean is better than what they have been doing lately, like going over to West Africa to try to treat Ebola with water and sugar pills.  I guess if it keeps them busy and out of harm's way, it's all good.

Especially since they can't be accused of putting something that has any side effects into the ocean.  Or, actually, something with any effects at all.

Homeopathy for gunshot wounds

I was just thinking about a study I read about years ago, done by Charles Lord, Lee Ross, and Mark Lepper back in 1979.  Called "Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence," this study came to the following rather sobering conclusion:

People who hold strong opinions on complex social issues are likely to examine relevant empirical evidence in a biased manner.  They are apt to accept "confirming" evidence at face value while subjecting "disconfirming" evidence to critical evaluation, and, as a result, draw undue support for their initial positions from mixed or random empirical findings.  Thus, the result of exposing contending factions in a social dispute to an identical body of relevant empirical evidence may be not a narrowing of disagreement but rather an increase in polarization.  To test these assumptions, 48 undergraduates supporting and opposing capital punishment were exposed to 2 purported studies, one seemingly confirming and one seemingly disconfirming their existing beliefs about the deterrent efficacy of the death penalty.  As predicted, both proponents and opponents of capital punishment rated those results and procedures that confirmed their own beliefs to be the more convincing and probative ones, and they reported corresponding shifts in their beliefs as the various results and procedures were presented.  The net effect of such evaluations and opinion shifts was the postulated increase in attitude polarization.

Argument, then, doesn't change people's minds; it makes believers believe more strongly.

This is why, I think, the homeopaths have been doubling down on their rhetoric as of late.  The critics of homeopathy have been outspoken -- from James Randi's fiery takedown of homeopaths to "What's the Harm?", a running list of people who are documented to have been harmed or killed by taking homeopathic "remedies" rather than seeking conventional medical care.

All of this has, I think, contributed to a "siege mentality" amongst the practitioners of homeopathy, leading them to espouse ever more extreme views -- a result that Lord, Ross, and Lepper would not be surprised by, I think.  Take, as an example, this webpage, the work of John Benneth, a strident homeopath who claims therein that homeopathy doesn't just work for your standard-issue colds, flu, headache, and heartburn, it works for... damn near anything.

Think I'm kidding?  Here are a few of the things that Benneth wants to "treat" with homeopathy.

Child abuse:

30,000 or more children were left permanently physically disabled from abuse and neglect. Child abuse in the United States afflicts more children each year than leukemia, automobile accidents, and infectious diseases combined. With growing unemployment, incidents of abuse by jobless parents increased dramatically. Homeopathy could have helped with individualized constitutional treatments and a remedy such as Magnesium muriaticum.

Gunshot wounds:

In one year 85,000 Americans were wounded by firearms, of which 38,000 die, 2,600 children. Homeopathy could have helped with ledum pelustre , aconitum napellum, arnica Montana and individualized constitutional treatments.

Diabetes:

In one year, 160,000 Americans died from diabetes. Homeopathy could have helped with remedies such as Apoc. Carc. Kali-n. Squil. and Uran-n.

AIDS:

1,000,000 Americans were estimated to have AIDS as of 1996; over 250,000 died of it. Homeopathy could have helped with a remedy such as Carcinosin.

Mental illness and mental retardation:

In one year 255,000 Americans mentally ill or retarded Americans, released in recent years were in flophouses or wandering U.S. streets. Homeopathy could’ve helped with remedies such as Arg-n. Arn. Bor. Calc. Carb-v. Form. GRAPH. Hep. Hyos. Kali-c. Nat-m. Nit-ac. Nux-v. Petr. Ph-ac. PHOS. Plb. Psor. Puls. Ran-b. Rhus-t. Sep. Sil. Sulph. Tab. and Tarax.

The trauma of rape:

700,000 American women were raped, one every 45 seconds. Homeopathy could have helped with remedies such as Staphysagria, AIDS Cench. Kreos. LSD. Petr. Posit. Sep.

Elder abuse:

1,800,000 elderly Americans who live with their families were subjected to serious abuse such as forced confinement, underfeeding, and beatings. The mistreatment of elderly people by their children and other close relatives grew dramatically as economic conditions worsened. Homeopathy could’ve helped the victims in their recovery and the victimizers with their anger with remedies such as Nux-v, Cere-s. LSD. Posit. Salx-f. Staph.

Drug addiction:

In one year six and a half million (6,500,000) used heroin, crack, speed, PCP, cocaine or some other hard drug on a regular basis. Homeopathy could have helped with remedies such as Agar. Ant-c. Bry. Chin. COLOC. Hydr. Lach. NUX-V. Op. Ruta and Sulph, indicated in drug poisoning.

And finally, amazingly, child abduction:

150,000 American children are reported missing every year. 50,000 of these simply vanish. Their ages range from one year to mid-teens. According to the New York Times, “Some of these are dead, perhaps half of the John and Jane Does annually buried in this country are unidentified kids.” Homeopathy could have helped with individualized treatments. Homeopathy could have helped with remedies like Absin. Cimic. OP. Phos. Plb. Rhus-t. Staph. Stram., Falco-p, and Magnesium muriaticum .

Mad yet?  I hope so.  Benneth and his fellow purveyors of sugar pills have, as the opposition grows louder, grown louder themselves, making ever wilder claims about what their magic remedies can do for you.  And if you think that Benneth himself is just a lone voice, read the comments section on his webpage -- you'll find that the vast majority of them agree with him.  (I realize, of course, that this is a skewed sample -- the comments on the page represent those who (1) found Benneth's site, (2) read it all the way through, (3) felt motivated enough to write a response, and (4) Benneth himself didn't delete.  But still.)  Here's an example:

At the foundation of John’s extremely informative post, with statistics that should humble our allopathic arrogance, is that humans in an imbalanced condition are sick, damaged, damaging and in pain.

The arguments presented here , critical of JB’s information, deny, overlook or dismiss the philosophical proposal that healthy people do not become criminals and that healthy, victimized people can heal from their traumas. Socially, economically, emotionally, politically, physically and psychically, – health is a fundamental condition. Without it every outcome is a compensation and a handicap. Every solution We have lowered our expectations for health. Shame on us for acquiescing to the precepts of a patriarchal system that wants to keep us sick, sad and hopeless.

Right.  Because all of the "allopathic" (i.e. effective) doctors I know have, as their main career goal, keeping their patients "sick, sad, and hopeless."

I can only draw one positive message from all of this, and it comes from looking at the converse of Lord, Ross, and Lepper's main thesis; that the wild and desperate claims of the homeopaths are an indication that their anti-science, zero-evidence views are on the way out.  But "on the way out" and "gone" are two different things, and I can't help but wonder how many more lives will be lost before homeopathy joins the "four humors" model of human health in the dustbin of history.

Homeopathic chemtrail remedies

Following on the heels of my post yesterday regarding how much smarter and saner the conspiracy theorists are than us skeptics, today we will take a look at: homeopathic anti-chemtrail spray.

Yes, folks, guaranteed to "alleviate symptoms of chemtrail exposure," this homeopathic preparation (i.e. a bottle of water) is to be sprayed up the nose "until symptoms disappear."

At first, I thought this had to be a joke.  Or, at least, unique.  Surely no one else would come up with the idea of using worthless remedies for nonexistent chemtrail exposure.

I was wrong.

Check out, for example, ChemBuster.  The website starts out by asking a very important question, namely: "Have you experienced symptoms of unknown origin?"  Because if you had "chronic fatigue," "chronic pain," "chronic headaches," or "mental and emotional problems," there could only be one answer:

The government is putting chemicals into jet fuel, so that when the jet fuel is burned, the chemicals are dispersed over the unsuspecting citizenry, where they are inhaled and cause you to feel crummy.

So who you gonna call?  ChemBuster!

ChemBuster contains 4 herbals and 9 homeopathics blended in a proprietary process designed to defeat, to annihilate, the pools of mycoplasma, heavy metals, respiratory problems and even mental problems associated with Chemtrail poisoning.

But ChemBuster has to be "activated" before use.  How do you activate it?  By purchasing an "orgone energy generator," setting the bottle next to it, and turning it on, which will "potentiate" it, increasing its strength by a factor of ten (following the mathematical principle that 10 x 0 = 0).

At this point, I should mention that the "orgone energy generator" uses the power of gemstones to "collect, concentrate, transmute and radiate all ambient subtle energy into life force," and that the person who came up with the idea of "orgone," Wilhelm Reich, believed that it was the "life energy" that was released suddenly during an orgasm.  I'm not making this up, by the way.  So here we have a claim that combines four ridiculous ideas -- homeopathy + chemtrails + gemstone energies + orgone.

Which may be a new record.

Now, if you don't want to buy homeopathic remedies and orgone energy generators to combat chemtrails, there could be a cheaper solution, namely: a spray bottle filled with vinegar.  Once again, I feel obliged to state outright that I'm not making this up.  Last year, we had a claim going around that was given some momentum by such pinnacles of rationality as Alex Jones and Jeff Rense, stating that if you were worried about the government dousing you with chemicals, all you had to do to "cleanse the air" was to spray some vinegar up toward the sky.  So people did it, because of course there never is an idea so completely idiotic that there won't be large quantities of people who will believe it.  Here is one explanation, if I can dignify it with that word (spelling and grammar as written, because you can only write "sic" so many times):

Vinegar does a lot as a support to our orgone devices. Why ? Reason is pretty simple:

It is all about the electrical charge of the atmosphere. Fellow gifters all around the world were trying to figure out how it is possible, that such cheap and funky substance, as vinegar, is delivering such spectacular effects on the chemtrail-rich atmosphere. Here is the simple explanation:

During the chemtrail attack, atmosphere is charged with a lots of positive ionts. Well, and dispersed vinegar is charging the atmosphere with negative ionts.

TRY IT YOURSELF. If you see the chemtrail attack in your sector is going on -  buy a liter or two of the vinegar, and disperse it on the asphalt surface of the road (it is the best platform for the vinegar to go up to the sky). Or throw black T-Shirt into the vinegar and leave it on the sunlight.  

Vinegar begins AT ONCE to vapor to the sky, and sky is getting charged with the negative ionts by very aggresive chain reaction. Within maximally ONE HOUR you will get the results.

Yup.  Using a "funky substance" to fight "positive ionts" from "chemtrail attack in your sector."  Gotcha.

And lest you think that this explanation was immediately laughed into oblivion, I read the comments, without even putting on my anti-stupidity protective eyewear, and immediately came across one that read, "The idea of countering thousand dollars of chemtrail with cheap vinegar is very apealing [sic].  I'll try it. Must be very humiliating to them."

Ah, yes, them.  Those evil guys who are chemtrailing the hell out of us.  You know, I think that's the thing I understand the least about all of this; if the Illuminati in the government are dousing the skies with chemicals via jet contrails, and those contrails can be seen every day from damn near any spot in the United States, why don't we see all of the government employees walking around wearing big ol' respirators?  No, they're breathing the same air that we unsuspecting sheeple are.  So are the families of the government employees.  Everyone, pretty much, is breathing the same air, Illuminati and sheeple alike, and it seems that only the sheeple are affected?

Oh, wait, I forgot.  The government employees are Reptilian aliens, and they're immune.  Duh.

So, there you have it.  Using homeopathy, crystals, orgasmic energy, and vinegar to fight the chemtrails created by the llluminati.  I really think they should find a way to work in astrology, chakras, and the planet Nibiru, which would create a perfect storm of woo-woo quantum psychic vibrations, raising us to the next level of enlightenment.

On the other hand, I'm probably not ready for that.  Just let me stay unenlightened for the time being, at least until I recover from the forehead bruises I got from all of the headdesks I did while researching this post.

You put the water in the water, and drink it all up...

Let me just say, right up front, that I love my students.

They never fail to give me some optimism for humanity's future.  It's true that they sometimes come pre-installed with silly ideas; but I find that the vast majority of them are curious, interested in the world around them, and enjoy being challenged.  Given the opportunity to learn some of the skills of critical thinking, they rise, and often exceed, the target.

One student on the hope-for-the-future list is a young man I just met this year who has already supplied me with a number of topics for this blog, putting him in the running for the winner of the Junior Skeptophile Award for 2013.  His latest was one that I actually thought was satire for a while -- Poe's Law once again biting us in the ass.  But sadly, no, this one is real, which will shock you when you find out what it is.

Homeopathic water.

I'm just going to give you a moment to ponder that one, okay?

Are you thinking, "Wait.  That can't mean what it seems to mean."  But yes, it does.  These people are taking water... and then diluting it a bunch of times, with water.  And of course, being that this is homeopathy we're talking about, the more you dilute the water with water, the stronger the water gets.  This water is diluted to "30c" -- which is homeopathic parlance for one part water in 10 to the 30th power parts, um, water.

That's some strong water, friends.  As a coworker of mine commented, "I'll bet it's really good at curing dehydration."

(Look, I'm not claiming this isn't ridiculous.  Don't yell at me.)

[image courtesy of photographer Derek Jensen and the Wikimedia Commons]

Anyway, here's the catch: the water they're diluting is "new water," i.e., just formed from hydrogen and oxygen gas.  You dilute the new water with old water, and so on and so forth.  There's a whole page devoted to the "proving" of this "remedy."  Now, I always want to make sure that I'm being accurate myself, so just to be sure that I understood it, I looked up "proving" on the "Homeopathic Terms" page of HealingWithHomeopathy.net, and I found the following definition:

The method used by homeopathic researchers to define the symptom profile of a particular substance. Most provings were done and recorded in the late 1800's, although in the last ten years many homeopathic researchers have begun proving new substances. Provings are a very specific type of research and usually follow a standard protocol.

Which, as a definition, kind of sucks.  It's as if you defined "physics" as "a body of practice engaged in by physicists, mostly done since the 17th century, following a specific set of rules and standard protocols.  That's all you need to know."

Well, I wanted more than that, so I went to the wonderful site The Skeptic's Dictionary, and found on their page for homeopathy the following:

Hahnemann [the founder of homeopathy] experimented on himself with various drugs over several years and concluded that "a doctor should use only those remedies which would have the power to create, in a healthy body, symptoms similar to those that might be seen in the sick person being treated" (Williams, Guy R. The Age of Miracles: Medicine and Surgery in the Nineteenth Century (Academy Chicago Publishers 1981).)... (He) called this method of finding what symptoms a drug caused in a healthy person a "proving."

So, what they did, with the water diluted in water, is to give it to healthy people, and see what symptoms they developed.  And man, did these people develop symptoms!   Here are a few of over a hundred results, copied right from the "Materia Medica" page on "Aqua Nova" (which is what they call their water diluted in water):

I have felt invisible over the last few days, and with one particular person, it was as though I hadn't existed as she hadn't thought of me. People didn't register my presence.

Feel very light headed as though the top of my head, from the eyes upward, has dissolved and I am merging into the atmosphere.

Husband says I am more erotic and relaxed sexually. I feel more relaxed and less sensitive, physically and emotionally.

Can't stop drawing spirals while taking notes. I concentrate better if I draw those spirals.

I had this strange feeling of being a bird with a large beak. My nose felt as if it coming outward and down to meet my chin, which was also coming outward and up. My face felt contorted. My tongue was being squeezed into a very small space.

Twitch in left eye, underneath, lasts about 2 hours.

The end of my nose is in spasm, intermittently through out the day.

Flatulence: lots.

All I can say is:  if any of my readers participated in this study, I don't want to know about it.  And please don't come for a visit.  It might seem harsh, but I don't really want to hang out with invisible large-beaked birds who are experiencing twitching eyes, nose spasms, and massive farts, however "erotic and relaxed" they're feeling.

So.  I guess now we know what water diluted with water is useful for.  And in case you're wondering what other treatments are out there, there's a page called "Provings" linked on their website (link provided above) that tells you about other "remedies" these folks have worked on.  These include "30c" dilutions of:

• heroin
• blood from an AIDS patient
• antimatter
• basaltic lava
• cockroaches
• blood and feathers from a Peregrine Falcon
• slate
• LSD
• a latex condom
• herring
• a road-killed badger

And no, I don't think they're joking.

So, anyway, I think we can all agree that my student has found quite a treasure-trove of facepalming material, here.  But to return to the hopeful note of my opening paragraphs, keep in mind that these young people who, over and over, demonstrate to me that they are capable of high-level critical thinking -- those are our future.  With minds like this leaping forward into adulthood, I think we have every reason to be optimistic.  Wouldn't it be nice if one day, I can retire from this blog, because I've run out of topics, and this sort of superstitious hocus-pocus is a thing of the past?

I, for one, wouldn't mind that as an outcome, at all.