Medical care, serial dilution, and mathematical horses

It's been a while since we've seen a new salvo from the homeopaths, but I knew this did not mean they'd retreated in disarray.  After all, a belief in pseudoscientific woo-woo quackery means never having to say you're sorry.

The most recent news from the world of homeopathy comes from an online magazine called Clever H.  This is in many ways an unfortunate choice of names.  It immediately reminded me of "Clever Hans," a horse back in 1907 whose owner claimed he could do arithmetic.  Of course, the horse could do no such thing, but was shown by German psychologist Oskar Pfungst to be receiving cues from its owner.  Once the owner was taken off stage, suddenly Clever Hans lost his phenomenal ability to do calculations.

Clever Hans and his owner [Image is in the Public Domain]

So calling the magazine a name that recalls a debunked false claim isn't so much unflattering as it is ironic.  Apparently unaware of this, the writers are boundless in their enthusiasm, subtitling Clever H as "The Mag by Homeopaths, for Homeopaths, With the Patient in Mind!"  The article that caught my attention was called "The Anti-Aging of Homeopathic Cell Salts," which I at first thought meant they'd discovered a way to keep salt from aging.

Which, as far as I've heard, is not really a big problem.

But that isn't what the article's about.  It claims that they've discovered some chemicals ("cell salts") that can prevent, or even reverse, aging.  The authors write:

Tissue Salts are an off shoot of homeopathy and are vital elements that correspond to the same minerals our cells are made of.  These “vital elements” will nourish and rebuild your cells...   [A] homeopathic treatment that can be helpful in slowing the aging process and reducing the early signs of aging is a homeopathic detox of the liver, kidney and lymphatic system.  This will stimulate your body to function better.  A noticeable difference will be seen on the skin’s appearance and even aches and pains will improve.  When the lymphatic system is functioning at its best, weight loss and cellulite will be in control and the immune system will be functioning optimally.

Equipped with such homeopathic anti-aging secrets, the aging process can be slowed and life can be lived to the fullest beyond the days of youth.

Now, at the age of 58, no one would be happier than me to find there was a way to reverse aging.  (Physical aging, I mean.  My emotional age kind of plateaued around age 13, which is why I still laugh at fart jokes.)  On the other hand, I'm not so fond of the gray hair, wrinkles, and miscellaneous aches and pains, and would thrilled if I could return to the physique I had when I was 25.

What Clever H says we should do is take the homeopathic concoctions "calc fluor," "calc phos," and "kali phos," because all of these are valuable "cell salts" that will have the effect of restoring your youth.  Oh, and also "nat mur," which is a "water distributor."  Which, I suppose, is better than having water pool in our feet, or something.

So I did some research -- if you can dignify it by that name -- and found out that "calc fluor" is useful for treating hemorrhoids, "calc phos" restores health after an injury, "kali phos" is good for stress, and "nat mur" keeps you from drying out.  "Nat mur," I also found out, was made from plain old salt, so I was curious as to why they were making such a big deal about it.  In searching for an answer I stumbled upon a page about "nat mur" on the site of the British Homeopathic Organization, which had some information that was puzzling, to say the least:

The higher organisms, the mammals, require sodium chloride in comparatively large amounts.  It is clear that as life evolves to higher forms, and the faculties of perception and feeling unfold, the role of sodium chloride in psychological and biological functions becomes increasingly important.  The active secretion of salt through the urine, sweat and tears appeared in parallel with the development of feeling and the tender emotions.

So I'm supposed to develop tender emotions when I'm taking a piss?  Or am I missing some vital piece of the argument, here?

We also find out there are "nat mur" personalities, which are characterized by harshness, resentment, and lack of demonstrative emotions.  Because of the ocean or something.

 But back to the Clever H page, wherein we find that the recommended concentrations of all of these "remedies" are between "6x" and "30x."  For those of you who don't know how homeopathic "remedies" are produced, allow me to explain that each "x" represents a 1-in-10 dilution.  So a 6x dilution would have 1 part of the original substance dissolved in 1,000,000 parts of some inert substance like water or a sugar pill.  So that's pretty dilute, but it's nothing like a 30x dilution, which is 1 part of the original substance dissolved in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts of inert substance.

Which for most of us qualifies as "really fucking dilute," but those of you who know some chemistry might recognize that this dilution far surpasses Avogadro's Limit -- because once you have done a 1-in-10 serial dilution 23 times, you have (on average) one molecule of the original substance left.  Any further dilution, and you essentially have nothing there but the inert carrier.

Not that the original substance does what the homeopaths say it does in the first place.  But considering that they claim that the more dilute a substance is, the stronger it is, I'm not sure we should be splitting scientific hairs, here.

If you paw around the Clever H site, you find the following disclaimer:

All content on this website is intended as an adjunct to, not a substitute for professional homeopathic and/or medical care. 

No publication of Clever H. or its sub-pages should be interpreted as a means of diagnosis or treatment for any disease or condition, and the articles published at Clever H. by no means claim completeness of information. 

For a medical diagnosis or treatment a licensed medical professional should be consulted. Homeopathic treatments should only be undertaken under direct guidance and care of a professionally trained Health Care Professional specialized in the services described.

Maybe it's just me, but "A noticeable difference will be seen on the skin’s appearance and even aches and pains will improve.  When the lymphatic system is functioning at its best, weight loss and cellulite will be in control and the immune system will be functioning optimally" sure sounds like a recommendation for a "treatment of [a] disease or condition."

I keep hoping that the homeopaths and other purveyors of pseudo-medical quackery will be so widely known for what they are that they'll go out of business, but (much as it pains me to admit it) homeopathic "remedies" are still on the shelves of our local pharmacy.  Including some that are 30x dilutions (or even more dilute, and therefore stronger).  This means that people are buying them, and using them in the hopes of treating conditions for which they should be seeking out legitimate medical care.  Bringing me back once again to the site What's the Harm -- wherein you will find that a lack of critical thinking skills, with regards to your own health, can be very, very dangerous.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a classic: Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker.  This book is, in my opinion, the most lucid and readable exposition of the evolutionary model ever written, and along the way takes down the arguments for Intelligent Design a piece at a time.  I realize Dawkins is a controversial figure, given his no-quarter-given approach to religious claims, but even if you don't accept the scientific model yourself, you owe it to yourself to see what the evolutionary biologists are actually saying.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Permafrost permayouth

You might have heard about people consuming pills of dried shark cartilage as nutritional supplements.  They're still widely available, in fact.  It's supposed to be anti-carcinogenic.  Why, you might ask, did people get this idea?

Because, the purveyors of shark cartilage pills say, sharks don't get cancer.  So if you grind up shark parts and consume them, you won't get cancer either.

There are just two problems with this practice:

• Sharks actually do get cancer, something that has been known since at least 1908.
• Shark cartilage has been tested and found to have no beneficial therapeutic value whatsoever.  It is, however, kind of critical for the shark itself, and the practice of killing sharks for their cartilage has led to widespread decline in sharks in many parts of the world.

This did not stop two of the most prominent cartilage shark spokespeople, I. William Lane and Linda Comac, from writing a book called Sharks Don't Get Cancer.  When the book was completely trashed by scientists and other reviewers, Lane responded by writing a second book four years later called Sharks Still Don't Get Cancer.

His publisher wisely recommended that Lane eliminate the subtitle he was planning to use, which was So Take That Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah pfffttptbtbtbtbtb.

As usual, we have people who aren't letting little things like evidence and facts stand in the way of their claim.  You can still buy shark cartilage pills in many pharmacies, including a brand called, I kid you not, "BeneFin."

I bring all this up because yesterday I ran across a story about a woman who is doing something even stupider than consuming shark cartilage to prevent cancer; she is injecting herself with bacteria so she won't age.

It's not just ordinary, garden-variety bacteria, either.  These are bacteria that had been frozen in the permafrost of Siberia for, by some estimates, 3.5 million years, and now have been resuscitated by the thaw.  A Russian professor of geology named Anatoli Brouchkov noticed that the Yakut people who live in the area have a reputation for long lifespans, so he decided that (of course) it had to be because they were drinking melted permafrost water that had the bacteria in it.

Couldn't be genetics, or diet, or anything.

So he treated some plants, fruit flies, and mice with the bacteria, which has been dubbed "Bacillus F."  Brouchkov that they "seemed to have a rejuvenating effect," although gives no details about how he knew.  How do you distinguish between a rejuvenated houseplant and a tired, listless one?  Do non-rejuvenated fruit flies fly about in a dejected fashion?

Be that as it may, Brouchkov is certain enough of his claim that he's drinking water with Bacillus F in it himself.  But an actress who calls herself "Manoush" has gone a step further; she is now injecting herself with the bacteria.

Manoush, best known for such A-list blockbusters as Zombie Reanimation, The Shrieking, Philosophy of a Knife, and The Turnpike Killer, says she started taking the bacteria because like many of us, she's not so fond of the idea of getting old.  "Aging is a disease," she says.  "It is a genetic flaw to me.  Even as a teenager I could never accept the concept of getting older one day.  I don’t care what people think. I will stop at nothing to look and feel younger.  Nothing."

Which, I think we could all agree, would leave us with no option other than injecting 3.5 million-year-old Siberian permafrost bacteria directly into our bodies.

Manoush is absolutely convinced she's now aging backwards.  Me, I'm not sure.  I'm not fond of the gray hair, stiff joints, and crow's feet I've gotten in the past few years, but I don't think the answer is to jump on some loopy idea about anti-aging bacteria.  In fact, injecting bacteria into yourself is kind of a bad idea in general; perfectly normal, ordinary skin bacteria become a serious problem if they get into your bloodstream.  A friend of mine's father, in fact, almost died of a Staphylococcus aureus infection when his thumb got skewered by a rose thorn.

Staphylococcus aureus, I should point out, is a ubiquitous part of our skin flora.  On the surface of your skin, it's harmless.  Inside you, it can result in blood sepsis, which is a quick and spectacularly nasty way to die.

Staphylococcus aureus [image courtesy of the National Institute of Health]

So as much as I'd like perpetual youth, I'm not going to get in line behind Manoush for my bacteria injection.  I'll put up with the gray hair, which I'm told makes me look "distinguished," which isn't as good as "drop-dead sexy," but I guess I'll deal.

Layers of fiction

The Shroud of Turin is still an object of reverence for the devout.  Purportedly the burial cloth of Jesus, it shows the front and back of a man who has the injuries one would expect from a crucifixion.  The problem is, there was a peer-reviewed study that appeared in Nature all the way back in 1989 that used cotton fibers from the shroud to establish an age by carbon-14 dating -- and pretty conclusively showed that the cloth was made between 1260 and 1390.  In other words, a good twelve centuries too recent to be the cloth Jesus was wrapped in when he was put in the tomb.  The study was replicated, performed in several different labs, and any possible source of skew ruled out.

So it would have appeared that this was case closed.  The Shroud of Turin is a medieval fake.

But of course, nothing is ever case closed when it comes to true believers.  Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford wrote a paper in 2000 claiming that the date was inaccurate because the sample used in the 1989 study had come from a more recent repaired area.  That contention, and others like it, were taken apart piece by piece in a study in 2005.  Then only a month ago, forensic scientists Matteo Borrini and Luigi Garlaschelli published research that showed that the pattern of blood stains shown on the shroud was inconsistent with any reasonable pattern that would form if a man was killed by crucifixion, wrapped, and placed prone (either face up or face downward) on a solid surface.

So to repeat: it's a fake.  A remarkable fake, yes.  But a fake.

Which is what makes the latest from the people who venerate the Shroud of Turin even funnier.  Because some specialists in facial reconstruction and computer forensics in Italy have taken the image of the face on the shroud, and used digital analysis to come up with what Jesus looked like when he was alive -- then reverse-aged the image to see what Jesus looked like as a child.

So without further ado, here he is... the Christ child:

Now, have I made this adequately clear?  The Shroud of Turin isn't really the burial cloth of Jesus.  It was the work of some medieval dudes based on what they thought Jesus looked like, 1,200 years after the fact.  Even the gospels themselves weren't contemporary eyewitness accounts; most scholars believe that the earliest gospel, that of Mark, was written in about 70 C.E., or nearly forty years after Jesus died.  Add to that the fact that there is still a considerable debate in academia over whether Jesus existed at all -- or if, perhaps, he was a composite figure, put together from several historical individuals along with characteristics from mythological personages such as the Egyptian god Osiris.  New Testament scholar Robert MacNair Price writes, "There might have been a historical Jesus, but unless someone discovers his diary or his skeleton, we'll never know."

So what the Italian forensic scientists have done is take an image from a faked artifact, made by people who lived twelve centuries after the fact, of a guy who is only known from writings that were done four decades or more after he died, and who may not have existed in the first place... and reverse-aged the image to see what that person looked like as a boy.

How far removed from reality can you get?  It's as if I took a poorly-rendered drawing of Ian McKellen, reverse-aged it, and decided that was what the real Gandalf looked like in his youth in Valinor.

So anyhow.  The whole thing is harmless enough if it amuses them, I suppose, although you have to wonder what they thought they were accomplishing by all of this.  And once again, we have a group of people whose devotion to an object seems to have rendered them incapable of understanding what's meant by the term "reliable evidence."

Just as well, I suppose, because the kid's sneery expression actually reminds me not so much of the Holy Child as of Joffrey from Game of Thrones:

But heaven knows, Joffrey certainly didn't need any more ideas about his divinity.  So maybe it's better if we don't give that point any further attention.