Group homeopathy

400 volunteers survived an overdose of nothingmembrana
On January 30, at 10:23 a.m. GMT, more than 400 activists, primarily in London, but also in other cities in the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA, simultaneously took a monstrous amount of powerful drugs.

But – calmly, the participants of the strange action were not afraid to die from an overdose. After all, they tipped the contents of vials of homeopathic medicines into their mouths.

If you ask people on the streets what homeopathy is, most will answer: "something based on herbs" or "these are medicines of natural origin" (which is partly true). But very few can list all the basic postulates of homeopathy, and not everyone knows that its efficiency has never been scientifically proven.

An action called the 10:23 Campaign in honor of the Avogadro number (6,022x10 ²³), that is, the number of molecules in a mole of a substance, was aimed at ridiculing the basics of this method of treatment. It was organized by the Merseyside Skeptics Society, created just a year ago.

Similia similibus curantur – "Like is cured by like" is the main principle of homeopaths.
It means that it is necessary to treat the disease with a composition that a healthy person has
it would cause symptoms similar to those of this disease.
The inconsistency of this rule is obvious to anyone who is more or less familiar with medicine and pharmacology,
although, if desired, you can pick up a couple of examples that fall under such a combination of properties with a stretch.
However, homeopathic medicines are quietly sold in pharmacies
(photos wikipedia.org , Peter Macdiarmid/Getty, thevitalforce.net , wellsphere.com ).

Among other things, the volunteers drank 84 tablets of arsenic-based "medicine" in one gulp. Supporters of homeopathy believe that in tiny doses this very dangerous substance is able to fight food poisoning, depression, allergies and insomnia. The participants of the action believe that the pseudoscientific trend, which originates (in the modern, mass version) at the end of the XVIII — early XIX century, should be actively fought.

In particular, in the case of the manufacture of arsenic-based tablets (arsenic oxide is used as the "active" component in them), the poison is diluted to a concentration of 30C (that is, ¹ to 1060).

This means that the probability of getting at least one molecule (!) of this substance into one tablet is vanishingly small (recall the Avogadro number), and even for hundreds of tablets swallowed in one gulp, it is not much more. And besides, this drug is considered one of the fifteen most important means of homeopathy.

If you follow the logic of homeopaths, it turns out that antipyretic drugs work,
since a healthy person has a fever.
At the same time, supporters of homeopathy reproachfully claim that conventional medicine
always treats the disease with the "opposite", which is also wrong:
after all, in fact, antipyretic, taken by a healthy person,
it will not cause a decrease in his body temperature at all (photos 10:23 Campaign).

According to the manufacturers of such a "medicine", the active substance only increases its strength with repeated dilution with shaking (potentiation). When its concentration actually drops to zero, the force is greatest.

And, they say, the notorious "water memory" works here, which takes on something like an informational fingerprint of the original drug.

Why, when diluted in "pure" water (and there will always be a tiny fraction of impurities in it), water should "remember" exactly the target compound, and not impurities or in general everything that it previously encountered in sewer pipes, is not clear. And why, when grinding sugar (filler of homeopathic pills), one should not be afraid of getting trace amounts of mortar material in this case (and they will definitely be there) with its "information" — also an interesting question.

The main danger of homeopathy is that in some cases people who believe promises turn to it instead of traditional medicine,
missing the time for a genuine fight against the disease, – say the activists of the 10:23 Campaign.
Also, most homeopaths are against preventive vaccinations, which is dangerous for children,
whose mothers succumb to the exhortations of supporters of alternative medicine.
Finally, in the eyes of educated people, the reputation of pharmacy chains cannot but be damaged by the fact,
that along with real pills, they also sell simple "sugar cubes",
even if their packaging says Arsenicum album and the like (photo 10:23 Campaign).

Adherents of homeopathy will be happy to explain all this with a stack of "scientific" and "philosophical" works of the founders, but in modern scientific peer-reviewed publications, materials about "real homeopathy" should hardly be searched.

The masses, by and large, don't care: for two centuries, homeopaths have been convincing people that "it works." And against the background of such treatment, the recent action of skeptics is that a homeopathic sobering dose.

That's how, for example, the action took place in Birmingham.

Among the leaders of the 10:23 Campaign was a British writer, humorist and presenter Dave Gorman, who had previously, for example, already conducted an experiment on astrology.

For 40 days, he meticulously followed all the advice of horoscopes regarding finances, travel, health, communication with people (love, friendship) and so on. As a result, the situation of the brave man deteriorated literally "on all fronts", but Dave still benefited from the experiment for himself and for everyone: his torment took place under the eye of the camera, so an excellent TV show turned out from the experience.

The show with revelations, by the way, is not only a privilege of television. In November 2009, Paul Bennett, the managing pharmacist of Boots (the largest British pharmaceutical chain selling products outside of the Foggy Albion), appeared before the Science and Technology Committee of the British Parliament to testify about homeopathic remedies.

To the question of a member of parliament, "do they really work beyond the placebo effect?" Paul stated: "I have no evidence that they are effective, only assumptions. We will be glad to have evidence confirming (their work). I cannot clearly answer "yes" or "no" to this question."

In some places, the action took place at the doors of a large pharmaceutical retail chain.
Not by chance: the campaign is also a call for her to withdraw "pseudoscientific pills" from sale (photo 10:23 Campaign).

Bennett further argued that the company sells homeopathic medicines along with conventional medicines. To the question "Do you sell them, but do not believe that they are effective?" The answer was: "It's about giving consumers a choice. A large number of our clients really believe that homeopathy is effective. And these are licensed medicines, so we think it's right to make them available." — "But as a company, you don't believe that they work?" — "But we also don't "don't believe". It's a matter of evidence."

This is such a slippery position on the part of those who make money on homeopathy. Moreover, several scientific studies in recent years have shown that the effectiveness of homeopathy does not go beyond the effectiveness of placebo. And a placebo is such an interesting (and very powerful) thing, the work of which can be influenced by anything, even the price tag on a bottle of pills.

Robert Wilson, chairman of the British Association of Manufacturers of Homeopathic Remedies (BAHM), spoke at the same parliamentary "investigation", claiming that there are a number of confirmations of the efficiency of homeopathy, including clinical tests.

His words were immediately refuted by Professor Jane Lawrence, one of the leaders of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain): "There is no scientific basis for their (homeopathic medicines) effectiveness."

Let us explain that individual (and controversial) tests of individual drugs, cautiously forcing people to say "there is something in it," cannot reverse the overall picture of negative serious tests of homeopathic remedies. To focus on "successful checks" is like carefully removing all the numbers that do not fall under the chosen theory from the results of a lot of experience, and leaving all those that testify in its favor.

And these are the participants at 10:23 in Sydney: they took a handful of homeopathic sleeping pills,
but, of course, we didn't feel anything (saunderstv/flickr.com).

How many copies you have to break in order to protect your point of view... Or for the sake of protecting the wallet? And this is instead of calmly going and getting a million dollars at once from the James Randi Educational Foundation, which promises to pay the indicated amount to someone who, under controlled conditions (read — according to all the rules of the scientific method), will demonstrate reality (effectiveness) to independent observers any supernatural or paranormal phenomenon. Homeopathy, according to Randy, is on the list of such miracles.

However, who is interested in Randy if, according to the same Wilson, only in France and Germany the market of homeopathic medicines is 400 million euros each?

As for Britain, as the correspondent of the New Scientist informs, 40 million pounds are spent annually on homeopathy, 4 million of them from the budget of the national health system. Will a massive "overdose" at 10:23 change this state of affairs? We're not sure at all.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru02.02.2010