I am going to OD on homeopathic Rhus Tox

[SquishyDave]

It's less than 4 grams worth of little pills, labeled at 3c.

If I eat all these pills (4 grams total not each), there should be no effect right?

I need to prove a point to my Mum.

[Yahzi]

Well, actually, it might be dangerous.

Not because homeopathy has any validity: but because homeopathy is not regulated, there is no quality control.

There could be literally anything in those pills.

However, I'd eat the whole bottle in a second, and ask for a few more. But you realize this won't prove anything: by taking a large dose, you negate the homoepathic effect (which relies on small doses).

The way to overdose on a fantastically diluted solution is to take none at all!

How much smaller a dose can you get?

Instead, just ask your mom why she washes her dishes... doesn't that just dilute the scraps, making them even more potent?

[SquishyDave]

My mums not pro homeopathy at all, she just doesn't have the tools to fight off the junk, so I'm helping.

Thanks, I'll let you know if I get sick :) or if I die, I will haunt your arse ;)

[reprise]

Jeeze Dave, there are easier ways to get out of watching the World Cup, the test match, and Bathurst.

I just googled the symptoms for overdosing on Rhus Tox. It appears that you're in for a dose of poison ivy if you overdose on this particular remedy (well, that's if you believe the homeopathy websites).

Please post pictures and detailed verbal descriptions at regular intervals. :)

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by SquishyDave
It's less than 4 grams worth of little pills, labeled at 3c.

If I eat all these pills (4 grams total not each), there should be no effect right?

I need to prove a point to my Mum.
3C is not ultra-dilute. It's difficult to predict exactly what concentration of poison ivy there might be in these pills, because homoeopaths don't view concentrations the way we do. However, the dilution of the "mother tincture" is only 1:100 performed three times. (Gets calculator....) So it's only a millionth dilution of whatever was in that there mother tincture. I think (every time I do this some homoeopath comes out of the woodwork bleating, no, you just don't know anything about this). Still plenty chance of molecules in there, though, even if my sums aren't quite.

OK, it's not that dangerous. You've got pills, so all these are, are lactose pellets either briefly immersed in the 3C solution or having had a drop placed on them, then allowed to dry (so much for the "memory of water"....). How much actual solute is there likely to be? Not much.

However, it's still poison ivy, and there's some there. It's not a good situation to prove there's nothing there, 'cos that's not actually true. Only "potencies" of 12C or 24X, or greater, are actually certified solute-free. But these are so potent they don't tend to sell them as OTC medicines, you have to go to a proper trained homoeopath to have them individually prescribed.

No wonder I "don't understand" this stuff.

Rolfe.

[MRC_Hans]

Heheh. I am at work with homeopathy at the moment. I'm posting at a homepathy BB ( http://www.homeopathyhome.com/cgi-bin/bb/ultimatebb.cgi ) and I'm trawling through the basic bible of homeopathy, Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine. I'm preparing a review of it, but it will take some time ;).

The more you look into this thing, the more far out it appears. :rolleyes:

Hans

[SquishyDave]

heheh good one, reprise, I am stuck at my parents house at the moment, and of course they insist on watching the stupid rugby :rolleyes:

Well two and half hours have passed, I enjoyed a nice home cooked meal since taking the pills, and I still feel fine, I think I had a small suger rush just after taking the pills, but no real problems yet. :)

I don't want to know the symptoms I should get for overdosing on poison ivy, coz I don't want the placebo effect kicking in.

I'll check back in later.

[Quasi]

MRC_Hans,

All it took for me was to read section 2 at the beginning of "Organon," Hahnemann states: "It is not the role of the physician to determine how the body works or the causes of disease." I am paraphrasing a bit here but this is essentially what he said. So malaria is not caused by mosquitos, smoking cigarettes is healthy, and AIDS is not real. Not to mention broken bones etc. Of course, there are Homeopaths who just love this stuff, because it justifies their ignorance. Remember "hahnemannian" on www.sciforums.com?
Just kept avoiding the real questions.

[Prester John]

Malaria is not caused by mosquitos, they transmit it. It is caused by Plasmodium sp.
Sorry Nitpicking.

[SquishyDave]

Nit picking is what skeptics do best.

I have to make a correction, at my last post it was ONE and half hours, it is NOW two and half hours since my overdose, and I feel fine. A little full from dessert actually.

Considering the teachings of homeopathy, what I took was in fact an underdose. Oh well.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Quasi
MRC_Hans,
Remember "hahnemannian" on www.sciforums.com?
Just kept avoiding the real questions.
I think Hans is reading the Organon to be better armed against Albert the Hahnemannian. He's got more guts than I have.

However, Albert seems to have been banned from that forum, and when his mate Tim (whom I was trying to interest in a little bit of blind proving challenge - "I done my provings, I don't need no friend to help me", when I suggested he ask a friend to blind him on what he was taking) then posted an abusive message there from Albert, aimed at Francine, Tim got banned too. I think. At least, that's what Francine thought had happened.

Fun, isn't it? On the one hand we have Albert and Tim, to whom every word Hahnemann wrote is gospel and to be followed reverently as absolute truth, then on the other hand we have our very own Steve, who tells us that Hahnemann is old hat and has virtually nothing to do with modern homoeopathy. They can't lose, can they?

Rolfe.

[SquishyDave]

Almost 5 hours, and all is well. It's nearly midnight so I'll be popping off to bed soon, we'll see how I sleep.

[Drooper]

To overdose on homeopathic treatments, aren't you supposed to take less rather than more???

[Pyrrho]

Originally posted by Rolfe

OK, it's not that dangerous. You've got pills, so all these are, are lactose pellets either briefly immersed in the 3C solution or having had a drop placed on them, then allowed to dry (so much for the "memory of water"....). How much actual solute is there likely to be? Not much..

Rolfe.
One must also consider moisture absorbed by the pills from the surrounding air. BTW is there enough lactose in the pills to affect someone who is lactose intolerant?

[BTox]

If homeopaths followed dilutions correctly, 4 grams of a 3C dilution would contain 4 ug of the starting material (whatever that is - poison ivy leaves, extract, purified urushiol?). However, as Rolfe points out, sometimes the pellets are simply wetted with a 3C solution, which would reduce the final concentration further.

[BTox]

Originally posted by Pyrrho

BTW is there enough lactose in the pills to affect someone who is lactose intolerant?

4 grams of pellets would have about as much lactose as ~ 2.5 ounces of milk. I don't know anyone that is lactose intolerant but I doubt that small amount would cause much discomfort.

[BTox]

Originally posted by MRC_Hans
Heheh. I am at work with homeopathy at the moment. I'm posting at a homepathy BB ( http://www.homeopathyhome.com/cgi-bin/bb/ultimatebb.cgi ) and I'm trawling through the basic bible of homeopathy, Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine. I'm preparing a review of it, but it will take some time ;).

The more you look into this thing, the more far out it appears. :rolleyes:

Hans

I see Timokay is there. Is our old friend Hahnemanniac there too? :D

[SquishyDave]

Well I'm not lactose intolerant at all, I love milk and drink it all the time.

It is now 18 hours and I'm fine, no effects whatsoever.

I don't know what effect the pioson ivy would have had on me if there was signifanct amounts in the in the pills, but it seems there wasn't.

Sitting pretty :cool:

[reprise]

Of course if you ate garlic or used normal toothpaste yesterday your whole experiment is invalid. :)

[SquishyDave]

Originally posted by reprise
Of course if you ate garlic or used normal toothpaste yesterday your whole experiment is invalid. :)
It is? I'm pretty sure yesterday was my bi-annual tooth brushing day. :eek:

[Ratman_tf]

Originally posted by SquishyDave
It's less than 4 grams worth of little pills, labeled at 3c.

If I eat all these pills (4 grams total not each), there should be no effect right?

If the critics of Homeopathy are right, nothing should happen to you.
If the proponents of Homeopathy are right, nothing should happen to you. (AFAICT)

I need to prove a point to my Mum.

Just curious here, what exactly is the point you're trying to prove here?

[SquishyDave]

Originally posted by Ratman_tf
Just curious here, what exactly is the point you're trying to prove here?
My mum isn't a proponent of homeopathy, she just thinks it's a different branch of herbalism really, so she had this bottle of pills that in her mind was some sort of medicine. SO by taking the whole thing with no ill effects (or indeed any effects), it shows it's a load of nothing, and she shouldn't waste her money.

I'm just trying to save my Mum some money. Now I'm warning you, I'm half italian, so if you go ragging on my Mum, my italian familial protectiveness will kick in, and I'll have to take you down. ;)

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

There's an interesting question here that we're not considering. Homeopathy says that more dilute preparations are more powerful. But what does it say about the volume of medication? Sure, you get more of the active ingredient when you take more medication (assuming there's any at all), but the dilution is still the same. Is taking more medication less powerful, the same, or more powerful than taking the normal dose?

~~ Paul

[SteveGrenard]

There's an interesting question here that we're not considering. Homeopathy says that more dilute preparations are more powerful. But what does it say about the volume of medication? Sure, you get more of the active ingredient when you take more medication (assuming there's any at all), but the dilution is still the same. Is taking more medication less powerful, the same, or more powerful than taking the normal dose?


Volume seems to be miniscule as well and ill defined. This is an excellent question Paul.

Another interesting question is when a conventional medicine is given in microgram or milligram single digit doses and is injected intravenously and becomes dissolved in 5 liters of the body's water (bw) after being thrashed around in the circ system .. and, er, works. And before that placing a few mgs of a conventional drug in a .5 or 1.0 L. IV carrier solution such as saline or glucose and water. How does this conventional administration compare with homeopathic theory? Is placing a few micrograms or even a few milligrams into 5 L of bw a homeopathic end result? More so after putting it into a 1 L. IV solution. Paracelsus, loosely translated said something like the only difference between a remedy and a poison is its dose. Could we have heard the outcry of skeptics a hundred or two hundred years ago yelling there is no way a microgram of XYZ could produce any effect?

[Pyrrho]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Volume seems to be miniscule as well and ill defined. This is an excellent question Paul.

Another interesting question is when a conventional medicine is given in microgram or milligram single digit doses and is injected intravenously and becomes dissolved in 5 liters of the body's water (bw) after being thrashed around in the circ system .. and, er, works. How does this conventional administration compare with homeopathic theory? Is placing a few micrograms or even a few milligrams into 5 L of bw a homepathic end result? Paracelsus, loosely translated said something like the only difference between a remedy and a poison is its dose. Could we have heard the outcry of skeptics a hundred or two hundred years ago yelling there is no way a microgram of XYZ could produce any effect?
Very likely we would have heard such an outcry. In fact, we hear it today, from people who decry the use of vaccines, and from people who decry the use of homeopathics.

Drugs are today subject to extreme critical analysis before being approved for use. If it doesn't work, it doesn't get approved. Homeopathy doesn't have to follow that process, so it's useless to compare homeopathic to drugs that have been subject to proper clinical analysis. In the old days, whatever the sawbones gave you was up to him. There were a lot of patent medicines that did no good at all, and many that did harm. Many of them used alcohol as a primary ingredient, not unlike certain homeopathic preparations today. I can point to homeopathic preparations for the remediation of snoring that contain at least 12% alcohol. I don't think the homeopathic portion has any effect, but the alcohol sure does. Likewise, with lactose pills, the lactose has an effect, but not the homeopathic, because the homeopathic virtually isn't there.

If it's going to be used on a patient, a drug should have been thoroughly tested to show efficacy. In many cases highly toxic chemicals are used to aggressively treat serious illness, often at the risk of illness produced by the drug. This is because the potential benefit outweighs the risk.

Medicine introduced into the body isn't dissolved or distributed in a literal 5 liters of water. Mechanism of action is far more complex than that and wasn't understood a century or two centuries ago.

[SteveGrenard]

Originally posted by Pyrrho:
Very likely we would have heard such an outcry. In fact, we hear it today, from people who decry the use of vaccines, and from people who decry the use of homeopathics.

Yes we do.

Drugs are today subject to extreme critical analysis before being approved for use. If it doesn't work, it doesn't get approved. Homeopathy doesn't have to follow that process, so it's useless to compare homeopathic to drugs that have been subject to proper clinical analysis. In the old days, whatever the sawbones gave you was up to him. There were a lot of patent medicines that did no good at all, and many that did harm. Many of them used alcohol as a primary ingredient, not unlike certain homeopathic preparations today. I can point to homeopathic preparations for the remediation of snoring that contain at least 12% alcohol. I don't think the homeopathic portion has any effect, but the alcohol sure does. Likewise, with lactose pills, the lactose has an effect, but not the homeopathic, because the homeopathic virtually isn't there.


This is all true but irrelevant to the point which is trying to be put across.


If it's going to be used on a patient, a drug should have been thoroughly tested to show efficacy. In many cases highly toxic chemicals are used to aggressively treat serious illness, often at the risk of illness produced by the drug. This is because the potential benefit outweighs the risk.


Agreed although this is only a process based on developments over the past 50 years. The use of drugs predates written history, and if observations in chimpanzees and other animals are to be believed, such use even predates the appearance of humans.


Medicine introduced into the body isn't dissolved or distributed in a literal 5 liters of water. Mechanism of action is far more complex than that and wasn't understood a century or two centuries ago.

No? I guess then you are not familiar with the route of administration known as intravenous. Nor are you familiar with the practice of placing a small number of micograms (referred familiarly as mics but prounced mikes) of some medications into 250 ml, 500 ml or even 1 L bags (previously bottles) of solutions such as saline and
dripping them slowly into a vein by an intracath (needle and connector attached to tubing going to aforementined bags.) Nor are you familiar with the fact that as an adult human (well its size/wt linked) you may have up to 5 liters of blood comprising a fluid and solid phase in circulation plus other body fluids on board. So I re-pose my question in the face of Pyrrho's faulty denial of my statement.

First a few millionths (mcgs) of a gram of a drug is dissolved in an IV solution of several hundred to as much as 0.5 L or even 1.0 L of isotonic fluid and then administered into an adult person's circulation with a further 3 to 5 liters of fluid in which it is dissolved some more. Then somehow, through the miracle that is indeed modern pharmacotherapy, this drug or what is left of it, manages to find target receptors where its action is sought.

So to the chemists out there I say first take a few mics or even mgs of a drug, dissolve it in a few hundred to as much as a liter of IV fluid and then pump that into several to as many as 5 Liters of body fluid and what do you have? Does this or does this not approach or reach homeopathic dilution levels? Simple question not requiring a lesson in modern pharmacology and what works, why and how it should be tested. There is no disagreement with those statements Pyrrho. This is a simple mathematical proposition based on an actual scenario of how drugs are often administered in modern medicine.

I appreciate the fact that you may never have worked in an environment where this type of drug administration is commonplace (e.g. emergency rooms and hospitals) so before you deny what I said as fallacious perhaps you should wait for confirmation or absence thereof from others you trust on this board such as 3rd Twin. Or, then again, you can research my statements re the basis for my question yourself.

Here are a few drugs given in fractions of a milligram or multiple microgram doses when admin intravenously:

atropine
prostaglandin E
epinephrine
propanalol

and there are more.

These are dosed in mcgs/kg b/wt or mgs/bw with as few as 1 or mcgs per kg or even as little as 0.01 and 0.02 mgs/kg dissolved in IV solutions of as little as 80/100 ml to hundreds of mls.

[Pyrrho]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
No? I guess then you are not familiar with the route of administration known as intravenous. Nor are you familiar with the practice of placing a small number of micograms (referred familiarly as mics but prounced mikes) of some medications into 250 ml, 500 ml or even 1 L bags (previously bottles) of solutions such as saline and
dripping them slowly into a vein by an intracath (needle and connector attached to tubing going to aforementined bags.) Nor are you familiar with the fact that as an adult human (well its size/wt linked) you may have up to 5 liters of blood comprising a fluid and solid phase in circulation plus other body fluids on board. So I re-pose my question in the face of Pyrrho's faulty denial of my statement.

What you wrote was this:

Another interesting question is when a conventional medicine is given in microgram or milligram single digit doses and is injected intravenously and becomes dissolved in 5 liters of the body's water (bw) after being thrashed around in the circ system .. and, er, works. How does this conventional administration compare with homeopathic theory? Is placing a few micrograms or even a few milligrams into 5 L of bw a homepathic end result? Paracelsus, loosely translated said something like the only difference between a remedy and a poison is its dose. Could we have heard the outcry of skeptics a hundred or two hundred years ago yelling there is no way a microgram of XYZ could produce any effect?

What you're now saying is different from that:


First a few millionths (mcgs) of a gram of a drug is dissolved in an IV solution of several hundred to as much as 0.5 L or even 1.0 L of isotonic fluid and then administered into an adult person's circulation with a further 3 to 5 liters of fluid in which it is dissolved some more. Then somehow, through the miracle that is indeed modern pharmacotherapy, this drug or what is left of it, manages to find target receptors where its action is sought.

So to the chemists out there I say first take a few mics or even mgs of a drug, dissolve it in a few hundred to as much as a liter of IV fluid and then pump that into several to as many as 5 Liters of body fluid and what do you have? Does this or does this not approach or reach homeopathic dilution levels? Simple question not requiring a lesson in modern pharmacology and what works, why and how it should be tested. There is no disagreement with those statements Pyrrho. This is a simple mathematical proposition based on an actual scenario of how drugs are often administered in modern medicine.

I appreciate the fact that you may never have worked in an environment where this type of drug administration is commonplace (e.g. emergency rooms and hospitals) so before you deny what I said as fallacious perhaps you should wait for confirmation or absence thereof from others you trust on this board such as 3rd Twin. Or, then again, you can research my statements re the basis for my question yourself.

Here are a few drugs given in fractions of a milligram or multiple microgram doses when admin intravenously:

atropine
prostaglandin E
epinephrine
propanalol

and there are more.

These are dosed in mcgs/kg b/wt or mgs/bw with as few as 1 or mcgs per kg or even as little as 0.01 and 0.02 mgs/kg dissolved in IV solutions of as little as 80/100 ml to hundreds of mls.

What I wrote was this:


Medicine introduced into the body isn't dissolved or distributed in a literal 5 liters of water. Mechanism of action is far more complex than that and wasn't understood a century or two centuries ago.
Thanks for the detailed explanations of IV procedure. No, I am not familiar with those procedures, but I do know that the "body water" you described in your previous post isn't literally water.

Then somehow, through the miracle that is indeed modern pharmacotherapy, this drug or what is left of it, manages to find target receptors where its action is sought.
No miracle. Just chemistry.

[Yahzi]

Originally posted by SquishyDave
I'm just trying to save my Mum some money.
But now she has to buy a whole new bottle of pills! How is that saving her money?

:D :D :D

[Pyrrho]

FDA-approved atropine:

http://www.fda.gov/cder/foi/label/2003/17106se5-028_atroPen_lbl.pdf


Each prefilled auto-injector provides a dose of the antidote atropine in a self-contained unit, specially designed for self or caregiver administration. Three strengths of AtroPen are
available; they are AtroPen 0.5 mg, AtroPen 1 mg, and AtroPen 2 mg. When activated the AtroPen 0.5 mg dispenses 0.42 mg atropine base (equivalent to 0.5 mg atropine sulfate), the
AtroPen 1 mg dispenses 0.84 mg atropine base (equivalent to 1 mg atropine sulfate), and the AtroPen 2 mg dispenses 1.67 mg atropine base (equivalent to 2 mg atropine sulfate). Each AtroPen delivers atropine in 0.7 mL of sterile pyrogen-free solution containing glycerin, phenol, citrate buffer and water for injection. The pH range is 4.0–5.0.
...
Mechanism of Action:
Atropine is commonly classified as an anticholinergic or antiparasympathetic (parasympatholytic) drug. More precisely, however, it is termed an antimuscarinic agent since it
antagonizes the muscarine-like actions of acetylcholine and other choline esters.
Atropine inhibits the muscarinic actions of acetylcholine on structures innervated by postganglionic cholinergic nerves, and on smooth muscles, which respond to endogenous acetylcholine but are not so innervated. As with other antimuscarinic agents, the major action of atropine is a competitive or surmountable antagonism, which can be overcome by increasing the
concentration of acetylcholine at receptor sites of the effector organ (e.g., by using anticholinesterase agents, which inhibit the enzymatic destruction of acetylcholine). The receptors antagonized by atropine are the peripheral structures that are stimulated or inhibited by muscarine, (i.e., exocrine glands and smooth and cardiac muscle). Responses to postganglionic
cholinergic nerve stimulation may also be inhibited by atropine, but this occurs less readily than with responses to injected (exogenous) choline esters.

Thus, we see that the mechanism of action for atropine is well known and understood.

In this document, http://www.emea.eu.int/pdfs/vet/mrls/054098en.pdf , the toxic effects of atropine are defined. Although this is in regards to atropa belladonna as used for veterinary medicine, it still contains some valuable information. Unfortunately the PDF file is not text-based and portions cannot be cut-and-pasted.

It does explain that the minimum fatal oral dose of atropine for a human adult is 100mg; much less for children, only a few milligrams. The 1:100 dilution contains a maximum of 0.001% alkaloids (0.01mg/ml) The "mother tincture" preparation is also described. It's clear from this document that pure atropine is not used in the preparation of the homeopathic product.


The mother tincture of Atropa belladonna is prepared by ethanolic extraction of the whole fresh plant at the end of the blooming period without the ligneous parts of the stalks...The dilution 1:100 is containing a maximum of 1% of the original plant material. The degree of extractability of the plant constituents by homeopathic manufacturing procedures is not known...the maximum alkaloid content in the mother tincture is not allowed to exceed 0.1%, calculated as hyoscyamine base.

...In human phytotherapy...Only standardised Belladonna preparations...containing about 0.28 to 0.32% total alkaloids calculated as hyoscyamine, are used therapeutically. The oral intake of a median single dose of 0.05 to 0.1g prepared herb corresponds to 0.15 to 0.3 mg total alkaloids...

This abstract indicates that homeopathic belladonna 30CH has no effect:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11316508&dopt=Abstract

[SteveGrenard]

Atropine injectors which have public fame because of their use as a nerve gas antidote are one thing Pyrrho, what I am talking about is something completely different. Boy I am fascinated by the unwillingness of knowledgeable skeptics such as 3rdTwin and even BoTox to try and answer my question and instead leave it to amateurs. Your exposition on atropine injectors is evidence that a little knowledge can be an erroneous thing. Atropine is also available in solution, in bottles, to be drawn up in very low dose and given intravenously in certain types of cardiac/medical emergencies which have nothing to do with the injector technology you mention. Such injectors use much higher doses since they are administered into muscle or subcutaneously and not directly into a vein.

You think that body water is not, er, water? That the liquid part of the blood and fluids which bathe our tissues and cells is vodka perhaps? Budweiser? What do you think this fluid basically is?

My original question still stands. Do drugs administered by adding them to isotonic intravenous solutions in extremely small doses (mcgs/kg or fractions of mgs/kg) and given into the blood stream via an IV reach the threshold for homeopathic dosing levels?

[Pyrrho]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Atropine injectors which have public fame because of their use as a nerve gas antidote are one thing Pyrrho, what I am talking about is something completely different. Boy I am fascinated by the unwillingness of knowledgeable skeptics such as 3rdTwin and even BoTox to try and answer my question and instead leave it to amateurs. Your exposition on atropine injectors is evidence that a little knowledge can be an erroneous thing. Atropine is also available in solution, in bottles, to be drawn up in very low dose and given intravenously in certain types of cardiac/medical emergencies which have nothing to do with the injector technology you mention. Such injectors use much higher doses since they are administered into muscle or subcutaneously and not directly into a vein.

Ok, fine.

You think that body water is not, er, water? That the liquid part of the blood and fluids which bathe our tissues and cells is vodka perhaps? Budweiser? What do you think this fluid basically is?

My original question still stands. Do drugs administered by adding them to isotonic intravenous solutions in extremely small doses (mcgs/kg or fractions of mgs/kg) and given into the blood stream via an IV reach the threshold for homeopathic dosing levels?
Steve, you know as well as I do that water is only one constituent of the various fluids in the human body. Drugs administered intravenously do not simply enter a stream of "water" to become diluted. You know this. I simply cited an example of an FDA-approved use of atropine. If you have a better, more relevant reference, please do cite it.

Futhermore, conventional drugs are not prepared the way homeopathic substances are prepared. This, too, you know. The short answer to your question is "No, drugs administered as you describe do not reach the threshold for homeopathic dosing levels, because the human bloodstream is not just water; the drugs begin to act on the cells and structure of the body as they are absorbed and/or adsorbed thereby, and do not ultimately become diluted in the same sense that a homeopathic preparation is diluted." One does not need a medical education to understand this.

Even futher, homeopathic preparations are not made from the same substances as conventional medications, as my atropine example clearly illustrates. Nerve gas antidote is only one indication for atropine, as shown here: http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic3/atrop_ids.htm


Atropine Sulfate Injection, USP is indicated (1) as an antisialogogue for preanesthetic medication to prevent or reduce secretions of the respiratory tract, (2) to restore cardiac rate and arterial pressure during anesthesia when vagal stimulation produced by intra-abdominal surgical traction causes a sudden decrease in pulse rate and cardiac action, (3) to lessen the degree of atrioventricular (A-V) heart block when increased vagal tone is a major factor in the conduction defect as in some cases due to digitalis, (4) to overcome severe bradycardia and syncope due to a hyperactive carotid sinus reflex, (5) as an antidote (with external cardiac massage) for cardiovascular collapse from the injudicious use of a choline ester (cholinergic) drug, (6) in the treatment of anticholinesterase poisoning from organophosphorus insecticides, and (7) as an antidote for the “rapid” type of mushroom poisoning due to the presence of the alkaloid, muscarine, in certain species of fungus such as Amanita muscaria.

No competent doctor would even dream of administering homeopathic belladonna for such indications.

[SteveGrenard]

So you honstly believe that drugs administered into a vein, into the blood stream , no significant part of which is the fluid we know as water, do not get diluted in that fluid (we wont call it water then if you prefer) but rather travel like little rocketships and hit target receptors instantly at the doses delivered? oookay.

Do you agree drug dosages are generally presented as milligram per kilogram (mg/kg) with exception is for high-potency drugs (vasoactive amines and nitroprusside). For these drugs, dosage is given in microgram per kilogram (µg/kg).?

In general, drug doses (including "bolus" doses) should be administered over several minutes to avoid transiently excessive blood levels of the drug. Exceptions to this rule include: adenosine, epinephrine, atropine, and muscle relaxants. Infusion devices (intravenous [IV] infusion pumps) should be used for all vasoactive drugs administered as a continuous infusion, such as dopamine or nitroprusside.

You agree also that unless otherwise indicated, the IV route is preferred.?

In an average adult, say weighing 60 or 70 kgs, how much fluid do you think there is in the liquid part of the blood ino which conventional drugs such as atropine may be injected?

[SteveGrenard]

Ah good. Now we agree there are other uses for atropine besides in IM injectors as a nerve gas antidote. Terrific. And lets look at the extrmely small dosages employed. Remembver: 1 mcg = 1 one-millionth of a gram and a mg is one one 1000th of a gram.

Now take the doses below and throw them into an IV solution (100 200, 250 or even 500 mls of isotonic fluid) which is sometimes done ( othertimes larger doses are directly given )
IM or subcutaneously, and tell me if the result approaches or achieves homeopathic levels for dilution? Thank you. I am not trying to make a point so much as I am trying to get an answer which can make a point.

Data Sheet
ATROPINE SULPHATE INJECTION B.P. (AstraZeneca)
0.4 mg/mL, 0.6 mg/mL, 1.2 mg/mL injection.
Presentation
0.4 mg/mL injection: a clear, colourless, particle-free solution containing 0.4 mg/mL atropine sulphate.

0.6 mg/mL injection: a clear, colourless, particle-free solution containing 0.6 mg/mL atropine sulphate.

1.2 mg/mL injection: a clear, colourless, particle-free solution containing 1.2 mg/mL atropine sulphate.



Suitable premedication doses to be given subcutaneously 30-60 minutes prior to surgery in children are suggested below:

Infants weighing less than 3 kg: 100 mcg
Children weighing 7 to 9 kg: 200 mcg
Children weighing 12 to 16 kg: 300 mcg
Children weighing 20 to 27 kg: 400 mcg
Children weighing 32 kg: 500 mcg
Children weighing 41 kg: 600 mcg

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
Adults:
Atropine sulphate 0.4-1 mg IV may be repeated every 5 minutes until the desired effect on heart rate or asystole is achieved. The total dose should not exceed 2 mg.

When cardiac arrest has occurred, external cardiac massage or other method of resuscitation is required to distribute the drug after intravenous injection.

Treatment of Anticholinesterase Poisoning (nerve gas)
Adults:
An initial dose of 1-2 mg for mild poisoning, and up to 6 mg for severe poisoning; this is given IV preferably, or IM. Atropine can be given as often as every 5 minutes until secretions are minimal and ventilation is adequate. In moderate to severely poisoned adult, atropine is given for at least two days. In severe cases atropine therapy should be withdrawn gradually. Pralidoxime enhances the effect of atropine.

As an antispasmodic in the symptomatic relief of biliary or renal colic, 600 microgram IM up to three times a day may be given.

[Pyrrho]

Steve, I've already stated my position on this. Here it is again:

Futhermore, conventional drugs are not prepared the way homeopathic substances are prepared. This, too, you know. The short answer to your question is "No, drugs administered as you describe do not reach the threshold for homeopathic dosing levels, because the human bloodstream is not just water; the drugs begin to act on the cells and structure of the body as they are absorbed and/or adsorbed thereby, and do not ultimately become diluted in the same sense that a homeopathic preparation is diluted." One does not need a medical education to understand this.

Of course drugs become diluted in the bloodstream; such action is simply not the same as homeopathic dilution.

You can list dosage amounts all you like. Without homeopathic equivalents, given in the same measure, the exercise is a bit pointless.

[Luciana]

Steve,

If you have cut and pasted the above text, could you please acknowledge the source, in respect to the forum rules? Thank you.

[SteveGrenard]

The information on atropine indications and dosage comes from the pharmaceutical company (whose name is given above ) FDA statutary information sheet which is filed in accordance with US government regulations for free dissemination. It may be found in the NIH (also a US government free database) on this drug and elsewhere on may sites.
Therefore there is no one site where this information is found and it can be found repeated on many including ones which are copywritten but this material is not subject to those redstrictions. I could put it on my own site if I wanted to and cite that. I am putting here.

Prefatory and end comments/questions are my own re this matter and I am the source of those.

If this is a veiled attempt to squash information concerning the extremely small dosages of the drug chosen by Pyrrho to discuss (atropine) please advise me.

[Luciana]

Thank you for the clarification, Steve. I only read this thread because it was reported, and the quoting of uncited sources are against the rules.. I hardly know what it is you're talking about.

[SteveGrenard]

Of course it was reported. It was reported because there are people on this board who do not want to answer hard questions about subject matters which runs contrary to their biases and agendas.
They would like nothing better than to make sure we cannot discuss subjects that are unpopular with them. Wanting a reference is a convenient threat. They then run to the reference and say you can't use it, it is copywritten. But when you suggest people do their own Google search for example, you get back retorts from these same people who say they wanted references, not suggestions to do google searches (even when accompanied by key search terms to make it easy for them). Hence
a lot of people hereon are wise to this little game. Thank you for being honest about it.


In any case, Luciana, for further clarification, you can freely use the Drug Data sheets (not sell them which does require permission) and from where this atropine data actually came from at a site established by the government of New Zealand :)

http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/Datasheet/DSForm.asp


These same data sheets are probably made available by every advanced nation in the world. I do not know where they are on the FDA's pubic site as I have a password contact there so it would be useless and inappropriate for me to cite that.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Do drugs administered by adding them to isotonic intravenous solutions in extremely small doses (mcgs/kg or fractions of mgs/kg) and given into the blood stream via an IV reach the threshold for homeopathic dosing levels?
No. Nowhere close.

As discussed earlier, it's impossible to calulate the exact concentration in "low-potency" homoeopathic preparations, because we're never told the concentration in the mother tincture, and it isn't pure anyway. Nevertheless, even the lowest dilution ratios used in OTC products don't have much in them at all, as I said above. And remember, these then have to be diuted in the body fluids in their turn, if you look at it that way.

It is however very easy to calculate the concentration of atropine in 30C belladonna. None at all.

There are in fact at least three papers demonstrating that 30C belladonna has no observable effect:




G<FONT SIZE="-1">OODYEAR</FONT>, K., L<FONT SIZE="-1">EWITH</FONT>, G. & L<FONT SIZE="-1">OW</FONT>, J. L. (1998) Randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial of homoeopathic 'proving' for Belladonna C30. (http://www.jrsm.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/11/579) J. R. Soc. Med. 91(11), 579-82.</P>



W<FONT SIZE="-1">ALACH</FONT>, H. (1993) Does a highly diluted homeopathic drug act as a placebo in healthy volunteers? Experimental study of Belladonna 30C in a double blind crossover design - a pilot study. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=8301625&dopt=Abstract) J. Psychosomatic Res. 37(8), 851-860.</P>



W<FONT SIZE="-1">ALACH</FONT>, H., K<FONT SIZE="-1">OSTER</FONT>, H., H<FONT SIZE="-1">ENNIG</FONT>, T., & H<FONT SIZE="-1">AAG</FONT>, G. (2001) The effects of homeopathic belladonna 30CH in healthy volunteers - a randomized, double-blind experiment. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=11316508&dopt=Citation) J. Psychosomatic Res. 50(3), 155-160.</P>

And Steve, please be advised that there are people on this forum who are sick to the back teeth of telling you the same thing again and again, repeating the same correct information, and correcting the same misconceptions, only to have you come back with exactly the same misconceptions on another thread a week later.

:tr:

Rolfe.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Steve, in our amusement at the whole dilution thing with homeopathic preparations, we often ignore the other patent absurdity with them. The idea that treating a disease with symptoms X, Y, and Z using a substance that produces symptoms X, Y, and Z is, in general, totally asinine.

~~ Paul

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
The idea that treating a disease with symptoms X, Y, and Z using a substance that produces symptoms X, Y, and Z is, in general, totally asinine.
You can pick up a few odd situations where this seems to apply. But if Steve comes up and tells me that giving insulin to non-diabetic people causes coma, I'll take him out and shoot him.

Actually, this letter (http://vetlab.co.uk/voodoo/vettimes.html#hoare2) which I coincidentally posted on another thread just now, has the maddest set of alleged "mainstream" justifications for similia similibus known to modern science. Unless you count Hahnemann's own comment about the Princess Eudosia and the rosewater reported by Oliver Wendell Holmes (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holmes.html) - you know, this 1842 article says just about everything that needs to be said about homoeopathy.

It's ludicrous.

Rolfe.

[SteveGrenard]

Like treating like is another issue; there is precedent for that in the manufacture and method of action in vaccines, anti-serums, provocation of antibodies -- the entire field of immunology in fact.

Thank you Rolfe for telling me that a 30C preparation of belladona is berfeft of any belladona or means to effect any action, even if it the provocation of substances to fight the symptoms of belladona. I agree that methods of action are important. The fact that an agent that causes a problem can cure the symptoms of another problem does not meet the criteria for immunological action since the homeopathic remedy is symptom oriented when conventional immunology is specific antigen/antibody mediated. Except perhaps by sheer coicnidence, which is not good enough.
For example snake venom is used to fight snake venom. By injecting extremely small doses which would cause no symptoms of snakebite envenomation it is possible to trigger the production of antibodies to that venom which are then drawn off from donor animals such as horses or sheep, are purified and then adminstered to victims of snakebite. Such preps are highly specific; in fact the venom of one type of species or families will not work to trigger production of antibodies to the venom of other species or families of snakes.

None of this answers my question, however, regarding microgram dosing dissolved in a large volume of IV solution such as saline or RLS.

I appreciate the absence of any hard data on the original solution makes this impossible. However, it is possible to make up new solutions where careful records can be maintained.

[Rolfe]

Immunology has got nothing to do with homoeopathy. Homoeopathy has got nothing to do with immunology.

In one case we have molecules which we know to quite a good degree of detail how they interact with the molecules of the body to produce an immune reaction. In the other case we have - well, nothing, really.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Hmmm, that wasn't really what you were asking, was it? I wouldn't want you to feel I was avoiding your point.

I didn't tell you 30C belladonna was bereft of any physiological effect, I linked to three published papers that said so. Two of which were written by dedicated homoeopathic proponents, by the way.

Your question is quite easy to answer, without need for experiment. Microgrammes is actually quite a lot of stuff. When we're analysing biological fluids for hormones, for example, we can get down to femtomoles per litre and still detect the molecules with a good degree of accuracy. That's 10<SUP>9</SUP> more dilute than micro. Put a few microgrammes into a human-sized body, which is mostly water, and you still have very measurable amounts of stuff.

I recall one day in the lab. Someone had submitted a sample from a horse in big trouble with severe rhabdomyolysis. We needed a CK measurement to figure how bad. Normal concentration of that in horse serum is about 200 iu/l. Every time we did the test the result was off the top of the scale. We kept diluting it 1:10 to try to get a preparation that would read on the scale of the analyser. Jokes started to fly about "homoeopathic dilutions". In the end the reported result was 1,400,000 iu/l. We had to dilute it what I think would be 3X (or maybe 4X) in homoeopathic terms. But that's not homoeopathic at all, even at the OTC level. And certainly a million miles from the "high-potency" ultramolar dilutions that homeopaths claim are the real powerful stuff.

Rolfe.

[Pyrrho]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
The information on atropine indications and dosage comes from the pharmaceutical company (whose name is given above ) FDA statutary information sheet which is filed in accordance with US government regulations for free dissemination. It may be found in the NIH (also a US government free database) on this drug and elsewhere on may sites.
Therefore there is no one site where this information is found and it can be found repeated on many including ones which are copywritten but this material is not subject to those redstrictions. I could put it on my own site if I wanted to and cite that. I am putting here.

Prefatory and end comments/questions are my own re this matter and I am the source of those.

If this is a veiled attempt to squash information concerning the extremely small dosages of the drug chosen by Pyrrho to discuss (atropine) please advise me.


Ok, I reported the post, myself, because I thought it improper to take a moderator action, for two reasons: one, I have stated elsewhere that I won't take moderator actions upon you, and two, because I now feel that it's improper for me to behave as moderator in a thread in which I am an active participant. I left it up to the other moderators as to whether or not they felt action was merited. Obviously, your post stands. At least you've admitted that you cut-and-pasted it.

It was not an attempt to squash information. No doubt you'll continue to color it that way; I won't deprive you of your conspiracy theories.

[SteveGrenard]

If you search homeopathy, immunological effects you will find that modern researchers including those in alllopathic specialties are looking at the possible effects of ultradilutes as having some kind of immunological effect. Of course this runs counter to the traditionalists and followers of the Hahnneman cult but there is a growing number of researchers, both inside and outside the field that are looking at this. Here is an example, a recent abstract of a review of studies perfomed by Dana Ullman, one of homeopathy's 's loudest defenders. The point of this abstract is not the whether or not the studies Ullman analyzes were up to snuff or not but rather than Ullman is leaning away from traditional practice and looking at this as a possible underlying basis for the effectiveness of some h- drugs.
NBotice how he now uses the terms "nanopharmacologic" and "ultramolecular doses" rather than the old energies concept.

ULLMAN, Homeopathic Educational Services, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA, mail@homeopathic.com, reviews (43 references) clinical trials on the homeopathic treatments of people with HIV or AIDS.

Background: Homeopathy uses nanopharmacologic and ultramolecular doses of medicines to strengthen a person’s immune system rather than directly attacking the infectious agent. This paper reviews the literature for placebo-controlled trials of homeopathic medicines for the treatment of people with AIDS and HIV infection, considers a different theoretical and methodological approach to treating people with HIV.
Methods: Medline and nonindexed homeopathic journals were searched for placebo-controlled trials of homeopathic medicines in the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
Results: 5 controlled clinical trials were identified. A double-blinded placebo controlled study on 50 asymptomatic HIV positive subjects and 50 subjects with persistent generalized lymphadenopathy provided individualized single-remedy homeopathic treatment. Two randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trials were found studying a total of 77 people with AIDS who used only natural therapies over a period of 8 to 16 weeks. Two other studies were conducted over a 2.5 year period with 27 subjects in an open-label format. The first study found no statistically significant improvement in CD4 T-lymphocytes but did find statistically significant pretest and posttest results in subjects with persistent generalized lymphadenopathy in CD4 (p = 0.008) and CD8 (p = 0.04) counts. The second group of studies found specific physical, immunological, neurological, metabolic and quality of life benefits, including improvements in lymphocyte counts and functions and reduction in HIV viral load.
Conclusions: Homeopathy may play a useful role as an adjunctive and/or alternative therapy, especially in people with drug-resistant HIV infection taking structured treatment interruptions.
Ullman D. Controlled clinical trials evaluating the homeopathic treatment of people with human immunodeficiency virus or acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 9 (1): 133-141, Feb 2003.

[Pyrrho]

NBotice how he now uses the terms "nanopharmacologic" and "ultramolecular doses" rather than the old energies concept.
Yes. New smoke and mirrors, now that the old ones have been discredited.

[SteveGrenard]

Pyrrho: Obviously, your post stands. At least you've admitted that you cut-and-pasted it.

Hell yeah. You don't think I memorized all those dosages and indications do you. Even ER docs use a computer to spit up this information on drugs when they need to. This kind of info is free to use,
is needed to save lives (should we pay a royalty on it first?) and is SOP everywhere it is needed. I forgot where I was for a moment. If I was discussing this anywhere else it wouldn't be an issue.

[Pyrrho]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Pyrrho: Obviously, your post stands. At least you've admitted that you cut-and-pasted it.

Hell yeah. You don't think I memorized all those dosages and indications do you. Even my ER docs use a computer to spit up this information on drugs when thery need to. This kind of info is free to use.
is needed to save lives (should we pay a royalty on it first?) and is SOP everywhere it is needed. I forgot where I was for a moment. If I was discussing this anywhere else it wouldn't be an issue.
When you cut and paste without giving a cite, Steve, it can give the impression that you have memorized that stuff, or that you really do practice that kind of medicine, or that you really are a medical doctor. God, do you really think you're that important that we single you out for special abusive treatment? You've done the cut-and-paste routine without proper citation over and over again. In professional circles your work would be thrown out for failure to provide references.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
If this is a veiled attempt to squash information concerning the extremely small dosages of the drug chosen by Pyrrho to discuss (atropine) please advise me.
I can't see what all the fuss is about. Steve's idea of "extremely small dosages" is still a heck of a lot of stuff. Even diluted in a human body it's still many many orders of magnitude greater than homoeopathic "potencies".

Why would anyone want to squash information on this?

We biochemists use jumps of 1,000 when we change prefixes for our expressions of concentration. The scale goes like this:

Basic unit (gramme in the US or if you're a pharmacologist, mole in civilised parts of the globe)
milli
micro
nano
pico
femto

We're still happily measuring away at the femtomole/litre range. This is 10<SUP>-15</SUP> moles per litre. I can't remember the prefix, but I know some assays can look at 10<SUP>-18</SUP> moles.

You've still got about eight orders of magnitude before you're in danger of having an ultramolar solution.

Edited to add: I'm not going to start yet again posting all the links to all the papers which have criticised, discredited, debunked and shredded these pro-homoeopathy meta-analyses. This stuff is as discredited as Fleischmann and Pons. I've cited the work on that till I'm blue in the face and Steve simply says these authors are biassed because they don't believe in homoeopathy, and besides the pro-homoeopathy papers are still there. Yes, Steve, they're not going to spontaneously combust just because they've been weighed in the balance and found wanting. They're still cr*p, but I can't pull the chain. You can refuse to read or understand or accept the debunking, but you can't keep posting the same tired old stuff to draw off the argument.

I'm going to say two words about it once more. Multiple endpoints.

So can we just take all that as read, and move on?

Rolfe.

[SteveGrenard]

I am not a medical doctor. I am also not a pencil pushing administrator as some have lied here. However, I have been on, in over 35 years, 1000s of hospital based codes. As an ACLS certified person I do know the atropine dosages for cardiac arrest and near cardiac arrest indications. My occupation, legal practice guidelines and license allows me and my colleagues to administer drugs that affect the cardiopulmonary system, especially in emergency situations.

I absolutely do not say investigators who find negative results are biased in any way against the treatment they are investigating. Both people within and outside homeopathy have found negative results and people both within and outside homeopathy have produced positive results. What I have said all along is that studies are needed that live up to FDA protocols. I also said that research is needed to elucidate underlying mechanisms for the claims of homeopaths and if they cannot be found it is indeed rubbish. I do not buy into the Hannemann cult., never did and in fact have relegated it to history like many other outdated and unproven aspects of medicine and science going back 200 to 2000 years (e.g. bleeding patients who are not polycythemic).

[_Q_]

Originally posted by Rolfe

milli
micro
nano
pico
femto

We're still happily measuring away at the femtomole/litre range. This is 10<SUP>-15</SUP> moles per litre. I can't remember the prefix, but I know some assays can look at 10<SUP>-18</SUP> moles.For what it's worth:

10^-18 atto
10^-21 zepto
10^-24 yacto

_Q_

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by _Q_
For what it's worth:

10^-18 atto
10^-21 zepto
10^-24 yacto
Oh, thanks. I did know atto really, but I didn't know the others.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
I do not buy into the Hannemann cult., never did and in fact have relegated it to history ....
Well, speaking personally, I'd quite like to relegate to history all the poor-quality studies you keep dragging up and demanding that they be explained. You do give a very good imitation of supporting homoeopathy, so it's maybe not a huge surprise if people think you "buy into it".

Lots of people here would just love to see the day that the whole ludicrous farrago is laid to rest, while deploring the fact that still more scarce research funds will apparently have to be spent before that inevitable outcome is reached. There are some good studies going on at the moment, and recently published. Unfortunately some people keep dragging up old, discredited work for reasons of their own, and others keep putting forward more woo-woo as the old woo-woo gets put in its place, for reasons which are only too easy to understand ($£$£$£).

If you don't buy into it, why are you so ready to accept any nonsense its proponents put out, while (falsely) accusing others of trying to suppress favourable homoeopathy points? Why are you so reluctant to take on board the enormous and well-founded stacks of evidence that says it's all a lotta hooey?

Rolfe.

[SteveGrenard]

Rolfe:

Well, speaking personally, I'd quite like to relegate to history all the poor-quality studies you keep dragging up and demanding that they be explained



Well they would be if there was one large scale, multi-center, multi-part statistically significant RCT done by a multidisciplinary team of homeopaths andnon-homeopaths covering a range of therapeutic claims (multi-part) in accordance with FDA standards.

Subjective opinions about extant studies either pro or con will not cut it. I am glad you were speaking personally. So am I.

I am sorry research funds are scarce but this would cost the equivalent of a very tiny% of the current annual research funding in this country. In the meantime we have ongoing privately and to a smaller extent publicly funded studies that do not meet these standards. We have garbage studies in many other areas that are not related to homeopathy as well. It may just be a matter of reorienting a few priorities regarding garbage studies overall.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
I am sorry research funds are scarce but this would cost the equivalent of a very tiny% of the current annual research funding in this country.
Consider this. Real drugs have to demonstrate efficacy before they are permitted on the market. And the people who have to pay for these studies are the people who make and market the drugs. And because it's obviously a universal concern that any drug manufacturer might be tempted to cut the odd corner in this exercise, scrutiny and validation of the trials is very tight indeed. For everybody.

To level the playing field, all that is necessary is to remove homoeopathic drugs from the market until their manufacturers too have fulfilled the necessary criteria for proper licensing. Of course you'd allow a period of grace during which the things could still be sold (with some required disclaimer labelling, probably), to give the companies time to comply. But eventually they'd have to demonstrate efficacy or be removed from the market. Ten years would be more than enough. Five should do it.

All this already happened with things that were on the market before current legislation came in. There was a period of "licence of right" during which any trials could be completed, then if there wasn't the evidence, away it went. There was a down side. Not a few genuinely useful drugs went, simply because the market was so small it wasn't worth anyone's while to do the work. This was a serious nuisance, but the powers that be felt it was worth it to get things on a proper footing, and we seem mostly to be managing.

Homoeopathy was left out of this, mostly for political reasons. Many people believe that was a serious mistake, and it's time to rectify this, but the political clout is still there.

This is what you might think about advocating, no? It's a position I strongly support, speaking personally, of course.

Rolfe.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Steve said:For example snake venom is used to fight snake venom. By injecting extremely small doses which would cause no symptoms of snakebite envenomation it is possible to trigger the production of antibodies to that venom which are then drawn off from donor animals such as horses or sheep, are purified and then adminstered to victims of snakebite.
As Rolfe said, this has nothing to do with homeopathy. If we were to apply this logic to homeopathy, then the homeopathic treatment for every poison would be a dilution of that poison, since a poison causes the very symptoms in a healthy person that are exhibited by the poisoned person. But that's not how snake antivenom works! Instead, the homeopathic treatment would have to contain antibodies. But then we would call it immunology.

~~ Paul

[SteveGrenard]

Exactly Paul. There is emergent thought by homeopathic researchers and I provided an abstract by one, Dana Ullman, that the
possibility exists a homeopathic prep triggers antbody production. I neglected also to mention that some few handlers of venomous snakes inject themselves with highy diluted venom to directly trigger antibody production, thus eliminating the middle man (horse or sheep antibody donor). There is also widespread concern that injecting larger non-fatal doses of venom into horses and sheep visibly
causes the animals to suffer, especially with tissue necrosis and infection around the injection site. One technique that is being explored is to inject such donor animals with serially (highly) diluted venoms and then measuring the production of antibodies from this. Since this is a commercial project, the researchers have not deigned to share their protocols or data as yet.

This tale is, I am afraid, not yet over and so long as there are researchers willing to explore this, closing the door on this field may be premature.

I am willing to wait and see.

Edited to add:

I did not say this is how snake anti-venom works. I said this is how it is made. There is a huge difference.

[BTox]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Boy I am fascinated by the unwillingness of knowledgeable skeptics such as 3rdTwin and even BoTox to try and answer my question and instead leave it to amateurs.

Gee, Steve, can't be on this board 24/7. Just got back from a scouts camping trip with the son.

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
My original question still stands. Do drugs administered by adding them to isotonic intravenous solutions in extremely small doses (mcgs/kg or fractions of mgs/kg) and given into the blood stream via an IV reach the threshold for homeopathic dosing levels?

Not sure what the question is here but I'll try to answer. You chose atropine which happens to have a very low therapeutic dose (~ 0.5 mg or 500 mcg). Injecting 500 mcg into an IV still delivers a 500 mcg dosage, as required. Same dosage as directly injecting 5ml of a 100 mcg/ml solution (would be 4X in homeopathic terms). The dilution factor in the body is the same for all drugs, so giving the a homeopathic drug at a typical 6C dilution would start out 100,000,000 times more dilute, so the answer would be no, the concentrations are still not even close. And this whole discussion assumes homeopaths are wrong in saying that the more dilute the more effective, including dilutions far beyond the theoretical limit of no solute molecules remaining.

[BTox]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
There is emergent thought by homeopathic researchers and I provided an abstract by one, Dana Ullman, that the
possibility exists a homeopathic prep triggers antbody production.

This sounds like grasping for straws. As I understand it (and surely Third Twin can confirm), typically foreign proteins elicit antibody production in the bloodstream. Since most homeopathic "remedies" contain no protein, and are not injected but ingested, won't happen.

[Rolfe]

Could we take a moment to consider Ullman's remark about homoeopathy using "nanopharmacologic and ultramolecular doses of medicines"?

Leaving aside the meaningless concept of an ultramolar "dose" of anything, what about "nanopharmacologic"?

Nanomolar is, as we've already discussed, 10<SUP>-9</SUP> molar. There are about five more prefixes, each referring to a jump of 10<SUP>-3</SUP> between that and ultramolar, which is when there's nothing left (about 10<SUP>-26</SUP> molar). Nanomolar is still great honking wodges of solute, in the context of this discussion.

Ullmann isn't talking science, he's just using the word "nano" in its popular sense of "very small". If he has any idea of the enormity of the yawning gap between nanomolar and ultramolar, he certainly isn't showing it.

His publication isn't scientific - any scientist would rip that usage of the scientific term to shreds. It's populist woo-woo dressed up to sound like science. Steve - you work in a hospital. Have you so little familiarity with scientific terminology and units of measurement that you can't see this?

If you're remarking that some apparently very small doses have definite pharmacologic effects, of course you're right. One point to make is that the more pure you can make the drug, and the better targeted, the less you need (and the fewer side-effects you expect to see). But what we keep trying to explain to you is that these apparently very tiny amounts are still bucketloads by comparison to what homoepathy is talking about. In addition, the homoeopathic mother tinctures aren't pure drug - belladonna mother tincture is a plant extract, with an undisclosed amount of atropine in it, but certainly there isn't a huge amount of that active principle even at that stage.

Tiny doses as regular pharmacologists look at it can indeed be very powerful. And as drugs are refined both in purity and specificity of action, doses can become even tinier. Looked at from our end of the telescope. But you need to sit there and try to comprehend the sheer numbers of zeros between these amounts and the claims of homoeopathy. The ends aren't even close, even if you were proposing that the "low-potency" OTC remedies were all that had any action.

Both BoTox and I have tried to explain this - it's logarithms, really, and the multiplications are exponential. Have a look at Powers of Ten (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/). As a rough analogy, it's a bit like getting in as far as where you can see the globe of the Earth and believing that you ought to be able to see the strands of chromatin from there. You think you're a long way in, and you are, but there's still as far again to go and more.

But when we factor in that the professional homeopaths believe in "high-potency" prescribing of preparations which are many many orders of magnitude down from that, and in fact have no molecules there at all, I can't see where there's any relevance at all.

And Steve, would you care to comment regarding who should be doing these trials you'd like to see done? Real drugs have to be tested by the manufacturer before going on the market. Why shouldn't manufacturers of homoeopathic products have to produce the necessary evidence (if they can) at their own expense before being allowed to sell them? The only way this quackery will be sorted out is by a decree that these products, like all other drugs, will have a licensing system phased in, and if people want to go on selling them beyond the period of grace, they have to do the studies. Everyone else had to do it, why not them?

Rolfe

[Rolfe]

PS. Homoeopaths have been suggesting that their preparations might produce an immune reaction ever since the immune system was researched. There's no such thing. This isn't even yesterday's theory, it's about 100 years out of date. There's nothing there.

Ullmann is a homoeopathic populiser who uses scientific-sounding terms to try to fool the unwary into thinking he's a scientist. Why is Steve so ready to take people like this seriously, but when analyses by genuine scientific teams are posted, he either ignores the links or announces that the authors are biassed?

Rolfe.

[BTox]

Steve,

Here's another way to look at it, perhaps more to your point. A typical drug that has a therapeutic dosage of 5 mg results in a concentration in the body (assuming a 70 kg person) of 70 ug/KG or approximately 7X dilution. Your atropine example (500 mcg dose) results in concentration of 7 ug/KG or about 8X in the body. Botulinum toxin, one of if not the most toxic substance known, has reported LD50s of 100 ng/KG, or 10X in the body. I assume you would agree that death is a sure sign of physiological activity!

[SteveGrenard]

BoTox:
Antibodies are mediated by lymphocytes, two kinds of blood cells. B-Lymphocytes produced in bone marrow and T-lymphocytes produced in the thymus gland. But yes, they certainly wind up in the blood which carries them to where they are needed.

For an animation on this see:

http://www.cellsalive.com/antibody.htm

PS: Plants have proteins. Check out Digibind, a F'ab product that mops up overdoses of digitalis. Botanicasl used in herbal remedies have proteins in them. We tend to think of the old vegetable, mineral, meat food groups thing and loose sight of the fact that plants can be proteinacious but yes, not as proteinacious as meat.



Specific antibodies are triggered by specific proteins; also specific peptides and polypeptides which are fractions of proteins. Snake venom is highly proteinacious but also has citrates and zinc which are not proteins. The peptides are the lethal components; this includes enzymes, They are held in check by the citrate and zinc so the venom does not destroy(necrose) the gland that's holding it (in the snake).




Now onto Ullman's abstract. Frankly, I don't know how many times I will be required to answer the same questions or make the same statements. This is why Redundo Larsen is on irrevocable ignore.


I posted Ullman's paper Rolfe not because it was scientific and not because it had any great scientific revelations. See if you can go back and find out why. And stop insulting me at the same time, it discredits you. People can read, you prefer to use Larsen's half-baked techniques to subvert what others write. Go ahead.

Okay -- for the final time, I posted Ullman's diatribe because it is a very recent (this year in fact) turn about on the basis of homeopathic action, implying a immunologic thesis. Remember Ulman is one of the loudest mouthes out there defending homeopathy and his revenue stream definitely is beholden to the field! But Ullman is not alone. A search of immunology and homeopathy or homeopathic and immunologic action, etc will turn up a lot of theorizing on this.

Ullman's abstract is also interesting because this is the first time I have seen terms that describe homeopathic remedies quantified by the metric system and mainstream chermistry definitions: nano and ultramolecular. I don't really care what this means to you Rolfe or to me. What is interesting is that this may signal a shift in that field away from Hahnnemanian dogma.
THIS WAS MY REASON FOR PASTING THIS. I am sorry you don't like. it but oh well.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard

PS: Plants have proteins. Check out Digibind, a F'ab product that mops up overdoses of digitalis. Botanicasl used in herbal remedies have proteins in them. We tend to think of the old vegetable, mineral, meat food groups thing and loose sight of the fact that plants can be proteinacious but yes, not as proteinacious as meat.

Mr. Grenard,
You've posted a number of things in this thread which may be true but which are entirely irrelevant. Why does it matter that plants have proteins if they are ingested (after extreme dilution)? Any proteins will be broken down into amino acids in the GI tract.

Or are you talking about applying herbal remedies via injection or IV? That would be entirely weird.

[BTox]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
PS: Plants have proteins. Check out Digibind, a F'ab product that mops up overdoses of digitalis. Botanicasl used in herbal remedies have proteins in them. We tend to think of the old vegetable, mineral, meat food groups thing and loose sight of the fact that plants can be proteinacious but yes, not as proteinacious as meat.




Steve,

I know plants have proteins, but many homeopathic remedies are inorganic (like silica, arsenic, zinc, etc, etc).

And to add to the discussion of homeopathic dilution in the body, let's look at a 6X remedy, which is the highest limit to what I consider a homeopathic dilution. Assuming proper dilution, it will contain 1 ug/G of original material, so a typical pellet at 100 mg would deliver 100 ng, which works out to 1.4 ng/KG or a 12X dilution in the body. Only 10,000 times more dilute than your atropine example!

[SteveGrenard]

Okay -- for the final time, I posted Ullman's diatribe because it is a very recent (this year in fact) turn about on the basis of homeopathic action, implying a immunologic thesis. Remember Ulman is one of the loudest mouthes out there defending homeopathy and his revenue stream definitely is beholden to the field! But Ullman is not alone. A search of immunology and homeopathy or homeopathic and immunologic action, etc will turn up a lot of theorizing on this.

Ullman's abstract is also interesting because this is the first time I have seen terms that describe homeopathic remedies quantified by the metric system and mainstream chermistry definitions: nano and ultramolecular. I don't really care what this means to you to US . What is interesting is that this may signal a shift in that field away from Hahnnemanian dogma.

THIS WAS MY REASON FOR PASTING THIS. I am sorry you don't like. it but oh well, what the hey.

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by BTox


I see Timokay is there. Is our old friend Hahnemanniac there too? :D Yes. He calls himself Nick-something. He does not post much, but he sent me a flurry of e-mails pointing to various litterature. Their present attitude over there is that I'm not credible because I wonn't try the stuff. As if that could influence their argumentation :rolleyes: .

However, I'm learning plenty, and it ain't pretty.

Hans

[Prester John]

I am sorry research funds are scarce but this would cost the equivalent of a very tiny% of the current annual research funding in this country. In the meantime we have ongoing privately and to a smaller extent publicly funded studies that do not meet these standards. We have garbage studies in many other areas that are not related to homeopathy as well. It may just be a matter of reorienting a few priorities regarding garbage studies overall.

Ok what about the homepathic industry spending some of the rather large amount of money it makes on funding some real trials of the stuff???? Thats what the pharmaceutical industry does.

I say there is no alternative medicine, just medicine that works. Homeopathy has in over 100 years not shown any indication that it works. Steve the very small amounts of medicines that are administered to patients contain large numbers of molecules. The doses given have been shown in clinical trials to be effective. Simple as that. Homeopathic treatments have not. Homeopathy is a best (an expensive) placebo. Real doctors do not and can not treat patients with placebos. Its not ethical .

[SteveGrenard]

BoTox: I know plants have proteins, but many homeopathic remedies are inorganic (like silica, arsenic, zinc, etc, etc).

Okay. But are you saying that zinc, for example, does not have immunogenic properties?

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Okay -- for the final time, I posted Ullman's diatribe because it is a very recent (this year in fact) turn about on the basis of homeopathic action, implying a immunologic thesis.
*snip*
What is interesting is that this may signal a shift in that field away from Hahnnemanian dogma.

THIS WAS MY REASON FOR PASTING THIS. I am sorry you don't like. it but oh well, what the hey. It does not make sense to theorize an immunologic basis for homeopathy. The basic principle of homeopathy is that disease is a malfunction of the Vital Force, that there are no knowable causes, although external effects may trigger disease. Homeopathy recognizes disease purely as consisting of a set of unique symtoms. Further, it recognizes no effects on medicine EXCEPT the symptoms the medicine can cause. Cure is theorized to result as an interaction between the symptoms of the disease and the symptoms of the medicine. Hahnemann is VERY specific on this.

If you bring immunology into it, you you are acknowledging CAUSES. You are acknowledging that disease is not characterized by symptoms, but by causes. If you do this, you open the gates wide to modern medicine, which is based on causes. You also open homeopathy wide to simple chemophysical scrutiny, where it fails totally.

I'm sorry, but you have to be kosher about homeopathy. As it is, it is based on a tenous logic rationale; once you are revisionistic about it, it collapses completely.

If you leave Hahnemannian dogma, you have nothing left.

Hans

[SteveGrenard]

Dear Mr Hans C

I do not appreciate the fact you asre directing these comments to me. Kindly address them to the source and say Dana Ullman is incorrect. Try telling him that: mail@homeopathic.com

You all seem to have a serious problem in proper attribution.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
BoTox: I know plants have proteins, but many homeopathic remedies are inorganic (like silica, arsenic, zinc, etc, etc).

Okay. But are you saying that zinc, for example, does not have immunogenic properties?
If you are saying that it does, please provide evidence. If you are not saying that it does, what the @%^#^% are you saying?

Zinc is an ion in solution, and is much too small to serve as an antibody target. It could conceivably have some effect on the immune system through ion channels or whatever, but like I say, if you wish to make that claim, please provide some evidence.

[SteveGrenard]

I am asking a question. Did you see the ? mark? LOL. I am interested what BoTox says to this question. Okay?

?????

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
I am asking a question. Did you see the ? mark? LOL. I am interested what BoTox says to this question. Okay?

?????
It appears to be a loaded question. If you act disengenuous, do not be surprised if you are accused of being disingenuous.

[patnray]

My 2 cents worth is to point out that 1 microgram of a drug with a molecular weight of 1000 AMU dilluted in 6 liters of fluid will still have about 1 X 10^14 molecules of the drug per liter. That's 100,000 billion more molecules per liter than a homeopathic solution even before it is diluted in the body...

There is no comparison between microgram doses of real drugs and the doseage administered in homeopathic solutions.

Most drugs have a MW considerably less than 1000 AMU (which would be about 70 carbon atoms). I picked 1000 as an upper bound and an easy number to work with:

1000 g = 1 mol = 6 X 10^23 molecules
1 microgram = 10 ^-9 mol = 6 X 10^14 molecules...

[SteveGrenard]

I am still asking the question. ??? okay???

You have a lot of nerve saying I am disingenous asking a question when most of you don't lift nary a complaint to the incessant, trivial BS questions of Claus Larsen who is protected by the moderators even when he uses such tactics as a harassment tool.

I appreciate the brief reply to this I got so far. BoTox claims zinc is not an immunogen. I want to make sure I am hearing this correctly and what the reason for this is. if correct.

And to have it confirmed. I have indeed heard oherwise but I am not claiming that, I am trying to get clarification for what someone said who did make a claim. What's the matter, only Larsen is allowed to do that? (Thats a question also!) The part in brackets is a statement.

You guys really make me laugh.

[SteveGrenard]

Thanks for doing that math. Actually many of the products used to compound these remedies are or were real drugs and certainly real molecules that at some point were of allopathic medciinal value ... if any of them were left. Again, my point is to demonstrate that some people in the field including most especially Dana Ullman seem to be moving their own goal posts and are leaving the historical Hahnnemanian precepts/principles behind.

[Rolfe]

A catch-up post, mainly FAO Steve.

"Allopath" is an insulting term coined by Hahnemann. Please do not use it of scientific medicine unless you intend to be insulting. Personally, I am not an allopath, I was never trained in allopathy, and I do not answer to the label.

Am I right in thinking that we're now agreed that there's bucketloads of substance in even the most "low-dose" drugs used by scientific medicine, compared to even the low-potency (not ultramolar) homoeopathic preparations? So can we now give up on that analogy?

Is there any hope at all that we might agree that homoeopathy as an immune stimulant is an old idea which has proved to have no basis in spite of many years of homoeopathic optimism? Or recognise that Dana Ullman is a salesman who is very good at dressing up his product in scientific terms, nevetheless that doesn't validate what he's saying? (Can I repeat "multiple endpoints" again? - I explained that in detail the last time we had this argument and I don't fancy wearing out my fingertips doing it once more.)

The other point which was forcibly and repeatedly made in the other thread is that while there are unscrupulous salesmen who label products which are actually at normal physiological concentrations "homoeopathic" in order to piggy-back on the extraordinary exemptions homoeopathic preparations have from the usual requirements for demonstrating efficacy and safety, this doesn't make these preparations homoeopathic. (If I call my grizzly bear a dog in order to circumvent laws against keeping dangerous wild animals, that still doesn't make it a dog.)

If your point is that there may be physiological effects of pharmaceutical preparations at lower levels than those we currently use, I'd readily concede that might be so. But this has nothing to do with homoeopathy. The dose response curve is an unarguable effect, and the way doses are made lower is by making the drug purer and more specific. Not by starting with whole plant extracts.

Homoeopathic theory is characterised by belief in the "vital force", by a reversal of the dose/response curve so that the more dilute the preparation is made the more "potent" it becomes, with the truly powerful preparations having no solute present, and by the totally demented general rule that "like cures like". (And by the way, since they do the tests for this part using 30C - solute-free - preparations, you can imagine how valid these observations are likely to be. Oh wait, you don't have to imagine, I posted three references higher up the thread.)

If you get rid of all this, or even part of it, I don't know what to call what's left, but it isn't homoeopathy.

Yes, some homeopathic preparations, at normal concentrations, do have medicinal properties. The vast majority don't, or are poisonous. They've "proved" nylon, for crying out loud! Arnica is a daisy-like plant with no medicinal uses. Poison ivy is - well - poison ivy. And you do know what Ap. mellif. is, don't you? And lac. caninum? (They use that to treat illness in dogs, I've no idea why.)

And finally, I'd still welcome comment on my proposal that homoeopathic preparations should have a period of grace in which the manufacturers can do the testing at their own expense, then should be withdrawn from the market if they couldn't comply with the laws governing all other drugs. That's what was done to the real drug manufacturers, after all. If Steve is so keen on proper testing to legislative standards, why am I not getting any feedback on this suggestion?

Rolfe.

[SteveGrenard]

Rolfe: And finally, I'd still welcome comment on my proposal that homoeopathic preparations should have a period of grace in which the manufacturers can do the testing at their own expense, then should be withdrawn from the market if they couldn't comply with the laws governing all other drugs. That's what was done to the real drug manufacturers, after all. If Steve is so keen on proper testing to legislative standards, why am I not getting any feedback on this suggestion?

Reply: From me, perhaps its because I have made this suggestion/proposal or whatever you want to call it several times already. :)

[Rolfe]

You mean you weren't proposing to leave the things on the market indefinitely while public funds were used to try to demonstrate efficacy? Why, I must have misunderstood you.

The only way this will ever be addressed is by an ultimatum. Five years to produce the same standard of proof of efficacy that any current entrant into the pharmacopoeia would have to do. At your own expense. Then, lacking that, banned.

Do you need more than three seconds to see what would happen if you did that?

Rolfe.

[SteveGrenard]

Insofar as your disdain for the word allopathy and its derivatives, it is based on its Greek roots and has earned a place in dictionaries including medical dictionaries. I dont know if SH coined the term based on its roots, but he sure as heck didn't invent those roots.

Source: The Collins English Dictionary © 2000 HarperCollins Publishers:

allopathy [ə'lɒpəθı]
noun the usual method of treating disease, by inducing a condition different from the cause of the disease
Compare: homeopathy
allopathic [ˌælə'pæθık] adjective
"allo'pathically adverb(ial)


5 entries found for allopathy.

al·lop·a·thy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-lp-th)
n.
A method of treating disease with remedies that produce effects different from those caused by the disease itself.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[German Allopathie : Greek allos, other; see allo- + Greek patheia, suffering; see -pathy.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
allo·pathic (l-pthk) adj.
allo·pathi·cal·ly adv.




Source: Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary

allopathy

\Al*lop"a*thy\, n. [Gr. ? other + ? suffering, ?, ?, to suffer: cf. G. allopathie, F. allopathie. See Pathos.]

That system of medical practice which aims to combat disease by the use of remedies which produce effects different from those produced by the special disease treated;





The original meaning of this word "Allopathy" is from its roots. It means that the doctor treats by causing some effect in the body which is different from, or even opposite from, the effect being produced within the body. If the body is presenting a headache, the allopathic solution is to cause a deadening of pain. The pain is one effect, the deadening is a different, basically opposite effect.

That is "allo - pathy." "Allo" means opposite and "pathy" means disease. So, Allopathy treats disease with something opposite to the disease.


Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionar


allopathy

n : the usual method of treating disease with remedies that produce effects differing from those produced by the disease itself [ant: homeopathy]


Source: WordNet ® 1.6, Princeton University


allopathy

allopathy: in CancerWEB's On-line Medical Dictionary

-------------------------------------------------

I stated repeatedly that homeopathic preps should be tested in accordance with FDA (thats U.S.) standards. I don't know what those would be in the U.K. if they exist.

There are many drugs on the market in the U.S. which are effective and safe which have been grandfathered in. Apirin, morphine, cocaine, quinine and even atropine are a few examples.
Thus it would create a double legal standard to take all such drugs off the market pending verification via FDA protocols of their indications. Once those studies were complete, based on the results, the decision can be made to keep, ban or re-label the preparations tested. Since if they have no effect as detractors suggest and are merely nothing but water embodied in a sucrose pellet, their use as a complementary agent in regular medicine is not apt to kill anybody. Would you agree to that?
Efficacy is what we are after. Safety is a non-issue if used in complement with allopathic treatment.

[BTox]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard

Okay. But are you saying that zinc, for example, does not have immunogenic properties?

No, oral ingestion of trace levels of zinc or any other mineral will not elicit antibody production as suggested by your alternative method of homeopathy efficacy. Which is a good thing as virtually everything we eat and drink contains similar trace quantities of just about every inorganic homeopathic "remedy". Our immune systems would be going bonkers every time we put something in our mouth if this were the case!

[Pakaran]

Originally posted by BTox


No, oral ingestion of trace levels of zinc or any other mineral will not elicit antibody production as suggested by your alternative method of homeopathy efficacy. Which is a good thing as virtually everything we eat and drink contains similar trace quantities of just about every inorganic homeopathic "remedy". Our immune systems would be going bonkers every time we put something in our mouth if this were the case!

To be fair - zinc deficiency has occured in some *very rare* cases of people with *severe* intestinal problems or really bizarre diets.

Eating anything resembling normal food will give one enough zinc, I don't think zinc deficiency was a problem even on long sea voyages in the 15th and 16th centuries - when they managed to get almost every other deficiency.

Realistically, taking zinc will not make a normal person more healthy - and drinking homeopathic water containing no zinc will help no more than drinking tap water containing no plutonium. If water has a memory, we're all drinking homeopathic dinosaur urine. Not to mention homeopathic dead bodies, homeopathic micrometeors, and a bunch of other things.

[Pakaran]

Originally posted by Rolfe

Nanomolar is, as we've already discussed, 10<SUP>-9</SUP> molar. There are about five more prefixes, each referring to a jump of 10<SUP>-3</SUP> between that and ultramolar, which is when there's nothing left (about 10<SUP>-26</SUP> molar). Nanomolar is still great honking wodges of solute, in the context of this discussion.


Exactly. Homeopathy is NOT the same as the low effective doses of some drugs and poisons.

For example, botulin has a lethal dose of a few parts per trillion of body weight, and ricin - which you can grow in your garden with no professional skil - has lethal doses that are still invisible to the naked eye (by injection, anyhow).

However, if you take botulin, diliute it in a hundred parts of water, and repeat 100 times, I would be *happy* to drink it in exchange for a large amount of money.

Because my chance of dying of a meteor strike while holding the bottle would be better than my chance of swallowing even one molecule.

Is anyone still unclear on this?

[Pakaran]

Originally posted by SquishyDave

I don't want to know the symptoms I should get for overdosing on poison ivy, coz I don't want the placebo effect kicking in.


Hmm, I'm actually immune to poison ivy - I built up a tolerance in boy scouts, and now can actually pull it out of the garden/lawn, if I'm careful to wash my hands to keep it off tools the family might use.

Would homeopathic poison ivy still work for me? I guess if I wanted an immunity to that, I should have been careful to touch no poison ivy over no time, instead of inadvertently touching it over years, huh? :roll:

[SteveGrenard]

BTox: . Our immune systems would be going bonkers every time we put something in our mouth if this were the case!

Reply: Hmm. But maybe it does. Have you seen these early papers in the effects of mere ions of zinc on viral popagation? Thanks for taking the time to answer me. I was interested in your take on inroagnic substances such as zinc ions as, at the very least, immunomodulators.


Abstracts from Medline

Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 1981 Feb;19(2):213-7. Related Articles, Links


Inhibition of vaccinia virus maturation by zinc chloride.

Katz E, Margalith E.

Zinc chloride (0.1 mM) inhibited by 96.4% the growth of vaccinia virus in HeLa cells. Approximately 50% inhibition in formation of particles that sedimented in sucrose gradients similarly to vaccinia virions occurred in the presence of zinc ions. Whereas the synthesis of the viral deoxyribonucleic acid was not affected by zinc chloride, a decrease in the overall synthesis of viral polypeptides and inhibition of the cleavage of precursors to the core polypeptides were observed.



J Virol. 1979 Jan;29(1):405-8. Related Articles, Links


Inhibition of vaccinia virus growth by zinc ions: effects on early RNA and thymidine kinase synthesis.

Zaslavsky V.

Accumulation of thymidine kinase activity in vaccinia virus-infected cells was severely inhibited by zinc ions if the drug was added within 1 h postinfection. If added later, zinc ions had no effect on the enzyme synthesis. A fraction of RNA which is normally synthesized in infected cells, was missing from a proper part of the gradient if the cells were treated with zinc ions within 1 h postinfection (as has been shown by cosedimentation of pulse-labeled RNAs in isokinetic gradients). It is suggested that a transcriptional (or posttranscriptional) step is involved in zinc-caused inhibition of vaccinia virus growth.

[SteveGrenard]

And here's a very abbreviated account (brief summation) of some basic research at DuPont concerning this. I have no idea where it went.

Antiviral Effects of Zinc Ions

Positively charged Zn2+ ions from soluble, highly ionizable zinc compounds with very low stability constants were demonstrated to be highly effective antirhinoviral agents in vitro by Korant and others at Du Pont using HeLa cells (human epithelioid carcinoma of the cervix cells). Many other metals were determined not to be antirhinoviral at nontoxic dosages. Korant and colleagues determined that Zn2+ ions inhibit cleavage of rhinovirus polypeptides. Addition of Zn2+ ions, at concentrations 0.1 mMol and above, at any time during rhinovirus replication immediately inhibited further formation of infective virions. Antirhinoviral concentration is 6.67 times higher than normal zinc serum concentrations. Plaque-forming ability of rhinoviruses was reduced by 90 to 100 percent in eight of nine rhinoviruses tested.(3) Zinc ions rapidly inhibit virus production and lead to accumulation of rhinovirus precursor polypeptides cleaved predominantly to stable virus polypeptides upon removal of Zn2+ ion. Zn2+ ions complex with rhinovirus coat proteins and alters them to prevent their function as substrates for proteases or as reactants in the assembly of virus particles. Zn2+ ions were not shown to de-activate mature rhinoviruses.

The C9 component of complement has cell membrane-damaging properties capable of lysing or damaging cells. In the presence of 0.1 mMol Zn2+ ions, red blood cells do not lyse when complement C9 is added. The inhibitory action of Zn2+ ions appeared to be on the reaction or reactions occurring between the insertion of C9 and the damage-producing step and is completely reversed upon Zn2+ ion chelation.

The Du Pont team conducted an exhaustive five-year study of antiviral effects of Zn2+ ions on rhinoviruses and other picornaviruses.

Their literature search and biblio follows. I realize this is only a mere
130 references but what the hey.


1. Pasternak CA. A novel form of host defense: membrane protection by calcium and zinc ions. Bioscience Reports. 1987;7:81-91.

2. Eby GA, Davis DR, Halcomb WW. Reduction in duration of common cold symptoms by zinc gluconate lozenges in a double blind study. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotheraphy. 1984; 25:20-24.

3. Korant BD, Kaurer JC, Butterworth BE. Zinc ions inhibit replication of rhinoviruses. Nature. 1974; 248:588-590.

4. Korant BD, Butterworth BE. Inhibition by zinc of rhinovirus protein cleavage: interaction of zinc with capsid polypeptides. Journal of Virology. 1976;18:298-306.

5. Butterworth BE, Grunert RR, BD Korant, et al. Replication of rhinoviruses. Archives of Virology. 1976;51:169-189.

6. Korant BD, Butterworth BE. Chemical Abstracts. 1976; 85:76, Abs. 85:814y.

7. Korant BD. Role of cellular and viral proteases in the processing of picornavirus proteins. In: Perez-Bercoff R, ed. The Molecular Biology of Picornaviruses. New York:Plenum Publishing; 1979;149-173.

8. Korant BD. Inhibition of viral protein cleavage. In: Gauri KK, ed. Design of Inhibitors of Viral Functions. New York:Academic Press; 1979.

9. Butterworth BE, Korant BD. Characterization of the large picornaviral polypeptides produced in the presence of zinc ion. Journal of Virology. 1974; 14:282-291.

10. Korant BD, Kauer JC, Butterworth BE. Molecular basis of zinc as a viral inhibitor. In: Risby TH, ed. Ultratrace Metal Analysis in Biological Sciences and Environment. Washington D.C.:American Chemical Society; 1979.

11. Prasad AS. Zinc in Human Nutrition. Boca Raton, FL:CRC Press; 1979:67.

12. Merluzzi VJ, Cipriano D, McNeil D, et al. Evaluation of zinc complexes on the replication of rhinovirus 2 in vitro. Research Communications in Chemical Pathology and Pharmacology. 1989;66: 425-440.

13. Geist FC, Bateman, JA, Hayden FG. In vitro activity of zinc salts against human rhinoviruses. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. 1987;31: 622-624.

14. Korant BD. E. I. du Pont de Nemours Co., Wilmington, DE. Personal communication, 1992.

15. Eby GA, Halcomb WW. Use of topical zinc to prevent recurrent herpes simplex infection: review of literature and suggested protocols. Medical Hypotheses. 1985;17: 157-165.

16. Oxford JS, Perrin DD. Inhibition of the particle-associated RNA-dependent RNA polymerase activity of influenza viruses by chelating agents. Journal of General Virology. 1974;23:59-71.

17. Cload PA, Hutchinson DW. The inhibition of the RNA polymerase activity of influenza virus A by pyrophosphate analogs. Nucleic Acids Research. 1983;11:562l-5628.

18. Vogt VM, Eisenman R, Diggelmann H. Generation of avian myeloblastosis virus structural proteins by proteolytic cleavage of a precursor polypeptide. Journal of Molecular Biology. 1975;96:471-493.

19. Palan PR, Eidinoff ML. Specific effect of zinc ions on DNA polymerase activity of avian myeloblastosis virus. Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry. 1978;21:67-69.

20. Fuke M. Introduction of specific cleavages into RNAs of RNA bacteriophages for determination of base sequences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 1974;71:742-745.

21. Black DN, Brown F. Proteins induced by infection with caliciviruses. Journal of General Virology. 1977;38:75-82.

22. Allen GP, O'Callaghan DJ, Randall CC. Purification and characterization of equine herpesvirus-induced DNA Polymerase. Virology. 1977;76:395-408.

23. Gordon YJ, Asher Y, Becker Y. Irreversible inhibition of herpes simplex virus replication in BSC-1 cells by zinc ions. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. 1975;8: 377-380.

24. Shlomai J, Asher Y, Gordon YJ, et al. Effect of zinc ions on the synthesis of herpes simplex virus DNA in infected BSC-l cells. Virology. 1975;66:330-335.

25. Fridlender B, Chejanovsky N, Becker Y. Selective inhibition of herpes simplex virus type I DNA polymerase by zinc ions. Virology. 1978;84:551-554.

26. Gupta P, Rapp F. Effect of zinc ions on synthesis of herpes simplex virus type 2-induced polypeptides. Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. 1976;152:455-458.

27. Nachtigal M, Nachtigal S. Interactions between human herpesviruses and host cell chromosomes. Archives of Romanian Pathology and Experimental Microbiology. 1978;37:223-249.

28. Nachtigal M, Nachtigal S. Effect of zinc ions, phosphonoacetate, phosphonoformate and violamycin BI on the induction by herpes simplex virus of chromosome abnormalities in cell cultures. Archives of Romanian Path ology and Experimental Microbiology. 1980;39:79-87.

29. Eizuru Y, Hyman RW, Nahhas WA, et al. Herpesvirus RNA in human urogenital tumors. Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. 1983; 174:296-301.

30. Falke B, Kahl GF. Ca++, Histidin und Zn++ als faktoren bei ber Riesenzellbildung durch das Herpes-virus hominus. Z Medical Mikrobiology Immunology. 1967; 153:175-189.

31. Ratka M, Lackmann, M, Ueckermann C, et al. Poliovirus-associated protein kinase: destabilization of the virus capsid and stimulation of the phosphorylation reaction by Zn2+. Journal of Virology. 1989;63:3954-3960.

32. Semler BL, Hanecak R, Dorner LF, et al. Poliovirus RNA synthesis in vitro: structural elements and antibody inhibition. Virology. 1983;126:624-635.

33. Lawrence C, Thach RE. Identification of a viral protein involved in post-translational maturation of the encephalomyocarditis virus capsid precursor. Journal of Virology. 1975;15:918-928.

34. Gainer JH. Antiviral activity of zinc sulfate and zinc sulfate + poly I / poly C on EMCV mortality. In: Program and Abstracts of the 14th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. San Francisco:American Society for Microbiology. 1974; abstract no. 234.

35. Esposito JJ, Obijeski JF. Enterovirus type 70 viron and intracellular proteins. Journal of Virology. 1976;18:1160-1162.

36. Polatnick J, Bachrach HL. Effect of zinc and other chemical agents on foot-and-mouth disease virus replication. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. 1978;13: 731-734.

37. Sangar DV, Bryant J, Harris TJ, et al. Removal of the genome-linked protein of foot-and-mouth disease virus by rabbit reticulocyte lysate. Journal of Virology. 1981;39: 67-74.

38. Firpo EJ, Palma EL. Inhibition of foot-and-mouth disease virus and procapsid synthesis by zinc ions. Archives of Virology. 1979;61:175-181.

39. Nakai K, Lucas-Lenard J. Processing of mengovirus precursor polypeptides in the presence of zinc ions and sulfhydryl compounds. Journal of Virology. 1976;18:918-925.

40. Levinson W, Faras A, Woodson B, et al. Inhibition of RNA-dependent DNA polymerase of Rous sarcoma virus by thiosemicarbazones and several cations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 1973;70:164-168.

41. Clegg JCS, Brzeski H, Kennedy SIT. RNA polymerase components in Semliki Forest virus-infected cells: synthesis from large precursors. Journal General Virology. 1976;32:413-430.

42. Bracha M, Schlesinger MJ. Inhibition of Sindbis virus replication by zinc ions. Virology. 1976;72: 272-277.

43. Epstein J. SV40-transformed human cells fail to grow in zinc concentrations which permit normal human fibroblast proliferation. Journal of Cellular Physiology. 1982; 110:17-22.

44. Huff JW, Sastry KS, Gordon MP, et al. The action of metal ions on tobacco mosaic virus ribonucleic acid. Biochemistry. 1964;3:501-506.

45. Katz E, Margalith E. Inhibition of vaccinia virus maturation by zinc chloride. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. 1981;19:213-217.

46. Zaslavsky V. Inhibition of vaccinia virus growth by zinc ions: effect on early RNA and thymidine kinase synthesis. Journal of Virology. 1979;29: 405-408.

47. Diener TO, McKinley MP, Prusiner SB. Viroids and prions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 1982;79:5220-5224.

48. Butzow JL, Eichhorn GL. Different susceptibility of DNA and RNA to cleavage by metal ions. Nature. 1975;254: 358-359.

49. Zhang ZY, Reardon IM, Hui JO, et al. Zinc inhibition of renin and the protease from human immunodeficiency virus type 1. Biochemistry. 1991;30: 8717-8721.

50. Sergio W. Zinc salts that may be effective against the AIDS Virus HIV. Medical Hypotheses. 1988; 26:251-253.

51. Korant BD. Strategies to inhibit viral polyprotein cleavages. In: St. Georgiev V, McGowan JJ, eds. AIDS: Anti-HIV Agents, Therapies, and Vaccines. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1990;616:252-257.

52. South, TL, Blake PR, Sowder RC III, et al. The nucleocapsid protein isolated from HIV-1 particles binds zinc and forms retroviral-type zinc fingers. Biochemistry. 1990;29:7786-7789.

53. Gallagher IHC, Cutress TW. The effect of trace elements on the growth and fermentation by oral Streptococci and Actinomyces. Archives of Oral Biology. 1977;22:555-562.

54. Skjörland K, Gjermo P, Rölla G. Effect of some polyvalent cations on plaque formation in vivo. Scandinavian Journal of Dental Research. 1978; 86:103-107.

55. Oppermann RV, Rölla G, Johansen JR, et al. Thiol groups and reduced acidogenicity of dental plaque in the presence of metal ions in vivo. Scandinavian Journal of Dental Research. 1980;88:389-396.

56. Oppermann RV, Rölla G. Effect of some polyvalent cations on the acidogenicity of dental plaque in vivo. Caries Research. 1980;14:422-427.

57. Greenberg SB, Harris D, Giles P, et al. Inhibition of Chlamydia trachomatis growth in McCoy, HeLa, and human prostate cells by zinc. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. 1985;27:953-957.

58. Schlievert P, Johnson W, Galask RP. Bacterial growth inhibition by amniotic fluid. VI. Evidence for a zinc-peptide antibacterial system. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 1976;125: 906-910.

59. Windholz M, Budavari S, Blumetti RF, et al, eds. The Merck Index. Rahway NJ:Merck & Company. 1983;1455-1458.

60. Ibid; 226.

61. Ibid; 1153.

62. Osol A. Astringents and antiperspirants. In: Osol A. ed. Remington's Pharmaceutical Sciences, 16th Edition. Easton:Mack Publishing Co. 1980;720-723.

63. Sugarman B. Zinc and infection. Reviews of Infectious Diseases. 1983;5:137-147.

64. Bashford CL, Alder GM, Menestrina G, et al. Membrane damage by hemolytic viruses, toxins, complement, and other cytotoxic agents - a common mechanism blocked by divalent cations. The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 1986;261: 9300-9308.

65. Bashford CL, Menestrina G, Henkart PA, et al. Cell membrane damage by cytolysin. The Journal of Immunology. 1988;141:3965-3974.

66. Bashford CL, Alder GM, Graham JM, et al. Ion modulation of membrane permeability: Effect of cations on intact cells and on cells and phospholipid bilayers treated with pore-forming agents. Journal of Membrane Biology. 1988;103:79-94.

67. Pasternak CA. Virus, toxin, complement: common actions and their prevention by Ca2+ or Zn2+. Bio Essays. 1987; 6:14-19.

68. Lichtenheld MC, Olsen KJ, Lu P, et al. Structure and function of human perforin. Nature. 1988; 335:448-451.

69. Boyle MDP, Langone JJ, Borsos T. Studies on the terminal stages of immune hemolysis. IV. Effect of metal salts. The Journal of Immunology. 1979; 122:1209-1213.

70. Prasad AS. Zinc in humans. In: Risby TH, ed. Ultratrace Metal Analysis in Biological Sciences and Environment. Washington D.C.:American Chemical Society; 1979.

71. Barrett JT. Textbook of Immunology. St. Louis:C. V. Mosby Co; 1978.

72. Struckhoff G, Heymann E. Rat peritoneal mast cells release dipeptidyl peptidase II. Biochemistry Journal. 1986;236:215-219.

73. Danscher G, Obel J, Thorlacius-Ussing O. Electron microscopic demonstration of metals in rat mast cells. A cytochemical study based on an improved sulfide silver method. Histochemistry. 1980;66: 293-300.

74. Selye H. The Mast Cell. Washington DC: Butterworths Press; 1965;302.

75. Uvnas B, Aborg CH, Bergqvist U. No role for zinc in the storage of histamine in rat peritoneal mast cells. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica. 1975;93:401-408.

76. Marone G, Lichtenstein LM. Inhibition of histamine release from human basophils by zinc chloride. Federation Proceedings. 1978;37:590.

77. Marone G, Findlay SR, Lichtenstein LM. Modulation of basophil histamine release by zinc. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 1979;65:171.

78. Marone G, Columbo M, de Paulis A, et al. Physiological concentrations of zinc inhibit the release of histamine from human basophils and lung mast cells. Agents and Action. 1986;18:103-106.

79. Chvapil M. Effect of zinc on cells and biomembranes. Medical Clinics of North America. 1976; 60:799-812.

80. Mousli M, Gies J-P, Bertrand G. The Sensitivity to Zn2+ discriminates between typical and atypical mast cells. Agents and Actions. 1990;30:102-105.

81. Martell AE, Smith RM. Critical Stability Constants. New York: Plenum Press; 1991.

82. Berthon G, Kayali A. Histamine as a ligand in blood plasma. Part 5. Computer simulated distribution of metal histamine complexes in normal blood plasma and discussion of the implications of a possible role of zinc and copper in histamine catabolism. Agents and Actions. 1982;12:398-407.

83. Berthon G, Varsamidis A, Blaquiere C, et al. Histamine as a ligand in blood plasma. Part 7. Malate, malonate, maleate and tartrate as adjuvants of zinc to flavor histamine tissue diffusion through mixed-ligand coordination. In vitro tests on lymphocyte proliferation. Agents and Actions. 1987;22:231-247.

84. Berthon G, Germonneau P. Histamine as a ligand in blood plasma. Part 6. Aspartate and glutamate as possible partner ligands for zinc and histamine to favor histamine catabolism. Agents and Actions. 1982;12:619-629.

85. Part II, Formulas. In: Merck's 1901 Manual of the Materia Medica. New York:Merck and Co. 1901;125.

86. Remedies for nasal catarrh. In: Merck's Manual of the Materia Medica. New York:Merck and Co. 1923;160.

87. Franklin P. Treatment of hay fever by intranasal zinc ionization. The British Medical Journal. June 27, 1931; 1115-1116.

88. Shields C. The ionization treatment of hay fever. The Practitioner. January-June 1936;645-648.

89. Bailey LD, Shields C. Treatment of hay fever by intranasal zinc ionization. The British Medical Journal. April 17, 1937;808.

90. Zinc borate decongestant. In: Howard MA, ed. Modern Drug Encyclopedia and Therapeutic Index. New York:Drug Publications; 1956;1168.

91. Weir CD. Intranasal ionization in the treatment of vasomotor nasal disorders. The Journal of Laryngology and Otology. 1967;81:1143-1149.

92. Castleman M. Cold Cures. New York:Fawcett Columbine;1987.

93. Eggleston PA, Hendley JO, Gwaltney JM Jr, et al. Histamine in Nasal Secretions. International Archives of Allergy and Applied Immunology. 1978; 57:193-200.

94. Naclerio RM, Proud D, Lichtenstein LM, et al. Kinins are generated during experimental rhinovirus colds. Journal of Infectious Diseases. 1988; 157:133-142.

95. Eggleston PA, Hendley JO, Gwaltney JM Jr. Mediators of immediate hypersensitivity in nasal secretions during natural colds and rhinoviral infection. Acta Oto-Laryngologia Supplement. 1984; 413:25-35.

96. Proud D, Naclerio RM, Gwaltney JM, Hendley JO. Kinins are generated in nasal secretions during natural rhinovirus colds. Journal of Infectious Diseases. 1990;161:120-123.

97. Gaffey MJ, Gwaltney JM Jr, Sastre A, et al. Intranasally and orally administered antihistamine treatment of experimental rhinovirus colds. American Review of Respiratory Disease. 1987;136: 556-560.

98. Gaffey MJ, Kaiser DL, Hayden FG. Ineffectiveness of oral terfenadine in natural colds: evidence against histamine as a mediator of common cold symptoms. Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. 1988;7:223-228.

99. Naclerio RM, Proud D, Kagey-Sobotka A, et al. Is histamine responsible for the symptoms of rhinovirus colds? A look at the inflammatory mediators following infection. Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. 1988;7:218-222.

100. Borum P, Gronborg H, Brofeldt S, et al. Nasal reactivity in rhinitis. European Journal of Respiratory Diseases Supplement. 1983;128 (Pt 1):65-71.

101. Carter-Barnett JK, Cruse LW, Proud D. Kinins are generated in nasal secretions during influenza A infections in ferrets. American Review of Respiratory Diseases. 1990;142:162-166.

102. Lemanske RF Jr, Dick EC, Swensen CA, et al. Rhinovirus upper respiratory infection increases airway hyper reactivity and late asthmatic reactions. Journal of Clinical Investigation. 1989;83:1-10.

103. Welliver RC, Wong DT, Sun M, et al. The development of respiratory syncytial virus-specific IgE and the release of histamine in nasopharyngeal secretions after infection. New England Journal of Medicine. 1981;305:841-846.

104. Prasad AS. Zinc in Human Nutrition. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 1979;65.

105. Chandra RK, Au B. Single nutrient deficiency and cell-mediated immune responses: Zinc. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1980;33:736-738.

106. Prasad AS. Discovery and importance of zinc in human nutrition. Federation Proceedings. 1984; 43:2829-2834.

107. Beisel WR, Edelman R, Nauss K, et al. Single-nutrient effects on immunologic functions. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1981;245: 53-58.

108. Phillips JL, Azari P. Zinc transferrin: Enhancement of nucleic acid in phytohemagglutinin-stimulated human lymphocytes. Cellular Immunology. 1974;10:31-37.

109. Dardenne M, Pléau JM, Nabarra B, et al. Contribution of zinc and other metals to the biological activity of the serum thymic factor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 1982;79: 5370-5373.

110. Bates J, McClain CJ. The effect of severe zinc deficiency on serum levels of albumin, transferrin, and prealbumin in man. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1981;4: 1655-1660.

111. Beach RS, Gershwin ME, Hurley LS. Gestational zinc deprivation in mice: persistence of immunodeficiency for three generations. Science. 1982;218 469-471.

112. Golden MHN, Jackson AA, Golden BE. Effect of zinc on thymus of recently malnourished children. Lancet. November 19, 1977;1057-1059.

113. Duchateau J, Delepesse G, Vrijens R, et al. Beneficial effects of oral zinc supplementation on the immune response of old people. The American Journal of Medicine. 1981;70:1001-1004.

114. Duchateau J, Delespesse G, Vereecke P. Influence of oral zinc supplementation on the lymphocyte response tomitogens of normal subjects. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1981;34:88-93.

115. Mathe G, Blazsek I, Gil-Delgado MA, et al. The effect of zinc on normal and neoplastic T-lymphocyte proliferation. Medical Oncology & Tumor Pharmacotherapy. 1985;2: 203-210.

116. Wazewska-Czyzewska M, Wesierska-Gadek J, Legutko L. Immunostimulatory effects of zinc in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Folia Haematology. 1978;105: 727-732.

117. Cavdar AO, Babacan E, Gözdasoglu S, et al. Zinc and anergy in pediatric Hodgkin's disease in Turkey. Cancer. 1987;59:305-309.

118. Rocklin RE, Haberek-Davidson A. Histamine activates suppressor cells in vitro using a coculture technique. Journal of Clinical Immunology. 1981; 1:73-79.

119. Chandra RK. Excessive intake of zinc impairs immune responses. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1984;252:1443-1446.

120. Reardon CL, Lucas DO. Zn++ - and Hg++ - mediated induction of mitogenesis, cell-mediated cytotoxicity, and interferon production in murine lymphocytes. In: Parker JW, O'Brian RL, eds. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Leukocyte Culture Conference. New York:John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 1983; 449.

121. Reardon CL, Lucas DO. Heavy metal mitogenesis: Zn++ and Hg++ induce cellular cytotoxicity and interferon production in murine T lymphocytes. Immunobiology. 1987; 175:455-469.

122. Salas M, Kirchner H. Induction of interferon-g in human leukocyte cultures stimulated by Zn2+. Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology. 1987;45:139-142.

123. Gainer JH. Effects on interferon of heavy metal excess and zinc deficiency. American Journal of Veterinary Research. 1977;38:863-867.

124. Norris D. Zinc and cutaneous inflammation. Archives of Dermatology. 1985;121:985-989.

125. Chvapil M, Stankova L, Weldy P, et al. The role of zinc in the function of some inflammatory cells. In: Zinc Metabolism: Current Aspects in Health and Disease. New York: Alan R. Liss, Inc; 1977;103-122.

126. Subcommittee on Zinc, Committee on Medical and Biological Effects of Environmental Pollutants, Division of Medical Sciences, Assembly of Life Sciences National Research Council. Zinc. Baltimore:University Park Press; 1979; 235.

127. Beisel WR, Pekarek RS, Wannemaker RW Jr. Homeostatic mechanisms affecting plasma zinc levels in acute stress. In: Prasad AS, Oberleas D eds. Trace Elements in Human Health and Disease. New York:Academic Press; 1976;97.

128. Martinez-Cairo S, Coello P, Alvarez T, et al. PMN cell phagocytic function in malnourished patients with zinc uptake. Archivos de Investigation Medica. 1980;11:227-238.

129. Kelley RW, Abel MH. Copper and zinc inhibit the metabolism of prostaglandin by the human uterus. Biology of Reproduction. 1983;28:883-889.

130. Cohen S, Tyrrell DAJ, Smith AP. Psychological stress and susceptibility to the common cold. New England Journal of Medicine. 1991;325:606-612.

[BTox]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Hmm. But maybe it does. Have you seen these early papers in he effects of mere ions of zinc on viral popagation?



Bacterial growth inhibition by zinc ions is well documented, and it appears to have similar properties against some viruses. We use zinc in oral care products for that reason. It is, like all other therapeutic agents, dosage dependent. The dosages and concentrations required are much higher than could be attained by homeopathic remedies.

[Pakaran]

Originally posted by BTox


Bacterial growth inhibition by zinc ions is well documented, and it appears to have similar properties against some viruses. We use zinc in oral care products for that reason. It is, like all other therapeutic agents, dosage dependent. The dosages and concentrations required are much higher than could be attained by homeopathic remedies.

But nonexistent ingredients can be scientifically proven to have no side effects! :roll:

[SteveGrenard]

The following short account is snipped from a much longer piece at:

http://www.asthmaworld.org/Th1Th2.htm

which is actually a subsite of the Canadian Asthma Prevention Institute.
It would appear that zinc ions may have a greater role in immunomodulating antibody production than some might've suspected. The first paragraph echoes this.

Thanks to progress in zinc research, it is now possible to describe in more detail how zinc ions (Zn++) and nitrogen monoxide (NO), together with glutathione (GSH) and its oxidized form, GSSG, help to regulate immune responses to antigens.

NO appears to be able to liberate Zn++ from metallothionein (MT), an intracellular storage molecule for metal ions such as zinc (Zn++) and copper (Cu).

A zinc deficiency can lead to a premature transition from efficient Th1-dependent cellular antiviral immune functions to Th2-dependent humoral immune functions.

Deficiencies of zinc, NO and/or GSH shift the Th1/Th2 balance towards Th2, as do deficiencies of any of the essential nutrients (ENs) - a group that includes methionine, cysteine, arginine, vitamins A, B, C and E, zinc and selenium (Se) - because these are necessary for the synthesis and maintenance of sufficient amounts of GSH, MT and NO.

Under Th2, levels of interleukin-4 (II-4), II-6, II-10, leukotriene B4 (LTB4) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) are raised, while levels of II-2, Zn++, NO and other substances are lowered.

Moreover, a sufficiency of Zn++ and NO prevents a shift of the Th1/Th2 balance towards Th2.

Research makes it look likely that deficiencies of ENs such as zinc promote the proliferation of Th2 cells at the expense of Th1 cells. Zinc deficiency also promotes cancer.

Under the influence of Th1 cells, zinc inhibits the growth of tumors by activating the endogenous tumour-suppressor endostatin, which inhibits angiogenesis.

[Rolfe]

:s2: &nbsp Bored now.

Rolfe.

[SquishyDave]

Hi

Whoa, big thread, just in case anyone cares, I didn't die, nothing happened to me at all.

Originally posted by Pakaran
Hmm, I'm actually immune to poison ivy - I built up a tolerance in boy scouts, and now can actually pull it out of the garden/lawn
We don't have this plant in Australia that I know of, not commonly anyway, so I have no immunity. I might now, coz the minute amounts I took could have caused an antibody reaction in me ;) still even if it did, that's not the point of homeopathy is it?

When I'm in pain, I'm supposed to take something to cause me pain, in this case pioson ivy, coz taking something that causes pain stops the pain when you have the pain first.

This whole anti-body stuff is irrelevant, anti-bodies is not the point of homepathy and that's not how it's supposed to work, and everyone here knows it.

[SteveGrenard]

Everybody knows it? Are you sure?

I note that you say homeopathy has nothing to do with provoking immune responses. You make it sound as if this comes straight from the annals of the discipline. Homeopathy does not agree with you and I wonder why people who are not in the field or who have not taken time to completely explore their claims make such sweeping generalizations without at least checking facts.



adapted from the Swiss Homeopathy Society website:

http://www.homeopathy.ch/fundamental.htm


The SHS writes:

During years of experiments and observation Hahnemann discovered two important facts:

"If you give healthy subjects certain natural substances regularly in relatively strong doses, these persons will develop symptoms of diseases which are characteristic for the substance administered."

Sounds familiarly like the provocation of an immune response.

In 1790, following an experiment on himself with cinchona bark - at that time known as a remedy for malaria - he began to investigate these symptoms. After consuming certain quantities of cinchona bark powder he became ill and for a short time presented symptoms resembling those of malaria. He concluded that there must be a connection, and for a number of years he experimented with different medicines on a group of volunteers, meticulously noting the symptoms presented (proving of medicines on healthy subjects). In this way he gathered a knowledge of medicines that enabled him to anticipate the effects certain substances might have on the human organism.

He carried out further experiments over a long period and noticed that only those substances that caused symptoms in healthy subjects similar to those of the disease were capable, in their potentiated form, of curing a sick person.


Here http://www.homeopathic.com/articles/intro/immune_system.php

you will find an article by Ullman again titled:


Homeopathic Medicine and the Immune System


Just when things might be getting interesting regarding zinc as an immunomodulator some people just get bored and fall asleep. Sorry couldn't provide anything more exciting for you.

[Ed]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
And here's a very abbreviated account (brief summation) of some basic research at DuPont concerning this. I have no idea where it went.

130. Cohen S, Tyrrell DAJ, Smith AP. Psychological stress and susceptibility to the common cold. New England Journal of Medicine. 1991;325:606-612.


130 references and no opinion.

Very well done Steve, you have outdone yourself.

You have no idea where it went, have no opinion and post 130 references.

Excellent work

[SteveGrenard]

So long as some posters here will decide to go to sleep rather than respond to questions concerning, for example, the root or origin of the word allopathy or who have nothing more to say, agree or disagree, with the use of alternative methodologies as complementary or integrative (with mainstream or allopathic medicine), especially during a period during which they could be undergoing stringent FDA type evaluations, then I reallly have to say the ball is in the sleeper's court. Let me know when he wakes up. Maybe he's not really sleeping and is busy. I trust that is the case.

Insofar as Zinc is concerned, I think there is enough compelling research to dismiss the sweeping generalization it has no role in immunology. That's my opinion. What's yours?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

He carried out further experiments over a long period and noticed that only those substances that caused symptoms in healthy subjects similar to those of the disease were capable, in their potentiated form, of curing a sick person.
And then he made a gross generalization from the experiments he ran. And his potentiated substances often had nothing in them at all. And he's obviously wrong that "only those substances that caused symptoms" are useful in curing disease.

It's a hodge-podge of random observation and nonsense. Of course a few of the supposedly curative substances will cure something. So what?

~~ Paul

[Ed]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
So long as some posters here will decide to go to sleep rather than respond to questions concerning, for example, the root or origin of the word allopathy or who have nothing more to say, agree or disagree, with the use of alternative methodologies as complementary or integrative (with mainstream or allopathic medicine), especially during a period during which they could be undergoing stringent FDA type evaluations, then I reallly have to say the ball is in the sleeper's court. Let me know when he wakes up. Maybe he's not really sleeping and is busy. I trust that is the case.

Insofar as Zinc is concerned, I think there is enough compelling research to dismiss the sweeping generalization it has no role in immunology. That's my opinion. What's yours?

I have never heard a real doctor use the term "allopath". This relates to my friends who are in the medical profession (as Dr's), the professors that I had during my graduate study at Mt. Sinai, Bronx VA and Beth Isreal. This seems to me to be a co-opting of the language (illeagal alien=undocumented immigrant) to provide the illusion that there is something like Homeopathic "medicine" and "allopathic " medicine.

There is medicine and then everything else. "Allopathic" suggests some sort of vague equality with the woo-woo stuff and is, therefore, dishonest.

[SteveGrenard]

Ed: Please look up the word in your dictionary or if you have one or access to one, in a mainstream, medical dictionary.
There is nothing dishonest or contrived about this word other than its basis in its ancient Greek roots. Are you saying this is NOT what conventional, mainstream medicine practices? There is no Equality with homeopathy. It is the very converse, reverse and absolutely and positively opposite of homoepathy imbued in the word allopathy. It distinguishes mainstream or conventional medicine from homeopathic process, not equate with it.

Its like black or white, hot or cold, high or low....

I really asked what your opinion is on the zinc discussion....

[Pakaran]

Originally posted by SquishyDave
Hi

Whoa, big thread, just in case anyone cares, I didn't die, nothing happened to me at all.


We don't have this plant in Australia that I know of, not commonly anyway, so I have no immunity. I might now, coz the minute amounts I took could have caused an antibody reaction in me ;) still even if it did, that's not the point of homeopathy is it?


The point of homeopathy is to make money for its practitioners.

By the way, before I got the immunity, I ran across poison ivy many times (dozens to hundreds, probably). The set of symptoms it will give you, if it does affect you, are fairly unmistakable. However, the active component is an oil, so I don't know whether it would blend with a homeopathic preparation made with water, or even with vodka.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard

Reply: Hmm. But maybe it does. Have you seen these early papers in the effects of mere ions of zinc on viral popagation? Thanks for taking the time to answer me. I was interested in your take on inroagnic substances such as zinc ions as, at the very least, immunomodulators.


Abstracts from Medline
...
So now you have switched from the term immunogenic to immunomodulator. You will note that none of the references you supplied refer to production of antibodies specific for zinc ions.

Bait & switch.

[SteveGrenard]

Not really.There is a fine, very fine line between facilitating and actually producing antibodies. In fact tha latter is not possible without the former. :)

[Pakaran]

(snip)

Originally posted by MRC_Hans
If you leave Hahnemannian dogma, you have nothing left.

Hans

What if you only dilute it a few million times? Then you have more than when you started, right? :wink8:

[BTox]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Not really.There is a fine, very fine line between facilitating and actually producing antibodies. In fact tha latter is not possible without the former. :)

Steve,

No one questions the physiological effects of zinc. The question that you appear to keep ignoring is what effect could it have at the concentrations delivered by a homeopathic remedy? Your citations demonstrate viral effects at 0.1mmol concentrations. Going back to our most concentrated homeopathic remedy at 6X, when dissolved in the mouth will result in a concentration in saliva of 0.1umol (1000 times more dilute). In the entire body, another 1000 times dilution occurs on that!

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by SquishyDave
It's less than 4 grams worth of little pills, labeled at 3c.

If I eat all these pills (4 grams total not each), there should be no effect right?

I need to prove a point to my Mum.
Getting back to basics:

SquishyDave, are you dead yet? ;)

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Not really.There is a fine, very fine line between facilitating and actually producing antibodies. In fact tha latter is not possible without the former. :)
As a biochemist, I do not see the line as being fine. Immunogenic usually refers to a molecule that is specifically recognized by an antibody. This would never happen with zinc, as a zinc ion is much too small to accomodate cross-linking.

[SteveGrenard]

immunogenic
adjective causing or producing immunity or an immune response
"immuno'genically adverb(ial)

Me thinks you are confounding this with an immunogen which is a noun:

immunogen
noun
1 any substance that evokes an immune response

2 any substance that stimulates immunity


and of course, there is immunomodulator(noun) or immunomodulating (adv) which means:

A substance that facilitates or stimulates an immune response.

[BTox]

Ahem... Steve... the crux of the matter here is concentration. Are you going to keep ignoring it?

[SteveGrenard]

BTox: Ahem... Steve... the crux of the matter here is concentration. Are you going to keep ignoring it?


Not actually being involved in homeopathy and having little or no use for it myself, I cannot address this subject in detail. I pointed out how homeopathic gurus such as Ullman are moving their priorities around. I also pointed out that original work by SH was based on detectable, even large doses to come up with his law of similars which has a tenuous (I agree) but still potential relationship to all and sundry immunological.

At at the risk of being a wise guy, is your statement above conceding that these preps have a concentration? But that it just happens to fall below some unknown threshold for which a dose/response is expected?

[Rolfe]

:slp:

Steve, you must realise that not every connotation of words can be described by any reasonably compact dictionary. If I were black, and took exception to being addressed as "******", do you think that simply pointing to a dictionary which confirmed that this usage of the word was described, would be sufficient? Hahnemann invented the word allopathy, and it is only used by woo-woo quacks, usually in a sneering manner. It is thus considered thoroughly insulting by scientific physicians, expecially those who have been on the receiving end of these insults. Therefore, please avoid the use of the term unless you are intending to sneer and insult us.

I've switched off on the zinc. We were talking about Rhus tox (glad you're still alive, SquishyDave!), then about belladonna, and now zinc. Where did zinc come in? If it's a universal immune facilitator, and this is the great secret, how come nearly all homoeopathic remedies have never been in contact with a molecule of the stuff except by accident?

You've got a couple of biochemists here, at least one of whom is medically qualified. Steve has some sort of advanced first-aid authorisation, but I'd certainly be interested to hear what his formal scientific or medical qualifications are that he presumes to correct ArcticPenguin on a matter of immunology (see above observation about dictionaries).

I've seriously lost count of the questions I was hoping Steve would answer, but I see we've mentioned "stringent FDA-type evaluations" again. So, I'll try once more. Does Steve agree that the best way to resolve this is to do to homoeopathic manufacturers exactly what was done to manufacturers of real medicines when the legislation first came in? That is to allow say five years grace while these trials are carried out to FDA standards, at the expense of the homoeopathic manufacturers, and at the end of that time any product which has not proven efficacy to the same standard as real drugs must be withdrawn from the market. Note the two salient points here - who pays, and the consequences of not demonstrating efficacy. (I'm not terribly worried that safety tests would be a problem, SquishyDave is living evidence of that.)

Another rubber stamp. Homoeopaths are fond of asserting that the alleged effect has something to do with the immune response. This is complete nonsense, so much nonsense that the medically-qualified ones have pretty much given up on it. However, lay proponents such as Ullman still find this a useful line of patter. He's also quite fond of lines such as scientific explanations not being relevant to homoeopathy as science rejects the essential concept of the vital force. I think it all depends on the audience which line is trotted out at any given moment.

Hans, how are you getting on with Hahnemannian? I sort of ran away from that because Francine said she thought he was cyber-stalking her, and she was worried. I'm so intrigued by the way both him and Timokay worship every word Hahnemann wrote and reject anything he didn't personally sanction, compared to Steve's diametrically-opposed attitude. Who do you find more tiresome?

Rolfe.

[Loki]

Steve,

A question - all this "antibody" stuff you refer to, it's a measurable/detectable change in the body isn't it? If homeopathic treatments work in some way similar, then isn't "proof" as simple as :

(a) take first sample/reading
(b) take homeopathic dose
(c) take second sample/reading
(d) compare (a) and (c)
(e) repeat as often as required to ensure confidence in results.

Wouldn't this simple procedure show, once and for all, that homeopathic treatments have a measurable effect? If this testing was (has been?) done, and no changes were detected, then why try to link the "action" of homeopathy to the "action" of anything that *does* produce these measurable changes (zinc, etc)?

[SteveGrenard]

Loki ... you missed the post somewhere buried above, I think by BTox that homeopathic remedies consist of serially diluted (and agitated) preparation of inorganic substances such as "zinc" and silica. Rolfe should have seen this as well. I did not bring up zinc, BTox did.

Then I asked BTox questions and did some checking myself. Does this cover that for you? Rolfe? As probably (don't now for sure but)) the world's largest processor and seller of zinc, E.I. dupont de Nemours and Co, the chemical giant, sponsored the research I cited above. I believe they are up there also with respect to silica, which is the other inorganic substance BTox mentions. This they profitably turned into silicone. And no doubt many of the other elements and substances embaced by homeopathy are processed and sold by DuPont. I decided to find out why, as a result of BTox's post on this, for example zinc at any level might have a positive or beneficial therapeutic effect. Does that answer the question? I was told it didn't and couldn't or was irrelevant to the discussion. I maintain that it may not be on Hahnneamanian grounds but not otherwise.

I am not only waiting for a cogent response to this, but also to my assertion that the reason homeopathy, prayer, TT, etc etc are collectively referred to by the NIH as Complementary Alternative (and Integrated) Medicine is because nobody on any level suggests using them to the exclusion of mainstream (or dare I say it: alliopathic) treatment. Dr. Rolfe in the UK seems to have fallen asleep at this point. So Rolfe, do you understand about complementary now?. I also await comment on Rolfe's disdain for the term allopathic derived from its classical Greek roots.

I also reiterate my and his suggestion that homeopathic preps should be validated as to indications in FDA-type multi-center, large scale controlled trials and if they fail their use for such indications, they should be legally banned. I also suggested however, like any drug grandfathered in (e.g. aspirin, morphine, atropine, quinine) they can continue to be used on a complementary basis until the results of such studies are known and adjudged,
Dr. Rolfe stated that they should be subjected to the same stringent requirements of any new drug which means that they should be illegal until proven efficacious. Dr. Rolfe ignores the historical status of drugs like morphine and atropine as well as homeopathic preps when he says this, so this would not likely be legal in the U.S. or anywhere. They are not new drugs or novel agents nor are they old ones seeking new indications. If an old drug has been found to be non-efficacious or even hazardous, there is legal grounds to illegitimize it. eg. Thalidomide use in pregnant women. The only physical danger with homeopathic preps would be if they are used to the exclusion of mainstream medication and treatment.
This goes to how it used, not if it is used. Any legal prescription drug which is used illegally or illicitly is in the same category including and especially opiates and cocaine.

By the way many new drugs, in the process of seeking FDA approval, are made available as INDs, especially on compassionate grounds so it is not entirely true that such new drugs are illegal until approved either.

Rolfe, you can decide to go along with Claus and Ed in attacking the person rather than the subject. I thought you were above that but it appears not. In reference to the atropine issue, as a NYS State Licensed practitioner, I have AHA training in Advanced Cardiac Life Support which means I give drugs in cardiac emergencies such as atropine. Claus already has me down as a pencil pushing administrator. If you knew anything about the system, which you don't, in the US, you would know that only doctors, nurses and specialized licensed healthcare professionals are usually admitted to ACLS training.

However, I am not publishing my CV
here so you can persist in your ad hom attacks if you wish. Irrevocable ignore is my weapon. Presumably you have failed to address the arguments I brought up re testing.

[Loki]

Steve,

...you missed the post somewhere buried above, I think by BTox that homeopathic remedies consist of serially diluted (and agitated) preparation of inorganic substances such as "zinc" and silica. Rolfe should have seen this as well. I did not bring up zinc, BTox did.
Yes, I understand Steve. But you brought in studies that (attempt to?) show that zinc has a measureable effect regarding genreation of antibodies didn't you? Swhat you claiming is thatg :

BTOx : "Homeopathic treatments can contain (well, 'remember containing') zinc, which can have no effect"
Steve: "But perhaps Zinc has an effect - look at these studies regarding antibodies".

And you stop there. Fair enough, as far as it goes. But in the context of the wider conversation, isn't the next step :

BTox : "Okay, assuming a measurable effect for zinc regarding antibodies, is the same effect evident with homeopathic zinc treatments?"
Steve : "Probably not"

In other words, you're correcting a (possible) misconception about the conventiaonal role of zinc (thanks!), but it has nothing to do whatsoever with any discussion of homeopathy?

[SteveGrenard]

So wait a minute Loki, let me get this straight BTox can bring up Zinc, and when I ask him about it, and dont get an answer and research it myself, I am not allowed to challenege his implication that zinc has no biological effects worthy of its use in these preps. Sorry friend, I don't allow claims like that to pass without researching them. To be fair, I did ask the claimant and then was accused of knowing the answer but asking a loaded question. I was also asked for references -- to a question no less. Then when I provided them, after I did research it, everyone decides to take a crap. You guys make my day.....

we were talking about Zinc ... as in ions or even a single ion of zinc. Not necessarily an 80 million fold or whatever dilution in the Pacific Ocean.

[BTox]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
At at the risk of being a wise guy, is your statement above conceding that these preps have a concentration?

Of course homeopathic remedies at dilutions below the theoretical level where no molecules are left have a concentration. Assuming they are prepared properly, our 6X dilution example will have 1 ppm zinc.

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
But that it just happens to fall below some unknown threshold for which a dose/response is expected?

Just happens to fall? We are talking about concentrations 3-6 orders of magnitude lower than observed physiological effects levels. And the secondary problem to this proposed alternate mode of homeopathic action (ultra-low concentrations of components like zinc) is that everything we eat and drink contains similar if not higher concentrations of the same components. How can the body distinguish between the nanogram levels of zinc in a homeopathic remedy from the nanograms present in a glass of water or piece of apple?

[Rolfe]

I obviously know nothing about the system of drug registration in the US either, but I do know about it in the UK, and I don't think it's that different. In fact in some ways we are less restrictive, we do allow doctors and vets to prescribe unlicensed preparations on an individual basis without requiring the reams of individual approvals needed in the US. But for a drug to be marketed with therapeutic claims, proof of safety and efficacy and a proper licence, or no dice.

License of right (grandfathered?) preparations were given these for a set time. By the end of that time either produce the data, or take it off the market. Concentrates the mind wonderfully. Of course we did lose some low-volume drugs which were genuinely useful, and there was a lot of moaning about that, but it happened. Aspirin, morphine, atropine and quinine have proper licences or they could not be marketed. Of course, since these things were already well-characterised and had a self-evident effect, the trials weren't too difficult to complete successfully.

So, who should pay for these FDA-style trials? If not the manufacturers, why not? The regular drug manufacturers had to pay. And if the manufacturers have to pay, how on earth do you think you get them to do the work unless you slap on a deadline?

I do know what complementary medicine is. In the UK it is woo-woos trying to get paid by the NHS. In general it's people with useless remedies which wouldn't fly for a second on their own, who think they can get away with marketing the stuff as an add-on. At its best it keeps the patient entertained while the real medicine does the business (or not, but it sure don't change that part). But mostly it's just a way of transferring money to the bank accounts of the woo-woos.

Steve, I have no idea what argument you brought up re testing that I have ignored. You change the subject so often and go off at so many tangents it's difficult to keep score. But try my arguments again. Who should pay for these trials, and should you put any sort of deadline threat in to ensure that they actually get done?

I have demolished the subject so often that the person who keeps reiterating the same refuted points is getting a little irritating. You could try answering other people's points instead of continually ignoring them and demanding that a new set of yours be answered, if you want to deflect signs of annoyance.

You don't have to publish a CV, but when you contradict someone who has just stated that he is a biochemist, in his own field, by quoting from a standard dictionary, I think it's reasonable to ask what status you have for issuing that challenge.

Rolfe.

[BTox]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
I am not allowed to challenege his implication that zinc has no biological effects worthy of its use in these preps. .....

we were talking about Zinc ... as in ions or even a single ion of zinc. Not necessarily an 80 million fold or whatever dilution in the Pacific Ocean.


Steve, you haven't provided any evidence of the biological effects of zinc at the concentrations delivered by even the most concentration homeopathic remedy...

[SquishyDave]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
During years of experiments and observation Hahnemann discovered two important facts:

"If you give healthy subjects certain natural substances regularly in relatively strong doses, these persons will develop symptoms of diseases which are characteristic for the substance administered."

Sounds familiarly like the provocation of an immune response.

It really doesn't sound like one, malaria is caused by little bug things that get in the liver then the blood, the symptoms of malaria can be caused using plant chemicals by disrupting the chemical processes of the human body. Related? Hardly.

Anyway current thinking is that you cannot get an immune response to pain. Can you guess why my Mum was taking poison Ivy? Coz she was in pain for various reasons I won't go into here, and was told it would help. But the problem is, my Mum wasn't given the poison ivy BEFORE she was in pain, so she could be immunised against it, she was given it WHILE she had the pain. Go and find out what happens if you give someone a small pox vaccine in the middle of having the disease, then get back to me on this whole immunity smoke screen.

AP I'm fine, I mentioned that before, but there are a lot of threads to read, I guess it got lost :)

Pakaran It was pills, possible sugar or lactose.

[SteveGrenard]

I didn't state the above, It is attributed to and was quoted from the Swiss Homeopathic Society archives. They seem to feel the bit about cinchona bark extract (quinine) had some relevance for SH. Or so SH thought.

Immunization post-exposure to smallpox has been shown to offer some protection against the disease. Vaccination administered within four days of first exposure helps protect against acquiring infection and provides significant protection against a fatal outcome.
excerpted from: http://www.partnersforimmunization.org/smallpox.html


Vaccines are frequently recommend post exposure and during incubation phases of a presumably infected peson. Antiserums, on the other hand, give already infected or envenomated (e.g. snakebite) persons immediate access to antibodies which may take too long for them to develop on their own in time to stave off significant morbidity and even mortality.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by SquishyDave

It really doesn't sound like one, malaria is caused by little bug things that get in the liver then the blood, the symptoms of malaria can be caused using plant chemicals by disrupting the chemical processes of the human body. Related? Hardly.
Hahnemann read (in Cullen) that cinchona was effective against malarial fever (true) because of its astringent effect on the stomach (false). Hahnemann realised that substances even more astringent than cinchona do not help malarial fever. Out of curiosity he took some cinchona (real cinchona, it was only later he decided to do these "provings" on shaken-up water).

He had a very odd reaction to the cinchona, see the plausible theory that he was allergic to it (http://www.angelfire.com/mb2/quinine/allergy.html). The really weird part is that nobody else who has ever taken cinchona (or its later-purified active ingredient, quinine) ever had the same reaction. Never mind, that was the observation that began it all.

Of course the reason quinine is effective against malaria is that it is toxic to Plasmodium vivax, the causative organism.

Yes, homoeopathy does sound familiarly like the provocation of an immune response, which is why homoeopaths have used this analogy to try to justify their arcane practices since about forever. But there's no connection. Jenner made the basic discoveries about immunisation quite separately from Hahnemann's teachings. Not only that, many homoeopaths actively oppose vaccination, and some of the most prominent activists in the anti-vaccination lobby are homoeopaths.

Also, Hahnemann himself was quite adamant that he had discovered nothing which was a disease preventative. He stated very definitely that it was impossible to treat anything until the patient was actually suffering from symptoms of disease.

This doesn't stop homoeopaths producing their own entirely ineffective form of vaccination called "nosodes", although strict Hahnemannians abjure this as not classical homoeopathy. Nosodes produce no measurable antibody, no protection from acquiring infection, and no detectable effect on the course of the disease. Which is only to be expected as there is (thankfully) none of the original "mother tincture" in them.

Rolfe.

[Ed]

Originally posted by SquishyDave

Pakaran It was pills, possible sugar or lactose.

It would be realy funny if you are lactose intolerant and died:D

Steve what about zinc? Did anything you posted show that when it is non-existant it has an effect? That is the issue, isn't it?

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Ed
Steve what about zinc? Did anything you posted show that when it is non-existant it has an effect? That is the issue, isn't it?
And who should pay for the trials of homoeopathic products to be done to FDA standards. And whether there should be any deadline by which these trials had to be done.

And ....

Well, we covered the point that there are still several orders of magnitude between real low-dose drugs and even low-potency homoeopathy, and that there was no similarity between homeopathy and immunology except in the mind of one D. Ullmann, and we touched on dose-response curves and why does homoeopathy's seem to operate in reverse, and the fact that very low-dose preparations (low-potency) are really pretty peripheral as real specialist homooepathy is all concerned with no-dose preparations (high-potency).

I'm sure there are still several points Steve has quietly sidled past, though.

Oh, I can't remember. I'm off.

Rolfe.

[SteveGrenard]

If there isn't even a single ion of zinc in the preparation at issue, yes it is. Back to the subject matter of this thread. The following is a page out of the reference given for rhus tox. From this it is easy to see why a immunological basis is suggested for these kinds of preparations where the eczema indication least is concerned. I think anyoine should have a hard time wrapping their head around this as a treatment for bronchitis in cats, for example.

source: http://www.meditrina.net/animalailments/animalremedies/rhustox.html

Remedy: RHUS TOXICO-DENDRON or commonly RHUS TOX.

Source: Fresh leaves of Poison Ivy

Potency: 6c

Dosage: See below


May be used for:


Arthritis - which improves with movement
Strains and sprains
Ear infections, Canker
Conjunctivitis
Bronchitis in cats - due to damp
Rheumatism
Some forms of eczema



Rhus Tox is a major rheumatic remedy and is traditionally used to relieve stiffness whether mental, physical or emotional. Generally symptoms are worse at rest, in cold weather and at night.







For acute or sudden onset of symptoms:

The selected remedy should be given at a rate of one tablet every hour for up to ten doses, then one tablet every twelve hours for two to three days.

In cases where an immediate response is required such as an accident, 1 tablet may be given every 15 minutes for up to 6 doses.This dose rate may also be used in anticipation of an emotionally traumatic event such as a thunderstorm, show fright, a change of environment or a trip to the vet.

For long-standing or chronic conditions:

In cases where an immediate response is required such as an accident, 1 tablet may be given every 15 minutes for up to 6 doses.This dose rate may also be used in anticipation of an emotionally traumatic event such as a thunderstorm, show fright, a change of environment or a trip to the vet.

As soon as there is any improvement in the animals condition the remedy may be reduced or stopped. If there has been no response after two to three weeks an alternative remedy may be required.

[Ed]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard

Rhus Tox is a major rheumatic remedy and is traditionally used to relieve stiffness whether mental, physical or emotional.


Mental, physical or emotional?

Even assuming that there is a "mental" stiffness, how for the love love of god could anyone believe that this stuff would act this way? This sounds like classic snake oil. Good for what ails ya!!

You say you are not a believer, Steve? Explain to me how this stuff treats mental disorders and physical ones. Also tell me how it passes the blood-brain barrier. Oh, it's water, I forgot.

[SteveGrenard]

Ed wrote:
You say you are not a believer, Steve? Explain to me how this stuff treats mental disorders and physical ones. Also tell me how it passes the blood-brain barrier. Oh, it's water, I forgot.

I dont disagree with you. Some of these indications are out there. And I am not here to explain anything to anyone, especially since I dont have one. I was referring to the possible immunological basis with respect to the treatment of eczema. In fact if you read my post you would already know this. People have been trying to immunize and/or densitize to Rhus toxicodendron for a hundred years at least. As usual your selectivity in reponding shines through.

[BTox]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
I was referring to the possible immunological basis with respect to the treatment of eczema. In fact if you read my post you would already know this. People have been trying to immunize and/or densitize to Rhus toxicodendron for a hundred years at least. As usual your selectivity in reponding shines through.

Once again the numbers game causes problems. 6C (which is the typical homeopathic "low potency" dilution) represents 1 part per trillion. I'd wager one would get more exposure than this just walking outside anywhere near poison ivy (which is all over my backyard woods area, btw).

[Ed]

What does the dose/response curve look like (or supposed to look like) for these remedies? I guess they are not supposed to be monotonic. Is there any other phenomenon that shows this type of function when it comes to critters? You see the punkenji shift but that is two interacting processes measured on a gross level.

So in summary, when it comes to homeopathy

-no clear, repeatable evidence
-counter intuitive
-unprecedented S/R relationships
-Basic tenents of theory not observable (like causes like)
-fabulous claims (using immunology as a mechanism)
-if these things were sold as real medicine, thed never get to market. Put another way, you could be arrested for selling them (how comforting is that?)

All in all I'd say this one fails the old sniff test. Do you really need to know more than what I have outlined?

Yawn

[Rolfe]

Steve keeps on about wanting FDA-style trials on homoeopathy. Given that manufacturers of real drugs have to pay for the licensing trials themselves, who does he think should pay for the trials on homoeopathic preparations? Given that companies with real drugs on the market were given a deadline by which they had to have produced satisfactory evidence of safety and efficacy, after which time and failing this, the products would be withdrawn from the market, does he agree that homoeopathic remedies should be treated the same way? If not, why not?

I've said this before on another thread, but what the heck. Steve baffles me. He keeps asserting that he isn't a homoepathic believer, yet he's almost a lone voice here conducting an ever more desperate and impassioned defence of homoeopathy against rigorous and well-reasoned rebuttal which would have had any normal unbiassed reader over on the sceptic side long ago.

Every time he gets tired of defending one indefensible position he pulls out another statement from a homoeopath and declares that since it's "out there" it must have some validity to be explained. There's tons of stuff "out there" promoting useless homoeopathic remedies, most of it entirely out of the imagination of the writer.

My favourite Rhus tox story is an article by one Peter Mueller in Veterinary Review, March this year. The patient was a collie with autoimmune skin disease. "Interviews and examinations had led me to choosing Rhus toxicodendron (poison ivy) for this particular dog - not an obvious choice if taking the skin problems alone into account but right for this individual animal!" Who did he interview? The dog? Well, maybe - he's quite obviously barking. In fact a promised second part to to this article never appeared. This is a lunatic fringe talking here.

You could go on forever. Paper takes on anything, as my old professor used to caution. Html files take on even more. The point is that this leads to the need for selective appraisal of the material and judgement calls on which side of the argument is stronger.

It's virtually impossible to sway the true homoeopathic believer. There are subtle psychological points appreciable there which I'm not really qualified to comment on. However, what are we to make of someone who claims not to be a true believer, but who constantly defends the weak side of the argument, dreams up rationalisations (like this zinc thing) which even the believers hadn't thought of, and when one point is ridden into the ground simply finds another to ride to death in the cause of "investigating" homoeopathy?

Answers on a postcard....

Rolfe.

[Ed]

Rolfe,

Is there some particular reason that your pm is turned off?

[Ed]

Originally posted by Ed
What does the dose/response curve look like (or supposed to look like) for these remedies? I guess they are not supposed to be monotonic. Is there any other phenomenon that shows this type of function when it comes to critters? You see the punkenji shift but that is two interacting processes measured on a gross level.

So in summary, when it comes to homeopathy

-no clear, repeatable evidence
-counter intuitive
-unprecedented S/R relationships
-Basic tenents of theory not observable (like causes like)
-fabulous claims (using immunology as a mechanism)
-if these things were sold as real medicine, thed never get to market. Put another way, you could be arrested for selling them (how comforting is that?)

All in all I'd say this one fails the old sniff test. Do you really need to know more than what I have outlined?

Yawn

I might also add that the notion of some water memory being transferred to suger pills is an assult on the intellegence

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Ed
Rolfe,

Is there some particular reason that your pm is turned off?
What's a pm?

(Prime Minister, post mortem, post meridian....)

Rolfe.

[Ed]

in your cp you can turn on or off private messages, yours is off. A failure to communicate

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Ed
in your cp you can turn on or off private messages, yours is off. A failure to communicate
Hmmm. An acquaintance of mine believed she was being cyber-stalked by a homooepathy proponent on another board (NOT Steve) who was trying to find out her email address and where she lived and so on. She was quite spooked about it, and advised me to keep personal details available in forum profiles to a minimum.

Also, I'm quite happy to debate with Steve in the forum, but if he (for example) were to start sending me private messages, I'd have to leave the forum and go into hiding.

Rolfe.

[Dragon]

Originally posted by Rolfe

Hmmm. An acquaintance of mine believed she was being cyber-stalked by a homooepathy proponent on another board (NOT Steve) who was trying to find out her email address and where she lived and so on. She was quite spooked about it, and advised me to keep personal details available in forum profiles to a minimum.

Also, I'm quite happy to debate with Steve in the forum, but if he (for example) were to start sending me private messages, I'd have to leave the forum and go into hiding.

Rolfe.
PMs are not email. Your PMs are your own private bit of the forum which only you can see.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Dragon

PMs are not email. Your PMs are your own private bit of the forum which only you can see.
Oh, sorry, I'm being dim here. This forum is so well-organised it has bells and whistles I wasn't aware of. Presumably that's where you can "ignore" people if they're being a nuisance?

If I can figure how to turn it back on, would you like to send me a message (just a teeny little one?) so I can see how it works?

Rolfe.

[Pakaran]

Originally posted by BTox


Once again the numbers game causes problems. 6C (which is the typical homeopathic "low potency" dilution) represents 1 part per trillion. I'd wager one would get more exposure than this just walking outside anywhere near poison ivy (which is all over my backyard woods area, btw).

A friend of mine once got symptoms from hitting it with a lawn mower while wearing shorts.

That gives an interesting idea - want to save money on homeopathy, just use the lawn mower! :)

[Pakaran]

Originally posted by Ed


I might also add that the notion of some water memory being transferred to suger pills is an assult on the intellegence

Agreed. You know, I have a networking exam I'm a bit nervous about this friday.

Would I be advised to tear a corner off one of the pages of my textbook, soak it in my water bottle for a few seconds, and then carry that water bottle into the exam?

Or does this transfer only work between sugar and water? I can just picture my professor standing at the door with a homeopathy-detector wand trying to catch this sort of thing.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Pakaran
A friend of mine once got symptoms from hitting it with a lawn mower while wearing shorts.

That gives an interesting idea - want to save money on homeopathy, just use the lawn mower! :)
No, no, no, that won't do at all. Such a concentrated dose is nowhere near potent enough!

As far as economics are concerned - look at the Oscillococcinum story (http://www.homeowatch.org/history/oscillo.html). That one is diluted to 200C, and they apparently use only one duck per year to produce the world supply (and still have plenty left over I should think). The dilutions involved are simply mind-boggling. They call it the 20 million dollar duck.

I also found this page here (http://www.liberator.net/articles/TremblayFrancois/curing.html) while I was looking for the other. Steve might be interested, it's quite a succinct summary of everything we're been saying. Edited to add: the date on this is 2000, which is why the "latest explanation" is said to be digital biology. That has since been superseded by "patient-practitioner-remedy entanglement", sort of like quantum mechanics, but bigger. (There, I can describe it in one sentence - but all the homoeopaths' papers on it are about 17 pages each.)

Rolfe.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

200C?

Patient-practitioner-remedy entanglement?

Come on Rolfe, now you're just yanking our chains!

~~ Paul

[Pakaran]

Originally posted by Rolfe

No, no, no, that won't do at all. Such a concentrated dose is nowhere near potent enough!


True, true. I can find poison ivy near my college, so I guess I could just crush it between my fingers and allow it to evaporate. Then every forum participant can report on the ill effects.

The Earth's atmosphere is about 5 x 10^18 kg. Assuming that a milligram of oil evaporates off my fingers, everyone will be breathing something only a bit stronger than 10C - but given that I'm playing with the health of the world population I don't want to take any risks by doing something like just walking past the plant, and increasing the potency. After all, I'm risking the health of everyone on Earth! :eek:

Should I consult the United Nations before trying this experiment? I'm not worried about my own safety - my own dose is unlikely to be much stronger than 4C. :)

But seriously - HOW do these folks find studies - even century-old ones - to support their profession?

[SteveGrenard]

These authors discuss what we have been discussing and echo the remarks I made regarding use of safe alternative treatments in an integrated or complementary manner.

Drugs Today (Barc). 2001 Oct;37(10):651-664. Related Articles, Links


Unconventional therapies in asthma.

Szelenyi I, Brune K.

Department Pulmonary Pharmacology, Corporate Research & Development, ASTA Medica AG, Radebeul, Germany. szelenyi@pharmakologie.uni-erlangen.de

Complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) is more popular than ever before. Patients with allergic diseases often seek so-called alternative treatment as supplementation but seldom as a real alternative to classical medicine. Innumerable physicians and even more patients feel confident that CAM is effective and safe without seriously questioning this notion. The lack of clear opinion or guidelines can be explained on the one hand by the present trend that tradition should be questioned in general and on the other hand by the argument that they have "stood the test of time". Healthcare providers need to be aware of the CAM therapies their patients are using, as well as their potential side effects. Despite the demand for CAM, there is a paucity of well-founded evidence about its effectiveness. There are few good studies and those that exist are often inconclusive. CAM should be approached in the same way as some of orthodox medicine is evaluated now and how most, if not all, will be assessed in the future. Remedies, if shown to be effective and safe, should be part of the interventions made available to patients. Ineffective or unsafe therapies should be abandoned. Unproven interventions should be evaluated in high-quality clinical trials. CAM is often promoted and perceived to be entirely risk-free. However, it is not true: herbal remedies may induce liver damage, acupuncture may cause trauma of vital tissue, homeopathy may aggravate symptoms, etc. We all agree that rigorous research must be performed on this special area of asthma therapy in order to evaluate the real value and significance of CAM in the interest of our patients. (c) 2001 Prous Science. All rights reserved.

PMID: 12738963 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]





Here is a call for studies and more evidence in a Homeopahic Journal by a homeopath:

: Homeopathy. 2003 Apr;92(2):84-91. Related Articles, Links


Comment in:
Homeopathy. 2003 Apr;92(2):67-8; discussion 123.

The research evidence base for homeopathy: a fresh assessment of the literature.

Mathie RT.

Faculty of Homeopathy, 15 Clerkenwell Close, London, EC1R 0AA, UK. rmathie@trusthomeopathy.org

BACKGROUND: The claims made for the clinical effects of homeopathy are controversial. The results of several meta-analyses of clinical trials are positive, but they fail in general to highlight specific medical conditions that respond well to homeopathy. AIMS: This review examines the cumulative research from randomised and/or double-blind clinical trials (RCTs) in homeopathy for individual medical conditions reported since 1975, and asks the question: What is the weight of the original evidence from published RCTs that homeopathy has an effect that is statistically significantly different from that in a comparative group? METHOD: Analysis of the 93 substantive RCTs that compare homeopathy either with placebo or another treatment. RESULTS: 50 papers report a significant benefit of homeopathy in at least one clinical outcome measure, 41 that fail to discern any inter-group differences, and two that describe an inferior response with homeopathy. Considering the relative number of research articles on the 35 different medical conditions in which such research has been carried out, the weight of evidence currently favours a positive treatment effect in eight: childhood diarrhoea, fibrositis, hayfever, influenza, pain (miscellaneous), side-effects of radio- or chemotherapy, sprains and upper respiratory tract infection. Based on published research to date, it seems unlikely that homeopathy is efficacious for headache, stroke or warts. Insufficient research prevents conclusions from being drawn about any other medical conditions.

CONCLUSIONS: The available research evidence emphasises the need for much more and better-directed research in homeopathy. A fresh agenda of enquiry should consider beyond (but include) the placebo-controlled trial. Each study should adopt research methods and outcome measurements linked to a question addressing the clinical significance of homeopathy's effects.

Publication Types:
Review
Review, Tutorial

PMID: 12725250 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[Rolfe]

I do like the domain name attached to that last reference - trusthomeopathy! :rolleyes: While at the same time acknowledging that the evidence base is distinctly scanty even after 200 years, and indicates at best the need for more research.

The question of meta-analysis and quality of trial has been highlighed many times, and is best described by Bandolier (http://www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/alternat/homequal.html). This one here (http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/abstract.asp?ref=0306-5251&vid=54&iid=6&aid=2&s=), a paper by the "Professor of Complementary Medicine" who was being looked at askance in another thread, also considered the same research as the source Steve has cited, and comes to a very difference conclusion.Electronic databases were searched for systematic reviews/meta-analysis on the subject. Seventeen articles fulfilled the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Six of them related to re-analyses of one landmark meta-analysis. Collectively they implied that the overall positive result of this meta-analysis is not supported by a critical analysis of the data. Eleven independent systematic reviews were located. Collectively they failed to provide strong evidence in favour of homeopathy. In particular, there was no condition which responds convincingly better to homeopathic treatment than to placebo or other control interventions. Similarly, there was no homeopathic remedy that was demonstrated to yield clinical effects that are convincingly different from placebo. It is concluded that the best clinical evidence for homeopathy available to date does not warrant positive recommendations for its use in clinical practice.
Trusthomeopathy, yeah, why don't you?

Rolfe.

[Ed]

Steve,

When you start with the stats you get into trouble. You can't just fling studies into a meta analysis.

It appears that there are two deadly believer warning signs (so far) one is appeal to meta analysis (when individual studies are dreck) and the other is QM.

You do understand the problem with meta analysis, do you not Steve? If so, tell me why your citation should be treated seriously. We have an abused tool from a staunch believer. That is a witches brew.

[SteveGrenard]

Excuse me, but why do you say that these reviews or meta-reviews if you will, prove that there is validity to homeopathy?
I would get some help on the knee jerk problem you have.

They do not. The authors cleartly state this . They also state that better, more stringent studies are necessary.

I recognize that it is hard for you to swallow the fact that proponents of the discipline (and I am not one of them) are calling for more and better studies but that was the purpose of these abstracts.

Belief has nothing to do with it by the way. It either works or it doesn't. "Acceptance" is the word we should be using but the knee jerkers prefer "belief" because it connotes a lack of critical review and consideration and fits their biased agendas.

It is becoming tiresome to argue with people who cannot read the most rudimentary statements in the above abstracts before responding.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
proponents of the discipline (and I am not one of them) are calling for more and better studies....
And some are indeed being done.

I was going to post some individual links, but there are just so many, I'll give one link to a list of links (http://www.vet-task-force.com/Medline3.htm). Unlike Steve's lists, these are all linked through to the actual papers, or abstracts, so you can access them directly. There's a great deal there, and very little of it looks good for homoeopathy.

However, all this costs money. Who do you think should pay for FDA studies to validate the products that the homoeopath merchants are selling at such a handsome profit?

Of course, if you studiously ignore all the studies you don't like, and keep harking back to the same tired and discredited old publications irrespective of what has been published since, you'll still be stuck here in 3002.

At the risk of repeating myself, hey, look, these guys called Fleischmann and Pons published some really interesing stuff in the late 1980s, and there were quite a few papers which seemed to agree that there really was something there. We need more research to investigate this further!

No, not THAT research, that's all irrelevant because the people who did it don't believe in cold fusion. Now, to get back to Fleischmann and Pons....

Rolfe.