November 2009 / vol. 6 issue 3
| Wait a minute. Consumption, flux, and the grip? What a deal! Illustration by lewis chang |
Homeopathology
Water, water everywhere, and none of it is medicine
Just over 7 years ago, Thomas and Manju Sam, an Australian couple with a newborn daughter suffering from a severe case of eczema, made the fateful decision to discontinue her medical treatment and put her on a program of homeopathic “remedies”. Gloria, their daughter, spent the final two weeks of her short life in ceaseless, shrieking agony as the skin slowly peeled off her body. Two months ago, in an Australian court, the couple was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison.
We can look at that case and decry the parents’ terrible neglect, place the blame squarely on their shoulders, and feel a sense of righteous justice at their sentence. Our anger at them would not be misplaced. But we shouldn’t confine our fury to the Sams alone. What killed Gloria was a combination of ignorance and a culture of quackery, so-called “alternative medicine”, which has steadily gained exposure and acceptance, despite the complete lack of evidence that the so-called “medicine” is anything more than wishful thinking.
Homeopathy kills people. It is not some harmless superstition or some zany new-age fad that rich people use on their pets. It is a massive, systemic attempt to undermine legitimate science, and the consequences of allowing it to go unchallenged are lethal.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, homeopathy is a belief first expounded in the early 19th century by Samuel Hahnemann, who observed (incorrectly) that cinchona bark, a cure for malaria, created malarial symptoms when given to non-malarial patients. He had practically no methodology, and even by the lax standards of the day his conclusions could hardly be considered scientific.
However, his observations led him to the conclusion that “like cures like” — that is, to cure an illness, give the patient something that presents similar pathologies.
If curing poison with poison sounds crazy to you, you’re not alone. It even sounded crazy to Hahnemann, which is why he expanded his theory. You don’t just treat arsenic with arsenic — that would kill someone. Instead you must first dilute the arsenic treatment in water, and the more diluted the treatment, the more effective it becomes.
That’s really it. Homeopaths believe that putting poison in water and rendering it so dilute that it no longer contains anything but water cures illness. It’s one of the craziest, most unscientific quack treatments ever devised. It’s like selling snake oil without having the decency to squeeze a good snake. Water. That’s it. Water will cure whatever ails you — according to homeopaths.
That in itself wouldn’t be so awful, except homeopaths also believe that in order for their “alternative treatments” to work, people must discontinue standard medical treatment. If you have strep throat, you mustn’t take antibiotics. Instead, just drink some water with boric acid in it. That’s why homeopathic “medicine” is so insidious. While drinking magic water is pretty harmless, drinking magic water at the exclusion of real medicine is dangerous.
Homeopathy is crazy, not even remotely scientific, and not really medicine, but there are fringe elements everywhere — so what? You should care because all over the Western world homeopathy is given special treatment, as though it were a scientific approach to curing disease.
Abroad and at home, people such as Senator Tom Harkin are actively working to force doctors and government research institutions to treat homeopathy as a valid alternative to medicine.
Years ago, Harkin began a campaign to undermine real science: he forced the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create an Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM). The goal of that office was to study the efficacy of so-called alternative treatments. After several years, the OAM found no evidence that homeopathy can treat any known disease and in fact proved that it does nothing. Fearing that his beloved center for quackery would be shut down, Harkin elevated the Office to its own independent center within the NIH, the NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Harkin, and people like him, have worked tirelessly to create a culture of acceptance and “open-mindedness” regarding alternative “medicine”. They want you to think of traditional (that is to say, effective) medicine as bound by prejudice, as set in its ways. Alternative theories, he would have you believe, are new and bold and should be given encouragement.
For proof of what happens when we treat homeopathy as medicine, look no further than Zicam, an “over-the-counter cold remedy.” Zicam is just water with zinc diluted in it, and while it won’t cure a cold, it should at least have been pretty harmless.
Because of the efforts of people like Harkin, homeopathic “medicines” like Zicam aren’t regulated by the FDA. Since it had no regulation, some batches of Zicam were shipped that were not just ineffective — they actually caused hundreds of people to lose their sense of smell permanently.
Homeopathy is dangerous, and should be treated as such. It deserves no protection. Homeopaths aren’t daring medical practitioners willing to take bold risks. They are charlatans preying on the gullible.
Because of homeopathy, a newborn girl, oozing pus from every surface of her tiny body, screamed herself to death in unending pain. The only thing homeopaths dilute in their magical water is the efficacy of science and the value of human life. 
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