Say ''No'' to Homeopathy

Homeopathy is nonsense-plain nonsense of the worst kind. Financial greed of some and ignorance of millions has kept this dead field of medicine alive, though people like me are fighting hard to strike the last nail in its coffin and bury this rotting piece of nonsensical hokum. A homeopathy doctor is no better than that shaman or tantrik who sits by the banks of river ganges with ash rubbed all over his body and claims to miraculously cure diseases.

I should confide to my readers that I myself believed in Homeopathy since a few years back. I had an acquaintance whose daughter was suffering from epilepsy. Her parents used to consult a Homeopathic doctor for her ailment. The doctor would give her a set of sugary, white pills and some other red, blue ones at a fees equivalent of a clinical surgery and claim that it would cure her. I remember that the doctor himself would never tell about the pharmaceutical composition of those pills. Instead it was claimed in his bogus advertisements that his medicines were prepared from rare herbs that he gathered from the hearts of the jungles in Himalayas. As a marketing student now, I can understand the trickery that the doctor was playing on our minds.

Tell them - that your medicines are costly because you have prepared them with rare herbs. Your doctor; Mam is a real life Indiana Jones. Don’t be fooled by his pot-belly and shaggy trousers, he has done the hunt for the red orchid and the blue and the white and fought with Bigfoot and Yeti and Cannibalistic tribals to get you this preparation.

James Randi, the famous sceptic and magician has been doing shows all over the world where he pops more than a hundred homeopathy sleeping pills at a time and still stands smiling before his audience. Think about it, have you ever taken Alprazolam (Sleeping pill)? I have a few times and only one pill can make you sleepy. 2-4 can even cause slight memory loss when you wake up. 15 can cause coma and more than 20 can cause...you know, death. That is the effect of standard, scientifically proven medicine, unlike homeopathy that does nothing. You can add those sugary pills in your coffee if you like, that would atleast save some of your money on sugar.

Now, the question arises – Why doesn’t homeopathy works? The answer is that Homeopathy is not real science.  Homeopathy is a system of alternative medicine originated in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, based on his doctrine of similia similibus curentur. This doctrine says that anything that can cause disease like symptoms in a healthy person can even cure it if given in diluted quantities. Hahneman used to ingest Cinchona barks as a test. The chemicals present in the bark used to give him malaria like symptoms. So he concluded on the basis of his aforementioned “belief” that if cinchona is given in a diluted form to a patient suffering from malaria than it will cure him. It was a belief that had no scientific basis. Now you may ask, how diluted should a chemical be to cure the symptoms of a disease? The weird answer is, the more diluted it is, the more potent its medicinal effect becomes.

Homeopathic remedies are prepared by repeatedly diluting a chosen substance in alcohol or distilled water, followed by forceful striking on an elastic body, called succussion. Each dilution followed by succussion is said to increase the remedy's potency. Dilution usually continues well past the point where none of the original substance remains.

Let me give you an example.  A popular homeopathic treatment for the flu is a 200C (1C dilution = 1 part in 100) dilution of duck liver, marketed under the name oscillococcinum. As there are only about 10⁸⁰ atoms in the entire observable universe, a dilution of one molecule in the observable universe would be about 40C. Oscillococcinum would thus require 10³²⁰ more universes to simply have one molecule in the final substance. The high dilutions characteristically used are often considered to be the most controversial and implausible aspect of homeopathy.

So, there is offcourse not a single molecule of medicine in the above preparation. Yet, people will buy it for themselves and their children as a cure for Flu. This is not just fraud, but it can be very dangerous too.

Do you know? Many people call the modern scientifically proven field of medicine as Allopathy. This term was coined by Hahneman only. Allopathy according to him was a field of treatment where the effects of the chemicals given to the patient produced reverse effect to his symptoms. So a chemical ‘’X’’ given to a patient would reduce the symptoms of cold rather than produce the same.

Just use your brain. If there was anything that could cure your disease in a cheap and healthy way without any side effects than even a single pharmaceutical MNC like Pfizer would had acquired and patented that medicine. Occasionally I have heard Homeopaths (I would refrain from calling them doctor from now) saying that their medicine is better than Allopathy (Scientifically proved medicine) because it has no side effects. How in the hell is a Homeopathic preparation going to have any side effects when it has no effects at all.

I think that even after reading this, some of you will be unconvinced. You guys have seen some of your friends getting cured by taking homeopathy pills. I myself have seen that. Remember that Homeopaths never say that your ailment will be cured overnight by taking their remedy. They say that the disease would be cured in a few months. Also they prescribe several diet changes or exercise. Most of the times, the diseases like viral fever or boils are cured by their own. In other cases, the disease or its symptom is cured or merely suppressed by placebo effect. Placebo effect is still not clearly understood by science but as we know, it is the body’s own mechanism to cure a person. You can read more about it on internet.

Homeopathy gives you a sugar pill or distilled water. None of that has the ability to do you any harm. Sometimes, you might just get cured with it because of placebo effect. But then, why take the risk? If you know that Homeopathy is nothing but placebo than it will not help you anyways.

Do you know? Homeopathy has not published a single peer reviewed journal in science since the day it has originated. If you have ever sincerely studied science than you must be knowing that publishing a peer reviewed journal is necessary for any theory or scientific discovery to get accepted by the scientific community. Every single drug that you have ever taken in medicine has gone through this process.

So, why is Homeopathy still allowed in India and some (Not all) countries of the world? You will know this when you understand about the history of modern medicine and how it was also similar to alternative medicines like Homeopathy just 150 years ago. This is the same reason why Marijuana is banned in the world today while tobacco and alcohol is allowed. Want to know more, keep checking this space.