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53

Homeopathy—One Giant Myth 

Lecture 15

Homeopathy ... is even more popular in Europe than in the United States. 
In Europe, it is a $1.4 billion a year market, according to 

Business Week

. 

It is popular with the British Royal family and is currently supported 
by the NHS [National Health Service].

T

here are a lot of misconceptions about what homeopathy is. Many 
people think that homeopathy means herbal medicine or natural 
medicine, but this is not true. Homeopathy, in fact, is a 200-year-

old philosophy-based system. It’s based on the notion of vitalism, the idea 
that living creatures have an essence or vital force that animates them. 
Homeopathy survives today due to cultural inertia and despite a complete 
lack of scienti

¿

 c evidence.

Homeopathy was developed by Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann 
(1755–1843), a German medical doctor. In the 1790s, Hahnemann came 
up with several laws that govern the actions of homeopathic remedies. The 

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 rst law of homeopathy is called the law of similars. He claimed to discover 

this principle when he noted that the cinchona bark, which is used to treat 
malaria, caused him to have symptoms very similar to those of malaria. He 
therefore generalized this one observation to this law, which became one of 
the cornerstones of homeopathy.

Hahnemann’s next law is the law of in

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  nitesimals. He believed that substances 

transferred their essence to water in which they were diluted. The greater 
the dilution, the greater this transference of essence was. The law of the 
individual remedy states that each person’s totality of symptoms has a single 
underlying cause. Therefore, homeopathic remedies are intended to treat all 
of those symptoms at once with a single remedy. Homeopathic remedies 
also include the notion of potentiation. Between each dilution, homeopathic 
remedies are potentiated by succussing them. That means shaking them in a 
certain way; this is more of a ritual than science or chemistry. 

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Lecture 15: Homeopathy—One Giant Myth

What does the clinical evidence show? There have actually been hundreds of 
clinical studies of homeopathic remedies. After reviewing all of the evidence 
for homeopathy, the scienti

¿

 c community has come to the conclusion that 

there is no evidence to support 
homeopathy for any indication. 
Also, homeopathic remedies are no 
different than placebos. 

There are many homeopathic 
products on the market, however. 
They are marketed because of 
loose regulations without evidence 

for either safety or effectiveness. Homeopathic remedies are generally safe, 
because they’re usually just water. There is no active ingredient, so they don’t 
really have the potential to cause direct harm. But this is not universally true 
of homeopathic remedies. Some homeopathic products cheat the system by 
including measurable levels of active ingredients but using the homeopathic 
label to skirt regulations.

One example is Zicam. This is a product that was marketed as homeopathic. 
Some preparations of it have measureable and meaningful amounts of zinc 
oxide, which is shown to treat and reduce the symptoms of a cold. However, 
zinc oxide is also known to cause anosmia, a sometimes permanent loss of 
the ability to smell. Several people who were using Zicam had permanent 
anosmia as a side effect. That caused regulatory agencies to take a second 
look at it and to temporarily suspend it from the market. 

One justi

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 cation for the ultradilutions of homeopathic remedies that’s often 

given is the analogy to vaccines or allergy shots. This is a myth and not an 
apt analogy. A vaccine contains a measurable, if small, amount of antigen 
meant to stimulate the immune system. Allergy shots give a small amount 
of a substance to which one is allergic in order to provoke the immune 
system to make blocking antibodies. They make antibodies to the substance 
to help prevent an allergic reaction. In order for allergy shots to work, you 
have to give a small dose and then build it up to increasingly larger doses. 
Eventually, you’re giving a fairly signi

¿

 cant dose in order to provoke a 

The scienti

¿

 c community has 

come to the conclusion that 
there is no evidence to support 
homeopathy for any indication.

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suf

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 cient immune response. Therefore, there is no analogy whatsoever to a 

preparation that has no measurable amount of anything in it.

Testimonials and anecdotes tend to support what people want to believe. 
There are also placebo effects, which can make anything seem to work. 
There’s also often a failure to recognize the harm that could be done with 
these types of interventions. I mentioned that homeopathy mostly is a 
completely inactive substance; it’s just water without any active ingredient. 
Some people will say if it does nothing, how could it possibly do any harm? 
The harm often comes in preventing effective treatment. There are many 
cases of harm occurring to people relying upon homeopathic remedies who 
could have easily been treated with modern medicine. 

There’s a broader intellectual con

À

 ict that’s represented by homeopathy. It’s 

between science-based medicine—what we recognize today as the modern 
scienti

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 c approach to biology, healing, and disease—and what we would now 

think of as magical thinking. Over the last 200 years, the scienti

¿

 c approach 

has clearly won out. It has produced all of modern medicine, whereas 
homeopathy is stuck in the 200-year-old ideas of its founder. Completely 
inert treatment may have actually been an advantage to what was passing 
for standard medicine 200 years ago. But today, science-based medicine has 
brought us a host of effective treatments. 

Ŷ

Barrett, “Homeopathy.”

Ernst, 

Homeopathy

. 

House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, “Evidence Check 2.” 

Science-Based Medicine

 (blog), “Homeopathy.”

1. 

Do you know what the central claims of homeopathy really are?

    Suggested Reading

    Questions to Consider

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Lecture 15: Homeopathy—One Giant Myth

2. 

Why has homeopathy survived as long as it has, despite a complete lack 
of scienti

¿

 c validation?

57

Facts about Toxins and Myths about Detox 

Lecture 16

Have you ever considered having your colon cleansed? How about 
ear candling or having the toxins leached out of the bottom of your 
feet or squeezed out of your muscles? Are the fears over toxins and 
their treatments real medicine, or just more marketing hype? You can 
probably guess where I’m going to go with this one.

T

his lecture is about toxins in the environment; fears of these toxins; 
and alleged treatments for toxins, such as detoxi

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 cation or “detox.” 

Technically, a toxin is a poison that is produced by a living organism, 

such as a protein. Colloquially, it refers to any substance that is poisonous to 
a living organism. In reality, everything can be a toxin or can be completely 
safe, depending on the dose. Even water and oxygen can be toxic at high 
enough doses.

Our bodies have mechanisms for dealing with toxins. One of the most 
signi

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 cant is the liver, which produces enzymes to metabolize toxins in order 

to neutralize them. Other organs are also involved: The kidneys continuously 

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 lter the blood, removing harmful waste products or toxins and then excreting 

them in the urine. The skin also excretes toxins through sweat. 

So are there any real toxins that you need to worry about? Yes, toxicity is a 
real potential health hazard. For example, there are risks of overdose. One of 
the most common overdoses is multivitamins or supplements, particularly of 
iron in children. Overdoses can happen with just about any prescription or 
recreational drug. Even common ones like alcohol can cause toxicity due to 
excessive use. 

Food is another source of toxins or potentially harmful chemicals. For 
example, pathogenic bacteria can contaminate food. There may also be 
contaminants in food production, and fresh fruits and vegetables may contain 
small amounts of pesticides. Other environmental toxins include lead and 
cigarette smoke.