Gosh – a whole big sciencey conference with sciencey people in sciencey clothes and sciencey glasses, using sciencey words and sciencey concepts, to talk about…
…homeopathy.
What a lot of effort for such a futile activity.
The Homeopathy Research Institute’s International Research Conference, ‘Cutting Edge Research in Homeopathy’, took place in Barcelona in May-June 2013. With a programme dedicated solely to high-end, robust scientific research, this was the first gathering of its kind in a decade. After 18 months of preparation and anticipation, it was a pleasure to witness the event being hailed as a resounding success by respected peers from around the world.
“High end” research? Who says that? That’s a word from advertising, not science. They might as well call it prestigious, or bijou, or exclusive, or glamorous.
Headline speaker, Dr Stephan Baumgartner (University of Bern, Switzerland), summarised the state of play and way forward for basic research (i.e. establishing fundamental principles about the properties and action of homeopathic dilutions).
Yes…it really is more than time to establish fundamental principles about the properties and action of homeopathic dilutions, because so far nobody has the faintest idea how “homeopathic dilutions” could possibly have any curative properties.
Discussions of new findings defined the ‘cutting edge’ theme of the conference and were typified by a plenary session looking at possible mechanisms of action of homeopathic medicines. Prof Iris Bell (University of Arizona College of Medicine) joining the conference live online from the US, shared her theory that nanoparticles play a key role in the mechanism of action – an appealing hypothesis as it potentially brings homeopathy into the realms of conventional nanomedicine.
How exciting! Someone has a theory – and that’s appealing because if it works out it could being homeopathy into the real world. It’s only a pity that it’s taken them so many centuries to get around to it.
It’s also fun that they have no idea what the “possible mechanisms of action of homeopathic medicines” might be, and that that doesn’t stop them taking homeopathic medicines seriously and prescribing them to people as medicine.
Dr Gustavo Bracho (Finlay Institute, Cuba), proposed a scheme to integrate homeopathy in hospitals as a first line of defense against epidemics, suggesting that homeopathy could be used prophylactically to treat infected patients as they come in to hospitals, thereby shortening their stay and the risks of further contamination.
Why?
I’ll assume that “integrate” means “add to existing, evidence-based treatments.” In which case: why? Why waste money and time on this footling conference and talk about adding water to genuine medical treatments? Why make a career out of this stupid bullshit?
Homeopathy remains controversial because of debate around its mechanism of action. However, the strong scientific presentations at this event demonstrate that high caliber academics, medics and practitioners are engaged in robust research in homeopathy worldwide, pushing this field forward.
It’s not research, it’s “research”; it’s just people wearing the costumes and talking the jargon while doing nothing real. They’re all playing dress-up and let’s pretend. It’s kind of embarrassing.