In early 2010, the UK’s Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee published a report into homeopathy and whether it should be funded by the government as part of the National Health Service. Actually, the report submitted by the committee is the basis of all subsequent state-initiated anti-homeopathic measures in various countries around the world.
The report was concluded with a recommendation to the government that “government should not endorse the use of placebo treatments, including homeopathy. Homeopathy should not be funded on the NHS and the MHRA should stop licensing homeopathic products.(Select Committee report, p. 47). The report also warned the government that there is a “risk of endorsing homeopathy as an efficacious system of medicine”, if the government decides to “provide homeopathy on the NHS”, and allow MHRA licensing of homeopathic products products”,
The report explains what homeopathy is, according to their understanding-— “Homeopathy is a 200-year old system of medicine that seeks to treat patients with highly diluted substances that are administered orally. Homeopathy is based on two principles: “like-cures-like” whereby a substance that causes a symptom is used in diluted form to treat the same symptom in illness and “ultra-dilution” whereby the more dilute a substance the more potent it is (this is aided by a specific method of shaking the solutions, termed “succussion”). It is claimed that homeopathy works by stimulating the body’s self-healing mechanisms. (Select Committee report, p. 9)
After defining what is homeopathy, the committee went on identify “TWO main “concerns” involved in evaluating homeopathy:
”There appear to be two main concerns. The first is the principle of like-cures-like and the second is about how ultra-dilutions could retain characteristics of the active ingredient”. (Select Committee report, p. 18).
These “two main concerns” where critically addressed by the committee, leading to the conclusion: “We conclude that the principle of like-cures-like is theoretically weak. It fails to provide a credible physiological mode of action for homeopathic products. We note that this is the settled view of medical science” (Committee report, p. 20).
The committee consider “the principle of like-cures-like is theoretically weak”. Reason? It fails to provide a “credible physiological mode of action” for homeopathic drugs.
It means, the committee would not have arrived at the conclusion that “the principle of like-cures-like is theoretically weak”, if anybody could convince them that “credible physiological mode of action” for homeopathic drugs.
It were the representatives of homeopathic community who actually failed in this regard. They failed in providing a “credible physiological mode of action” for homeopathic drugs, and explaining the principle “likes cures like” in a way that is fitting to the existing scientific paradigms and methods. They also failed to provide a convincing scientific answer to the question “how ultra-dilutions could retain characteristics of the active ingredient”.
Actually, it was this failure of homeopathic community in convincing the committee regarding the “two main concerns” they identified crucial in deciding the fate of homeopathy that led the committee to the most disappointing conclusion and recommendation. How can a responsible scientific committee do otherwise in such an important subject entrusted to them?
Did anybody ever try to present before the committee an explanation that provides a ‘credible physiological mode of action’ for homeopathic drugs that is scientifically convincing? Had any homeopath got such an explanation for homeopathy? Had any homeopath ever got a scientifically viable answer to the question “how ultra-dilutions could retain characteristics of the active ingredient”? If you cannot, how can you blame the scientific committee for their conclusions and recommendations that are harmful for homeopathy? Do you expect to convince a scientific committee by talking unscientific ‘energy medicine’ theories and pseudoscientific ‘nanoparticle’ theories? Do you expect a scientific committee to ratify homeopathy, as far as you theorize about ‘vital force’ and ‘dynamic drug energy’?
Had the representatives of homeopathy understood the scientific explanation for homeopathy provided by MIT, and presented it before the scientific committee, there would have been at least a chance for a scientific dialogue. Even if the committee is prejudiced, it would not have been so easy for them to declare that the “principle of like-cures-like is theoretically weak”. It would not have been so simple for them to say that the principle “fails to provide a credible physiological mode of action for homeopathic products.”. They would have been compelled to consider many valid points, and answer many strong arguments before settling the questions. At least, they would have been compelled to recommend to the scientific community to validate the ideas proposed by MIT.
Representatives of homeopathic community either ignored or failed understand MIT and its implications. They ignored or failed to recognize that MIT provides a scientifically “credible physiological mode of action for homeopathic products”. They ignored or failed to realize that MIT has scientifically and rationally answered the question “how ultra-dilutions could retain characteristics of the active ingredient”.
According to MIT hypothesis, potentization involves a process of ‘molecular imprinting’, where in the conformational details of individual drug molecules are ‘imprinted’ or engraved as hydrogen-bonded three dimensional nano-cavities into a supra-molecular matrix of water and ethyl alcohol, through a process of molecular level ‘host-guest’ interactions. These ‘molecular imprints’ or ‘hydrosomes’ are the active principles of post-avogadro dilutions used as homeopathic drugs.
Due to ‘conformational affinity’, molecular imprints can act as ‘artificial key holes’ or ‘ligand binds’ for the specific drug molecules used for imprinting, and for all pathogenic molecules having functional groups ‘similar’ to those drug molecules. When used as therapeutic agents, molecular imprints selectively bind to the pathogenic molecules having conformational affinity and deactivate them, thereby relieving the biological molecules from the inhibitions or blocks caused by pathogenic molecules. According to MIT hypothesis, this is the biological mechanism of high dilution therapeutics involved in homeopathic cure.
MIT has also shown that the homeopathic principle ‘Similia Similibus Curentur’ Is not at all “weak” as the select committee report has observed.
According to MIT hypothesis, ‘Similia Similibus Curentur’ means, diseases expressed through a particular group of symptoms could be cured by ‘molecular imprints’ forms of drug substances, which in ‘molecular’ or crude forms could produce ‘similar’ groups of symptoms in healthy individuals. ‘Similarity’ of drug symptoms and diseaes indicates ‘similarity’ of pathological molecular inhibitions caused by drug molecules and pathogenic molecules, which in turn indicates conformational ‘similarity’ of functional groups of drug molecules and pathogenic molecules. Since molecular imprints of ‘similar’ molecules can bind to ‘similar’ ligand molecules by conformational affinity, they can act as therapeutic agents when applied as indicated by ‘similarity of symptoms’.
Where as the first part of the scientific committee report deals with and settles the ‘main concerns’ of homeopathy that are theoretical in nature, the second part deals with the question of ‘efficacy’ of homeopathic treatment.
Select Committee report, page 18 says: “We would expect the Government to have a view on the efficacy of homeopathy so as to inform its policy on the NHS funding and provision of homeopathy. Such a view should be based on the best available evidence, that is, rigorous randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses and systematic reviews of RCTs. If the effects of homeopathy can be primarily attributed to the placebo effect, we would expect the Government to have a view on the ethics of prescribing placebos.”
Select Committee report continues in 23: “in our view, the systematic reviews and meta-analyses conclusively demonstrate that homeopathic products perform no better than placebos.” And, “there has been enough testing of homeopathy and plenty of evidence showing that it is not efficacious.”
It is obvious that these observations and conclusions are based on the conclusions they arrived regarding the questions of ‘principles’ dealt with in the first part. They are talking on the basis of ‘placebo’ theory, since they have already concluded that ‘ultra dilutions cannot work’, and the principle of ‘likes cure likes is theoretically weak’.
Once the biological mechanism of homeopathic cure as proposed by MIT is clearly understood, the scientific committee would have realized that the ‘molecular imprints’ of homeopathic drugs act by a biological mechanism that is entirely different from that of ‘molecular drugs’ of modern medicines.
They would have been easily convinced of the fallacy of considering RCTs as the last word and ‘golden law’ for measuring the efficacy of homeopathy. They would have been better convinced about the necessity of evolving newer methods of validations that are more realistically applicable to homeopathy than classical RCTs conducted by modern medicine.
Skeptics always ask for Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) for proving the ‘efficacy of homeopathy.
According to their viewpoint, homeopathy is ‘ineffective’ and ‘fake’ if there are no enough RCTs to support it. Some enthusiastic homeopaths having no understanding of ‘molecular imprints’ and their biological mechanism, often fall in this trap and try to do RCTS, which inevitably result in ‘failures’.
Those friends should be made to understand, RCTs are useful only in proving the efficacy of ‘molecular forms’ of drugs. They are not applicable in verifying the efficacy of ‘molecular imprints forms’ of drugs used as ultra-dilutions of homeopathy.
Molecular imprints contained in ultra-dilutions act by a biological mechanism that is entirely different from the actions of ‘molecular’ drugs. Molecular imprints cannot exhibit any biological action in the absence of pathogenic molecules having conformational affinities.to the particular molecular imprints contained in the selected drug, that could be determined only by ‘similarity of symptoms’. That is why RCTs cannot be used to validate homeopathy.
Issue of proving the efficacy of homeopathy could be satisfactorily addressed only when scientists recognize this difference in biological mechanism of molecular imprints and molecular drugs, and agree to evolve newer methods of validation that are more perfect and more compatible with the peculiar biological mechanism of homeopathic cure.
http://dialecticalhomeopathy.com/2015/04/30/select-committee-report/
REDEFINING HOMEOPATHY 