Anti-homeopathy campaigners on social media frequently refer to a “research paper” published by one Kerala-based research team in support of their argument that potentized homeopathy medicines are highly toxic and dangerous, and may kill human beings even if used in minute homeopathic doses.
This much-celebrated research article titled ‘Dangerous Placebo During the COVID-19 Pandemic, A Series of Homoeopathic Arsenicum Album-Induced Liver Injury’ is available widelyon internet.
The main researcher, an “eminent hepatologist” attatched to a “center of excellence” of a leading hospital in kerala, who seems to be in charge of concocting clinical evidences for “dangers of homeopathy”, has declared that he has found out the quantity of arsenic present in homeopathic drug Arsenic Alb 30. According to him, 1 kg of Ars Alb 30 globules he purchased from market contains 0.18 mg of crude arsenic, and hence it is a very dangerous drug to be used in human beings!
This eminent allopathy scientist seems to have misunderstood that homeopathic drugs are administered to patients as kilogram doses of globules! Such foolish mistakes often happen to wise people when they try to talk about topics they do not know anything about.
1 kg of No 40 sugar globules commonly used by homeopaths approximately consists of around 32000 globules. That means, 1 medicated globule of Ars Alb 30 may contain 0.18 divided by 32000 or 0.00000562 mg of arsenic! Anybody can simply calculate how much negligible quantity of arsenic will enter our body by taking 3 or 4 hlobules of Ars Alb 30, even if the “invention” of our allopathy scientist is right!
What “danger” such a small quantity of arsenic can cause? Our Resepected scientist is bound to answer. Even if a person takes 4 pills of ars alb 30 twice daily for 360 days, total arsenic entering the body through 2880 pills will be much lesser than 18 microgram, that is much below the per day recommended dietary requirement!
Please do some calculations and tell me sir, how much arsenic will reach into the body by consuming Ars Alb 30, 4 pills twice daily for 3 days? Is it enough to cause toxicity “leading to liver failure and death”?
Arsenic is a trace element that occurs naturally in very small amounts in our diet. Its exact functions are not known. The estimated adult daily intake of arsenic from a typical diet is 12 to 50 micrograms. A dietary requirement of 12 to 25 micrograms per day has been suggested.
Let us look at some quick facts regarding arsenic in environment as well as our daily consumed food articles:
The arsenic content ranged from 0.001 mg per kilogram in cabbages and to 0.104 mg per kg also in bananas.
Inorganic arsenic that exists in soil is highly attracted to sulfur compounds in brussels sprouts, along with other cruciferous vegetables, including kale, broccoli, and cauliflower.
It has been evidenced that arsenic in garlic is present in the most toxic inorganic forms.
The amounts of Arsenic tended to be higher in non-processed nuts such as cashews, almonds, pine nuts, walnuts etc.
The arsenic content of raw rice varies from 0.1 to 0.4 mg of inorganic arsenic per kilogram of dry mass. Arsenic is concentrated in rice bran.
The cocoa powder revealed the maximum metal concentrations up to 0.035 mg per kilogram for cadmium, 0.146 mg per kilogram for lead and 0.013 mg per kilogram for arsenic.
It has also been reported that honey can be contaminated with heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium.
Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a form of groundwater pollution which is often due to naturally occurring high concentrations of arsenic in deeper levels of groundwater. It is a high-profile problem due to the use of deep tube wells for water supply in the Ganges Delta, causing serious arsenic poisoning to large numbers of people.
Tobacco contains arsenic in high amounts. Arsenic is introduced into tobacco through the farming process, and is present in small quantities in cigarette smoke. Inorganic arsenic is present in mainstream tobacco smoke and presumably in sidestream smoke as well. Smoking makes it harder for your body to get rid of arsenic before it damages your cells. Arsenic exposure and smoking can increase your risk of lung, kidney and bladder cancer, and heart disease.
A comparative study of arsenic content in banana and arsenic Alb 30 will be usefull to realize the folly of our “researcher” attacking homeopathy.
Wikipedia says that 1 kg of banana contains 0.1mg of arsenic. 1 gm banana contains 0.0001 mg of arsenic It means, 0.015 mg arsenic enters our body when we consume 150 gram of average sized banana.
Arsenic claimed to be detected in 1 kg of Arsenic Alb 30 globules is 0.18 mg. It means, Arsenic in 1 gm of Ars Alb 30 is 0.00018 mg. Arsenic in 150 gm of Ars Alb 30 is 0.027 mg.
Arsenic we get by consuming 150 gm of banana is approximately equivalent to what we get from 75 gm of Arsenic Alb 30 globules This 75 gm of Arsenic Alb 30 globules will contain 2400 globules.
It means, arsenic our children get by eating 150 gms of banana will be equivalent to arsenic they may get by taking 2400 Ars Alb 30 globules.
Since the homeopathic dosage of Ars Alb 30 per day is 3 or 4 globules, they will have to take it for 800 days to get arsenic equivalent to that they get from 150 gms of banana they eat one day.
If a child takes one banana every day for 300 days in a year, he will get arsenic equivalent to that he may get by taking 22.5kg of arsenic Alb 30 globules or 720000 globules of arsenic Alb 30.
Respected learned physician, kindly tell us which is more dangerous to our children, 3 or 4 globules of homeopathic arsenic Alb 30 per day, or one banana per day?
Actually, going though the “research paper” of this “allopathy scientist” is a real fun, making us wonder how these people claiming themselves to be “experts”, “researchers” and “scientists” could stoop so low, proving themselves to be pathetically biased and ignorant of the subject they are dealing with as well as the basics of “scientific method” they boast about!
In this “research paper” our researchers from “center of excellence” have claimed to present “three cases of acute liver injury, leading to death in one patient with underlying non-alcoholic steatohepatitis cirrhosis, after consumption of the homeopathic remedy Arsenic Alb 30 for COVID-19 prevention.”
But these “researchers” failed pathetically to understand the difference between Arsenic and homeopathic drug Ars Alb 30! They should know, homeopathic Ars Alb 30 will not contain even a single molecule of Arsenic, since t is diluted to 30c or a ratio “1:1 followed by 60 zeros”, which is very much above avogadro limit.
If their argument is that homeopathic drug Ars Alb 30 still contains arsenic particles, they should have tested the sample used by the patients they subjected to study, and the test report showing the presence and quantiy of arsenic in the sample attatched to the “research paper”! Instead, they say “analysis of drugs consumed could not be performed in view of inadequate sample availability”. Is it so difficult for anybody to procure a sample of homeopathic drug arsenic alb 30 for such a “sample analysis”? Without conducting such a sample analysis, how could they come to the conclusion that Ars Alb 30 contains such a high amount of arsenic to cause “acute liver toxicity and death” by using “4 pills” or “three drops”? They are bound to say how much arsenic will be present in 4 globules or 3 drops of homeopathic Ars Alb 30, and whether that quantity is enough to produce the toxic effects of arsenic.
And still our “expert hepatologist” builds up stories about “cases of acute liver injury, leading to death in one patient with underlying non-alcoholic steatohepatitis cirrhosis, after consumption of the homeopathic remedy Arsenic Alb 30 at a dosage of 4 pills twice daily for 3 days for covid-19 prevention.”
Let us now go to the first case they have reported in this “research paper”.
“It is a 70-year-old man with compensated non-alcoholic steatohepatitis-related cirrhosis and diabetes mellitus who consumed the homeopathic “immune booster” Ars Alb 30 as prescribed for 12 weeks prior to the onset of symptoms. He presented with jaundice and abdominal distension within four weeks after the onset of loss of appetite and well-being. The patient succumbed to complications related to ACLF, nine months after the initial diagnosis.”
Author says: “Analysis of drugs consumed could not be performed in view of inadequate sample availability. The patient and family consented to arsenic analysis in nail and hair samples which revealed extremely high levels of the heavy metal, supportive of arsenic toxicity and associated liver injury in the patient. Evaluation of hair and hair samples of two family members (below detection limits, method detection limit being 0.1 mg per kg), staying in the same household did not reveal levels signifying cluster arsenic poisoning from water or soil sources.”
Let me bring to your notice some simple facts. Since the minimum detection level of arsenic in nail and hairs is 0.1 mg per kilogram body weight, “high level” obviously means much above that minimum level. 0.1 mg per kilogram body weight means 7 mg for a person having 70kg body weight. To get 7 mg of arsenic accumulated in a body, kindly calculate how much ars alb 30 globules he should take, whereas according to the researcher himself, 1 kg of Ars Alb 30 globules he purchased from market contained only 0.18 mg of crude arsenic! That means, to get 7mg of arsenic in the body, the person should consume at least 38 kilograms of ars alb 30 globules! Remember, 1 kg of No: 40 sugar globules commonly used by homeopaths approximately consists of around 32000 globules.
According to researcher, the proposed toxicity was caused by taking 4 globules of Ars Alb 30 globules for 3-4 days as a preventive for covid-19! Calculations show that in order to get 7 mg of Arsenic accumulated in the body, the person should have consumed at least 1216000 globules!
Tell me dear researcher, what happened to you? Seems you have lost all your reasons, commonsense and arithmatic skills in your malicious eagerness to prove homeopathic medicine Ars Alb 30 is a very dangerous drug that caused the acute-on-chronic liver failure and subsequent death of a poor patient you treated at your “center of excellence”!
As a responsible and respectable physician, our researcher should have inquired where from this heavy load of arsenic came in the body of this patient, instead of implicating a few sugar pills of homeopathy drug Ars Alb 30 he was reported to have consumed. Any body with average commonsense and minimum scientific aware knows it is totally impossible for a homeopathic drug potentized above 12c or avogadro number to contain even a single molecule of original drug substance. If anybody could detect any traces of crude arsenic in a sample of Ars Alb 30, it would have come not from the original drug, but from the natural contamination of water, alcohol or cane sugar used for preparing that homeopathy drug. Beyond any doubt, sucha trace amount of arsenic present in the preparation at level of 0.18 mg per one kilogram as detected by our researcher will not be enough to produce any toxic effects. We all know, arsenic naturally is present very much above that level in any substance we regularly consume, such as water, rice, vegetable oils, vegetables, fruits, honey etc etc.
Then our researcher narrates the story of a 68-year-old male with systemic hypertension controlled on telmisartan who ingested homeopathic Ars Alb 30 as prescribed for four weeks prior to the onset of symptoms. There was no associated jaundice or cholestatic symptoms, but liver tests revealed acute hepatitis with an elevation of liver enzymes. The patient was not on any other hepatotoxic agents, over-the-counter medications, or herbal and dietary supplements. Further investigations did not reveal the presence of underlying chronic liver disease or portal hypertension. After ruling out all competing causes for acute liver injury, using the probability theory the researcher came to the conclusion that the cause of acute non-icteric hepatitis was the homeopathic remedy Ars Alb 30! He is very much sure even without any further study that homeopathic medicine Ars Alb 30 is a highly potent hepatotoxic drug! If Keechaka is killed, Bhima should be the killer. Wonderful scientific conclusion! What our researcher proved by this research is only that he is pathetically ignorant about the difference between toxic substance arsenic and totally non toxic post-avogadro diluted homeopathic preparation Ars Alb 30!
Next comes the history of a 48-year-old overweight woman who consumed homeopathic Ars Alb 30 sugar pills as COVID-19 preventive for one week prior to the onset of her symptoms of cholestatic jaundice. Prior to the development of jaundice, she had nonspecific gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea and progressive loss of appetite. Liver tests revealed conjugated hyperbilirubinemia with highly raised liver enzymes. The patient was not on any other hepatotoxic prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, or herbal and dietary supplements. Further investigations did not reveal the presence of underlying chronic liver disease or portal hypertension. After ruling out all competing causes for acute liver injury, using probability theory the researcher concluded that the cause of acute cholestatic hepatitis as the homeopathic remedy Arsenic Alb 30 the patient had taken. Chemical analysis using inductively coupled optical emission spectroscopy and triple-quadrupole gas chromatography with tandem mass spectroscopy method on two sets of Ars Alb 30 samples retrieved from the patient revealed D-mannose, and melezitose, and arsenic respectively. This much were enough for our respected scientist to draw the conclusion that Ars Alb 30 was the cause of acute liver injury.
We have already discussed a lot about the story of detection of arsenic in homeopathic drugs earlier in this article. According to the new story here, D-mannose and melezitose he detected in Ars Alb 30 samples are pictured as if they were highly hepatotoxic agents! Everybody except the researcher is aware that Mannose is a sugar monomer commonly found in cane sugar, which can also be produced in the human body from glucose, or converted into glucose. Mannose is used as a dietary supplement. It is not at all a toxic substance. Melezitose is a nonreducing trisaccharide sugar that is produced by many plant sap eating insects by an enzyme reaction. This melezitose can be partially hydrolyzed to glucose and turanose the latter of which is an isomer of sucrose. Melizitose is occassionally found in cane sugar samples, and is not at all a toxic substance! It is evident from these facts that as a responsible physician, our researcher utterly failed to diagnose the exact cause of liver injury of his patient, in a hurry for cooking evidences against homeopathy!
Our researcher seems to be blinded towards these plain and self evident facts, due to his extreme animosity and deep seated professional jealousy towards homeopathy! My only wonder remaining after reading this research paper is, how could a physician of such a respectable professional and social stature could stoop this much low and mean, forgetting even the basic principles of scientific method and professional ethics!
REDEFINING HOMEOPATHY 
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