Fuente: The Huffington post 02/02/2013
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Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize Winner, Takes Homeopathy Seriously
Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who won the Nobel
Prize in 2008 for discovering the AIDS virus, has surprised the
scientific community with his strong support for homeopathic medicine.
In a remarkable interview published in
Science magazine of
December 24, 2010, (1) Professor Luc Montagnier, has expressed support
for the often maligned and misunderstood medical specialty of
homeopathic medicine. Although homeopathy has persisted for 200+ years
throughout the world and has been the leading alternative treatment
method used by physicians in Europe, (2) most conventional physicians
and scientists have expressed skepticism about its efficacy due to the
extremely small doses of medicines used.
Most clinical research conducted on homeopathic medicines that has
been published in peer-review journals have shown positive clinical
results,(3, 4) especially in the treatment of respiratory allergies (5,
6), influenza, (7) fibromyalgia, (8, 9) rheumatoid arthritis, (10)
childhood diarrhea, (11) post-surgical abdominal surgery recovery, (12)
attention deficit disorder, (13) and reduction in the side effects of
conventional cancer treatments. (14) In addition to clinical trials,
several hundred basic science studies have confirmed the biological
activity of homeopathic medicines. One type of basic science trials,
called in vitro studies, found 67 experiments (1/3 of them replications)
and nearly 3/4 of all replications were positive. (15, 16)
In addition to the wide variety of basic science evidence and clinical
research, further evidence for homeopathy resides in the fact that they
gained widespread popularity in the U.S. and Europe during the 19th
century due to the impressive results people experienced in the
treatment of epidemics that raged during that time, including cholera,
typhoid, yellow fever, scarlet fever, and influenza.
Montagnier, who is also founder and president of the World Foundation
for AIDS Research and Prevention, asserted, "I can't say that
homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high
dilutions (used in homeopathy) are right. High dilutions of something
are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original
molecules."
Here, Montagnier is making reference to his experimental research
that confirms one of the controversial features of homeopathic medicine
that uses doses of substances that undergo sequential dilution with
vigorous shaking in-between each dilution. Although it is common for
modern-day scientists to assume that none of the original molecules
remain in solution, Montagnier's research (and other of many of his
colleagues) has verified that electromagnetic signals of the original
medicine remains in the water and has dramatic biological effects.
Montagnier has just taken a new position at Jiaotong University in
Shanghai, China (this university is often referred to as "China's MIT"),
where he will work in a new institute bearing his name. This work
focuses on a new scientific movement at the crossroads of physics,
biology, and medicine: the phenomenon of electromagnetic waves produced
by DNA in water. He and his team will study both the theoretical basis
and the possible applications in medicine.
Montagnier's new research is investigating the electromagnetic waves
that he says emanate from the highly diluted DNA of various pathogens.
Montagnier asserts, "What we have found is that DNA produces structural
changes in water, which persist at very high dilutions, and which lead
to resonant electromagnetic signals that we can measure. Not all DNA
produces signals that we can detect with our device. The high-intensity
signals come from bacterial and viral DNA."
Montagnier affirms that these new observations will lead to novel
treatments for many common chronic diseases, including but not limited
to autism, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and multiple
sclerosis.
Montagnier first wrote about his findings in 2009, (17) and then, in
mid-2010, he spoke at a prestigious meeting of fellow Nobelists where he
expressed interest in homeopathy and the implications of this system of
medicine. (18)
French retirement laws do not allow Montagnier, who is 78 years of
age, to work at a public institute, thereby limiting access to research
funding. Montagnier acknowledges that getting research funds from Big
Pharma and certain other conventional research funding agencies is
unlikely due to the atmosphere of antagonism to homeopathy and natural
treatment options.
Support from Another Nobel Prize winner
Montagnier's new research evokes memories one of the most sensational
stories in French science, often referred to as the 'Benveniste
affair.' A highly respected immunologist Dr. Jacques Benveniste., who
died in 2004, conducted a study which was replicated in three other
university laboratories and that was published in
Nature (19).
Benveniste and other researchers used extremely diluted doses of
substances that created an effect on a type of white blood cell called
basophils.
Although Benveniste's work was supposedly debunked, (20) Montagnier
considers Benveniste a "modern Galileo" who was far ahead of his day and
time and who was attacked for investigating a medical and scientific
subject that orthodoxy had mistakenly overlooked and even demonized.
In addition to Benveniste and Montagnier is the weighty opinion of
Brian Josephson, Ph.D., who, like Montagnier, is a Nobel Prize-winning
scientist.
Responding to an article on homeopathy in
New Scientist, Josephson wrote:
Regarding your comments on claims made for homeopathy:
criticisms centered around the vanishingly small number of solute
molecules present in a solution after it has been repeatedly diluted are
beside the point, since advocates of homeopathic remedies attribute
their effects not to molecules present in the water, but to
modifications of the water's structure.
Simple-minded analysis may suggest that water, being a fluid, cannot
have a structure of the kind that such a picture would demand. But cases
such as that of liquid crystals, which while flowing like an ordinary
fluid can maintain an ordered structure over macroscopic distances, show
the limitations of such ways of thinking. There have not, to the best
of my knowledge, been any refutations of homeopathy that remain valid
after this particular point is taken into account.
A related topic is the phenomenon, claimed by Jacques Benveniste's
colleague Yolène Thomas and by others to be well established
experimentally, known as "memory of water." If valid, this would be of
greater significance than homeopathy itself, and it attests to the
limited vision of the modern scientific community that, far from
hastening to test such claims, the only response has been to dismiss
them out of hand. (21)
Following his comments Josephson, who is an emeritus professor of Cambridge University in England, was asked by
New Scientist editors how he became an advocate of unconventional ideas. He responded:
I went to a conference where the French immunologist Jacques
Benveniste was talking for the first time about his discovery that
water has a 'memory' of compounds that were once dissolved in it --
which might explain how homeopathy works. His findings provoked
irrationally strong reactions from scientists, and I was struck by how
badly he was treated. (22)
Josephson went on to describe how many scientists today suffer from
"pathological disbelief;" that is, they maintain an unscientific
attitude that is embodied by the statement "even if it were true I
wouldn't believe it."
Even more recently, Josephson wryly responded to the chronic
ignorance of homeopathy by its skeptics saying, "The idea that water can
have a memory can be readily refuted by any one of a number of easily
understood, invalid arguments."
In the new interview in
Science, Montagnier also expressed
real concern about the unscientific atmosphere that presently exists on
certain unconventional subjects such as homeopathy, "I am told that some
people have reproduced Benveniste's results, but they are afraid to
publish it because of the intellectual terror from people who don't
understand it."
Montagnier concluded the interview when asked if he is concerned that
he is drifting into pseudoscience, he replied adamantly: "No, because
it's not pseudoscience. It's not quackery. These are real phenomena
which deserve further study."
The Misinformation That Skeptics Spread
It is remarkable enough that many skeptics of homeopathy actually say
that there is "no research" that has shows that homeopathic medicines
work. Such statements are clearly false, and yet, such assertions are
common on the Internet and even in some peer-review articles. Just a
little bit of searching can uncover many high quality studies that have
been published in highly respected medical and scientific journals,
including
the Lancet,
BMJ,
Pediatrics,
Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal,
Chest
and many others. Although some of these same journals have also
published research with negative results to homeopathy, there is simply
much more research that shows a positive rather than negative effect.
Misstatements and misinformation on homeopathy are predictable
because this system of medicine provides a viable and significant threat
to economic interests in medicine, let alone to the very philosophy and
worldview of biomedicine. It is therefore not surprising that the
British Medical Association had the sheer audacity to refer to
homeopathy as "witchcraft." It is quite predictable that when one goes
on a witch hunt, one inevitable finds "witches," especially when there
are certain benefits to demonizing a potential competitor (homeopathy
plays a much larger and more competitive role in Europe than it does in
the USA).
Skeptics of homeopathy also have long asserted that homeopathic
medicines have "nothing" in them because they are diluted too much.
However, new research conducted at the respected Indian Institutes of
Technology has confirmed the presence of "nanoparticles" of the starting
materials even at extremely high dilutions. Researchers have
demonstrated by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), electron
diffraction and chemical analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic
Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES), the presence of physical entities in
these extreme dilutions. (24) In the light of this research, it can now
be asserted that anyone who says or suggests that there is "nothing" in
homeopathic medicines is either simply uninformed or is not being
honest.
Because the researchers received confirmation of the existence of
nanoparticles at two different homeopathic high potencies (30C and 200C)
and because they tested four different medicines (Zincum met./zinc;
Aurum met. /gold; Stannum met./tin; and Cuprum met./copper), the
researchers concluded that this study provides "concrete evidence."
Although skeptics of homeopathy may assume that homeopathic doses are
still too small to have any biological action, such assumptions have
also been proven wrong. The multi-disciplinary field of small dose
effects is called "hormesis," and approximately 1,000 studies from a
wide variety of scientific specialties have confirmed significant and
sometimes substantial biological effects from extremely small doses of
certain substances on certain biological systems.
A special issue of the peer-review journal,
Human and Experimental Toxicology
(July 2010), devoted itself to the interface between hormesis and
homeopathy. (25) The articles in this issue verify the power of
homeopathic doses of various substances.
In closing, it should be noted that skepticism of any subject is
important to the evolution of science and medicine. However, as noted
above by Nobelist Brian Josephson, many scientists have a "pathological
disbelief" in certain subjects that ultimately create an unhealthy and
unscientific attitude blocks real truth and real science. Skepticism is
at its best when its advocates do not try to cut off research or close
down conversation of a subject but instead explore possible new (or old)
ways to understand and verify strange but compelling phenomena. We all
have this challenge as we explore and evaluate the biological and
clinical effects of homeopathic medicines.
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Montagnier, Claude Lavallee, Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by
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(21) Josephson, B. D., Letter, New Scientist, November 1, 1997.
(22) George A. Lone Voices special: Take nobody's word for it. New Scientist. December 9, 2006.
(23) Personal communication. Brian Josephson to Dana Ullman. January 5, 2011.
(24) Chikramane PS, Suresh AK, Bellare JR, and Govind S. Extreme
homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate
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(25) Human and Experimental Toxicology, July 2010: http://het.sagepub.com/content/vol29/issue7/
To access free copies of these articles, see: http://www.siomi.it/siomifile/siomi_pdf/BELLE_newsletter.pdf
Dana Ullman, MPH, is America's leading spokesperson for homeopathy and is the founder of
www.homeopathic.com . He is the author of 10 books, including his bestseller,
Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines. His most recent book is,
The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy
(the Foreword to this book was written by Dr. Peter Fisher, the
Physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II). Dana lives, practices, and
writes from Berkeley, California.
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