Guest post by Richard Rasker
Homeopathy has existed for 230 years already, but so far, good evidence for any efficacy is lacking. The Big Problem of course is that most homeopathic dilutions, if prepared correctly, don’t contain a single molecule of the original substance any more, which means that they cannot possibly (and don’t) have any effect – which is also the overwhelming consensus among scientists.
Yet undaunted, homeopaths not only keep claiming that their dilutions actually do something beyond placebo, but they also come up with various mechanisms to explain that even their most extreme dilutions still contain something that can have an effect. The latest claims involve nanoparticles, which are basically particles of the original, undiluted substance with sizes in the 1-100 nanometer range.
Here, I take a closer look how this nanoparticle hypothesis may or may not apply to one particular homeopathic preparation, natrum muriaticum or homeopathically diluted table salt (sodium chloride, NaCl). This ‘remedy’ was already created by Samuel Hahnemann himself, and still widely used by homeopaths today. Homeopaths ascribe a stunning range of ‘symptoms’ and thus therapeutic properties to this homeopathic salt.
If the nanoparticle hypothesis indeed describes the essential mechanism behind homeopathy, then it must by necessity apply to ALL homeopathic preparations, including natrum muriaticum.
According to homeopaths, homeopathic nanoparticles
1. are created by simply diluting and shaking a homeopathic solution,
2. are persistent, i.e. they somehow escape the normal dilution rate of 1:100 per dilution step,
3. are stable, i.e. they don’t break down easily,
4. enter a patient’s body by ingestion, and travel to the very sites where they are needed,
5. have almost miraculous therapeutic effects in patients,
6. yet evoke the exact opposite effects in healthy people (cf. ‘provings’).
However, there are problems:
Ad. 1: Table salt in an unsaturated solution does not form nanoparticles period. It always dissociates into sodium ions (Na+) and chlorine ions (Cl-). Yes, it is possible to create NaCl nanoparticles, but this is a very delicate process taking place outside a watery solution, and involves several other chemicals. Even then, those nanoparticles aren’t very stable, and dissociate into ions again within 24 hours; also they can’t be administered in liquid or pill form. But it is ludicrous to claim that a salty solution can produce NaCl nanoparticles simply by diluting and shaking the solution. Also, no homeopathic NaCl nanoparticles have ever ever been observed in a watery solution. The same goes for many other highly soluble substances that are often used in homeopathy.
Ad. 2: Homeopaths point to various mechanisms how their homeopathic substances supposedly get concentrated at the surface of the solution, where they somehow evade the 1:100 dilution ratio that occurs with each dilution step. One of these proposed mechanisms is so-called froth flotation – but froth flotation does not work for soluble substances like salt. In fact, people working on desalination projects would give their right arm for an easy way to get dissolved salt to concentrate by just shaking it. There is no evidence that such a localized concentration effect has ever been observed for salt, or for any other highly soluble substance.
Homeopaths also claim that it is this surface layer that is preferentially transferred to the next dilution step. They are wrong. In korsakovian dilution, all dilution steps take place in one small container. After every dilute-and-shake step, the container is upended, tossing out almost all of its contents – including the surface layer; it is then assumed that 1 percent of the solution is left behind, to be diluted by adding 99% water again. But even with the Hahnemannian method, dilution is usually done with a pipette – which means a liquid sample is taken from below the surface, not from a ‘surface monolayer’. Only when carefully pouring over liquid from one container into another can most of the surface layer be preserved in any consistent way. But this is very likely not how most homeopathic dilutions are made, especially in an industrial context. Exit persistence, even for insoluble substances that may actually aggregate at the surface as claimed.
Ad. 3: As no NaCl nanoparticles are formed or transferred, the only stable substance present is the water used.
Ad. 4: Any solid table salt nanoparticles will immediately dissociate again the moment they are ingested by a patient. No salt nanoparticles make it beyond the mouth and stomach, let alone that they are taken up and travel through the body in their original nanoparticle form.
Ad. 5, 6: No specific effects have ever been observed for homeopathically diluted salt. The Nuremberg Salt Trial of 1835 confirmed that natrum muriaticum does nothing special in healthy people, and there are no trials showing clear and repeatable effects in any patients suffering from any condition whatsoever. Which is of course to be expected: we all have some 200 grams of sodium chloride in our body, and it is de facto impossible that an infinitely diluted ghost of salt (or even a few milligrams of salt) can have any effects at all.
But lack of effects aside: if the nanoparticle hypothesis doesn’t apply to natrum muriaticum, then it doesn’t apply to homeopathy period – because otherwise, there would have to be multiple mechanisms of action for homeopathy, which is astronomically unlikely.
So what DO homeopaths have? Basically, they have a few (with the emphasis on ‘few’) studies where they purchased particular homeopathic preparations from manufacturers, and examined samples from those preparations using a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) – at which point they found nanoparticles of the original substance.
So how can this be explained? Easy: the manufacturer most likely botched the dilution process or took shortcuts, resulting in a certain amount of the original substance ending up in what should be a 30C or 200C or whatever dilution – and that is what the researchers found. But why did they find nanoparticles? Also easy: TEM samples can’t contain water, so they are dried by evaporating the water. At which point any dissolved substance will clump together and/or crystallize – forming small solid (nano)particles, even if there weren’t any nanoparticles in the solution to begin with.
To the best of my knowledge, researchers never created a homeopathic dilution from scratch while monitoring/analyzing it for the presence of nanoparticles, nor did they actually test the proposed mechanisms involved. Again, they simply purchased a few homeopathic preparations, found nanoparticles, and then went wild, fantasizing about how those nanoparticles got there, and jumping to the conclusion that those nanoparticles not only have magical therapeutic properties, but also ‘explain’ all of homeopathy. This assuming things and jumping to conclusions is the hallmark of pseudoscience, not science.
Also note that most claims about nanoparticles are based on one paper by Chikramane et al., in which exclusively metal-based homeopathic preparations are analyzed. No trials with salt or other soluble substances could be found.
What is more: several studies mention analyzing homeopathic preparations, without finding any trace of the original substance, nanoparticles or otherwise.
In other words: homeopathic nanoparticles are just nonsensical, pseudo-scientific nanobabble. They certainly don’t ‘explain’ homeopathy. If 30C or 200C or whatever diluted homeopathic preparations still contain traces of the original substances, then that is likely due to a flawed dilution process. This is infinitely more plausible than those hypothetical musings about elusive nanoparticles, highly variable (read: unreliable) transfer mechanisms and completely unexplained (and so far unobserved) effects on living organisms.
20 Responses to A salty tale: homeopathic nanoparticles revisited once again
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It is so much fun watching people who set-up a straw man and then happily and joyfully knock them down and then pretend that they won the fight. Yippee!
However, those of you who have done your homework know better.
It is as though the Rasker cannot imagine anything other than particles and in particle and wave world.
If he had done just a little homework (he rarely does), he would have discovered this paragraph in my article, Exploring Possible Mechanisms of Hormesis and Homeopathy in the Light of Nanopharmacology and Ultra-High Dilutions, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8207273/
The journal in which my article was published is called “Dose Response,” and it is the leading multidisciplinary journal specializing in hormesis (which is a very worthy specialty area in science that explores the power of exceedingly small doses of certain substances in certain biological systems.
Oh…and I should add that anyone who doesn’t believe in the power of nanodoses must believe that our hormones and cell-signaling agents are placeboes because they often act in doses equivalent to 10 to the negative 9 to 19th power!
So, as promised, here’s the quote from my article:
Vigorously shaken ultra-high dilution of lithium chloride and sodium chloride were irradiated by X-and y-rays at 77 K and then let them warm up to room temperature. Rey claimed, “During that phase, their thermoluminescence has been studied, and it was found that, despite their dilution beyond the Avogadro number, the emitted light was specific of the original salts dissolved initially.”
Oh…and this reference is to a major (high-impact) physics journal: Rey L. Thermoluminescence of ultra-high dilutions of lithium chloride and sodium chloride. Physica A. 2003;323(15):67–74. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437103000475
OR…perhaps the Rasker will now claim that this is a placebo effect! Ah c’mon, what other explanation does he have?
Oh, I guess he can go back to his usual ad homs against me or another homeopath, especially since the researcher in this study was not a homeopath.
“Homework” for any scientist or rational person does not include reading DUllman’s drivel; it fact, it might even include actively avoiding it.
That article of yours is from five years ago, Dana. Has anyone paid it any attention? Has it changed anything?
Nope. It’s just another bit of pathetic, delusional bumwash that you imagine lends credence to your fantasies.
It does no such thing.
That paper by Louis Rey was confirmed by Jose Texeira from CNRS and Raphael Visoekas (expert in thermoluminescence). The results were independently replicated under controlled conditions:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1089/acm.2006.12.437
Hey, dince you’re a dentist, you still need to tell me what WHO study confirmed that “it doesn’t work.” You still haven’t shared the reference.
Lenny…Thanx for inquiring about my article. According to TWO dialogues that I’ve had with ChatGPT, it acknowledges that viability of homeopathic nanodoses and provides impressive compliments for my article.
https://danaullman.substack.com/p/are-there-plausible-scientific-explanations
https://danaullman.substack.com/p/dialogue-with-chatgpt-on-compelling
The SECOND article will be of SPECIAL interests to the skeptics cult here at this website. Dinosaurs are a better name of this cult.
That said, I appreciate your Artificial Ignorance.
Hi Dana
I think you missed an important fact!
Even if you have stringed together a lot of words, many of which you evidently do not understand. Even if you managed to have those word-strings published in publications that someone actually reads. And even if something of what your wonderfull sciency word strings describe really happens in the water before it evaporates from the sugar pills, all that sciency stuff does not make the small sugar pills have unexplainable medical effects.
I am sorry to have to tell you this, but even AI cannot find evidence that so-called homeopathic remedies have any medicinal effects beyond that which is explained by good old gullibility. Try asking it yourself.
@Dana Ullman
It is so much fun watching water-shaking clowns embarrass themselves by responding to a critical article without actually addressing any of the points made in that article. Your comprehensive reading skills are quite special – one could almost say of a homeopathic level.
This is EXACTLY why homeopathy is a pseudoscience: you clowns pick and choose a few real physical and chemical phenomena that appear related to your beliefs – and then start musing and hypothesizing about how those things may(!) prove how homeopathy works. You do this not only without actually testing those fantasies in a rigorous and repeatable way, but even without providing any good evidence that homeopathy works in the first place(*).
And another miss! Hormones are highly specific chemicals that act on highly specific receptors, with highly specific effects – which, however, may vary depending on the actual cells and organs that respond to those hormones. But the point here is that there is an absolutely HUGE amount of evidence for the very real effects of hormones. In stark contrast, there is no robust scientific evidence whatsoever for any effects of your shaken water.
However, the point that I made (which of course you failed to understand, let alone address) is that homeopathic table salt cannot possibly have any of the effects that you water-shaking clowns ascribe to it, simply because it is a very basic chemical, ubiquitous throughout our body. It is present in literally all bodily fluids and cells. Which means that an extra few milligrams or micrograms of it can’t possibly make a difference, let alone that homeopathic dilutions – botched or not – can do anything at all. Which of course was also demonstrated in the Nuremberg Salt Trial of 1835.
Yet you water-shaking clowns keep insisting that diluted salt it is a real homeopathic ‘medicine’, and are contorting yourselves in the most amusing ways to come up with extremely far-fetched and convoluted explanations. Which of course are never actually tested in any rigorous manner.
Ah, yes, interesting. But you clearly failed to understand Rey’s key finding: he claims to observe thermoluminescence effects of ultra-diluted lithium chloride and sodium chloride, without any physical traces of the original solute being present(**). No nanoparticles are involved at all, and Rey himself calls his findings a “ghost effect”.
The most likely explanation is however that Rey still found some salt in his ultra-high dilutions. And he isn’t the first. In fact my whole posting is predicated on the fact that homeopathic dilutions are often found to contain traces of the original substances (something that you apparently missed). The most rational explanation is that the production process of those dilutions was somehow flawed. Also, quack company Boiron seems to be involved in creating these dilutions, which doesn’t exactly instil confidence in the quality. Furthermore, note that Rey’s detection method is still indirect, so no analysis for actual LiCl or NaCl was carried out, and he used just one dilution (15C).
I can think of several better ways to really trace what happens to sodium chloride in a solution, e.g. by using radioactive sodium isotopes – and radio-isotopes can also be used to trace other substances during and after homeopathic dilution. This way, it can be determined exactly what happens to the original substance, and also whether any traces of the original substance found in fact stem from the original substance, or are contaminants from the environment, or are something completely different.
I can find some hints about this in the 1950’s, but no researcher has done any experiments with homeopathic dilutions in this way in more recent years.
So nope, no nanoparticles, just a lot of nanobabble.
*: By your own admission, Boiron’s best-selling (~ $600 million annually) nostrum oscilloquack is the most effective homeopathic ‘medicine’ in existence, supposedly shortening the duration of common cold symptoms by an amazing 5%! And this result has been replicated not just once, not twice, but three times! Boiron itself did 2 of those studies, so you know it’s been done by (hahaha) professionals, without any conflict of interest, woo-hoo!
**: In Rey’s literal words: “… the initial addition of a solute (NaCl and LiCl) in the original D2O leaves a permanent effect even when, by successive dilutions made under strong vibration, all traces of solute have disappeared.”
Richard:
1. Repeating “water-shaking clowns” only makes your “arguments” be considered fallacious from the outset.
Ullman’s review does not select only a “few real physical phenomena”; it considers several findings related to the topic he is presenting. The way to determine whether those phenomena are rigorous and repeatable is not by calling them “fantasies,” but by conducting rigorous experiments. And some of those experiments have been achieved. Not only is there already some good evidence that homeopathy works, but also at the physicochemical level.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1089/acm.2019.0064
“To conclude, the most promising techniques used so far are NMR relaxation, optical spectroscopy, and electrical impedance measurements. In these three areas, several sets of replicated high-quality experiments provide evidence for specific physicochemical properties of homeopathic preparations
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13643-023-02313-2
“The quality of evidence for positive effects of homoeopathy beyond placebo (high/moderate/low/very low) was high for I-HOM and moderate for ALL-HOM and NI-HOM. There was no support for the alternative hypothesis of no outcome difference between homoeopathy and placebo“
Keep your 1835 test. There is evidence that small quantities can have physiological effects.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043661821003224
“Herein we provide evidence for the induction of reproducible biological responses in multiple biological systems at ligand concentrations from 10−18 M to 10−24 M. These findings elucidate the capacity of a number of biological systems to display extraordinary sensitivity to ultra-low concentrations of ligand”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19420889.2025.2612465
“The emphasis put by critics of homeopathy on the incomprehensibility of the action of very high dilutions is not justified. Homeopathy functions well with dilutions where information about the drug is gustatorily detected by the body in the normal way and that should be the subject of discussion. The potential effect of small doses of drugs as discussed above sufficiently supports the validity of homeopathy as a therapeutic method. The effects of high dilutions should be accepted as an apparently empirical fact which is in no way decisive for the therapeutic system.”
2. Rey could not observe nanoparticles because his research method was not the one used in nanoscience. The “ghost” effect observed by Rey mainly refers to water memory. At that time, only a few researchers had indirectly suggested the presence of nanoparticles; it was not until 2011 with Chikramane that it was experimentally demonstrated.
The “ghost” effect is consistent with that of other experiments using different techniques (not nanoparticle-based); the hypothesis that the effects are solely due to “contamination” is no longer supported. You should know this, Richard, but if you disagree, why don’t you refute the data from Demangeat’s experiments?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167732222010388
That article of yours is from five years ago, Dana. Has anyone paid it any attention? Has it changed anything?
Nope. It’s just another bit of pathetic, delusional bumwash that you imagine lends credence to your fantasies.
It does no such thing.
Rasker:
1. “Good evidencie for any efficacdy is lacking”. Ironically, Edzard Ernst himself says the opposite: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-43592-3
“Several well-conducted clinical studies of homeopathy with positive results have been published. It is therefore not true to claim that there is no good trial evidence at all
2. Without survey data, one cannot speak of an “overwhelming consensus among scientists.” And even if such a consensus existed, the validity of an argument cannot be based on what those scientists believe due to popularity.
3. If NaCl dissociates, that does not imply that the dissociated ions cannot form nanoparticles. Nanoparticles of NaCl have indeed been observed in crystallized form and as ions.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1475491615000740
“In this present study, we have investigated the inorganic salt based homeopathic medicines such as Natrum muriaticum (NaCl)… All the electron diffraction patterns are mosaic single crystal patterns in 6c, 200c, and 1 M, but 30c has polycrystalline pattern. EDX studies show significant peaks of sodium and chlorine in all potencies along with silica and oxygen peaks at higher potencies from 30c, 200c and 1 M.
4. Following the same previous paper, the claim that the flotation mechanism does not apply to salt is incorrect: “Inorganic salt based homeopathic medicines retain particles, ranging from nano to large size particles, of the starting salt despite super Avogadro dilution. This is exactly analogous to the behavior of metal based homeopathic medicines.
5. Korsakovian potencies are not the same as common potencies.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30144789/
“To produce the 200 cK, the starting material was the 4 cH potency but the following steps were carried out in the same calibrated container using a Korsakov machine (Labotics) that automatically emptied, refilled and dynamised the flask… The Gelsemium yielded the largest quantity of material (36 times more than from copper at the same potentisation, 30 cH). The existence of this material demonstrates that the step-by-step process used (dynamised or not) does not match with the theoretical expectations in a dilution process”
6. The 1835 trial is not a clinical trial evaluating efficacy, but a proving. This proving, although considered rigorous for the standards of the time, could be regarded as low quality when compared with modern provings. Modern provings with better methodology confirm that some homeopathic remedies produce effects in healthy and sensitive subjects.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1475491615000685
“We believe that ours is probably the most promising approach in the human research field of homeopathy. It has been developed thoroughly, proven that it can be used, has replicable results and a sound theoretical underpinning”
7. Rasker makes ridiculous claims saying there are “few studies” (although he did not conduct a single review), and says the samples cannot be valid because in all studies the samples are purchased rather than made from scratch, which according to him is “a hallmark of pseudoscience.” For this, Rasker claims that many of the findings are based only on a single article by Chikramane.
Rasker is lying. In response to the nonsense said at the time by Harriet Hall on her blog, Chikramane conducted a study using laboratory-prepared samples (they did not purchase them) and confirmed the results again. This study has been available since 2012.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/la303477s](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/la303477s
“we performed controlled experiments closely mimicking the homeopathic manufacturing process of successive dilution with succussion and analyzed the concentration of gold in various parts of the sample.
8. “What is more: several studies mention analyzing homeopathic preparations, without finding any trace of the original substance, nanoparticles or otherwise.”
Which studies? Rasker does not mention them. I am only aware of one study that claims not to have found nanoparticles. And guess what—it was a study commissioned by the Center For Inquiry a few years ago to sue Walmart. The study was never published; it is only mentioned anecdotally.
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/14130827/CFI-v-Boiron-Complaint-FINAL.pdf
The lawsuit states that CFI tested various products using FTIR and X-ray spectroscopy, but they do not provide results. They also say they used SEM-EDS for Arnica, but ironically they did find traces of silicon there. Rasker should explain why, since 2022, CFI has not published the results or the samples—there is nothing available.
On the other hand, CFI should eat its words because, using practically the same methods, it is indeed possible to identify specific components in homeopathic remedies up to 200CH.
https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/abstract/10.1055/a-2721-3317
“This study characterized Nux vomica homeopathic potencies (Q to 200cH) compared with an ethanol control. The characterization confirmed that nanostructures and physicochemical behaviors are intrinsic properties of potentized samples, not solvent artifacts.”
9. The conclusion that nanoparticles are “nanobabble” and “nonsensical” has no empirical or experimental support; they are merely the delusions of a pseudoskeptic like Rasker, desperate to avoid admitting he was wrong. There is no evidence that the presence of specific nanoparticles is caused by a “flawed production process,” since experiments with both commercial and controlled samples have consistently shown the presence of nanoparticles. If Rasker disagrees, he should present his own results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Another blur of waving hands, Sandbrain. And deflection, and whataboutery. Same as ever. Because it’s all you have.
As ever. If homeopathy worked as you claim, the evidence would be overwhelming and unarguable.
And it isn’t. At all. And you know it. You just can’t admit it.
Self-delusion, Sandbrain. It’s why nobody pays you or Dana any heed. You are insignificant, deluded loons who howl inanities into an uncaring void. We respond only out of a sense of fun. In some ways it’s cruel but, hey. It’s a good game. You keep playing.
Lenny, you’re always hurling insults and making ad hominem attacks; there isn’t a single piece of reasoning in any of your comments. You’ve even made up references that don’t exist (such as claiming that the WHO had issued a “report refuting the effectiveness of homeopathy”). If you have an anger management issue, you should see a mental health professional.
Dream on, Sandbrain. Look up what the WHO said in an open letter from 21/08/2009. And you still don’t understand what an ad hom is, do you?
And, strangely, that overwhelming evindence that we keep asking for that has to be out there if homeopathy works as you claim it does has yet to be presented by you. Wee keep asking. You keep deflecting.
Flapdoodle, flannel and handwave all you like. We’ll keep laughing at you.
Lenny, you said that the WHO published a report “proving that it doesn’t work.” But you can’t provide a reference. The 2009 letter you mentioned was published in the BMJ; it’s not a report, it’s an opinion piece by Voice of Young Scientists (from Sense About Science). Are you saying you’re tricking sources?
Oh dear, Sandbrain.
Still nitpicking other peoples’ arguments because you know you haven’t a shred of decent evidence to support your own?
It’s pathetic to to watch you delusional clowns looking for straws to grasp.
The letter was sent to the WHO as well as being published in the BMJ.
The response of the WHO?
“Our evidence-based WHO TB treatment/management guidelines, as well as the International Standards of Tuberculosis Care (ISTC) do not recommend use of homeopathy.” — Dr Mario Raviglione, Director, Stop TB Department, WHO
“WHO’s evidence-based guidelines on treatment of tuberculosis…have no place for homeopathic medicines.” — Dr Mukund Uplekar, TB Strategy and Health Systems, WHO
“The WHO Dept. of HIV/AIDS invests considerable human and financial resources […] to ensure access to evidence-based medical information and to clinically proven, efficacious, and safe treatment for HIV… Let me end by congratulating the young clinicians and researchers of Sense about Science for their efforts to ensure evidence-based approaches to treating and caring for people living with HIV.” — Dr Teguest Guerma, Director Ad Interim, HIV/AIDS Department, WHO
“Thanks for the amazing documentation and for whistle blowing on this issue… The Global Malaria programme recommends that malaria is treated following the WHO Guidelines for the Treatment of Malaria.” — Dr Sergio Spinaci, Associate Director, Global Malaria Programme, WHO
“We have found no evidence to date that homeopathy would bring any benefit to the treatment of diarrhoea in children…Homeopathy does not focus on the treatment and prevention of dehydration – in total contradiction with the scientific basis and our recommendations for the management of diarrhoea.” — Joe Martines, on behalf of Dr Elizabeth Mason, Director, Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development, WHO
Pretty equivocal, no?
@Sandbox2
It’s always fun to see water-shaking clowns going into Damage Control Mode, trying to defend their fantasies as if they were real 🙂
This says it all, really:
So science is just another opinion, and scientific consensus is merely unwarranted popularity. Sure.
Maybe you want to sign up for my astrology class? Just $10,000 for the whole year, and given that Ram is the classical Mars ascendant (as proven by all the wars going on right now), my prediction is that you’ll feel right at home! And oh, I believe there’s an opening in our alchemy department as well – just the perfect position for you water-shaking clowns. No doubt, you’ll succeed in turning lead into gold within a few months, so the tuition cost of $50,000 shouldn’t be a problem – you’ll earn it back in no time at all.
About what is and what isn’t in homeopathic ‘medicines’:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12303440/
So there you go. Arsenicum album without any arsenic at all, in any form or shape, including nanoparticles. Same with mercury.
But what WAS there was lead. LOTS of lead – toxic amounts of lead in fact. Lead that should not be there at all.
And then there were the homeopathic pills ‘n powders: almost all contained contaminants in sometimes huge amounts, most of which were not declared on the label at all.
In summary: homeopathy is based on deception, lies and fairy tales. Not only does it not work at all, it can even be actively harmful. It often does not contain what is claimed), and equally often it does contain all sorts of unlisted contaminants, including toxic ones such as lead. Especially children are at risk here, for two reasons:
– Children are extremely susceptible to brain damage through lead exposure – in fact, there is no safe limit for lead exposure, and damage is consistently found at even the lowest exposure levels.
– Parents believe the two Big Lies of homeopathy, i.e. that it is effective as well as inherently safe, and thus tend to give their children homeopathic preparations rather than real medicines.
Of course you water-shaking clowns will keep lying that homeopathy is safe and effective, and truth be told: most people escape homeopathic treatment relatively unharmed – with only minor financial damage. But it is ridiculous to call homeopathic nostrums ‘medicines’, because they most definitely aren’t.
And of of course, no nanoparticles are involved – or rather: there are no doubt plenty of different nanoparticles in homeopathic nostrums, but they don’t do anything special. Just look at natrum muriaticum: even if this would form nanoparticles due to interaction with silica combined with shaking, then ordinary sea water should contain those exact same nanoparticles, as all ingredients are present: dissolved salt, silica, and endless shaking. Yet no-one argues that a few drops of sea water have special medicinal properties. (All apart from the problem that ingesting tiny bits of salt in whatever form can’t possibly do anything because we already have lots of it in our body.)
So only when you clowns do the shaking and diluting does anything special happen? Yeah, sure, in your dreams.
Rasker:
1. I never said that science is a matter of opinion; I told you that scientific consensus must be based on evidence. But you seem to think that scientific consensus is an opinion poll. It’s up to you to provide the international study that surveyed a large sample of scientists about their views on homeopathy—and whether that sample even knows what homeopathy is and is informed about it.
2. I was the one who gave you the reference to Cyrac et al. in previous discussions. The study you’re citing is quite amusing because Cyrac claims that many homeopathic remedies are contamined, but his samples are limited to a single region of India. Assuming these findings are legitimate, the method they used wasn’t consistent with standard nanoscience practices. While you say that homeopathy is just “sugar water,” Cyrac says that homeopaths use mother tinctures. And the authors themselves say that in mother tinctures, although they find some heavy metals, they also find what they claim to contain.
3. Cyrac doesn’t even attempt to establish a causal relationship; there are no documented cases of hepatotoxicity in the article. And even if there were cases in his other publications, they bear no resemblance to the cases of hepatotoxicity associated with “conventional” medicine. In fact, if we give him the benefit of the doubt, standardization would solve the problem by reducing contaminants.
4. It’s quite funny because you’re complaining about one of Chikramane et al.’s studies for using commercial samples, but you don’t complain that Cyrac did the same thing. Furthermore, the two studies are not equivalent due to the types of techniques employed. On the other hand, Chikramane et al., in their 2012 study, continued to detect NPs even when they conducted everything under controlled conditions, and this same result was replicated in other laboratories under highly controlled conditions:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39168134/
https://www.longdom.org/open-access/nanoparticle-characterization-of-traditional-homeopathicallymanufactured-emgelsemium-sempervirensem-medicines-and-placeb-22284.html
So you should be able to explain why Cyrac et al. do not cite any research on NPs at all in their references. You should also explain how it is that controlled experiments (as you request) conducted on controlled production lines with rigorous cleaning processes (unlike the samples from India) continue to yield NPs.
5. Whether or not there are biological effects is something that must be demonstrated by clinical or in vitro/in vivo trials. And if there are NPs but no biological effects, that still refutes your claim that “they can’t contain anything.” Seawater is a saturated solution of various salts; it’s not the same as the liquid used by homeopaths.
I sense you’re getting more and more angry, perhaps because you wrote a poor-quality book that, with just a few references, undermines the chapter you devoted to homeopathy.
@Sandox
I don’t complain about Chikramane and other researchers purchasing the nostrums they work with. I merely point out that anything they find in those products are very likely contaminants, and not the result of a highly convoluted chain of elusive mechanisms that somehow lie at the core of homeopathy.
Philips just did what any researcher in homeopathy should ALWAYS do: properly analyze the nostrums they work with for anything they can find. Then first and foremost they should accept those findings, and perhaps come up with likely hypotheses explaining what they found. Contamination as a result of bad hygiene and sloppy production practices are by far the simplest and most likely explanations (Occam, anyone?).
Instead, those water-shaking clowns start out by positing a special homeopathic mechanism, and then focus all their efforts on trying to find support for that mechanism. Anything contradicting their preconceived ideas is ignored or ‘explained’ by more convoluted handwaving – the hallmark of pseudoscience, in other words.
Of course this whole circus about what is and shat isn’t found in homeopathic dilutions to explain how homeopathy supposedly works is a huge waste of time: homeopathy hasn’t even been proven to work in the first place.
Even by your own admission, the most successful and effective homeopathic products are supported by maybe 3 or 4 weakly positive trials, showing tiny effects at best. And there are only a handful of such products.
Anyway, since dyed-through-the-wool pseudoscience supporters like you can’t be reasoned with on the basis of established facts, let’s look at it a different way.
Ullman is calling homeopathy “The Future of Medicine”. Funny thing is, he has said this already since 1990 or thereabouts. So when will this future arrive? Because in all those 35+ years, real medicine has not adopted homeopathy in any significant manner, and no convincing scientific evidence of any efficacy has been found. If anything, science and medicine have only rejected homeopathy more firmly since ~2010, after large reviews failed to show any benefits for patients. And notably, no progress of any kind has been reported in treatment outcomes in all those decades.
In the same time frame, real medicine has achieved huge progress, including breakthroughs such as immunotherapy for several types of cancer and other diseases, the CRISPR/Cas mechanism for genetic manipulation, and recent pharmacological breakthroughs such as semaglutide, to name just a few.
So let’s take Ullman’s most recent fad of calling homeopathy ‘nanopharmacology’, predicting (again, yawn) that this now really is The Future of Medicine, and that anyone not on board with it is going the way of the dinosaurs.
So, when do you think that real medicine will catch on to this? When will this homeopathic nanopharmacology break through into the world of regular medicine?
I propose a time period of 5 years from now to look for any developments in this respect – as in: real applications, or at the very least broad scientific acceptance of the basic premise (i.e. that shaking and diluting of stuff creates special nanoparticles with clearly proven therapeutic properties). So not just more hypothetical musings, nanobabble and other pseudoscientific gibberish from just a handful of water-shaking clowns, but thousands of real scientists taking this very seriously and widely supporting it.
To make it more interesting, we could even make a little bet: I’ll pay you $1000 if in 5 years, Ullman’s ‘homeonanopharmacology’ has made any inroads in real medicine. But you pay me $1000(*) if by that time, nothing has significantly changed compared to now, and homeopathy and this nanoparticle thing are still “The Medicine of the Future” or vice versa.
And no, I will not accept as payment a wallet that once held lots of cash, regardless of any brass and nickel nanoparticles that may still be found therein.
Richard:
Your complaint about the paper by Chickramane et al. is that they only used a single commercial batch. While contamination cannot be ruled out, the fact is that it is hypocritical on your part to cite the study by Cyrac et al., which was also based on commercial samples. There are differences between both studies. Chikramane et al. (2010) state that the samples were taken from Willmar Schwabe India. Cyrac et al. mention several brands including Willmar (https://cdn-links.lww.com/permalink/md/p/md_2025_07_04_philips_md-d-24-15988_sdc1.pdf
), but unfortunately the data in the attached document are illegible (https://cdn-links.lww.com/permalink/md/p/md_2025_07_04_philips_md-d-24-15988_sdc3.pdf
).
Chikramane et al. not only used ICP-AES, but also SAED and TEM. Cyrac et al. only employed ICP, mass spectrometry, and gas chromatography. Contamination is a satisfactory explanation if there are insufficient hygiene practices, but since Cyrac et al. did not apply TEM and SAED, it is difficult to assess whether it is merely contamination.
Even if the study by Cyrac et al. supports the contamination hypothesis, this does not explain cases involving manufacturing processes under hygienic conditions (such as those of Van Wassenhoven et al.) or when remedies are prepared in laboratory settings (as in Chikramane et al. 2012). Ironically, you have said that pseudoscience consists of ignoring facts you do not like; in your own words, by ignoring what does not fit the contamination hypothesis, you become a pseudoscientist.
Homeopathy has already been shown to have more effect than a placebo, and this effect is consistent across several meta-analyses. Whether a particular treatment works or not should be determined by meta-analyses for specific conditions or when there are indications for those conditions.
The emergence of nanomedicine with nanoparticles (NPs) from the field of homeopathy already has applications in industry (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30616251/
); it would not be surprising if in a few years it also has applications in “conventional” medicine. You should pay those 1,000 now, although I really doubt that you will.
@Sandbox2
Then you really should learn how to read. My main observation (or complaint if you will) was that almost all believers in nanohomeopathy refer to that one paper of Chikramane. And I also noted that this paper exclusively looked at a handful of nostrums based on metals, not salt or other solubles.
All of which are completely unsuitable to detect nanoparticles in solution. And all of which will almost inevitably produce nanoparticles of any substance that was originally dissolved in the solution – because all these analysis methods involve evaporating any liquid (water and/or alcohol) from the sample to begin with.
So the results of these studies are completely meaningless. They don’t tell us anything about nanoparticles, and they don’t tell us anything about homeopathy – except that belief in homeopathy is closely linked to scientific incompetence, and that most homeopathic nostrums are contaminated with all sorts of substances. Which may or may not include the original substance.
I see no reference to ‘nano’ or ‘particles’ or ‘medicine’ at all, just a couple of water-shaking imbeciles who claim that they can tell the difference between ordinary water and shaken water. So you are lying – as usual.