From What’s New, the website of University of Maryland physics professor Bob Park
The Science and Technology Committee of the UK Parliament released a report urging the government to withdraw funding and licensing of homeopathy. It is unlikely to happen; even the Queen has her own personal homeopathist. This year is the 200th anniversary of Samuel Hahnemann’s “Organon of the Medical Art.” The prevailing philosophy of medicine at the time was “vitalism, the belief that life involves some spiritual essence. “Medicinal energy,” Hahneman wrote, “is most powerful when it communicates nothing material.” He was unaware of the extent to which he achieved this ideal by sequentially diluting his medications. It would be another 50 years before Loschmidt determined Avogadro’s number. It is now clear that Hahnemann was many dilutions beyond the dilution limit. Last week WN commented on the mistaken belief that cell phone radiation causes cancer. The photon energy in the microwave region of the spectrum is only about 1 millionth of the energy required to create a mutant strand of DNA, which is the initiation of cancer. There is no need to go any further. Epidemiology is expensive, time-consuming, and prone to statistical errors and faulty recall.
Related Posts
