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Author Topic:   Homeopathy
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 63 of 142 (427229)
10-10-2007 2:04 PM
Reply to: Message 62 by Kitsune
10-10-2007 1:14 PM


As both your links clearly state, the possibility of any effect from homeopathic medicines is rejected because of the lack of a mechanism. When comparing water to a homeopathic medicine, the most stringent analysis cannot discern which is which, so of course the human body cannot tell the difference, either.
I think it must remain a mystery why so many people, even very intelligent people who publish in prestigious journals, are vulnerable to quackery.
I think most scientists look at the evidence for things like homeopathy, ESP and UFOs and conclude that scientific experiments will never be sufficiently conclusive to convince true believers, but that the hallmark of a phenomenon that truly doesn't exist is that the evidence never improves over time, and that it never provides any insights that make predictions or that would help identify a mechanism. Predictions are a key part of science, and a missing mechanism is the common element in much quackery.
Another way to look at homeopathy is to think about cause and effect. When you take aspirin, we know it contains compounds that have an effect on the body. Even when we understood aspirin less well (and I believe the mechanisms behind its effects are still not well understood), it is quite obvious that aspirin contains something that can have an effect. There are chemicals in aspirin that can actually do things.
A homeopathic remedy has nothing but water. There's nothing in it that could cause anything to happen. If you drank the homeopathic remedy from a glass, it would contain more soap molecules from the last time you washed the glass then it would of the original substance.
Even the submicroscopic effects of quantum theory are detectable to us. That we can detect nothing that could have an effect in homeopathic medicines should be all you need to know. We do not live in a universe where a substance that isn't present can still have an effect.
Is there any such thing as homeopathic foods? Maybe I should start a company to sell homeopathic liquid sugar. It would be very low calorie. I'll just take a teaspoon of sugar, dilute it 10:1 about 30 times, then bottle it up with a nice label and sell it as homeopathic sugar. All the benefits of sugar with none of the calories or negative health effects!
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 62 by Kitsune, posted 10-10-2007 1:14 PM Kitsune has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 64 by NosyNed, posted 10-10-2007 3:36 PM Percy has not replied
 Message 65 by AdminAsgara, posted 10-10-2007 3:46 PM Percy has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 113 of 142 (460465)
03-15-2008 9:37 AM
Reply to: Message 112 by johnfolton
03-15-2008 9:18 AM


Re: Water Memory
whatever writes:
Water and Nanoelectronics Will Mix to Create Ultra-Dense Memory Storage Devices, Researchers Say
April 26, 2006
"We are particularly excited that water is the key ingredient in making these wires 'remember' their state."
Page not found | University of Pennsylvania
Even more exciting is what they say about the future of storage technology:
Though a scheme for the dense arrangement and addressing of these nanowires remains to be developed, such an approach would enable a storage density of more than 100,000 terabits per cubic centimeter. If this memory density can be realized commercially, a device the size of an iPod nano could hold enough MP3 music to play for 300,000 years without repeating a song or enough DVD quality video to play movies for 10,000 years without repetition.
Imagine being able to fill your iPod with tap water every morning to fill it with every song and movie ever recorded throughout time! But it goes beyond that! All we'll have to do is connect our computers up to the household plumbing to give them nearly infinite storage capacity! And the Internet will no longer require undersea cables to cross the ocean, the servers will just dump water into the ocean on one side of pond and servers on the other side will just suck the information up.
But the possibilities go far beyond electronic technology. Since water has been around forever it has been in contact with everything throughout the planet throughout all time and then diluted and mixed in the oceans. All the information about all of history and pre-history and all of geological time is just waiting there in the oceans for us to siphon it out.
And there's still the medical possibilities. Homeopathy hasn't even begun to explore what water can do. The same ordinary water found everywhere has also been in contact with every imaginable chemical over time, and so every drop of water anywhere is a cure for anything!
A new age dawns!
Oh, wait a minute, the article was talking about water's ability to give a wire the ability to remember it's state, not about water's ability to remember a state.
Never mind.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 112 by johnfolton, posted 03-15-2008 9:18 AM johnfolton has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 114 by johnfolton, posted 03-15-2008 9:49 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 115 of 142 (460531)
03-16-2008 8:31 AM
Reply to: Message 114 by johnfolton
03-15-2008 9:49 PM


Re: Water Memory
Sorry, Charley. That was sarcasm.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by johnfolton, posted 03-15-2008 9:49 PM johnfolton has not replied

  
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