The Homeopathy Scam

Nick Cohen, in the Guardian:

On 1 December, faith healers will meet at Roots & Shoots in south London to discuss how to treat Aids with magic pills. They won't call themselves faith healers, of course, or shamans or juju men. They will present themselves as 'homeopaths': serious men and women whose remedies are as good as conventional medicine.

According to the advance publicity, Hilary Fairclough, a homeopath endorsed by no less than Jeanette Winterson, will describe the 'impressive' results from her clinic in Botswana. Harry van der Zee, co-founder of the Amma Resonance Healing Foundation, will say that 'in just a few days or weeks' African Aids patients he treated became 'symptom-free and able to return to their jobs and schools or to look after their children again'. All in all, the Society of Homeopaths promises to provide 'fascinating insights' for World Aids Day.

It can do no such thing. Of all the pseudo-sciences on offer, homeopathy is the most obviously spurious. Devised by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 18th century, it holds that the smaller the dose of a mineral or herb the more potent it is. Thus, if you go into a chemist and buy a homeopathic sulphur remedy marked 30C, the proportion of sulphur to inert packaging in a pill is 1 to 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. A glass of water is more likely to cure you...