WATER MEMORY' THEORY REVIVAL BOOSTS
HOMOEOPATHY
-
Pune , July 20
THE emergence
of homoeopathic medicines as over-the-counter (OTC) products in India
coincides with the presentation of a paper by Swiss chemist Dr Louis
Rey. The paper, which is to be published in the reputed Physica A
journal shortly, says even though they should be identical, the structure
of hydrogen bonds in pure water is very different from that in homeopathic
dilutions of salt solutions.
This view
assumes significance in the context of the fact that scientists reject
the theory that water retains a memory of substances dissolved in
it - a theory central to homeopathy, the practitioners of which treat
their patients with formulations so dilute that they may not contain
even a single molecule of the active compound. In fact, the proposition
that water has "memory" had cost one of France's top allergy
researchers, Dr Jacques Benveniste, his funding and his reputation
in 1988.
Dr Rey has
now revived the "memory of water" theory with his findings
based on the use of thermo-luminescence to study the structure of
solids and technique involving bathing a chilled sample with radiation.
When the temperature of the sample increases, the stored energy is
released as light in a pattern that reveals the atomic structure of
the sample.
The Swiss
chemist, in order to test the basic tenet of homoeopathy that patterns
of hydrogen bonds can survive successive dilutions, tested samples
diluted to a notional 10-30 grams per cubic cm - far beyond the point
at which any ions of the original substance could remain. When he
compared the ultra-dilute lithium and sodium chloride samples with
pure water subjected to the same process, he found that the difference
in their thermo-luminescence peaks was still present. According to
Dr Rey, this finding proves that the networks of hydrogen bonds in
the samples were different.
But not all
are convinced. Some experts on water and hydrogen bonding argue that
Dr Rey's rationale for water memory is not very persuasive as most
hydrogen bonding in liquid water rearranges when frozen and that the
thermo-luminescence peaks observed by the Swiss chemist occurred at
about the temperatures where ice is known to undergo transitions between
different phases. Others, however, believe that Dr Rey's findings
fall well within the parameters of good physics.
The last
time homoeopathy received a fillip from mainstream science was in
2001 when a research team in South Korea made a chance discovery that
challenged the conventional wisdom that dissolved molecules may not
spread farther apart as a solution is diluted and that they may, in
fact, come together, initially as clusters of molecules and then as
bigger aggregates of those clusters.
A German
chemist, Dr Kurt Geckeler, and his colleague, Dr Shashadhar Samal,
chanced upon this wholly counter-intuitive effect when investigating
fullerenes at the Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South
Korea. They reported that the football-shaped buckyball molecules
formed untidy aggregates in solution.
This finding
caused a lot of excitement among chemists as they believed that it
provided the first scientifically valid insight into how some homoeopathic
remedies work. Homoeopaths dilute medications several times over as
they believe that the higher the dilution, the more potent the remedy.
Some dilute to "infinity" - that is, until no molecules
of the remedy remain. They maintain that water holds a memory, or
"imprint" of the active ingredient which is more potent
than the ingredient itself.
Pratap
Ravindran
Business online
