Just picked this up from New Scientist - very interesting
Jo and the Casblaidd Flatcoats
NEW SCIENTIST WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
No. 110, 10 November 2001
Andy Coghlan
Bizarre chemical discovery gives homeopathic hint
It is a chance discovery so unexpected it defies belief and threatens to
reignite debate about whether there is a scientific basis for thinking
homeopathic medicines really work.
A team in South Korea has discovered a whole new dimension to just about
the simplest chemical reaction in the book - what happens when you
dissolve a substance in water and then add more water.
Conventional wisdom says that the dissolved molecules simply spread
further and further apart as a solution is diluted. But two chemists have
found that some do the opposite: they clump together, first as clusters of
molecules, then as bigger aggregates of those clusters. Far from drifting
apart from their neighbours, they got closer together.
The discovery has stunned chemists, and could provide the first scientific
insight into how some homeopathic remedies work. Homeopaths repeatedly
dilute medications, believing that the higher the dilution, the more potent
the remedy becomes.
Some dilute to "infinity" until no molecules of the remedy remain. They
believe that water holds a memory, or "imprint" of the active ingredient
which is more potent than the ingredient itself. But others use less dilute
solutions - often diluting a remedy six-fold. The Korean findings might
at last go some way to reconciling the potency of these less dilute
solutions with orthodox science.
Completely counterintuitive
German chemist Kurt Geckeler and his colleague Shashadhar Samal
stumbled on the effect while investigating fullerenes at their lab in the
Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. They found
that the football-shaped buckyball molecules kept forming untidy aggregates
in solution, and Geckler asked Samal to look for ways to control how these
clumps formed.
What he discovered was a phenomenon new to chemistry. "When he diluted
the solution, the size of the fullerene particles increased," says
Geckeler. "It
was completely counterintuitive," he says.
Further work showed it was no fluke. To make the otherwise insoluble
buckyball dissolve in water, the chemists had mixed it with a circular
sugar-like molecule called a cyclodextrin. When they did the same
experiments with just cyclodextrin molecules, they found they behaved the
same way. So did the organic molecule sodium guanosine monophosphate,
DNA and plain old sodium chloride.
Dilution typically made the molecules cluster into aggregates five to 10 times
as big as those in the original solutions. The growth was not linear, and it
depended on the concentration of the original.
"The history of the solution is important. The more dilute it starts, the
larger the aggregates," says Geckeler. Also, it only worked in polar
solvents like water, in which one end of the molecule has a pronounced
positive charge while the other end is negative.
Biologically active
But the finding may provide a mechanism for how some homeopathic
medicines work - something that has defied scientific explanation till now.
Diluting a remedy may increase the size of the particles to the point when
they become biologically active.
It also echoes the controversial claims of French immunologist Jacques
Benveniste. In 1988, Benveniste claimed in a Nature paper that a solution
that had once contained antibodies still activated human white blood cells.
Benveniste claimed the solution still worked because it contained ghostly
"imprints" in the water structure where the antibodies had been.
Other researchers failed to reproduce Benveniste's experiments, but
homeopaths still believe he may have been onto something. Benveniste
himself does not think the new findings explain his results because the
solutions were not dilute enough. "This [phenomenon] cannot apply to high
dilution," he says.
Fred Pearce of University College London, who tried to repeat Benveniste's
experiments, agrees. But it could offer some clues as to why other less
dilute homeopathic remedies work, he says. Large clusters and aggregates
might interact more easily with biological tissue.
Double-check
Chemist Jan Enberts of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands is
more cautious. "It's still a totally open question," he says. "To say the
phenomenon has biological significance is pure speculation." But he has no
doubt Samal and Geckeler have discovered something new. "It's surprising
and worrying," he says.
The two chemists were at pains to double-check their astonishing results.
Initially they had used the scattering of a laser to reveal the size and
distribution of the dissolved particles. To check, they used a scanning
electron microscope to photograph films of the solutions spread over slides.
This, too, showed that dissolved substances cluster together as dilution
increased.
"It doesn't prove homeopathy, but it's congruent with what we think and is
very encouraging," says Peter Fisher, director of medical research at the
Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.
"The whole idea of high-dilution homeopathy hangs on the idea that water
has properties which are not understood," he says. "The fact that the new
effect happens with a variety of substances suggests it's the solvent that's
responsible. It's in line with what many homeopaths say, that you can only
make homeopathic medicines in polar solvents."
Geckeler and Samal are now anxious that other researchers follow up their
work. "We want people to repeat it," says Geckeler. "If it's confirmed it will
be groundbreaking".
Journal reference: Chemical Communications (2001, p 2224)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991532
Really interesting and would lean towards supporting Samuel Hahnemann's discoveries in the eighteenth century! the modern father of homeopathy.It is hard to get into the mind set that less is more with homeopathy, with the heavy emphasis of a quick pill of a chemical substance is all that needed to cure the symptoms ethos that we have now.Because homeopathy cannot be understood doesnt mean that it cant work.I always consder the alternative treatment now for the family and dogs unless it is obvious that an immediate solution is needed. I have been using Fragaria on on of the dogs and his tartar has simply melted away.
By cassie-slave ![[gb]](/images/flags/gb.png "United Kingdom")
Date 11.11.01 18:17 UTC