VT's Prof Gloria Moss investigates totalitarianism in science and medicine and attempts to suppress homeopathy

By Prof. Gloria Moss Ph.D. FCIPD

The seventeenth-century philosopher, Spinoza, argued that intellectual freedom was ‘absolutely necessary for progress in science and the liberal arts’, and according to Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the US, was ‘the currency of democracy’.  What happens when that currency is corrupted?

By Prof Gloria Moss

At the end of 2022, in December, the Federal Drugs Authority (FDA) in the US announced that any homeopathic drug that has not been considered ‘generally recognised as safe and effective’ (GRAS/E) is considered a new drug.  It went on to state that it has not determined that any homeopathic drugs are GRAS/E and that a new drug cannot be marketed unless if goes through the FDA’s approval process.   To date, no homeopathic drugs have gone through FDA approval so this announcement will have a devastating impact on the production of homeopathic preparations (ANH, 2022).

This onslaught on homeopathy is nothing new.  Just a few years ago, in France in July 2019 in which the government stated that it would end support for homeopathic medicines by 2021, with a committee of experts commissioned by the Ministry of Health claiming that ‘These remedies have not demonstrated their effectiveness in remedying illness, nor have they proven to reduce the consumption of other medicines’.  Then, just a few months later, in October 2019, the chief executive and medical director of NHS England urged the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), the statutory body that oversees healthcare regulation, to strip accreditation from the Society of Homeopaths (SoH).

This was a drastic move so what was NHS England’s argument?   It brazenly stated that to endorse the society was to afford a ‘veneer of credibility’ that lures vulnerable patients towards ‘bogus treatments’.   No surprises here perhaps since both the NHS and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK had described homeopathic remedies as scientifically invalid, with NHS England arguing IN 2017 that there was ‘no clear or robust evidence to support the use of homeopathy on the NHS’.  The claim was made that homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos and that the principles on which homeopathy is based are ‘scientifically implausible’.

The views from France and the NHS were paralleled by those of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), an umbrella organisation that represents 29 national and international scientific academies in Europe, including the Royal Society (UK) and Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.  Indeed, in September 2017 this body not only criticised homeopathy for its belief that ‘like cures like’ and that water has memory but also issued a warning that its use ‘risk[ed] significant harms’.

Many readers will be aware of these concerted blows delivered to homeopathy.  Let us then review what we know of the medical and scientific evidence in its favour.

Scientific Evidence for Homeopathy

Most clinical research on homeopathic medicines in peer-review journals has shown positive clinical results, particularly in the treatment of respiratory allergies, influenza, fibromyalgia,  rheumatoid arthritis, childhood diarrhea, post-surgical abdominal surgery recovery, attention deficit disorder and reduction in the side effects of conventional cancer treatments.  In addition to clinical trials, several hundred basic science studies have confirmed the biological activity of homeopathic medicines. What is more, in recent years, Dr. Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize winner for his work on the AIDs virus and founder and president of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, asserted, ‘I can’t say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions (used in homeopathy) are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures that mimic the original molecules (ibid).

Montagnier was continuing the work of Dr Jacques Benveniste, the senior director of the French medical research organisation INSERM’s Unit 200, 200 sq metres of space in Clamart, Paris, which studied the immunology of allergy and inflammation.  After a colleague raised the topic of homeopathy, Benveniste and members of his team began investigating the effects of diluting water on antibodies in the water.  He reported that white blood cells (‘basophils’) which control the body’s reaction to allergens can be activated to produce an immune response by solutions of antibodies that have been diluted so far that they contain none of these biomolecules at all.  It appeared that the water molecules somehow retained a memory of the antibodies that they had previously been in contact with, so that a biological effect remained when the antibodies were no longer present. This, it seemed, validated the claims made for highly diluted homeopathic medicines.

After a lengthy review process, in which the referees insisted on seeing evidence that the effect could be duplicated in three other independent laboratories, Nature published the paper in 1988. The editor, John Maddox, prefaced it with an editorial comment entitled ‘When to believe the unbelievable’, which admitted: ‘There is no objective explanation of these observations.’  Naturally, the paper caused a sensation with Newsweek declaring that homeopathy finds support.   However, there were powerful forces unwilling to accept the findings and the article was accompanied by an astounding editorial reservation, with the editor-in-chief, John Maddox, declaring that ‘there is no physical basis for such an activity’.  This view prompted the editor to announce that independent investigators would ‘observe repetitions of the experiments’.

The outcome?  The first experiments confirmed the published results but not later ones, leading James Randi, the magician member of the Nature team, to declare that the results should be compared to the sensational claim of having seen a unicorn when there was in fact merely a goat.  In reality, subsequent experimentation by Benveniste showed that the biological efficiency of ‘Extra-high dilutions’ (EHDs) of histamine increased at first but increased again after the 9th decimal dilution.  Then it dropped and continued to vary in a quasi-periodic way during successive dilutions.  Subsequently, in 1993, Benveniste found that two EHDs could perturb each other and not only suggested that audible sound waves could be involved but that they could be detected, amplified, recorded, and transmitted.  The consequences?   When pure water was exposed to these frequencies, it acquired the same properties as EHDs of the initially dissolved active molecules.

Later, Benveniste was to show how EHDs could be transmitted digitally, and downloaded into the water but in 1995, INSERM made the decision not to renew the contract on Unit 200.  Not daunted by this, Benveniste continued his research in a portacabin in the parking lot of his former institute, storing materials in a nearby caravan.   He was to develop DigiBio, a company that could transmit frequencies digitally.  For, he believed that biomolecules communicate with their receptor molecules by sending out low-frequency electromagnetic signals which the receptors pick up like radios tuned to a specific wavelength.  By recording these signals digitally, and by playing them back to cells in the absence of the molecules themselves, he could reproduce their biochemical effect, including triggering a defence response that kills invading cells.

His courage was of necessity short-lived since he was struck down by an infection following heart surgery and died in 2004.  It then fell to another French scientist, Nobel Laureate Professor Luc Montagnier, and holder of France’s Légion d’Honneur to take up Benveniste’s pioneering work, leading to the ground-breaking announcement in 2010 that electromagnetic signals of the original medicine can remain in the water and bring about dramatic biological effects.  These findings were described by Jeff Reimers, Professor of Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney, as ‘the most significant experiments performed in the past ninety years, demanding re-evaluation of the whole conceptual framework of modern chemistry’ (Coghlan, 2011).

Despite Montagnier’s Nobel Prize and record of 350 publications, he faced opposition and pressures to retire from the Pasteur Institute in France.  This led him to take his research to a new institute bearing his name at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, China’s MIT.  There he investigated the electromagnetic waves that emanate from the high-intensity signals coming from bacterial and viral DNA.  During his time on this research, he declared Benveniste a ‘modern Galileo’ and described the climate of research in which researchers were too afraid to submit their work for publication as an ‘intellectual terror’ (Enserink, 2010).  His death in February 2022 put an end to his heroic work.

DOCTEUR JACQUES BENVENISTE, DIRECTEUR SCIENTIFIQUE DE DIGIBIO (LABORATOIRE DE BIOLOGIE NUMERIQUE) POSE DANS SON LABO RATTACHE A L’INSERM DE CLAMART LE 14/12/2000.
PHOTO FRANCOIS BOUCHON / LE FIGARO

Fallout

Why the intense controversy over this work?  Benveniste’s and Montagnier’s experiments confirmed the efficacy of homeopathy, a parallel medical system to that of Big Pharma.  Indeed, Brian Josephson, Ph.D., a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and emeritus professor of Cambridge University stated that advocates of homeopathic remedies attribute their effects not to molecules present in the water, but to modifications of the water’s structure (Josephson, 1997).   Josephson’s thoughts appear in a fascinating letter for New Scientist in which he stated that:

‘Simple-minded analysis may suggest that water, being a fluid, cannot have a structure of the kind that such a picture would demand. But cases such as that of liquid crystals, which while flowing like an ordinary fluid can maintain an ordered structure over macroscopic distances, show the limitations of such ways of thinking. There have not, to the best of my knowledge, been any refutations of homeopathy that remain valid after this particular point is taken into account.’ (ibid).

He went on to state that criticism of the finding that water has memory ‘attests to the limited vision of the modern scientific community that, far from hastening to test such claims, the only response has been to dismiss them out of hand.’ (ibid, 1997).  He even went so far as to refer to the ‘pathological disbelief’ experienced by scientists, expressing real concern about the unscientific atmosphere that presently exists on subjects such as homeopathy.  As he wrote:

‘I am told that some people have reproduced Benveniste’s results, but they are afraid to publish it because of the intellectual terror from people who don’t understand it.’

In fact, this fear has not halted advancements in the field of ‘hormesis’, the multi-disciplinary field focused on small-dose effects, with around 1,000 studies from a wide variety of scientific specialties now confirming significant and sometimes substantial biological effects from extremely small doses of certain substances on biological systems.  Just nine years ago, a special issue of the peer-review journal, Human and Experimental Toxicology (July 2010), devoted itself to the interface between hormesis and homeopathy, with the articles in this issue verifying the power of homeopathic doses of various substances.

Luc Montagnier: Nobel prize winner and HIV science pioneer

Final Irony

The science of memory in water originated in Paris where it was pursued by Dr Jacques Benveniste and Dr. Luc Montagnier.   The announcement on 10 July by the French Minister of Health, Agnès Buzyn, that ‘Homeopathic medicines do not provide sufficient public health benefits to justify their reimbursement by the federal government’ represents a betrayal of all the ground-breaking work done by her remarkable French compatriots.

The lessons?  Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, the scientist behind the concept of morphic resonance, has written of an Ars Technica

conflict at the heart of science between science as a method of inquiry based on reason, evidence, hypothesis, and collective investigation, and science as a belief system, or a world view. In his view, ‘the world view aspect of science has come to inhibit and constrict the free inquiry which is the very lifeblood of the scientific endeavour.’

Solution?

The greater the degradation in the peer review and regulatory processes, the greater must be public vigilance to ensure that vested interests are kept at bay.  An initial focus of interest must be peer review, an activity that Vladimir Nabokov colourfully described as being directed by the ‘terrible turtles …[of] academic journals.  The  Russian word for ‘terrible’ has the force of ‘terrifying’ according to Dr McWhorter, author of ‘The Power of Babel’), with Nabokov’s phrase signaling the nightmarish iniquity of mediocre thinkers holding considerable power over one’s output and career path’ (2001).

So the system of peer review, currently the determining factor in academic careers worldwide, needs – in turn – to be the subject of review (The Secret Professor, 2022).  Academics the world over are judged on their ability to publish in so-called ‘top journals’ and the impartiality of these journals must be the object of intense scrutiny.  Benveniste’s poignant story must surely underline the need for this.

In fact, mistrust of peer review is the hallmark of a mature and healthy society and one of the best examples of this comes ironically from France in 1863.  This was the year in which the Salon des Refusés (“exhibition of rejects”) exhibited artworks rejected by the official Paris Salon, a conservative salon that not only classified work according to a strict genre hierarchy but also required near-photographic realism.  The success of the new salon can be judged by the fact that exhibitors such as Manet, Pissarro, Cézanne and Whistler became household names and so 1863 is seen as a watershed date that kick-started the era of modern art (Browness, 1972).  An important part of the success of the new salon was taking decision-making from a jury and opening it up to a wider public.  It is now urgent that something similar happens where journal peer review is concerned.

With pronouncements in the US, France and Britain turning on the de-legitimisation of homeopathy, it is time to refresh the system of peer review and medical decision-making and as a new book on the degradation of the university system proposes, start up new institutions (The Secret Professor, 2022).  What is more, since even the mainstream system recognises the importance of research ‘impact’ (including assessment of this in research audits), we should move to a system where expert,  independent academics play a role in the assessment of the value of a scientist’s work.  This would protect the independence of peer review and ensure that science research findings were freed from the influence of money and Big Pharma.   Doing this would liberate scientists from totalitarian systems that impose ‘intellectual terror’ and stop Einstein’s mantra to ‘Question everything’ from achieving effect (Moss and Armitage, 2023).

Now that homeopathy is threatened by the FDA in the US, is it time for homeopaths to fight back through the voices of their patients?  Is it the moment that the 6 million users of homeopathy in the US, the figure provided by the National Institute of Health (homeopathy research institute) rise up?  In doing this, they might protest the double standards on the part of the FDA in approving the Covid-19 vaccines, for which there is evidence of significant harm and no evidence of a comprehensive trial, but disallowing unregulated pharmaceutical products.

A campaign involving homeopathy’s 6 million patients could protest the FDA’s pronouncements on homeopathy while exposing large-scale involvement of Big Pharma in the funding of the FDA.  Now that the war against homeopathy has been taken to the US, it is time for citizens to voice a resounding ‘no’.   How to voice ‘no’ most effectively is a topic for another article but as this article was going to press, the author received the words of a Catholic monk, Brother Bugnolo, proposing that the most effective way of saying ‘no’ involved the use of Natural Justice and the arrest of those pursuing anti-life policies.

It is for readers to determine the rightness of such a policy but the need to respond effectively to the attack launched on homeopathy by the FDA is vital if the choice is available to people and homeopathy able to flourish.

References

ANH (2022), FDA declares homeopathy illegal, Natural Health News, 8 December, https://anh-usa.org/fda-declares-homeopathy-illegal/

Bugnolo, Br (2021), https://www.fromrome.info/2021/11/11/the-only-solution-to-the-great-reset/, 11 November

Browness,  A. (1972), Modern European Art, Thames and Hudson, London

Coghlan, A. (2011), Scorn over claim of teleported DNA, New Scientist 12 January 2011, issue 2795

Enserink, M. (2010), Newsmaker Interview: Luc Montagnier. French Nobelist Escapes ‘Intellectual Terror’ to Pursue Radical Ideas in China, Science, 24 December, https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.330.6012.1732

Josephson, B. D. (1997), Letter, New Scientist, 1 November

Moss, G. and Armitage, K. (2023), Light Bulb Moments and the Power of Critical Thinking: Insights from Inquiring Minds and Literary Heroes, Truth University Press

National Institute of Health, https://www.hri-research.org/resources/essentialevidence/use-of-homeopathy-across-the-world/

The Secret Professor (2022), The Dark Side of Academia:  How the Truth is Suppressed, Truth University Press

Ullman, D (2017), Luc Montagnier, Novel prize winner, takes homeopathy seriously, Huffington Post, 6 December, https://tinyurl.com/yxlfsufc