Double-blind, placebo-controlled homeopathic pathogenetic trials: Symptom collection and analysis

Homeopathic medicines for prevention of influenza and acute respiratory tract infections in children: blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial

BACKGROUND

Influenza and its complications are common at all ages, especially in children. Vaccines and anti-influenza drugs aim to prevent it. Preventative approaches with favorable risk profiles should be considered for flu, particularly since the evidence of the efficacy of anti-viral drugs is debated.

METHODS

This pragmatic clinical trial was conducted in the Brazilian Public Health System in Petrópolis (BPHSP) with children aged from 1 to 5 years old. The medications used were mainly selected based on in vitro experiments (InfluBio), and in successful qualitative clinical experiences (Homeopathic Complex). Following informed parental consent, subjects were randomly distributed, in a blind manner, to three experimental groups: Homeopathic Complex, Placebo, and InfluBio. BPHSP health agents collected flu and acute respiratory infection symptomatic episodes monthly following the established protocol. The number of these episodes was registered in one year (2009-2010).

RESULTS

Out of the 600 children recruited, 445 (74.17%) completed the study (149: Homeopathic complex; 151: Placebo; 145: InfluBio). The number of flu and acute respiratory infection symptomatic episodes detected in this clinical trial was low; however, it was different between homeopathic groups and placebo (p < 0.001). In the first year post-intervention, 46/151 (30.5%) of children in the placebo group developed 3 or more flu and acute respiratory infection episodes, while there was no episode in the group of 149 children who used Homeopathic Complex, and only 1 episode in the group of 145 (1%) children who received InfluBio.

CONCLUSION

These results suggested that the use of homeopathic medicines minimized the number of flu and acute respiratory infection symptomatic episodes in children, signalizing that the homeopathic prophylactic potential should be investigated in further studies.

On the observed specific and non-specific effects of complex therapeutic interventions: truly separate or complementary?

Specific and non-specific effects observed in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are generally treated implicitly as ontologically separate and purely additive. Building on the notions of Heisenberg uncertainty and complementarity from the discourse of quantum theory, and using a simple arithmetic argument, it is demonstrated how this separation enables results of RCTs (particularly of complex interventions) to be treated in a convenient but ultimately incorrect manner. Conclusions drawn from RCTs (that justify--and are justified by--a reductionist approach to therapeutic efficacy) should therefore be open to question.

Toward a topological description of the therapeutic process: part 2. Practitioner and patient perspectives of the "journey to cure"

BACKGROUND

The discourse of quantum theory has been used to describe (1) the homeopathic therapeutic process (in terms of three-way macro-entanglement between patient, practitioner, and remedy, called PPR entanglement), and (2) the homeopathic concept of the vital force.

METHODS

Combining these two approaches leads to a semiotic (i.e., pertaining to the theory of sign systems in language) geometry that illustrates the nature of this entanglement and how it could facilitate the patient's journey to cure. Here, this geometry is extended further to gain insight into both practitioner and patient perspectives of the process.

RESULTS

From the practitioner's perspective, the semiotic geometry predicts PPR entanglement, generating a number of distinguishable therapeutic outcomes that depend on the various patient-, disease-, and remedy-based "contributions" to the overall symptom picture of the remedy arrived at holistically. Furthermore, these outcomes may be seen as different facets of a more generalized PPR entangled state whose semiotic geometrical representation is hyperdimensional. Likewise, the patient's perspective of the journey to cure can also be represented semiotically, this time as a series of cross-sections through a hyperdimensional figure of similar symmetry, entering and leaving the patient's notional "dis-ease" space.

CONCLUSIONS

The semiotic geometries representing practitioner and patient experiences of the therapeutic process ultimately converge. Where they differ is that in elaborating the patient's journey to cure, the practitioner's perspective may be seen as from the outside of a whole process. As it is the patient who ultimately is traveling this journey, the patient's perspective is necessarily from the inside, of stages or cross-sections of the whole process.

Toward a topological description of the therapeutic process

INTRODUCTION

Two (2) quantum theoretically based metaphor/models have been proposed recently to describe the therapeutic process in homeopathy in terms of (1) a representation of the vital force (Vf) as a spinning quantized gyroscope, describable as a wave function; and (2) a form of nonorthodox quantum theoretical entanglement (called PPR entanglement) between the patient, practitioner, and remedy.

METHOD

Combining these two descriptions permits "normalization" of the Vf gyroscopic wave function. In this context, "normalization" refers to the probability of a patient's symptom totality being expressed and observable to the practitioner within a "therapeutic state space" that has mirror-like characteristics.

RESULTS

The Vf gyroscopic wave function contains a constant A related to this symptom totality and its expression. Normalization provides values for A at various stages of the patient's journey to cure, while at the same time suggesting a possible Möbius strip-like "topology" for the practitioner-derived "therapeutic state space."

CONCLUSIONS

Changes in the value of A on normalization indicate how expression of symptom totality varies at different stages of the patient's journey to cure, while suggesting a "topology" for the therapeutic process and how the practitioner could be affected by it.

Homeopathy: Clarifying its relationship to hormesis

This paper presents the case that certain types of homeopathic medicine may represent a form of hormesis, that is, either pre- or post-conditioning hormesis. An example of a post-conditioning model by van Wijk and colleagues demonstrated successful enhancement of adaptive responses using below-toxic threshold doses (i.e. hormetic doses) of inducing agents when administered subsequent to a highly toxic chemical exposure, thus satisfying a basic experimental biomedical standard. Of note is that this model uses exposures within a measurable predicted hormetic range, unlike most forms of homeopathy. This experimental framework (along with a pre-conditioning model developed by Bellavite) provides a possible vehicle by which certain aspect(s) of homeopathy may be integrated into mainstream biomedical assessment and clinical practice.

Falling trees, fractals, and sophistry: some philosophical "biohazards" en route to reconciling biomedicine and homeopathy

INTRODUCTION

Reconciling biomedical science and homeopathy might usefully begin by examining their various observational stances. This depends significantly on preconceptions about the nature of reality (e.g., whether it exists externally, independent of observers, or whether it is to some extent correlated nondeterministically with observation).

METHODS

Based on known observables, a rudimentary fractal model of the universe is proposed consisting of a series of self-similar integrated levels of reality, or "wholes" contained one within another like a set of Russian dolls. This model suggests possible contextualization of homeopathy and biomedicine's observational stances.

RESULTS

The fractal model bears compelling similarities to the ancient Hermetic tradition encapsulated in the phrase, "As above; so below." In the context of this model, homeopathy's observational stance includes a multidimensional range of symptoms from across several "levels of wholeness." In contrast, biomedicine's stance corresponds to exclusive observation of separate symptoms, each originating from one physical level of reality.

CONCLUSIONS

Pragmatic reconciliation of these two viewpoints is possible if it is realized that they are not contradictory but complementary; that each has its place in the therapeutic scheme of things, and that it should be possible to move freely between each type of observational stance as the patient's circumstances dictate.

A new geometrical description of entanglement and the curative homeopathic process

INTRODUCTION

The Memory of Water, a "local" explanation of homeopathy's efficacy, has been supplemented recently by complementary "nonlocal" hypotheses. One of these envisages "quantum macro-entanglement" among patient, practitioner, and remedy to form a "PPR" entangled state, from which the possibility of cure may manifest.

METHODS

Semiotic analysis affords a geometrical description of this entangled state as a patient-centered chiral tetrahedron. Its four corners depict three different types of symptoms (of the patient, the dis-ease, and the remedial substance) and the potentized remedy.

RESULTS

Reflecting this state in a practitioner-derived mirror-like "therapeutic state space" generates two notional patient-centered chiral tetrahedra: cure may be thought to arise from their patient-driven combination "through the looking glass" of the therapeutic state space, into one polyhedron called a stella octangula or stellated octahedron; in essence, a 3-dimensional Star of David.

CONCLUSIONS

The practitioner helps in forming these notional semiotic polyhedra, but the patient is at their epicenters (i.e., the practitioner facilitates but ultimately does not control the curative process).

Journeys in the country of the blind: entanglement theory and the effects of blinding on trials of homeopathy and homeopathic provings

The idea of quantum entanglement is borrowed from physics and developed into an algebraic argument to explain how double-blinding randomized controlled trials could lead to failure to provide unequivocal evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy, and inability to distinguish proving and placebo groups in homeopathic pathogenic trials. By analogy with the famous double-slit experiment of quantum physics, and more modern notions of quantum information processing, these failings are understood as blinding causing information loss resulting from a kind of quantum superposition between the remedy and placebo.