This, of course, is not new information for those who have been practicing homeopathy for many years, or to those who are familiar with holistic medicine, vibrational medicine, or other forms of medicine that go beyond the rather narrow definitions currently defended by conventional medicine. But of course, it is big news to many doctors, physicians, and western medical researchers, who have for decades insisted that homeopathy is quackery and that believing in homeopathy is the same as believing in magic. They say that water could not possibly exhibit a biological effect if it did not contain a single molecule of a biologically active substance. But now, of course, the science is quite real, and this isn't the first study to show that homeopathy is proven.
There have been other studies -- well-documented and well-constructed -- that also show the same effect. But these studies have been routinely ignored, and even shut out by medical journals simply because no one can quite explain how homeopathy works. To understand why this is such an important breakthrough in modern medicine, we have to go back to the 1800's and take a look at the origin of the so-called germ theory and how it relates to the invention of the microscope and the realization that disease could be spread by invisible microscopic creatures.
Today the germ theory is accepted as real and verifiable. But that's only because scientists and doctors can readily see these germs using microscopes. Before microscopes were invented, any doctor who proposed that disease could be caused by a doctor not washing his hands and touching two patients in sequence would have been called a lunatic or a quack. In fact, doctors did not engage in any sort of hand washing for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease until the germ theory became accepted.
The accidental father of the germ theory, a Hungarian physician known as Dr. Semmelweis, was fired and ostracized from the medical community in the mid 1800's for even proposing the idea that disease was caused by invisible, microscopic, undetectable organisms. In fact, after fighting to publicize the truth about microorganisms for fifteen years, Semmelweis was declared insane by doctors and committed to an insane asylum. (Sounds a lot like modern medicine, doesn't it?)
In other words, in the history of medicine, doctors and researchers didn't believe in the germ theory for one simple reason: they couldn't see the germs. There was no way they could detect these germs, so in their minds, they didn't exist. As a result, they continued to practice outdated medical procedures which actually resulted in the spread of germs from one patient to another.
Here's how this applies to homeopathy: today, the scientific evidence proves that homeopathy really works. No sane, rational person could deny it after reviewing the evidence proving the biological activity of homeopathic water. But instead of denying the existence of homeopathy on the grounds that it doesn't work, modern doctors and researchers deny it based on the rather feeble idea that they don't understand the mechanism by which it might work. That is, they don't know how it works, and therefore it must not be true. And that's about as intelligent as saying "We don't know how gravity works, therefore, there is no such thing as gravity."
Granted, homeopathy is somewhat mysterious. It is curious in the way that it works through the use of subtle energies. Apparently, water has a memory, and there's a fantastic book on this called The Memory of Water that will show you in great detail, with colorful pictures, exactly how water is reshaped by different energetic and emotional vibrations.
It's all quite real -- water takes on a different molecular structure when it is prayed over versus when angry people shout at it. Now, if you take a substance like the one used in this study, which was histamine, and you put a drop of histamine in a glass of pure, distilled water, that water, of course, contains a solution of histamine. But if you dilute that by taking one drop out of that entire glass and putting it into another glass of water, then you have another mixture of water that is diluted by a factor of 100 or more. If you do that over and over again and follow a sequence of increasing dilutions, you end up with a solution of water that has no molecules of histamine in it whatsoever.
But, as this study shows, this water retains the memory of histamine, and when this water is given to a biological system, such as a person or an animal, it will produce effects that are attributed to the histamine and that are clinically observable and quite unique to the vibration of histamine.
Of course there are many skeptics out there who will continue to say there is no such thing as homeopathy. They will deny the clinical evidence that's put right in front of their faces, and even if they were to conduct these experiments on their own and produce the exact same verifiable scientifically proven results, they would continue to deny it. Why is that?
It's because they don't understand it, and they don't have the imagination or creativity to suppose that nature might hold some surprises for us yet. They are people who represent the epitome of mankind's arrogance. They think they understand everything there is to know about the way the universe works, and that nature is apparent and nothing new will be learned. They think that if you can't see it, it doesn't exist, and thus I wonder how they even believe in gravity or electromagnetism or quantum physics, for that matter.
Nevertheless, the end result of this is that the amazing James Randi will probably end up being $1 million poorer because he has been so foolish as to offer a $1 million reward to the first person who can prove the scientific validity of homeopathy. Well, apparently this proof has already been completed, and now it will probably be a game of continued denials from James Randi in order to avoid paying out the $1 million reward. He will probably say, "Okay, the lab results look solid, but until you can explain how it works, it's not proven." And that's how he will deny actually paying the claim to people who have now scientifically proven that homeopathy is real -- something Randi adamantly insists is untrue.
By the way, to comment more on good science, kudos go out to the editor of Inflammation Research, a medical journal that has demonstrated the courage to publish a pioneering paper that most other medical journals would have rejected. And this again speaks to the closed-circle, dogmatic attitude of most peer reviewed medical journals. They define the so-called truths of modern science and modern medicine by selecting those studies and papers that support their current beliefs. Simultaneously, they reject all papers that challenge those beliefs, and that's how things that are true but unconventional (such as homeopathy) can be kept out of the minds of modern doctors and researchers.
But this journal, Inflammation Research, was willing to publish a pioneering paper, and at the same time, the researchers involved in this study -- none of which were from the United States, by the way -- are also to be applauded for their willingness to venture beyond the strict confines of conventional medicine and explore the way the universe really works.
Let's face it, folks -- as men and women on this planet, we are but children. We are all students of the universe, just attempting to understand the way things work... and barely scratching the surface in doing so. We know so little about the universe and about the way subtle energies operate. I don't think there's a single person alive today who truly understands the simple interaction of tabletop magnets, for one thing. I don't think there's anyone alive today who understands quantum physics, and who can really explain how it is that the entire universe is made up of probability waves of vibrating energy rather than physical matter.
I don't think there's anyone who can really explain or understand how light can be both a particle and a wave at the same time, depending on how you look at it. I don't think people can explain how properties of spinning subatomic particles can be instantly teleported from one place to another, regardless of the distance, without requiring any time whatsoever. I don't think people can explain how prayer alters the health outcome of patients, even when the patients aren't aware that they are being prayed for. (This is called "non-local medicine.")
These are just some of the many mysteries that continue to present opportunities for open-minded, smart thinkers to explore. Fortunately, there are some scientists who continue to be open-minded, and who are willing to ask these questions of nature, because that's what a true scientist does -- they ask questions of nature and they listen to whatever responses come back.
People like Dr. Stephen Barrett and James Randi are not scientists at all. They are, in every sense, feeble-minded skeptics who probably don't even believe in their own souls. I bet they didn't see this one coming -- homeopathy is real, folks. It's been proven, and it's been proven in a way that meets the most demanding requirements of the scientific method. If you are a true scientist, and you review the available studies on homeopathy, you either have to conclude that homeopathy is real, or you have to conclude that every law of science and truth upon which modern medicine is based is invalid.