mystery wrote:
I thought that people just hadn't caught up with the (very old) news that Andrew Wakefield's research was, er hum, "misleading". But it's not that - there seems to quite a significant minority of parents both here and in the states who think that he has more recently been proved right, that it's all a big pharma conspiracy etc etc. There are some autism groups on his side, a British doctor who is also a homeopath with a health info website quite a few parents use.
http://www.jayne-donegan.co.uk/Homeopathy

. An utterly ridiculous sham that I find hard to believe still retains credibility in some quarters and products of which are sold in reputable high street stores. I mean, just read this which is from this doctor's
justification for it as a treatment:
"A fascinating but as yet unexplained characteristic of homeopathic remedies is that the more dilute a remedy, the more effect it appears to have on the vital force. For example, a remedy diluted 30 times by a factor of 100 (strength 30c) is much more potent than a 6c remedy, even though it contains less of the original substance."Yeah, I'm surprised the "vital force" is as yet unexplained too...

And as for "30c" as a concentration, it is literally just water. At 12c concentrations the Avogadro line is crossed, meaning there is statistically less chance of the bottle you buy having one molecule of substance in it than not, so you can imagine how that chance becomes absurd when you dilute that liquid a further 18 times by a factor of 100 each time. Supporters of homeopathy will counter this by suggesting that the water retains a memory of the active ingredient and therefore its effect, so it doesn't actually need the active ingredient to be present. Of course they dismiss the obvious consequence of that which is that the water must therefore retain a memory of urine, faeces, vomit, poison and whatever else it has come into contact with in its existence. Yum.
Medicine and science can cure some cancers, replace organs and perform all sorts of incredible things to save and improve lives and we're still giving room for this utter nonsense? Please.