Mark Twain used to say that a flu goes away in seven days if you don't take anything, otherwise it goes away in a week if you take some medicine. If he were alive today perhaps he would update his motto by saying that instead of taking a homeopathic preparation the flu passes in more than six days but less than eight. In short, it doesn't do much good. He would also surely have used one of his fulminant quips to remind us that, after all, this shouldn't be surprising given that in a typical homeopathic preparation there really aren't any active ingredient molecules. The dilution is often so high that there is not even a shadow of a potentially active substance: assuming the typical "granule" we are ingesting only the excipient, usually sugar.
By doing so, however, poor Mark Twain would run the risk, nowadays, of receiving a warning for defamation from a multinational homeopathy company, such as Boiron. Apparently it is impossible to tell the scientific truth if this "tarnishes" the image of a multinational and its products.
This is what happened to Samuele Riva, a computer engineer who on his blog in July he wrote two articles on homeopathy, explaining its foundations and distinguishing it from other "alternative" therapies such as herbal treatments. In fact, homeopathy is often confused by many with phytotherapy: the use of plant extracts and preparations for the treatment of particular diseases. According to the followers of homeopathy, however, a homeopathic preparation is all the more powerful the more it is diluted. The dilution is indicated on the packages with symbols such as 12C or 30C. Even a high school student is able to calculate, on the basis of the laws of chemistry, that a 12C or higher value preparation contains practically no active molecules: it is just sugar.
Nothing new under the sun. That homeopathy has no scientific basis and that there is practically nothing in its preparations is well known. However, this does not prevent millions of people all over the world, including Italy, from buying, satisfied, these preparations (they shouldn't be called "drugs" because they are not) often also prescribed by doctors and graduate pharmacists. However, the scientific reliability of a discipline is not measured by the number of "believers" (doctors included): millions of people believe in astrology, all&r
