Traditional Medicine vs Modern Medicine

JAMES RANDI (Paranormal Investigator): Do the test, prove that it works and win a million dollars. WALTER STEWART (Research Chemist): If Madeleine Ennis turns out to be right it means that science has missed a huge chunk of something. PROF. BOB PARK (University of Maryland): Madeleine Ennis's experiments cannot be right. Homeopathy isn't some wacky, fringe belief. PETER FISHER: Deadly nightshade. LIONEL MILGROM: Animal. PETER FISHER: Snake venom. LIONEL MILGROM: Mineral. LIONEL MILGROM: Disease product. LIONEL MILGROM: Radiation. The result is a mixture diluted 100 times. NARRATOR: At 2C the medicine is one part in 10,000, but the homeopaths keep diluting and this is where the conflict with science begins. At 6C the medicine is diluted a million million times. NARRATOR: But homeopaths believe that a drop of this ultra dilute solution placed onto sugar pills can cure you. Science says there's nothing but water. Jacques Benveniste was one of France's science superstars. NARRATOR: The researcher had taken the chemical and added water, just like homeopaths do. JACQUES BENVENISTE: I remember saying to this, to her, this is water so it cannot work. NARRATOR: Benveniste's team was baffled. It seemed that when a chemical was diluted to homeopathic levels the result was a special kind of water. At last here was scientific evidence that homeopathy could work. JACQUES BENVENISTE: A result doesn't exist until it is admitted by the scientific community. NARRATOR: Benveniste's research ended up with one of the most powerful figures in science, the then Editor of Nature, Sir John Maddox. NARRATOR: So in June 1988 Benveniste's research appeared in the pages of Nature. Benveniste became a celebrity. His memory of water made news across the world. JACQUES BENVENISTE: I looked in my books and I said who are, who is Randi and couldn't find any scientist called Randi. JACQUES BENVENISTE: I called John Maddox and I said what, what is this? NARRATOR: But Randi felt he was just the man for the job. JAMES RANDI: Scientists don't always think rationally and in a direct fashion. NARRATOR: So Randi became the second investigator. JAMES RANDI: Astonishing. NARRATOR: The first step was for Benveniste and his team to perform their experiment under Randi's watchful gaze. They had to prepare two sets of tubes containing homeopathic water and ordinary water. If the homeopathic water was having a real effect different from ordinary water then homeopathy would be vindicated. (ACTUALITY EXPERIMENT CHAT) As they plotted the results it was clear the experiment had worked. NARRATOR: But Maddox had seen that the experimenters knew which tubes contained the homeopathic water and which contained the ordinary water, so perhaps unconsciously, this might have influenced the results, so he asked them to repeat the experiment. NARRATOR: With the codes out of reach the final experiment could begin. JACQUES BENVENISTE: It was a madhouse. Randi was doing magician tricks. NARRATOR: Soon the analysis was complete. It was time to break the code to see if the experiment had worked. JAMES RANDI: John and Walter and I were looking at one another as if to say wow, if this doesn't work it's going to be a downer. WALTER STEWART: Finally came the actual work of decoding the result. JAMES RANDI: There was much excitement at the table. NARRATOR: Benveniste felt sure that the results would support homeopathy and that he would be vindicated. JAMES RANDI: That didn't happen. JAMES RANDI: It was general gloom. NARRATOR: The team wrote a report accusing Benveniste of doing bad science and branding the claims for the memory of water a delusion. Benveniste's scientific reputation was ruined. NARRATOR: For now the memory of water was forgotten. Science declared homeopathy impossible once more, but strangely that didn't cause homeopathy to disappear. Since the Benveniste affair sales of homeopathic medicines have rocketed. NARRATOR: She'd tried everything that conventional medicine could offer, including drugs and surgery. Nothing seemed to work. Then she tried homeopathy. NARRATOR: There are thousands of cases like Marie's and they do present science with a problem. NARRATOR: Scientists believe the mere act of taking a homeopathic remedy can make people feel better and homeopathy has other ways of reducing stress. NARRATOR: A crucial part of homeopathic care is the consultation. LIONEL MILGROM: Yeah... NARRATOR: So most scientists believe that when homeopathy works it must be because of the placebo effect. NARRATOR: It seems like a perfect explanation, except that homeopathy appears to work when a placebo shouldn't - when the patient doesn't even know they're taking a medicine. All over the country animals are being treated with homeopathic medicines. NARRATOR: Mark made it his mission to prove that homeopathy works. The results were impressive. NARRATOR: To Mark this was clear proof that homeopathy can't be the placebo effect. NARRATOR: But Mark's small trial doesn't convince the sceptics. They need far more evidence before they'll believe that homeopathic medicines are anything more than plain water. JAMES RANDI: I've heard it said that unusual claims require unusually good proof. NARRATOR: To scientists the claim that homeopathic water can cure you is as unlikely as finding a unicorn. JAMES RANDI: Yes, there is a unicorn. That is called homeopathy. NARRATOR: Homeopathy needed the very highest standards of proof. What's different about homeopathy is the dilution. I confidently assumed that these diluted medicines were placebos. NARRATOR: David Reilly recruited 35 patients with hayfever. According to that data the medicine worked. NARRATOR: But to be absolutely rigorous Reilly decided to repeat the study and he got the same result. NARRATOR: The reason Reilly's research was dismissed was because his conclusion had no scientific explanation. NARRATOR: To convince science, homeopathy had to find a mechanism, something that could explain how homeopathic water could cure you. Madeleine Ennis has never had much time for homeopathy. MADELEINE ENNIS: I'm a completely conventional scientist. NARRATOR: But at a conference Ennis heard a French scientist present some puzzling results, results that seemed to show that water has a memory. NARRATOR: Ennis knew that the memory of water breaks the laws the science, but she believed that a scientist should always be willing to investigate new ideas, so the sceptical Ennis ended up testing the central claim of homeopathy. She performed an experiment almost identical to Benveniste's using the same kind of blood cell. The results were mystifying. the homeopathic water couldn't have had a single molecule of histamine, yet it still had an effect on the cells. NARRATOR: Ennis wondered whether counting by hand had introduced an error, so she repeated the experiment using an automated system to count the cells, and astonishingly, the result was still positive. PETER FISHER: If these results become generally accepted it will revolutionise the view of homeopathy. NARRATOR: At last here is evidence from a highly respected researcher that homeopathic water has a real biological effect. JAMES RANDI: This is not a cheap theatrical stung. NARRATOR: Proving the memory of water would certainly qualify for the million dollars. NARRATOR: So Horizon decided to take up Randi's challenge. NARRATOR: And with a million dollars at stake James Randi wants to make sure there's no room for error. NARRATOR: The first stage is to prepare the homeopathic dilutions. NARRATOR: For comparison we also need control tubes, tubes that have never had histamine in them. For these Peter starts with plain water. We now have 10 tubes. Half are just water diluted with more water, the control tubes, half are histamine diluted in water. PETER MOBBS: The histamine's now been diluted ten thousand million times. Now only he has the code for which tubes contain the homeopathic dilutions and which tubes contain water. NARRATOR: Next the time-consuming task of taking these solutions down to true homeopathic levels. The result is 40 tubes none of which should contain any molecules of histamine at all. Conventional science says they are all identical, but if Madeleine Ennis is right her methods should tell which ones contain the real homeopathic dilutions. JAMES RANDI: Whoa. Our two labs get to work. RACHEL PEARSON: ...5, 5.4 millimolar solution... NARRATOR: Then there's the small matter of the million dollars. JAMES RANDI: We don't actually carry a cheque around. NARRATOR: Now at last it's time to break the code. JOHN ENDERBY: 59. JOHN ENDERBY: 62. NARRATOR: Each tube is either a D for the homeopathic dilutions, or a C, for the plain water controls. JOHN ENDERBY: 52 and 75 were Cs. NARRATOR: Rachel Pearson identifies the tubes with a C or D. The homeopathic water hasn't had any effect. NARRATOR: So Horizon hasn't won the million dollars. It's another triumph for James Randi. JAMES RANDI: Further investigation needs to be done. NARRATOR: Homeopathy is back where it started without any credible scientific explanation. Homeopathy is impossible.