Gushoneybungirl's Neil Pearson Page
Horizon: Homeopathy, The Test
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There follows a transcript of the Horizon report broadcast on BBC2, 26 November 2003. Heavy stuff!!
NARRATOR (NEIL PEARSON): This
week Horizon is doing something completely different. For the first
time we are conducting our own experiment. We are testing a form of medicine
which could transform the world. Should the results be positive this man
will have to give us $1m.
JAMES RANDI (Paranormal
Investigator): Do the test, prove that it works and win a million dollars.
NARRATOR: But if the results
are negative then millions of people, including some of the most famous and
influential in the world, may have been wasting their money. The events that
would lead to Horizon's million dollar challenge began with
Professor Madeleine Ennis, a scientist who may have found the impossible.
PROF. MADELEINE ENNIS
(Queen's University, Belfast): I was incredibly surprised and really had
great feelings of disbelief.
NARRATOR: Her work concerns a
type of medicine which defies the laws of science.
WALTER STEWART (Research
Chemist): If Madeleine Ennis turns out to be right it means that science has
missed a huge chunk of something.
NARRATOR: She has reawakened
one of the most bitter controversies of recent years.
PROF. BOB PARK (University of
Maryland): Madeleine Ennis's experiments cannot be right. I mean it's,
they're, they're, preposterous.
MADELEINE ENNIS: I have no
explanation for what happened. However, this is science. If we knew the
answers to the questions we wouldn't bother doing the experiments.
NARRATOR: It's all about
something you can find on every high street in Britain: homeopathy.
Homeopathy isn't some wacky, fringe belief. It's over 200 years old and is
used by millions of people, including Presidents and pop stars. It's even
credited with helping David Beckham get over his foot injury and the Royals
have been keen users since the days of Queen Victoria, but it's also a
scientific puzzle. What makes it so mysterious is its two guiding
principles, formulated in the 18th century. The first principle is that to
find a cure you look for a substance that actually causes the symptoms
you're suffering from. It's the principle that like cures like.
DR PETER FISHER (Homeopath to
The Queen): For instance in colds and hay fever something we often use is allium
cepa which is onion and of course we all know the effects of chopping an
onion, you know the sore streaming eyes, streaming nose, sneezing and so we
would use allium cepa, onion, for a cold with similar sorts of features.
NARRATOR: This theory that
like cures like led to thousands of different substances being used, some of
them truly bizarre.
DR LIONEL MILGROM
(Homeopath): In principle you can make a homeopathic remedy out of
absolutely anything that's plant.
PETER FISHER: Deadly
nightshade.
LIONEL MILGROM: Animal.
PETER FISHER: Snake venom.
LIONEL MILGROM: Mineral.
PETER FISHER: Calcium
carbonate, which is of course chalk.
LIONEL MILGROM: Disease
product.
PETER FISHER: Tuberculous
gland of a cow.
LIONEL MILGROM: Radiation.
NARRATOR: But then homeopaths
found that many of these substances were poisonous, so they started to
dilute them. This led to the extraordinary second principle of homeopathy:
the more you dilute a remedy the more effective it becomes, provided it's
done in a special way. The method homeopaths use to this day is called
serial dilution. A drop of the original substance, whether it's snake venom
or sulphuric acid, is added to 99 drops of waster or alcohol. Then the
mixture is violently shaken. Here it's done by machine, but traditionally
homeopaths would hit the tube against a hard surface. Either way, homeopaths
believe this is a vital stage. It somehow transfers the healing powers from
the original substance into the water itself. The result is a mixture
diluted 100 times.
LIONEL MILGROM: That will
give you what's called a 1C solution, that's one part in 100. You then take
that 1C solution and dissolve it in another 99 parts and now you end up with
a 2C solution.
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. This is equivalent to one drop in 20 swimming pools. Another
six dilutions gives you 12C. This is equivalent to one drop in the Atlantic
Ocean, but even this is not enough for most homeopathic medicines. The
typical dilution is 30C, a truly astronomical level of dilution.
BOB PARK: One drop in all of
the oceans on Earth would be much more concentrated than that. I would have
to go off the planet to make that kind of dilution.
NARRATOR: But homeopaths
believe that a drop of this ultra dilute solution placed onto sugar pills
can cure you. That's why homeopathy is so controversial because science says
that makes no sense whatsoever.
BOB PARK: There is a limit to
how much we can dilute any substance. We can only dilute it down to the
point that we have one molecule left. The next dilution we probably won't
even have that one molecule.
WALTER STEWART: It's possible
to go back and count how many molecules are present in a homeopathic dose
and the astonishing answer is absolutely none. There's less than a chance in
a million, less than a chance in a billion that there's a single molecule.
NARRATOR: A molecule is the
smallest piece of a substance you can have, so for something to have any
effect at all conventional science says you need one molecule of it at the
very least.
WALTER STEWART: Science has
through many, many different experiments shown that when a drug works it's
always through the way the molecule interacts with the body and, so the
discovery that there's no molecules means absolutely there's no effect.
NARRATOR: That's why science
and homeopathy have been at war for over 100 years. The homeopaths say that
their remedies have healing powers. Science says there's nothing but water.
Then one scientist claimed the homeopaths were right after all. Jacques
Benveniste was one of France's science superstars. He had a string of
discoveries to his name and some believed he was on his way to earning a
Nobel Prize.
DR JACQUES BENVENISTE
(National Institute for Medical Research): I was considered as, well in
French we have a word which says Nobel is nobelisable, which means we can
have a Nobel Prize because I started from scratch the whole field of
research. I was the head of a very large team, had a lot of money and so I
was a very successful person.
NARRATOR: Benveniste was an
expert in the field of allergy, in particular he was studying a type of
blood cell involved in allergic reactions - the basophil. When basophils
come into contact with something you're sensitive to they become activated
causing the telltale symptoms. Benveniste had developed a test that could
tell if a person was allergic to something or not. He added a kind of dye
that only turns inactive basophils blue, so by counting the blue cells he
could work out whether there had been a reaction, but then something utterly
unexpected started to happen.
JACQUES BENVENISTE: A
technician told me one day I don't understand because I have diluted a
substance that is activating basophils to a point where it shouldn't work
and it still works.
NARRATOR: The researcher had
taken the chemical and added water, just like homeopaths do. The result
should have been a solution so dilute it had absolutely no effect and yet,
bizarrely, there was a reaction. The basophils had been activated.
Benveniste knew this shouldn't have been possible.
JACQUES BENVENISTE: I
remember saying to this, to her, this is water so it cannot work.
NARRATOR: Benveniste's team
was baffled. They needed to find out what was going on, so they carried out
hundreds of experiments and soon realised that they'd made an extraordinary
discovery. It seemed that when a chemical was diluted to homeopathic levels
the result was a special kind of water. It didn't behave like ordinary
water, it acted like it still contained the original substance. It was as if
the water was remembering the chemical it had once contained, so Benveniste
called the phenomenon the 'memory of water'. At last here was scientific
evidence that homeopathy could work. Benveniste knew this was a radical
suggestion, but there was a way to get his results taken seriously. He had
to get them published in a scientific journal.
JACQUES BENVENISTE: A result
doesn't exist until it is admitted by the scientific community. It's like,
like being a good opera singer but singing in your bathroom. That's fine,
but it's not Scala, Milan or the Met, Met or the Opera at Paris,
what-have-you.
NARRATOR: So he sent his work
to the most prestigious journal in the world, a journal which for over 100
years has reported the greatest of scientific discoveries: Nature.
SIR JOHN MADDOX (Nature
Editor 1980-1995): Nature is the place that everyone working in
science recognises to be a way of getting publicity of the best kind.
NARRATOR: Benveniste's
research ended up with one of the most powerful figures in science, the then
Editor of Nature, Sir John Maddox. Maddox knew that the memory of
water made no scientific sense, but he couldn't just ignore work from such a
respected scientist, so he agonised about what to do. Eventually he reached
a decision.
SIR JOHN MADDOX: I said OK,
we'll publish your paper if you ;et us come and inspect your lab and he
agreed, to my astonishment.
NARRATOR: So in June 1988
Benveniste's research appeared in the pages of Nature. It caused a
scientific sensation. Benveniste became a celebrity. His memory of water
made news across the world. He seemed to have found the evidence that made
homeopathy scientifically credible, but the story wasn't quite over.
Benveniste had agreed to let in a team from Nature. It was a decision
he would live to regret. Maddox set about assembling his team of
investigators and his choices revealed his true suspicions. First, he chose
Walter Stewart, a scientist and fraud-buster, but his next choice would
really cause a stir: James Randi.
JACQUES BENVENISTE: I looked
in my books and I said who are, who is Randi and couldn't find any scientist
called Randi.
NARRATOR: That was because
the amazing Randi isn't a scientist, he's a magician, but he's no ordinary
conjuror. He's also an arch sceptic, a fierce opponent of all things
supernatural.
JACQUES BENVENISTE: I called
John Maddox and I said what, what is this? I mean I thought you were coming
with, with scientists to discuss science.
NARRATOR: But Randi felt he
was just the man for the job. On one occasion he had fooled even experienced
scientists with his spoon bending tricks.
JAMES RANDI: Scientists don't
always think rationally and in a direct fashion. They're human beings like
anyone else. They can fool themselves.
NARRATOR: So Randi became the
second investigator.
JAMES RANDI: Astonishing.
NARRATOR: On 4th July 1988
the investigative team arrived in Paris ready for the final showdown.
SIR JOHN MADDOX: The first
thing we did was to sit round the table in Benveniste's lab. Benveniste
himself struck us all as looking very much like a film star.
JAMES RANDI: I found him to
be a charming, very continental gentleman. He's a great personality. He was
very much in control.
JACQUES BENVENISTE: We were
quite relaxed because there was no reason why things should not go right.
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.
JAMES RANDI: There were huge
peaks coming up out of it and that was very active results, I mean very,
very positive results.
WALTER STEWART: The
astonishing thing about these results is that they repeated the claim, they
demonstrated the claim that a homeopathic dilution, a dilution where there
were no molecules, could actually have some sort of an effect.
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. This
time the tubes would be relabelled with a secret code so that no-one knew
which tube was which.
JAMES RANDI: We went into a
sealed room and we actually taped newspapers over the windows to the room
that were accessible to the hall.
WALTER STEWART: We recorded
in handwriting which tube was which and we put this into an envelope and
sealed it so that nobody could open it or change it.
NARRATOR: At this point the
investigation took a turn for the surreal as they went to extraordinary
lengths to keep the code secret.
JAMES RANDI: Walter and I got
up on the stepladder and stuck it to the ceiling of the lab.
WALTER STEWART: There it was
taped above us as all of this work went on.
JACQUES BENVENISTE: Sticking
an envelope to the ceiling was utterly ridiculous. There is no way you can
associate that with science.
NARRATOR: With the codes out
of reach the final experiment could begin. By now Benveniste had lost
control of events.
JACQUES BENVENISTE: It was a
madhouse. Randi was doing magician tricks.
JAMES RANDI: Yes I was doing
perhaps a little bit of sleight-of-hand with an object or something like
that, just to lighten the atmosphere.
NARRATOR: Soon the analysis
was complete. It was time to break the code to see if the experiment had
worked. Benveniste and his team were brimming with optimism.
JAMES RANDI: Oh my goodness
it was party-time, cracked crabs legs and magnums, literally, of champagne
packed in ice.
WALTER STEWART: We were going
to be treated to a wonderful dinner. The press, many members of the press
were there.
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. Everyone was gathered around.
NARRATOR: Benveniste felt
sure that the results would support homeopathy and that he would be
vindicated.
JAMES RANDI: That didn't
happen. It was just a total failure.
SIR JOHN MADDOX: We said well
nothing here is there?
WALTER STEWART: And
immediately the mood in the laboratory switched, people burst into tears.
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.
JACQUES BENVENISTE: Everybody
believed that I am totally wrong. It's simply dismissed. Your phone call
doesn't ring anymore. Just like actresses, or actress that have no, are no
more in fashion the phone suddenly is silent.
NARRATOR: For now the memory
of water was forgotten. Science declared homeopathy impossible once more,
but strangely that didn't cause homeopathy to disappear. Instead it grew.
Since the Benveniste affair sales of homeopathic medicines have rocketed.
Homeopathy has become a trendy lifestyle choice, one of the caring, all
natural medicines, more popular in the 21st-century than ever before.
Despite the scepticism of science millions of people use it and believe it
has helped them, like Marie Smith. Fifteen years ago Marie was diagnosed
with a life-threatening blood disorder.
MARIE SMITH: I was more
concerned for me children. I used to look at them thinking I may, may not be
here one day for yous. That was the worst part of it.
NARRATOR: She'd tried
everything that conventional medicine could offer, including drugs and
surgery. Nothing seemed to work. Then she tried homeopathy. She took a
remedy made from common salt.
MARIE SMITH: It's like
somebody putting me in a coffin and taking me back out again. That's just
the way I felt and the quality of my life changed completely.
NARRATOR: Since then Marie
has been healthy and she has no doubt it's homeopathy that's helped her.
MARIE SMITH: I know it saved
my life and it's made my life a lot different, yeah and I'm just glad I'm
enjoying these grandchildren which I never thought I would do.
NARRATOR: There are thousands
of cases like Marie's and they do present science with a problem. If
homeopathy is scientific nonsense then why are so many people apparently
being cured by it? The answer may lie in the strange and powerful placebo
effect. The placebo effect is one of the most peculiar phenomena in all
science. Doctors have long known that some patients can be cured with pills
that contain no active ingredient at all, just plain sugar, what they call
the placebo, and they've noticed an even great puzzle: that larger placebo
pills work better than small ones, coloured pills work better than white
pills. The key is simply believing that the pill will help you. This
releases the powers in our minds that reduce stress and that alone can
improve your health.
BOB PARK: Stress hormones
make you feel terribly uncomfortable. The minute you relieve the anxiety,
relieve the stress hormones people do feel better, but that's a true
physiological effect.
NARRATOR: Scientists believe
the mere act of taking a homeopathic remedy can make people feel better and
homeopathy has other ways of reducing stress.
LIONEL MILGROM: And is there
any particular time of day that you will, you'll, you'll have that feeling?
PATIENT: No.
NARRATOR: A crucial part of
homeopathic care is the consultation.
LIONEL MILGROM: The stress
that you have at work, is that, are those around issues that make you feel
quite emotional?
PATIENT: No.
LIONEL MILGROM: The main
thing about a homeopathic interview is that we do spend a lot of time
talking and listening to the patient. We would ask questions of how they
eat, how they sleep, how much worry and tension there is in their lives,
hopefully give them some advice about how to actually ease problems of
stress.
PATIENT I just feel I want to
have something more natural.
LIONEL MILGROM: Yeah…
NARRATOR: So most scientists
believe that when homeopathy works it must be because of the placebo effect.
BOB PARK: As far as I know
it's the only thing that is really guaranteed to be a perfect placebo. There
is no medicine in the medicine at all.
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.
Pregnant cows are given dilute cuttlefish ink, sheep receive homeopathic
silver to treat eye infections, piglets get sulphur to fatten them up. A
growing number of vets believe it's the medicine of the future, like Mark
Elliot who's used homeopathy his whole career, on all sorts of animals.
MARK ELLIOT (Homeopathic
Vet): Primarily it's dogs and horses, but we also treat cats, small rodents,
rabbits, guinea pigs, even reptiles, but I have treated an elephant with
arthritis and I've heard of colleagues recently who treated giraffes. It
works on any species exactly the same as in the human field.
NARRATOR: Mark made it his
mission to prove that homeopathy works. He decided to study horses with
cushing's, a disease caused by cancer. He treated them all with the same
homeopathic remedy. The results were impressive.
MARK ELLIOT: We achieved an
overall 80% success rate which is great because that is comparable with,
with modern medical drugs.
NARRATOR: To Mark this was
clear proof that homeopathy can't be the placebo effect.
MARK ELLIOT: You can't
explain to this animal why the treatment it's being given is going to ben,
to benefit it, or how it's potentially going to benefit it and as a result,
when you see a positive result in a horse or a dog that to me is the
ultimate proof that homeopathy is not placebo, homeopathy works.
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. That's true. For
example, if I tell you that at my home in Florida in the United States I
have a goat in my garden. You could easily check that out. Yeah, looks like
a goat, smells like a goat, so the case is essentially proven, but if I say
I have a unicorn, that's a different matter. That's an unusual claim.
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. In science the best evidence there can
be is a rigorous trial comparing a medicine against a placebo and in recent
years such trials have been done with homeopathy. David Reilly is a
conventionally trained doctor who became intrigued by the claims of the
homeopaths. He wanted to put homeopathy to the test and decided to look at
hay fever. Both homeopathy and conventional medicine use pollen as a
treatment for hay fever. What's different about homeopathy is the dilution.
DR DAVID REILLY (Glasgow
Homeopathic Hospital): The single controversial element is that preparing
this pollen by the homeopathic method takes it to a point that there's not a
single molecule of the starting material present. I confidently assumed that
these diluted medicines were placebos.
NARRATOR: David Reilly
recruited 35 patients with hayfever. Half of them were given a homeopathic
medicine made from pollen, half were given placebo, just sugar pills. No one
knew which was which. For four weeks they filled in a diary measuring how
bad their symptoms were. The question was: would there be a difference?
DAVID REILLY: To our
collective shock a result came out that was very clear those on the active
medication had a substantially greater reduction in symptoms than those
receiving the placebo medicine. 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. Then he went further and tested a different type of allergy. Again
the result was positive, but despite all these studies, most scientists
refuse to believe his research.
DAVID REILLY: It became
obvious that in certain minds 100 studies, 200 studies would not change the
mental framework and so I'm sceptical that if 200 haven't changed it I don't
think 400 would change it.
NARRATOR: The reason Reilly's
research was dismissed was because his conclusion had no scientific
explanation. Sceptics pointed to the glaring problem: there was still no
evidence as to how something that was pure water could actually work.
BOB PARK: If you design a
medication to take advantage of what we know about physiology we're not
surprised when it works. When, when you come up with no explanation at all
for how it could work and then claim is works we're not likely to take it
seriously.
NARRATOR: To convince
science, homeopathy had to find a mechanism, something that could explain
how homeopathic water could cure you. That meant proving that water really
does have a memory. Then a scientist appeared to find that proof. Madeleine
Ennis has never had much time for homeopathy. As a professor of pharmacology
she knows its scientifically impossible.
MADELEINE ENNIS: I'm a
completely conventional scientist. I have had no experience of using
non-conventional medications and have no intention really of starting to use
them.
NARRATOR: But at a conference
Ennis heard a French scientist present some puzzling results, results that
seemed to show that water has a memory.
MADELEINE ENNIS: Many of us
were incredibly sceptical about the findings. We told him that something
must have gone wrong in the experiments and that we didn't believe what he
had presented.
NARRATOR: He replied with a
challenge.
MADELEINE ENNIS: I was asked
whether, if I really believed my viewpoint, would I test the hypothesis that
the data were wrong?
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. Then she added a chemical, histamine, which had been diluted
down to homeopathic levels. The crucial question: would it have any effect
on the cells? To find out she had to count the cells one by one to see
whether they had been affected by the homeopathic water. 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.
MADELEINE ENNIS: They
certainly weren't the results that I wanted to see and they definitely
weren't the results that I would have liked to have seen.
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.
MADELEINE ENNIS: I was
incredibly surprised and really had great feelings of disbelief, but I know
how the experiments were performed and I couldn't see an error in what we
had done.
NARRATOR: These results
seemed to prove that water does have a memory after all. It's exactly what
the homeopaths have been hoping for.
PETER FISHER: If these
results become generally accepted it will revolutionise the view of
homeopathy. Homeopathy will suddenly become this idea that was perhaps born
before its time.
LIONEL MILGROM: It's
particularly exciting because it does seem to suggest that Benveniste was
correct.
NARRATOR: At last here is
evidence from a highly respected researcher that homeopathic water has a
real biological effect. The claims of homeopathy might be true after all.
However, the arch sceptic Randi is unimpressed.
JAMES RANDI: There is so many
ways that errors are purposeful interference can take place.
NARRATOR: As part of his
campaign to test bizarre claims Randi has decided to put his money where his
mouth is. On his website is a public promise: to anyone who prove the
scientifically impossible Randi will pay $1m.
JAMES RANDI: This is not a
cheap theatrical stung. It's theatrical, yes, but it's a million dollar's
worth.
NARRATOR: Proving the memory
of water would certainly qualify for the million dollars. To win the prize
someone would simply have to repeat Ennis's experiments under controlled
conditions, yet no-one has applied.
JAMES RANDI: Where are the
homeopathic labs, the biological labs around the world, who say that this is
the real thing who would want to make a million dollars and aren't doing it?
NARRATOR: So Horizon
decided to take up Randi's challenge. We gathered experts from some of
Britain's leading scientific institutions to help us repeat Ennis's
experiments. Under the most rigorous of conditions they'll see whether they
can find any evidence for the memory of water. We brought James Randi over
from the United States to witness the experiment and we came to the world's
most august scientific institution, the Royal Society. The Vice-President of
the Society, Professor John Enderby, agreed to oversee the experiment for
us.
PROF. JOHN ENDERBY: ...but
they'll, of course as far as the experimenters are concerned they'll have
totally different numbers…
NARRATOR: And with a million
dollars at stake James Randi wants to make sure there's no room for error.
JAMES RANDI: ...keeping the
original samples, so I'm very happy with that provision. I'm willing to
accept a positive result for homeopathy or for astrology or for anything
else. I may not like it, but I have to be willing to accept it.
NARRATOR: The first stage is
to prepare the homeopathic dilutions. We came to the laboratories of
University College London where Professor Peter Mobbs agreed to produce them
for us. He's going to make a homeopathic solution of histamine by repeatedly
diluting one drop of solution into 99 drops of water.
PETER MOBBS: OK, now I'm
transferring the histamine into 9.9mmls of distilled water and then we'll
discard the tip.
NARRATOR: For comparison we
also need control tubes, tubes that have never had histamine in them. For
these Peter starts with plain water.
PETER MOBBS: In it goes.
NARRATOR: This stage dilutes
the solutions down to one in 100 - that's 1C. We now have 10 tubes. Half are
just water diluted with more water, the control tubes, half are histamine
diluted in water. These are all shaken, the crucial homeopathic step. Now he
dilutes each of the tubes again, to 2C. Then to 3C, all the way to 5C.
PETER MOBBS: The histamine's
now been diluted ten thousand million times. Still a few molecules left in
there, but not very many.
NARRATOR: Then we asked
Professor of Electrical Engineering, Hugh Griffiths, to randomly relabel
each of our 10 tubes. Now only he has the code for which tubes contain the
homeopathic dilutions and which tubes contain water.
HUGH GRIFFITHS: OK, so
there's the record of which is which. I'm going to encase it in aluminium
foil and then seal it in this envelope here.
NARRATOR: Next the
time-consuming task of taking these solutions down to true homeopathic
levels. UCL scientist Rachel Pearson takes each of the tubes and dilutes
them down further - to 6C. That's one drop in 20 swimming pools. To 12C - a
drop in the Atlantic. Then to 15C - one drop in all the world's oceans. The
tubes have now been diluted one million million million million million
times. Some are taken even further down, to 18C. Every tube, whether it
contains histamine or water, goes through exactly the same procedure. To
guard against any possibility of fraud, Professor Enderby himself recodes
every single tube. 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. Now we repeat Ennis's
procedure. We take a drop of water from each of the tubes and add a sample
of living human cells. Then it's time for Wayne Turnbull at Guys Hospital,
to analyse the cells to see whether the homeopathic water has had any
effect. He'll be using the most sophisticated system available: a flow
cytometer.
WAYNE TURNBULL: Loading it
up, bringing it up to pressure. Essentially the technology allows us to take
individual cells and push them past a focused laser beam. A single stream of
cells will be pushed along through the nozzle head and come straight down
through the machine. The laser lights will be focussed at each individual
cell as it goes past. Reflected laser light is then being picked up by these
electronic detectors here.
NARRATOR: By measuring the
light reflected off each cell the computer can tell whether they've reacted
or not.
WAYNE TURNBULL: This is
actually a very fast machine. I can run up to 100 million cells an hour.
JAMES RANDI: Whoa.
NARRATOR: But to be
absolutely rigorous we asked a second scientist, Marian Macey at the Royal
London Hospital, to perform the analysis in parallel. Our two labs get to
work. Using a flow cytometer they measure how many of the cells are being
activated by the different test solutions. Some tubes do seem to be having
more of an effect than others. The question is: are they the homeopathic
ones? At last the analysis is complete. We gather all the participants here
to the Royal Society to find out the results. First, everyone confirms that
the experiment has been conducted in a rigorous fashion.
MARION MACEY: I applied my
own numbering system to the…
RACHEL PEARSON: ...5, 5.4
millimolar solution…
WAYNE TURNBULL: ...we
eventually did arrive at a protocol that we were happy with.
NARRATOR: Then there's the
small matter of the million dollars.
JOHN ENDERBY: James, is the
cheque in your pocket ready now?
JAMES RANDI: We don't
actually carry a cheque around. It's in the form of negotiable bonds which
will be immediately sep, separated from our account and given to whoever
should win the prize.
NARRATOR: We asked the firm
to fax us confirmation that the million dollar prize is there.
JOHN ENDERBY: OK, now look,
I'm going to open this envelope.
NARRATOR: Now at last it's
time to break the code. On hand to analyse the results is statistician
Martin Bland.
JOHN ENDERBY: 59.
NARRATOR: We've divided the
tubes into those that did and didn't seem to have an effect in our
experiment.
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. If the memory of water is real each
column should either have mostly Cs or mostly Ds. This would show that the
homeopathic dilutions are having a real effect, different from ordinary
water. There's a hint that the letters are starting to line up.
JOHN ENDERBY: Column 1 we've
got 5 Cs and a D. Column 3 we've got 4 Cs and a D, so let's press on. 148
and 9, 28 and…
NARRATOR: But as more codes
are read out the true result becomes clear: the Cs and Ds are completely
mixed up. The results are just what you'd expect by chance. A statistical
analysis confirms it. The homeopathic water hasn't had any effect.
PROF. MARTIN BLAND (St.
George's Hospital Medical School): There's absolutely no evidence at all to
say that there is any difference between the solution that started off as
pure water and the solution that started off with the histamine.
JOHN ENDERBY: What this has
convinced me is that water does not have a memory.
NARRATOR: So Horizon
hasn't won the million dollars. It's another triumph for James Randi. His
reputation and his money are safe, but even he admits this may not be the
final word.
JAMES RANDI: Further
investigation needs to be done. This may sound a little strange coming from
me, but if there is any possibility that there's a reality here I want to
know about it, all of humanity wants to know about it.
NARRATOR: Homeopathy is back
where it started without any credible scientific explanation. That won't
stop millions of people putting their faith in it, but science is confident.
Homeopathy is impossible.
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