The specific purpose of this book is to test the “paradoxical” theory that homeopathic medicine has definite therapeutic effects, on the basis of scientific evidence.
In accordance with the standard pharmacological sense, it seems ridiculous to believe that a homeopathic medicine containing very low, sometimes undetectable concentrations of active constituents, could interact with a living organism and restore it to health.
Yet during the 200-year history of homeopathy, numerous studies have been conducted which appear to provide empirical confirmation of the therapeutic efficacy of homeopathic medicines.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of these studies used a special language and methodology which were incompatible with those of the academic and scientific world, thus relegating homeopathy to an inevitable long isolation.
We believe that this approach is unsuited to the purposes we aim to achieve with this volume.
Moreover, the therapeutic efficacy of homeopathic medicines may be confirmed by the fact that an increasing number of patients and doctors on every continent rely on homeopathy to solve their health problems.
A survey conducted by ISTAT (the Italian Statistics Institute) in September-December 1999 (“State of health and use of the National Health Service”) demonstrated that no less than five million Italians use homeopathic medicines, almost twice as many as in 1994, and even more people use this type of medicine in other European countries.
However, even these figures do not suffice for our purposes.
The Parliaments of numerous European and non-European countries have included homeopathic medicines in their legislation, and the health authorities have approved homeopathic pharmacopoeia, thus giving homeopathic medicines the status of drugs.
However, not even these official recognitions are sufficient for our approach.
Our specific aim is to establish whether it is possible to be certain, beyond all reasonable doubt, that homeopathic medicines have therapeutic effects. We believe that the most objective method can only be based on scientific research, performed in strict compliance with its standard methodological criteria.
We also believe that if the efficacy of homeopathy can be proved, it must be communicated in the language used by the present-day scientific and academic community.
We have consequently performed a lengthy, detailed analysis of the extensive homeopathic literature and selected studies that comply strictly with scientific methodologies and criteria. Fortunately, the scientific quality of the studies performed in this field has considerably improved in the past 3-4 years, often reaching very high standards.
Our analysis concentrates mainly on these studies, in order to offer a comprehensive review of the state of the art in homeopathic high level research.
This analysis effort, performed under the supervision of an Advisory Committee, required the examination of a huge number of publications, and led to the production of an updated chart of homeopathic research.
The basic, significant findings of the selected studies are presented here, with all the bibliographical references required to allow further information from the source.
Our purpose is to offer readers basic information in a deliberately concise, concrete text which is solely aimed at presenting results based on rigorous research.
Finally, we have illustrated in greater detail ten particularly interesting studies on the efficacy of some homeopathic medicines vs allopathic medicines regularly used to treat the same disorders.
We consider these studies to be particularly significant because of their socio-medical implications.
We have not tackled here the various issues relating to “the epistemological basis of the experimental method in medicine”, “the extreme personalisation of homeopathic treatment”, “ethical doubts relating to pharmacological research”, “theoretical non-standardisation of the choice of homeopathic remedy”, “the absence of the usual dose-effect relationship”, “the explanation of the action mechanism of homeopathic remedies”, and so on.
Our aim is to reach a definite conclusion: do homeopathic medicines interact with living beings, and above all, can they restore health? As readers will see, we consider that these studies lead to the undeniable conclusion that homeopathic medicine possesses therapeutic efficacy.
At this point a number of consequences follow at various levels, in particular as regards the socio-medical, political and scientific aspects.