Homeopathy

I'm usually more diplomatic about such things, but homeopathy is quite frankly the stupidest health-related thing I have ever heard of. I am shocked and saddened that people embrace this stuff to the point it sits on the shelf at the drugstore next to real medication.

Let me explain homeopathy to you:

- The belief that if a certain substance causes a certain symptom, then giving that substance to someone else suffering from similar symptoms will reverse it. Example: I give a healthy person caffeine. The symptom: they can't go to sleep. Therefore, if someone comes up to me and says "I can't get to sleep," I will give them caffeine. In homeopathy, this is called a "proving."

- Take one part of the drug in question, and add it to ten parts water. Shake it (this is very important) the correct number of times, in the correct direction. Take one part of this resulting mixture and add it to ten more parts water. Continue this process as much as you wish: the less substance is in the final product, the more potent it is.

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As an example, this package of "homeopathic sleep aids" from CVS Pharmacy says its active ingredient is caffeine at a power of "x1500." This means it has been dilluted to a power of 10, followed by 1500 zeroes. For reference, this is equivalent to dissolving one grain of rice in a sphere of water the size of the solar system, with a radius from the center of the sun out to beyond the orbit of Pluto.

...and then repeating that two billion times.

"But wait!" the chemists among you exclaim. "Doesn't Avogadro's constant say that once you get beyond x23, there are no atoms of the original substance even left in the solution?"

This is correct, and homeopaths argue that a solution needs to be x20 before it is even effective. (x30 is standard.) This means that homeopathic remedies do not actually contain one single molecule of the original active ingredient anyway.

This box of "homeopathic cold remedy?" The active ingredient is arsenic. Yes, you heard that right. Rat poison. But never fear: it's at a potency of x50. (And costs twice as much as the Tylenol Cold & Flu sitting next to it.)

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It is both incredibly depressing and deeply embarrassing that our culture is so scientifically illiterate and gullible -- so desperate to believe -- that they buy this shit by the billions.