If an ENTIRE 1ml was in a 30C suspension then the total mass of liquid would indeed be… bloody huge.

But that is not what is being claimed by homeofrauds.

Quite the contrary in fact. They are not pretending to KEEP the whole 1ml, they are in fact trumpeting how cleverly they throw it all away.

Only the tiniest Avogadro-defying amount (ie none) of “active” ingredient remains in their silly nostrum, so it can indeed be achieved with 3 litres or so…

To put it another way, a 30C solution can be prepared by either reducing the solute OR (theoretically at least) increasing the solvent.
.

No, you were right the first time. BillyJoe7 is proceeding from a fundamentally flawed understanding of the math involved.

BillyJoe7,

Your math is off. It isn’t 30 x 100ml, it’s a 1:100 ratio repeated 30 times. One ml is mixed with 100ml, then one ml of *that* is mixed with another clean 100 ml, and so forth, thirty times. So after the second step you’re already at one ml of the original substance for 10,000 ml of the water, which is to say ten liters. And that’s at 2C. At 3C we reach a needed volume of 1,000 liters to contain the original 1ml. The math is exponential rather than multiplicative, so we’d need to raise 100 to the 30th power, i.e. add two zeros to the number original 30 times, to reach an amount of water sufficient to contain the original 1ml. Which is to say, the ratio is this:

1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

That’s how dilution (and, for that matter, exponential math) works. Now, I can’t say I’ve measured 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ml in lightyears, but I do think we ought to be able to, say, take three zeros away from that figure, look at the number of liters it would take to contain 1ml of a 30C dilution, and agree it’s a teensy bit more than three. More like a septendecillion liters, to get technical about it.

Thanks for this BJ. It makes sense when you think about it (which, I admit, I hadn’t).

“A standard homeopathic dilution is 30C which (according to Wikipedia) equates to 1ml of active ingredient diluted in a cube of water with sides measuring 106 light years.”

Obviously ou don’t need a cube of water with sides measuring 106 light years.
Do the math. All you need only 30 X 100ml = 3 litres.

“The mind boggles at the logistics of applying this ratio in a factory. How could you actually do this without recycling most of the water you started out with?”

The water is “purified” by osmosis and re-used.

“I know the whole concept is nonsensical, but there are homeopathic manufacturers out there who claim a 30C dilution on some products and if they can’t show that they’ve stuck to their own magical rules they ought to be held to account.”

As I said, they actually do the dilutions and succussions.
(but, no, they do not use a leather bible in the succussion process)

“Have any manufacturers ever come forward and explained how they can achieve a 30C dilution?”

Here is a video by Bioron explaining what they do (in all seriousness!)
http://www.boironusahcp.com/homeopathy/about-homeopathy.php

A standard homeopathic dilution is 30C which (according to Wikipedia) equates to 1ml of active ingredient diluted in a cube of water with sides measuring 106 light years.

The mind boggles at the logistics of applying this ratio in a factory. How could you actually do this without recycling most of the water you started out with?

I know the whole concept is nonsensical, but there are homeopathic manufacturers out there who claim a 30C dilution on some products and if they can’t show that they’ve stuck to their own magical rules they ought to be held to account.

Have any manufacturers ever come forward and explained how they can achieve a 30C dilution?

The Tobacco Settlement was about money, not about fixing the health problem of tobacco use. My guess is that this settlement is also about money and that homeopathic stuff will continue to be sold, but maybe with a different label.

When you are a business and are the defendant and you are clearly in the wrong, you have to settle because a jury could kill your business. If the settlement is structured with more money to the lawyers who brought the case than to those who were defrauded and if the behavior the lawsuit was based on continues (but now with court sanctioned “legality”), what public good has been accomplished?

The better public health outcome would have been for the tobacco industry to be destroyed. Similarly a better outcome would be for Boiron to be destroyed. But destroying Boiron would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, even if those eggs are really just goose $h!t.

It is even stranger to realise that they actually do go through the whole dilution and succussion process (though I think the leather bible bit has been dispensed with )

What rules?
The more you learn about homoeopathy, the more you realise that there are no rules.
Anything goes, and everything is possible.

1, The federal government budget of May 2012 indicates that quack “treatments” will no longer be allowed to be covered by private health funds, excepting, for some strange reason, acupuncture and chiroquacktors. Why? Because they represent a large (therefore powerful) section of CAM?

2. Have a look at Friends of Science in Medicine
http://www.scienceinmedicine.org.au/
A group of professors got together late last year to point the finger at universities that were offering courses in woo. Several universities declined to reply, some came up with various useless excuses, some argued forcefully that it was “ok” to sell rubbish courses to students, others argued that no woo courses were offered by them when their own websites showed that they did.
FSM is working away not so quietly to gets its point across to government and public that CAM is a waste of funds and potentially very dangerous. There was a large article from FSM in the Brisbane Sunday Mail Health section a few weeks ago pointing out the garbage that is alternative “medicine”.

Stuart