If Diagnosed with Ebola, Would You Let a Homeopath Treat You?

originally posted 14 NOV 2014

I had a terrible run in with homeopathy last year. I knew nothing about homepathic medicine until that point. Now I know. I went through months of medical treatments as a result. I'm not a fan.

So, when I read this headline on Google news today" Homeopaths sent to deadly Ebola hotspot to treat victims with ARSENIC and SNAKE VENOM"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2834259/Homeopaths-sent-deadly-Ebola-hotspot-treat-victims-ARSENIC-SNAKE-VENOM.html
I just thought, "Oh my goodness, no!"

I lump homeopathy with voodoo practices which I saw extensively during my time in Haiti. Wait, what do you mean I lump homeopathy with voodoo? That is sure to shock a few.

To begin, you take your ingredient. Let's run with the snake venom mentioned in this article. Not sure what the 'measurements' are on the bottle but might be similar to this - 3x, 6x, 12x, 30x, 60x. The 'x' is the Roman numeral 10. They start by taking the snake venom (your call if you believe the venom is actually there in that first drop) and diluting it with 3000 equal parts water. Then they shake vigorously.  When you really look into what homeopathy is, it is a "spirit-like healing force" that is released when the water is shaken so that is why they shake it. It imparts a sort of memory into the surrounding water. Then they dilute with the 6x, 6000 equal parts water and so on and so forth with the shaking and diluting until they get to the 60x (a lot of zeroes there and a lot of water, eh).
Side note: if this were true, imagine all the millions of bottles of wine you could create off of just one grape!

But then reality sets in. According to an article on Wikipedia on homeopathy:

"60x - on average, this would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient."

Not too worried about these people really being given snake venom and aphrodisiacs since the chances are good that those were never even there to begin.

Lots of thoughts on this and glad to see that in a country that does have a large populace who believe in voodoo and witchcraft, they still won't allow it.

Will leave you with some of the thoughts mentioned in the comments which I think are the best part.

"I do hope they'll be wearing one millionth of a hazmat suit!"

"It would be interesting to see which method of treatment they chose should one of them contract it!"

"I hope water doesn't have a memory, when you think of all the things that have been in it in the past."

and, this last comment had me thinking, if one of these 'medical professionals' caught the disease, would they indeed treat it with homeopathy or fly back for the real treatment?