By Juanita Copeland
The New Zealand Skeptics Society has launched an attack on the natural medicine practice of homeopathy.
As part of an international protest, the group staged a mass overdose – designed to prove the remedies are just over-priced water.
“This stuff is so diluted it’s the equivalent of putting a pinch of sugar into the Atlantic Ocean, giving it a darn good stir and staying ‘the Atlantic Ocean is thereby sweeter’,” says NZ Skeptics spokeswoman Vicki Hyde.
The remedies are created by heavily diluting products from the plant, animal and mineral worlds.
Homeopaths like Jill Wilby say despite the dilution there are still active ingredients.
“Research at the moment is saying there is an electro-magnetic component that is the active ingredient,” she says.
Skeptics claim any benefits have nothing to do with the remedies.
“We know the human body has a great capacity to heal itself – the homeopaths are right about that,” says Ms Hyde.
“However it will heal itself regardless of weather you take a homeopathic solution or plain water – they’re the same thing.”
Ms Wilby says the protest will not have any physical affect on the sceptics because they are not taking the remedies as they are designed to be taken.
“When we take a client’s case we give them a single remedy and monitor that – we don’t do a mass overdoes, and we don’t do lost of different remedies at once.”
Former homeopathy skeptic Megan Kennedy claims the remedies fixed her daughter’s range of complaints from insomnia to chronic headaches.
“Keep believing what you want to believe, but for us it has worked and I totally believe in [homeopathy] now.”
While Ms Kennedy is convinced, the sceptics involved in today’s protest don’t.
None of them claim to feel any different after their overdose.
3 News