Scientifically Proving the Mechanism of Action

[timokay]

There is considerable criticism about Homeopathy not being able to explain its pharmacological mechanism, but this thread demonstrates some of Science's own shortcomings in this area, and some contradictions appearing in reputable Scientific texts.

 

POINTS

 

1. The shaky evidence, or lack of evidence, for the mechanisms of many bacterial diseases, and how medicines actually act on these disease agents "in vivo". Scientific knowledge of "in vivo" activities in this area is lacking - as mysterious as a previous discussion asking about "how symptoms are constructed in the body".

 

2. There are many contradictions in modern textbooks about inflammatory and immune system processes. What causes fever? Is it a deliberate process mediated via the Hypothalamus or is it "faulty nerve stimulation". Leading textbooks on the subject seem very confident with their contradictory explanations.

 

3. The way so-called Scientific specialists/experts DO NOT accept significant new research findings in their field if it is not in the interest of a pharmaceutical company (the source of their regular backhanders) which holds a patent on a particular drug which would almost become obsolete as a result of the Scientific acceptance of such research.

 

For example, many years ago, the Australian scientist, Barry Marshall who used Koch's postulates, proved that Helicobacter Pylori DOES thrive in the stomach and IS a significant risk factor to stomach ulcers and cancer. And he showed the simple way that this bacterium can be totally eliminated from the body with a short course of antibiotics, permanently removing that risk factor for these stomach diseases.

 

Marshall was conveniently ignored for decades because acceptance of his findings would mean a much reduced need for Glaxo/Wellcome's extortionately-priced ZANTAC (Ranitidine HCl) which inhibits stomach acid, for the treatment of stomach ulcers. But, Marshall's research was ignored until the patent had expired and other manufacturers were free to make and sell Ranitidine at a very much cheaper price. The BBC broad casted programmes about this case many times, exposing the injustice of it all. The drug companies should certainly be rewarded for their research efforts, but not at the expense of patients and progress.

 

PROVING THAT A BACTERIUM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A DISEASE

 

Returning to POINT 1 above, Medical Science has problems proving that a certain bacterium IS actually responsible for a particular disease. So, when bacterial disease occurs, how can we be sure that we have correctly identified the causative agent of the disease?

 

Criteria to answer this question were postulated by Robert Koch over a hundred years ago. All four of these criteria must be satisfied to prove that this infectious agent is the causative agent:

 

1. the infectious agent should be present in each and every case of the disease, and its distribution in the body should accord with the pattern of the lesion seen;

 

2. the infectious agent should be recovered from infected individuals, and be established in pure culture in the laboratory;

 

3. inoculation of samples of the pure cultures into experimental animals (or human volunteers) should cause the same disease;

 

4. when re-cultured from the experimental animals or human volunteers, the original bacterium should be recovered.

 

KOCH's postulates have never been fulfilled for many diseases like syphilis and leprosy, because the bacteria cannot be grown in nutrient media in the laboratory, yet these bacteria have been generally accepted as THE CAUSE of these diseases. And, many others, like the bacteria causing gonorrhoea and certain types of meningitis will only grow in humans, and have similar problems with Koch's Postulates.

 

Koch's postulates cannot be applied in relation to the importance of factors affecting host susceptibility. Cystic fibrosis patients are uniquely susceptible to damage to their lungs caused by long-term colonisation of their thickened mucus from a bacterium called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Koch's postulates cannot be tested by inoculating the bacterium into the lungs of a normal animal. Instead, mice belonging to a mutated strain must be used.

 

Some bacterial pathogens are 'single-disease' organisms; others give rise to a range of disease syndromes.

 

One way to summarise the properties of pathogenic bacteria is to regard the bacterial cell as a living delivery system for the various macromolecules which result in its capacity to cause disease.

The structural components, or soluble products, of a bacterium which are involved in its capacity to cause such diseases are known as its virulence determinants.

 

So, bacterial infection is no longer viewed as a process in which bacteria grow and develop in their host in the same mechanical fashion which results in the appearance of a bacterial colony on a plate of nutrient medium.

 

The survival of Bacteria depends on mediators which protect bacteria against host defence mechanisms, e.g., mediators against phagocytes and serum lysis.

Some bacterial components damage the host by triggering the body's key enzyme cascades to a pathological extent OR by eliciting harmful immune responses.

 

The symptoms of malaria are recurrent chills, fever, and sweating. The symptoms peak roughly every 48hrs, when successive generations of merozoites are released from infected red blood cells. The large number of merozoites formed can block capillaries, causing intense headaches, renal failure, heart failure or cerebral damage.

 

There is speculation that some of the symptoms of malaria may be caused not by Plasmodium itself but instead by excessive production of cytokines - stemming from the observation that cancer patients treated in clinical trials with recombinant tumour necrosis factor (TNF) developed symptoms that mimicked malaria.

 

Homeopathic medicines contain no bacteria, nor any disease agent whatsoever yet they produce symptom patterns that closely resemble those associated with bacterial infections. It is possible that their mode of action is similarly on immune system or acute inflammatory processes such as complement activation, production of cytokines, or influence the activities of macrophages, for instance.

 

The above illustrates that symptoms are not directly caused by a disease agent, but by complicated processes in the body attempting to deal with it.

 

The mode of action of medicines in living tissue faces similar verification problems. This applies as much to conventional medicines as it does to Homeopathic medicines.

 

But, I think that knowledge of the mode of action of Homeopathic medicines is not a mandatory requirement for acceptance of Homeopathy within Science.

 

Tim

[Glider]

timokay said in post #1 :

There is considerable criticism about Homeopathy not being able to explain its pharmacological mechanism [of action]

Not quite accurate. Until it can be demonstrated that there is an action, investigations into the mechanism are irrelevant and entirely pointless.

 

When penicillin was first shown to kill bacteria in culture, nobody knew how, but at least it was shown that it did. Investigations into how came later.