Why Would an Academic Health Center Support Homeopathy?

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Hahnemann, who is usually given the blame for homeopathy, had the idea that if something bad were diluted enough, it might be something good. If you think of cancer therapy, this idea, at first glance, might make sense. Except…

Cancer therapeutic agents are indeed toxic, but in the best case scenario they do more damage to rapidly growing cancer cells than to normal ones. But the therapeutic agents still have to be present in a concentration high enough to interfere with some cancer cell processes at the molecular level.

A digression: Dilution is an interesting process.

Suppose you had a twenty-gallon fish tank with one gold fish in it. Take out a gallon and dilute it to twenty gallons in another tank. What is the probability that the fish is in the second tank? 1 in 20 or .05.

Now if you repeat this process again, what is the probability of the fish in a third tank?

1 in 400 (.05 x .05 or .0025).

The point is that even with modest dilution factors the concentration of a molecular species gets very small, very fast. So much so that in multiple serial dilutions, the probability of having even one molecule in a solution is very small. One more dilution of the type described will bring the probability to 1 in 160,000! End digression.

An example relevant to homeopathy is that of UCL pharmacology professor David Colquhoun who wrote in Chest:

David Colquhoun, FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society)
doi: 10.1378/chest.06-2402 CHEST February 2007 vol. 131 no. 2 635-636

Now unfortunately, at our Academic Health Center, in addition to having an evidence based medical school (supposedly) we have a Center for Spirituality and Healing, directed by a self described nurse scientist who is apparently an advocate for homeopathy and in fact cited the above use of dichromate as an effective homeopathic remedy:

Minnesota Daily, Evidence for Alternative Medicine, February 14, 2010
Now it is generally accepted, cranks aside, that homeopathy is witchcraft. So why would an Academic Health Center put up with homeopathy and even give advice on its own website about how to select a homeopath?

Is this a good enough reason in the case of an Academic Health Center with an evidence-based medical school? Why are we wasting resources on junk science while cutting corners on real medicine?

From the University of Minnesota web-site:

This egregious baloney has recently been pulled and replaced with a link to an NIH site for alternative medicine. I guess that makes it ok?

This sleight of hand is ironic.

In a 2010 report, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health, said that the key concepts of homeopathy "are not consistent with the established laws of science."