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From: sarima@gryphon.CTS.COM (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Infinite dilutions revisited
Keywords: Don't start cheering for Homeopathy.
Message-ID: <5008@gryphon.CTS.COM>
Date: 26 Jul 88 03:47:41 GMT
References: <1907@aecom.YU.EDU>
Reply-To: sarima@gryphon.CTS.COM (Stan Friesen)
Distribution: na
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 45

In article <1907@aecom.YU.EDU> werner@aecom.YU.EDU (Craig Werner) writes:
>
>	Recently, both in this newsgroup and in the general scientfic and
>popular press, there was a lot of discussion about a rather amazing 
>experiment done in France by Jacques Benveniste of INSERM at the South
>Paris University that suggests that certain compounds can be
>diluted infinitely without necessarily losing biological activity.
>[Material deleted describing basic premise of experiment]
>
>  However, with further dilution, the activity INCREASED to an 
>intermediate value, and then decreased, and increased again in a periodic
>fashion.  This pattern continued to a dilution of 10^-120, well beyond
>the molecular limit where one would expect any molecules of the original
>mixture to be remaining.  This periodic behavior was robust -- it replicated
>on different trials -- although the phase was not constant between trials
>(i.e., on one trial, peaks might be seen at dilutions 45 49 53 57 etc,
>while on a later trial, no activity would be seen on those dilutions, but
>would appear in dilutions 47 51 55 59 etc.)
> [ Description of controls deleted ]
>	Another interesting phenomenon was that the handling of the
>compounds was important. If following dilution, only gentle mixing was
>applied, no activity wa recorded. Activity was only recorded if the
>tubes were subjected to 10 seconds of vigorous vortexing.
>
	Aha!! This looks like the key to the problem. This sounds like
a Chaotic Attractor. That is a complex, but deterministic, system which
shows apparently disorganized or unpredictable behavior. And mixing is
a known mechanism for producing Chaotic effects. I would suggest that the
vigorous mixing actually *increased* the "order" of the solution not
decreased it. That is the sample became internally heterogenous with the
antibody being relatively concentrated in small portions of the solution,
thus allowing moloecules to remain even at large "dilutions". Or at least
this is one possibility. A more thorough study of the dynamics of mixing
and the "reorganization" effect of some classes of mixing seems in order.
(Such effects are known, though I suppose my particular scenario is rather
simplistic and naive - still it may be something along these lines).

	If anyone out there has any more knowledge on Chaos Studies than
my beginner's knowledge, I would welcome more detailed discussion.

PS. Perhaps someone should suggest this to the researchers who are
working on this.
-- 
Sarima Cardolandion			sarima@gryphon.CTS.COM
aka Stanley Friesen			rutgers!marque!gryphon!sarima
					Sherman Oaks, CA