The Montagnier Paper – a Plain English Account by Rachel Roberts

‘Electromagnetic signals are produced by aqueous nanostructures derived from bacterial DNA sequences’

by Luc Montagnier et al., Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci, 2009
Montagnier and his colleague Lavallee observed that under certain conditions, biological fluids containing infectious microorganisms can still cause infection after being passed through filtration procedures designed to sterilise the fluid.

A fluid containing human white blood cells (lymphocytes) infected with a microorganism called Mycoplasma pirum was filtered through filters with either 100nM diameter holes or 20 nM holes; as M. pirum are 300nM in size they could not pass through and the resulting fluids (called filtrates) were apparently sterile.

Do Piglets Really Tell Porkies?

A wonderful research article was only recently published in the journal 'Homeopathy' (Volume 99, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 57-62 Special Issue: Biological models of homeopathy Part 2)

Here's a quick outline of what happened:
The study in question was a double blind RCT of 52 sows who were randonly treated with Coli 30K or placebo and who subsequently gave birth to 525 piglets.

The study showed that there was a reduction in the incidence of E.Coli diarrhoea. (Results showed that the placebo group had over six times more diarrhoea than the homeopathically treated group (P <>

The owner of the farm where the experiment was carried out initially quite sceptical about homeopathy. However, after the experiment he decided to apply Coli 30K to all sows. Since then E.Coli diarrhoea has hardly occurred . . . . . .

The authors state that "Advantages at farm level (of E.Coli 30K homeopathic remedy) are ease of application of the treatment by the farmer and cost reduction. These advantages and the positive results from this study make the homeopathic agent Coli 30K an attractive potential alternative in the prevention of E.Coli diarrhoea."

Hmmm . . . Food for thought . . . .
So, given the double blind RCT structure of the trial - the 'gold standard' of science, does this research indicate that homeopathy works, double blind RCTs don't work - or that ickle piggies tell great big porkies?

You decide!