Dramatic stuff, and enough to convince me that while it might use snake venon, homeopathy is no snake oil designed for gullible hypochrondriacs. Right now though, a fierce debate is raging between those, like me, who trust homeopathy because it works for them, and those who call it shamanistic claptrap, without clinical proof or any scientific base.

There have been a number of articles in the press recently criticising homeopathic remedies as worthless at best, and potentially lethal at worst, if they are being taken instead of tried and tested conventional medicines for conditions such as maleria, or HIV.

I have found myself cited, and drawn into this, because I am on record as supporting homeopathic practise in general, and in particular, a clinic in Botswana, set up by Hilary Fairclough.

The organisation Sense About Science, and journalists Nick Cohen and Ben Goldacre, are targeting a symposium in London in December that will discuss HIV and AIDS and the homeopathic response to such diseases.

Of particular concern is a claim by UK homeopath Peter Chapel, and his Dutch colleague, Harry Van Der Zee, that Chapel has developed a remedy, PC1, that can be used to treat the HIV virus.

As a patron of FOTAC (Friends of the Treatment Action Campaign) that has been fighting President Mbeke’s lunatic insistence that HIV sufferers just need Vitamin C and a good diet, I too am dismayed by any claim that may deter HIV sufferers from taking anti-retrovirals – and so is Doctor Peter Fisher. NHS doctor, Director of the Faculty of Homeopaths, and homeopath to the Queen. Good homeopaths know the value of conventional medicine and do not seek to undermine that value. Fairclough’s own clinic in Botswana, and her talk at the Symposium, concentrate on using homeopathy to support the ARV programme by alleviating the side-effects of ARVS, and boosting the patient’s immune system so that patients are better able to fight off the opportunistic viruses that follow behind HIV, and the drugs necessary to suppress it. There is no suggestion that homeopathy can replace ARVS.

Edwin Cameron, a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, HIV positive, and someone who has done much to counter the disastrous AIDS denialists in South Africa, visited the Maun Homeopathy Project, and agreed in writing that ‘there are patent health benefits.’ He also admitted that initially sceptical of homeopathy, he himself had had a persistent mouth and gum disease, untreatable by antibiotics, but cleared by homeopathic intervention.

I use the word ‘intervention’ because I admit it is hard to talk about what it is that homeopathy actually does, or why it works. For my part, I want to know more, not less, but I can’t dismiss the thing in the way that Sense About Science, many doctors, and some journalists are asking me to do.

The recent furore over those homeopaths who offered an undercover journalist alternative remedies for the prevention of malaria, has prompted long-term critics of homeopathy to demand its head on a plate. There will soon be an article in the Lancet calling on doctors to tell their patients that homeopathic medicines offer no benefit. Until now the caveat has been no ‘proven’ benefit. But where is the scientific sense is saying that because we don’t understand something, even though we can discern its effects, we have to ignore it, scorn it, or suppress it?

This homeophobia is, I think, a genuine terror of what homeopathy is suggesting; which is that we think differently about the relationship between the cure and the disease. It is not enough to say Disease A is caused by B and can be cured by C. Homeopathy, in common with other holistic approaches, asks that we look at the whole picture – the person, and not just his illness. Specifically, in the case of homeopathy, the remedy picture, which is carefully drawn up after full consultation with the patient, follows the ‘like by like’ premise – that tiny dilutions of the ‘problem’ can prompt the body to effect its own cure. This is why the homeopathic code of practise does not talk about the medicines themselves having a simple causal effect – B cures C. Homeopathy understands everything we are, everything we do, as a web of relatedness. The reason that I have a recurring sore throat will not be the reason that you have one, and what helps me may not help you.

This seems to be part of the reason why the double blind random control tests used for conventional medicines fail when used to test homeopathy. Sceptics will say it is the medicines that fail, and not the trials, but if the medicines really are ineffective, why is it that so many people who have tried homeopathy have found that it makes a difference to their wellbeing?

As I understand it, homeopathy is not a linear medicine – a drug aiming for a target, nor does it seek to remove the human factor. The patient and the practitioner are both important and relevant when it comes to understanding how humans respond to treatment.

That a good doctor is in him or herself part of the therapeutic process is commonsense to anyone who has ever visited their GP or been for surgery. We know too that patients heal differently, develop complications or not, secondary infections or not, and so on. The placebo effect that is often cited by detractors as homeopathy’s only resource, (people like being talked to and then given a pill to take), is common to all therapeutic processes, and it is valuable. We can feel better in the right hands – everyone knows that – and people can shrivel and die in the wrong hands – whatever the drugs/surgery.

I am sure that there is a placebo effect in homeopathy, but it is a fact that many of the people who end up visiting a homeopath do so as a last resort, when nothing else is working. That such people often see an improvement suggests that the remedies themselves are contributing to the wellness of the individual.

We know that objections to homeopathy begin with what are viewed as the impossible dilutions of the remedies, so that only nano amounts of the original active substance remain. Yet, our recent discoveries in the world of the very small, point to a whole new set of rules for the behaviour of nano-quantities. Thundering around in our Gulliver world, we were first shocked to find that splitting the atom allowed inconceivable amounts of energy to be released. Now, we are discovering that the properties of materials change as their size reaches the nano-scale. Bulk material should have constant physical properties, regardless of its size, but at the nano-scale this is not the case. In a solvent, such as water, nanoparticles can remain suspended, neither floating nor sinking, but permeating the solution. Such particles are also able to pass through cell wells, and they can cause biochemical change.

We do not know whether this has a bearing on homeopathic dilutions, but it may well be that that nanoparticles offer a clue.

Dr Peter Fisher says that water as a solvent has properties that are not yet understand, and there was great excitement recently when a team of Korean scientists seemed to show that water has ‘memory’. I take New Scientist every week and I am continually amazed at how the seemingly well-known physical world of ours is beginning to show itself as stranger than anyone imagined.

I would like to see homeopathy better regulated. I would like to see the Society of Homeopaths engaging with its critics, as well as initiating more research. There will always be rogue homeopaths and bad homeopaths, but that is true of any profession. Above all we should be careful of dismissing the testimony of millions who say the remedies have worked for them.

I will be donating the fee from this article to the Maun Homeopathy Project.