Many people reading this may have heard of Masaru Emoto’s wildly popular photography books on frozen water crystals. The premise of his work is that the shapes of the crystals reflect the vibrations water's environment and the consciousness surrounding it. Emoto was informed by the principles of homeopathy, whether he knew it or not.
In homeopathic medicine, successive dilutions of antigens shaken in water produce harmonics and sub-harmonics of the chemicals’ molecular patterns. These dilutions are then used to make remedies that stimulate the immune response of patients, without actually exposing them to toxins of any kind, whether they be antigens or pharmaceuticals.
Despite the fact that its effects have been exhaustively proven in countless laboratory studies, homeopathy remains one of the great bugaboos of so-called skeptics worldwide.
In her book, The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, Lynne McTaggart tells the cautionary tale of allergy specialist, Dr. Jacques Benveniste, head of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and whose lab technician accidentally stumbled onto the basic principle of homeopathy in 1984.
Due to an error in calculation, a solution had been diluted to the point where very few of the antigen molecules remained. However, the white blood cells were reacting as if they were being attacked by a high concentration of antigens. After intentionally repeating the dilution mistake and getting the same results, another doctor at the lab, who also happened to be a homeopath, remarked that these experiments were illustrating the fundamentals of homeopathy. At the time, Benveniste didn’t even know what homeopathy was but he asked the lab technician to dilute the solutions even more, to the point where none of the original active substance would remain.
In these new studies, no matter how dilute the solution, which was, by now, just plain water, Elisabeth kept getting consistent results, as if the active ingredient was still there…
Benveniste’s findings were replicated in laboratories in France, Israel, Italy and Canada and all thirteen scientists jointly published the findings of their four year study in a 1988 edition of the prestigious and conservative British journal, Nature. The popular press jumped all over the story as a validation of homeopathy and declared that Benveniste had discovered the “memory of water,” though he already understood that these results had repercussions far beyond any theory of alternative medicine.
McTaggart wrote, "If water were able to imprint and store information from molecules, this would have an impact on our understanding of molecules and the way they 'talk' to one another in our bodies…In any living cell, there are ten thousand molecules of water for each molecule of protein."
Nature was aware of the implications of these findings for the accepted laws of biochemistry, so they agreed to publish the article only after taking the extraordinary step of placing an editorial addendum at the bottom of the article, inviting readers to pick holes in the study. Four days after publication, Nature Editor John Maddox showed up at Benveniste’s lab with “quackbuster” Walter Stewart and professional magician/debunker-at-large, “The Amazing Randi.” Under their supervision, Benveniste’s team performed four experiments, one blinded, all of which were successful. Despite the fact that none of the three skeptics were trained in chemistry, Maddox and his team disputed the findings and claimed that Benveniste’s lab had not observed good scientific protocol. It discounted supporting data from other labs.
Nature’s results had a devastating effect upon Benveniste’s reputation and his position at INSERM and his career was basically destroyed over the controversy. He was somewhat vindicated thirteen years later, in 2001, when four outside labs, in a series of double-blind experiments overseen by skeptical chemist Madeleine Ennis, reproduced the same phenomenon that he had reported. Until jos death in 2004, Benveniste doggedly continued his search for a mechanism by which to explain the results of his laboratory work, which consistently showed that water retains the memory of the electromagnetic vibration specific to a chemical.
This film picks up where Benveniste left off, with the Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Dr. Luc Montagnier.