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starfishing
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Member Since May 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 466
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Default May 26, 2019 at 02:33 PM
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by octoberful View Post
Isn't this similar to how vaccines work, where a small amount of pathogen is used to trigger a response in the immune system?

That's how I thought homeopathy works too. I tried homeopathy once like 10 years ago and am not a big fan, but it sounds to me that vaccines are a form of homeopathy.
No, not at all. Vaccines and homeopathy aren't at all the same, though I can see why you might think so given how you've described them.

With homeopathy, the way they claim it works is that diluting something literally makes it stronger. So say you take a drop of some curative substance and put it in a glass of water, and then give someone a tablespoon of that water to help with what ails them. A homeopath would say that it's more powerful if instead you take that tablespoon from that glass, mix it into a swimming pool, and then give the sick person a tablespoon of the water from the swimming pool. Or even better yet, take the tablespoon from the swimming pool and add it to a different swimming pool, and give someone a tablespoon of that... and you can keep on that chain forever.

The end result is that many homeopathic remedies don't contain even a single molecule of the substance they're labeled as. So homeopathic arnica might have a picture of a lovely plant on the container, but in reality not one molecule of the stuff in that container has anything to do with that plant.

With vaccines, in contrast, the goal is to create the immune response but not harm the person. So the pathogen is weakened (killed or attenuated), not because it paradoxically makes it stronger, but because the weakened version strikes the balance we're looking for--it's capable of creating a strong enough immune reaction to protect the person later on from the actual pathogen, but weak enough for the vaccine itself to not hurt them.
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Thanks for this!
Anonymous45127, LabRat27, Xynesthesia2