Paying too much for water
August 26th, 2009 10:41 pm by Shane
One reason I decided to start LessThanCredulous.com comes from the response to a post I wrote about Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray on my personal blog, shanebrady.com. The post wasn't particularly well-written or well researched, but it quickly became my most popular post ever. Last time I looked, it had well over 80 comments. My website comes up for any Google searches for various combinations of "Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray". I definitely hit a nerve and it inspired me to write for this new site, on the same topic.
I won't be going into the specifics of Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray in this post; I'm saving that for the next one. For now I would like to consider cost of the supposed medicinal substances of homeopathic derivatives. First, let me include a definition of homeopathy (from wikipedia):
Homeopathy (also spelled Homoeopathy or Homœopathy) is a form of alternative medicine, first proposed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, that treats patients with heavily diluted preparations which are thought to cause effects similar to the symptoms presented. Homeopathic remedies are prepared by serial dilution with shaking by forceful striking, which homeopaths term "succussion," after each dilution under the assumption that this increases the effect of the treatment. Homeopaths call this process "potentization". Dilution often continues until none of the original substance remains.
Let there be no doubt that what you end up with is simply water. Homeopaths will tell you the same thing. The key, they claim, is that after this process of dilution, the water retains a memory of the original substance. How this happens and why it would be better to use water with memory versus the original substance to begin with is never explained. There is no proof of water memory from a voluminous number of studies too long to list here. Homeopathic solutions are just water.
It's become common to note (derisively) that Americans pay more for bottled water than they do for gasoline no matter how much unrest there is in the Middle East. While tap water is ridiculously cheap, Americans spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 billion a year for bottled water. I did a little research online to come up with some prices that I could pay for water:
- Nestle Waters® Bottled Spring Water - $0.76/L
- Water from Springbrook Springs, Conchord, NY - $1.80/L
- Aquafina - $0.31/L
- Ozarka - $.28/L
- Perrier - $1.79/L
- my tap water - $.002/L
Obviously my tap water is cheaper and with the use of a filter in my fridge, I improve the taste for a fraction of the cost of bottled water. This is well traveled ground. I want to now look at the costs of homeopathic solutions, ie, water.
As an easy example, I started with Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray. The best price I could find was $22.98 for a 6 oz bottle, which works out to be $129.52 per liter. For water. Looking at some other popular homeopathic treatments you come up with this:
- Zicam Cold Remedy Oral Mist - $654/L
- SnoreStop Extinguisher - $1589/L
- King Bio Homeopathic Sleep Aid - $2118/L
- Ridgecrest Herbals ClearLungs Liquid - $186/L
- Liddell Laboratories Nicotine Free - $311/L
Do I need to go on? It's pretty obvious the cost of the water in homeopathic treatments is ridiculous. Since there has never been any scientific proof that water has memory, it seems awfully expensive to pay that much for "special" water. However, if I can't change your mind about homeopathy, consider your tap water. It comes into contact with all sorts of substances that are extremely diluted within the water. If you believe in homeopathy, then you should also believe that your tap water has healing properties. It's the "ultimate" homeopathic solution. So if I can convince homeopathic believers of anything, I hope, at a minimum, it's that it's better to just drink your own tap water, than to pay $12 bucks for a 2 oz bottle of distilled water.
My next post will deal with the specifics of Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray and why I think it's a waste of money.
