WEIRD SCIENCE

The memory of water a reality?

Scientists are discussing recent scientific work exploring the idea that water can display memory effects.
The concept of memory of water is important to homeopathy because it offers a potential explanation of the mechanism of action of very high dilutions often used in homeopathy.

Guest editor Professor Martin Chaplin of the Department of Applied Science at London South Bank University, remarks: “There is strong evidence concerning many ways in which the mechanism of this ‘memory’ may come about. There are also mechanisms by which such solutions may possess effects on biological systems which substantially differ from plain water.”

The concept of the memory of water goes back to 1988 when the late Professor Jacques Benveniste published, in the international scientific journal Nature, claims that extremely high ‘ultramolecular’ dilutions of an antibody had effects in the human basophil degranulation test, a laboratory model of immune response. In other words, the water diluent ‘remembered’ the antibody long after it was gone. His findings were subsequently denounced as ‘pseudoscience’ and yet, despite the negative impact this had at the time, the idea has not gone away.
In a special issue of Homeopathy, scientists from the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, USA and the UK present remarkably convergent views from groups using entirely different methods, indicating that large-scale structural effects can occur in liquid water, and can increase with time. Such effects might account for claims of memory of water effects.

[Water memory is a concept, basic to homeopathy, which holds that water is capable of retaining a "memory" of particles once dissolved in it. This memory allows water to retain the properties of the original solute even when there is literally no solute left in the solution. No proof exists to support this theory.]