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Introduction
I am currently an independent medical writer. As a former member of Benveniste's lab in the 1980s'-1990s', I have kept a keen interest for the "memory of water" controversy.
I told the whole story in a book ("Ghosts of Molecules"; the full text is downloadable below). In recent articles, based on a probabilistic modelling, I defend the hypothesis that the results attributed to the "memory of water" are in fact related to a non-conventional experimenter effect.
Publications
Publications (45)
L'histoire d'une controverse scientifique: l'affaire de la "mémoire de l'eau". Un véritable thriller scientifique: description minutieuse et vulgarisée des expériences controversées de Jacques Benveniste, nombreux détails inédits de la célèbre polémique avec la revue scientifique Nature et son directeur John Maddox.
Texte téléchargeable en entier.
The story of a scientific controversy: the case of "memory of water". A true scientific thriller with detailed descriptions of disputed experiments performed by the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste; with many details of the famous conflict with the scientific journal Nature and its Director John Maddox.
Full text downloadable
Que s’est-il passé dans le laboratoire de Jacques Benveniste depuis les années 80 jusqu’au début des années 2000 ? Quel rôle le journal Nature a-t-il joué dans cette affaire ? L’eau a-t-elle définitivement perdu sa mémoire ? L’histoire commence au début des années 1980. Suite à des contrats industriels, l’Unité 200 de l’Inserm, dirigée par Jacques...
Benveniste’s experiments – known in the lay press as the “water memory” phenomenon – are generally considered to be a closed case. However, the amount of data generated by twenty years of well-conducted experiments prevents closing the file so simply. An issue, which has been little highlighted so far, merits to be emphasized. Indeed, if Benveniste...
The “memory of water” experiments suggested the existence of molecular-like effects without molecules. Although no convincing evidence of modifications of water – specific of biologically-active molecules – has been reported up to now, consistent changes of biological systems were nevertheless recorded. We propose an alternate explanation based on...
The “memory of water” experiments suggested the existence of molecular-like effects without molecules. Although no convincing evidence of modifications of water – specific of biologically-active molecules – has been reported up to now, consistent changes of biological systems were nevertheless recorded. We propose an alternate explanation based on...
Background:
Benveniste's biology experiments suggested the existence of molecular-like effects without molecules ("memory of water"). In this article, it is proposed that these disputed experiments could have been the consequence of a previously unnoticed and non-conventional experimenter effect.Methods:A probabilistic modelling is built in order t...
Background. In experimental sciences, conception of an experiment and record of the outcomes must be strictly separated. Although many possible pitfalls have been described, particularly in biological sciences, one cannot exclude unknown loopholes.
Methods. A simple probabilistic modeling is constructed in order to describe experimenters testing th...
Background. In experimental sciences, conception of an experiment and record of the outcomes must be strictly separated. Although many possible pitfalls have been described, particularly in biological sciences, one cannot exclude unknown loopholes. Methods. A simple probabilistic modeling is constructed in order to describe experimenters testing th...
Background.
Factors that participate in the biological changes associated with a placebo are not completely understood. Natural evolution, mean regression, concomitant procedures and other non specific effects are well-known factors that contribute to the “placebo effect”. In this article, we suggest that quantum-like correlations predicted by a p...
In previous articles, a description of 'unconventional' experiments (e.g.
in vitro or clinical studies based on high dilutions, 'memory of water' or
homeopathy) using quantum-like probability was proposed. Because the mathematical
formulations of quantum logic are frequently an obstacle for physicians and
biologists, a modified modeling that rests...
The case of the “memory of water” was an outstanding scientific controversy of the end of the twentieth century which has not been satisfactorily resolved. Although an experimenter effect has been proposed to explain Benveniste’s experiments, no evidence or convincing explanation supporting this assumption have been reported. One of the unexplained...
Benveniste’s experiments were at the origin of a scientific controversy that has never been satisfactorily resolved. Hypotheses based on modifications of water structure that were proposed to explain these experiments (“memory of water”) were generally considered as quite improbable. In the present paper, we show that Benveniste’s experiments viola...
Benveniste’s experiments have been the subject of an international scientific controversy (known as the case of the “memory of water”). We recently proposed to describe these results in a modeling in which the outcome of an experiment is considered personal property (named cognitive state) of the observer and not an objective property of the observ...
In previous articles, we proposed to describe the results of Benveniste’s experiments using a theoretical framework based on quantum logic. This formalism described all characteristics of these controversial experiments and no paradox persisted. This interpretation supposed to abandon an explanation based on a classical local causality such as the...
The “memory of water” was a major international controversy that remains unresolved. Taken seriously or not, this hypothesis leads to logical contradictions in both cases. Indeed, if this hypothesis is held as wrong, then we have to explain how a physiological signal emerged from the background and we have to elucidate a bulk of coherent results. I...
Objectives: “Memory of water” experiments (also known as Benveniste’s experiments) were the source of a famous controversy in the contemporary history of sciences. We recently proposed a formal framework devoid of any reference to “memory of water” to describe these disputed experiments. In this framework, the results of Benveniste’s experiments ar...
The randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the 'gold standard' of modern clinical pharmacology. However, for many practitioners of homeopathy, blind RCTs are an inadequate research tool for testing complex therapies such as homeopathy.
Classical probabilities used in biological sciences and in medicine are only a special case of the generalized theor...
Benveniste's experiments (also known as " memory of water " or " digital biology " experiments) remain unresolved. In some research areas, which have in common the description of cognition mechanisms and information processing, quantum-like statistical models have been proposed to address problems that were " paradoxical " in a classical frame. The...
After more than 20 years, the case of the "memory of water" still has not been resolved satisfactorily. After the affair with the journal Nature, Benveniste extended his results on high dilutions to an "electromagnetic biology" and then to a "digital biology," where electromagnetic signals supposed to be emitted from biologically active solutions w...
The release of mediators from human basophils is strongly enhanced by lL-3. However, the signalling pathways of IL-3 arc poorly defined in these cells. Since external Ca2+ and Na+ play important regulating roles in histamine release, the possibility that these cations could be involved in the potentiation by rL-3 of the anti-IgE-induced histamine r...
In a previous paper we showed that the nitric oxide (NO) donors azide and hydroxylamine inhibited eosinophil apoptosis. Azide and hydroxylamine generate a nitrosyl-heme complex - due to endogenous catalase activity - which activates soluble guanylate cyclase. In contrast, in the present paper, we show that NO donors (SNAP, SIN-1, S-nitroso-L-cystei...
The biological activity of Avène water from two different springs ('Sainte Odile' and 'Val d'Orb') was studied in vitro on rat peritoneal mast cell activation. A dilution-dependent inhibition of both histamine and prostaglandin D2 antigen-induced release was observed when cells were preincubated with both Avène spring waters. They also inhibited hi...
The influx of eosinophils in tissues plays a central role in the pathophysiology of allergic diseases such as allergic rhinitis, allergic asthma or atopic dermatitis. The death of eosinophils by apoptosis is an important factor for the resolution of hypereosinophilia. In the present study, we have shown that Uriage spring water induced in vitro the...
Nitric oxide (NO) has been shown to be both an intercellular and intracellular messenger. We propose here that exogenous NO induces chemotactic locomotion of human neutrophils. Indeed, when human neutrophils were placed in a gradient of a nitric oxide donor (S-nitroso-N-acetylpenicillamine; SNAP), a directed locomotion was induced, as evidenced by...
In the absence of appropriate stimulus, eosinophils in vitro rapidly exhibit the features of apoptotic cells (nuclear pycnosis, cell shrinkage, DNA fragmentation). By using electronic cell sizing, we precisely measured the volume distribution of human eosinophils during apoptosis. We observed that apoptosis of eosinophils was accompanied by a marke...
The presence of voltage-dependent ion channels (particularly Ca2+ channels) on the surface of 'non excitable' cells such as human basophils is a matter of debate. Indeed, in basophils, Ca2+ entry or mobilization is not sufficient by itself to trigger secretion, although enhanced cytosolic Ca2+ concentration increases it. In order to address this qu...
Azide and hydroxylamine release nitric oxide (NO) enzymatically in biological conditions. We observed that both compounds were able to inhibit in vitro the programmed cell death of human eosinophils from peripheral blood. This protective effect could be mimicked by permeable cGMP analogs and by the phosphodiesterase inhibitor 3-isobutyl-1-methylxan...
Basophils play a major role in allergic reactions-particularly in late phase reactions-by releasing histamine and other mediators of inflammation. Although transmembrane ion fluxes are thought to play an important role in the modulation of histamine release, little is known about ion pathways through the basophil membrane. We thus studied human bas...
The release of mediators from human basophils is strongly enhanced by IL-3. However, the signalling pathways of IL-3 are poorly defined in these cells. Since external Ca2+ and Na+ play important regulating roles in histamine release, the possibility that these cations could be involved in the potentiation by IL-3 of the anti-IgE-induced histamine r...
The autoimmune aetiology of type I diabetes has been well documented. We studied whether anti-insulin anaphylactic antibodies were present on the membrane of basophils from type I diabetics by the toluidine blue method (detecting basophil activation after stimulation by insulin). We observed that basophils of recently diagnosed insulin-dependent di...
We recently observed that external Na+ inhibited the IgE-dependent human basophil histamine release (HR) in normal subjects. In this article we report differences in the Na+ effect on basophil HR between normal subjects (n = 16) and age matched patients with allergic rhinitis (AR) (n = 18). As expected, in vitro anti-IgE-stimulated basophils from t...
We examined the potential role of a guanine nucleotide-binding protein in the biosynthesis of paf-acether (paf) and the release of beta-hexosaminidase during antigenic stimulation of cultured mouse bone marrow-derived mast cells. Unlike pertussis toxin, cholera toxin treatment enhanced the antigen-stimulated production of paf and calcium mobilisati...
In previous studies we observed that in vitro histamine release from human basophils could be dissociated from the loss of affinity of basophil granules for a cationic dye, toluidine blue. In the present study we further explored the intracellular signals leading to the decrease in toluidine blue positive basophil (TB+) numbers, with or without his...
Na+ and K+ are the major extra- and intracellular cations, respectively. We have thus studied the role of these ions on human basophil histamine release by modifying their transmembrane gradients or by increasing membrane ion fluxes using ionophores. 1) When external Na+ (reduced to 4 mM) was replaced by the nonpermeating Na+ substitute N-methyl-D-...
Human basophil activation was demonstrated by histamine release (HR) and by the decrease of the toluidine blue-positive basophils (TB+). In four experimental systems, TB+ number decreased in the absence of HR (1) in basophils from atopic subjects stimulated by allergen concentrations below the threshold for HR, (2) in basophils sensitized by anti-2...
The role of IgG4 antibodies in allergic disorders is suspected. Yet, their presence on human basophil membrane has not been demonstrated and the mechanism of the degranulation induced by anti-IgG4 antibodies remains unclear. As previously reported, we observed that monoclonal anti-IgG4 (10 to 100 micrograms/ml) induced histamine release in the pres...
Both anti-IgE and anti-IgG4 induce human basophil degranulation as assessed by toluidine blue staining. Anti-IgG4 has been recently shown to act on the human basophil by a 2-step process: anti-IgG4 induces the release from eosinophils of eosinophil cationic proteins which in turn induce human basophil degranulation. In the present study, we show th...
When human polymorphonuclear basophils, a type of white blood cell with antibodies of the immunoglobulin E (IgE) type on its surface, are exposed to anti-IgE antibodies, they release histamine from their intracellular granules and change their staining properties. The latter can be demonstrated at dilutions of anti-IgE that range from 1 x 10(2) to...
When human polymorphonuclear basophils, a type of white blood cell with antibodies of the immunoglobulin E (IgE) type on its surface, are exposed to anti-IgE antibodies, they release histamine from their intracellular granules and change their staining properties. The latter can be demonstrated at dilutions of anti-IgE that range from 1 x 10(2) to...
When human polymorphonuclear basophils, a type of white blood cell with antibodies of the immunoglobulin E (IgE) type on its surface, are exposed to anti-IgE antibodies, they release histamine from their intracellular granules and change their staining properties. The latter can be demonstrated at dilutions of anti-IgE that range from 1 x 10(2) to...
