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DOI: 10.1016/j.homp.2009.09.010
Biological models of homeopathy
Subject Editor:
Publication History
Received28 September 2009
accepted28 September 2009
Publication Date:
20 December 2017 (online)

This special issue of Homeopathy focuses on biological models of homeopathy, ranging from whole animal behavioural, intoxication and inflammation models through diseased and healthy plant models, isolated cell and cell culture methods to enzyme models. We exclude clinical trials in veterinary and animal husbandry and similarly horticultural and agricultural field trials. Several leading international experts in the field: Dr Stephan Baumgartner of the University of Berne, Switzerland, Prof Paolo Bellavite of the University of Verona, Italy, Prof Leoni Bonamin of Paulista University, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dr Christian Endler of Interuniversity College for Health and Development Graz, Austria and Dr Robert Mathie of the Faculty of Homeopathy, UK have kindly agreed to act as Guest Editors and peer reviewers.
The range of endeavour in this field is greater than we anticipated when we planned the issue. This, combined with the eruption of other urgent issues such as the novel H1N1 influenza flu pandemic, means that some of the material will appear in our next issue. Most contributions are reviews, but some include or focus on original experimental results.
The controversial aspect of homeopathy is its issue of very high dilutions, variously referred to as ‘ultramolecular’ or ultra low dilutions (ULD), or BRAN (Beyond the Reciprocal of Avogadro's Number), and most of our papers concentrate on research aimed at investigating whether biological effects attributable to such dilutions occur. However, it is important to remember that the primary idea of homeopathy is not the use of very high dilutions but the principle of similitude, and there has been relatively little research on this.
However, Fred Wiegant's the team at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands has conducted a research program on similarity, rather than ultramolecular dilution effects, which will appear in the second part of this special issue.
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