Sweigart Report: “Oscillococcinum” | Vol. 3 / No. 25.1

Not actually an ingredient | Photo: Danny Chapman, CC BY 2.0

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One of the links in yesterday’s “Best of the Rest” segment (those stories I don’t get to because time is a limited and valuable resource) was to a Smithsonian article from last month about an Australian study that showed (yet again) that homeopathy has no effect, no basis in reality, no potential for effect — it’s nothing but lies packaged and sold to a gullible public. Full stop.

To be fair that’s not exactly what the study concluded; I might be telegraphing a little there. What they actually said was this:

“Based on the assessment of the evidence of effectiveness of homeopathy, NHMRC concludes that there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective.”

All of which is a roundabout way of telling you that it reminded me of a product you can get basically everywhere in the US calling itself “Oscillococcinum,” which has got to be the fanciest name for sugar and/or water I’ve ever heard. Ostensibly a homeopathic remedy for flu-like symptoms, it’s made by taking the “active ingredient” — in this case duck liver and heart — and diluting them. How diluted?

Well, it’s so diluted that I can guarantee you it’s vegetarian. It’s vegan. There is no duck involved in the process of making Oscillococcinum — at least, none that makes it anywhere near the final product.

Oscillococcinum is diluted to something called “200C.” C stands for “centesimal” and means you take one part duck to one hundred parts water, and then repeat the process two hundred times. How much duck are you left with? Let’s just work this out:

1C = 1/100 duck

2C = 1/10,000 duck

3C = 1/1,000,000 duck

4C = 1/100,000,000 duck

5C = 1/10,000,000,000 duck

6C = 1/10,000,000,000,000 duck

7C = 1/1,000,000,000,000,000 duck

8C = 1/100,000,000,000,000,000 duck

9C = 1/10,000,000,000,000,000,000 duck

10C = 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 duck

Yes, at just 10C, one would expect to find one part duck to one sextillion parts water. That’s one in a million million billion parts.

At a certain point you need to start using scientific notation because you run out of room. Remember,

1 x 10¹ is 10

1 x 10² is 1 x 10 x 10 or 100

1 x 10³ is 1 x 10 x 10 x 10 or 1000

….and so on. The exponent next to the 10 is the number of zeroes.

30C is 1/(1 x 10⁶⁰) or 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s orders of magnitude more atoms than make up the entire Earth. At this point (in fact well before this point) it is guaranteed that there is not a single molecule of duck in your pills.

200C is 1/(1 x 10⁴⁰⁰), which I won’t even bother writing out. Just imagine four hundred zeroes there. One atom in the entire universe of atoms would only be 1/(1 x 10⁸⁰).

That’s one part in ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion parts.

At that dilution, it is literally impossible for it to have any effect on you, because the “active ingredient” is not in the pill. It hasn’t had any effect on the water in the pill. There’s nothing even remotely related to the duck in the pill. And somehow they’re still able to make claims like “reduces duration and severity of flu symptoms.” Why? Because we don’t regulate magic “herbal” “remedies” in this country. Ugh.

Happy Monday, everyone.

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