Jaggy Splinters (3 page)

‘How high does it get?’ Carol asked.

‘Homeopathic dilutions are by the hundredfold, which is why we denote the degree of dilution by the letter c, giving us a 1c for one part in a hundred.’

‘And 2c would be two parts in a hundred, or one in fifty?’ Carol asked.

‘No, 2c would be the 1c solution diluted by the same degree, giving you one part in ten thousand. So you can imagine how potent the solution must be by the time we reach 30c, and some remedies come in at 100c!’

I could vividly imagine how potent the solution would be at 30c. At 24x – that’s diluting by a ratio of a mere one in ten, not one in a hundred, twenty-four times – you reach what is known as the dilution limit, meaning that the chances of there being a single molecule of the original substance in any given sample of the solution are very close to zero. At a ‘potency’ of 30c – that’s a one with sixty zeroes after it, by the way - a helping of tincture the size of a teardrop would need to be dissolved in a quantity of water
one hundred million times the size of our galaxy
.

‘But surely, at that level of dilution—’ Carol began.

‘There can’t be any of the tincture remaining?’ Sandy anticipated. ‘Yes, this is the part that baffles the scientists, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re having trouble grasping it. The problem the scientists have is that they are entrenched in thinking about these things in molecular terms. This phenomenon may force them to reconsider a few of their own certainties, something they are unsurprisingly reluctant to do. Truth is, nobody is quite sure how it works, but it is believed to constitute evidence that water has a kind of memory, that water in fact functions almost like a liquid hard drive, and somehow stores information about what has been dissolved in it through changes in its own structure.’

So, to recap, we’ve got a solution containing no molecules of the original tincture, but this is explained by a hypothesis – with no supporting evidence whatsoever – postulating that water has a memory. But if water has a memory, then what else might water be remembering? We are seventy per cent water ourselves, after all, and statistically speaking, every breath you take contains at last one atom previously breathed by – and therefore previously constituting a part of – Albert Einstein. That’s a far higher concentration of Einstein in your body than concentration of tincture in a homeopathic remedy. Problem is, in the case of homeopathy advocates, the Einstein molecule is diluted entirely in pure-strain pillock, and the paradoxical dilution-improves-efficacy principle doesn’t appear to be making these people any smarter. Like cures like, and less is more. I notice, however, that nobody’s selling a homeopathic contraceptive. Surely according to Hahnemann’s principles, if somebody had a wank and they diluted the sperm… or should they get a wee bit of a baby – maybe the umbilical cord – and dilute that?

Sandy led us out of the lab to the automated production line, where trays of pills were being conveyed on a belt beneath a machine dispensing individual droplets.

‘And here, as you can see, are the sucrose pillules, which function as the delivery system. A single droplet is absorbed by each tablet, and allowed to evaporate before we place the pillules in blister packs. This, as you will see next door, is one hundred per cent automated, as it is vital that the pillules are not touched; even the patient taking them is advised to pop the pack and drop the pill directly on to their tongue.’

Yeah. Like I said: sugar.

‘Why?’ asked Michael.

‘It’s due to the risk of them being contaminated by absorbing any substances they come into contact with on the skin, which could render them useless.’

Michael just about suppressed a smirk. I refrained from asking whether sugar’s implied memory was as important as water’s. Meanwhile, poor Carol looked like she was imminently about to have a vocational crisis.

As Sandy ushered us towards the door to the packaging centre, I announced with an embarrassed apology that I needed to visit the little homeopathist’s room. ‘All this talk of water and solutions,’ I added.

Michael intercepted Sandy as he offered to show me the way, asking a question about the regulation of the droplet volume. I assured him I knew where I was going, which was true: I was going straight back to Sandy’s office to access his computer while Michael kept him talking.

With the PC still connected to the local network under Sandy’s log-in, I had full-clearance user privileges. I began where Sandy had left off, with my own account details still up when I shook the PC from its screen-saving slumber. I made a few important alterations to my order, involving a small change to the shipping date and a very large change to the quantities.

Next, I pulled up the security section and accessed the plant’s CCTV recordings, copying certain files to my flash drive (and when I say copy, I’m talking more ctrl-x than ctrl-c). Thus in a few brief minutes, I laid the groundwork for – but would, crucially, not need to personally execute – the perfect robbery.

A short time after my visit, I paid Timothy Cullis a visit at the ELHH. The high windows of his dual-aspect office took in the Meadows, the Castle and Salisbury Craig, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much normal sugar you’d have to flog to buy a view like that. Timothy was a nervously earnest individual in his late forties who reminded me uncomfortably of Tony Blair. He oozed a cloying, well-intentioned sincerity as he looked you in the eye, but you got the impression some cold, deeper part of him distrusted you on sight and was counting the seconds until you were removed from his presence.

‘I appreciate you seeing me at short notice,’ I told him. ‘But like I said on the phone, this is a pressing matter that I am sure you would want to be made aware of as soon as possible.’

‘Yes indeed. Which is why I’m hoping you can be a little less vague now that you’re here, Mr Parlabane.’ As he spoke, he eyed the black folder I had in my lap. We both knew this was the skinny, but I wasn’t cutting to the chase quite yet.

‘Certainly. First, forgive me for asking again, but now you’ve had time to look into it, are you aware of any negative effects being suffered by patients here recently, or any downturn in the effectiveness of your remedies?’

‘I haven’t really had time to look into it, but very generally, no, everything is running as normal, as far as I am informed. Why shouldn’t it be?’

I took the folder from my lap and placed it on his desk.

‘I received this yesterday,’ I said. ‘And though I’m not obliged to do so, I felt I ought to let you know about this before we run the story.’

I opened the folder and finally showed him the contents, spreading the pages across the broad expanse of sugar-funded mahogany.

‘This was sent to me by an anonymous protest group. These are CCTV stills showing the interior of the Sucrosanto plant in Corstorphine, taken five weeks ago.’

Timothy stood up and lifted one of the images. It showed two blurred figures dressed in black, ski-masks obscuring their faces, inside the packing centre.

‘These close-ups aren’t from CCTV: these are from the intruders’ own video footage of the break-in. As you can see, they have recorded themselves removing the blister packs from serial-numbered Sucrosanto packets and replacing them with blister packs of their own. They were very methodical. They took precise note of the range of serial numbers, which you can see on this page here. According to the accompanying letter, these serial numbers should correspond with your orders last month of Bryonia, Chamomilla, and Aconite, three of your most commonly prescribed remedies.’

‘What have they replaced them with?’ he asked, looking as livid as he was worried. It was my guess that ‘poison’ would be a preferable answer to the one he was truly dreading.

‘According to the letter, patients prescribed Bryonia, Chamomilla and Aconite have been taking clinical test-standard placebos for the past month. Harmless in and of themselves, but what worried me, naturally, were the consequences of patients taking placebos in place of vital prescribed drugs. However, as you just said, everything’s running as normal and nobody has noticed any change, so clearly it could have been a lot worse.’

Timothy swallowed and took a moment to compose himself. He took a step back and folded his arms.

‘Clearly,’ he said. ‘this is something that will require more than cursory examination, Mr Parlabane. It may well be a lot worse. I will have to investigate thoroughly, find out when these replacement drugs were prescribed and who to, bring in the patients concerned and make sure they haven’t suffered any harm.’

‘Absolutely. How soon can you let me know your findings?’

‘I couldn’t say. This may take some time.’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ I assured him.

The break-in story ran the next day. Took a bit longer than that for Timothy to get back to me with his findings, not for want of me calling to ask though. Nor was there much emerging from the polis regarding the break-in. They were unable to work out how the intruders gained entry without setting off the alarm system, and were further frustrated by the fact that the CCTV files for the night in question had been erased from Sucrosanto’s system.

‘It’s as if they were never there,’ a police source told me.

What Timothy was able to tell me was that there had been little need for him to get in touch with individual affected patients: they had been streaming in unbidden, swamping the hospital’s appointments schedule, uniformly reporting deterioration of their various symptoms. I wondered how many experienced a sudden worsening of their condition before they heard about the great pill-switch.

To make matters worse for poor Sucrosanto, they suddenly found themselves clean out of Bryonia, Chamomilla, and Aconite at precisely the same time as the ELHH was urgently requesting huge quantities of all three to replace the contaminated supplies they’d been forced to junk. Fortunately, Charles Litton was able to come to their rescue. He called up to inform them that some clerical error at Sucrosanto’s end had led to place b. taking delivery of massively surplus quantities of Bryonia, Chamomilla, Arsen, Nux Vom and Aconite.

‘Probably a computer error,’ I suggested to him. ‘I think a couple of zeroes got added to all of our orders. Either that or we got a hospital order by mistake. Anyway, if you can arrange an uplift and
please
ensure we’re not invoiced for this lot…’

‘Of course, Mr Litton, of course. We’ll have someone round to collect the supplies within the hour.’

‘The hour? That’s sharp.’

‘Serendipitous, Mr Litton. You may not know it, but you’re a life-saver.’

‘Albeit I’m not allowed to make such claims for my therapies.’

Weeks went past with Timothy still unable – or unprepared – to report his findings. A month slowly turned into two, and two into three. I was patient. I had closed up place b. after a month, and had my own findings – as recorded by the participating GPs – ready to produce when the time came.

After fully four months, Timothy was finally able to report his findings, though not merely to me. He called a press conference in the ELHH’s lecture theatre, where he was to make a major announcement regarding a breakthrough in homeopathic research. It was a surprisingly busy affair, with journalists present from a few of the nationals, as well as representing several ‘body and spirit’ (ie woo) publications. Timothy called the room to order and proceeded to read from a prepared statement.

‘A few months ago, as you are all aware, some maliciously intentioned and thoroughly uninformed individuals, in a misguided act of protest, broke into the Sucrosanto facility in Edinburgh and replaced our supplies of three homeopathic remedies with clinical trial placebos. This was the cause of a great deal of upset and distress to many of our patients, to whom we have made our profuse apologies. However, in their attempt to discredit homeopathy, these so-called protesters have in fact inadvertently managed precisely the opposite, because I can reveal that the results of their unapproved double-blind test have been quite the opposite of what I am sure they were anticipating.’

It almost seems superfluous to state that he was looking directly at me when he said this. ‘As the paper my assistant is distributing shows, a significant number of patients suffered a marked deterioration in their symptoms as a result of this sabotage. But just as significantly, they enjoyed an equally marked improvement after the resumption of their correct homeopathic prescriptions.

‘These, I must stress, were independent, medically verified changes in symptoms, not merely anecdotal verbal accounts of patients saying they generally felt better or worse. This therefore constitutes very strong evidence of the efficacy of homeopathic remedies as being far and above placebo levels. I will be publishing a paper presenting a more detailed analysis of the results, but even at this early stage I feel confident that this could be the breakthrough that homeopathic research has long been waiting for.’

Timothy then took questions, mainly from the tame hacks of the woo glossies, who teed up for him with lots of ‘can you confirm’s’ and ‘would you agree’s’. I waited with easy patience: I’d waited four months as it was, there was no rush. Timothy wasn’t in a hurry to call me either. I was the ghost at the feast, but both of us knew he’d need to give me the floor at some point, being the person who broke the original story, and to whom the protestors had sent their materials. It wasn’t merely to remind him of this that I held up another black folder instead of merely raising my hand.

‘Mr Parlabane,’ he acknowledged, with over-state weariness. ‘How can I help you?’

‘Well, I’d hold off firing into that research paper if I were you,’ I told him, removing a page from the folder as I got to my feet. ‘There’s been a wee development regarding your protestors. They have released the CCTV files they procured covering the night of the break-in. This is a print-out of a still from one of those files, with a time-stamp matching one of the original stills they sent me. As you can see, it shows the packing centre at Sucrosanto, but with nobody in it. Here, however, is a still showing the two protestors posing against a blank background. The two images were then combined using Photoshop to create a fake composite. There
was
no break-in. Your patients experienced – how was it you put it? – a marked deterioration of their symptoms while taking precisely what they were prescribed here at the ELHH.’