Shui-Yin Lo, PhD, a senior researcher at American Technolo gies Group and a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology, notes, "These water clusters or ice crystals remain stable at high temperatures, and what's intriguing is that the ice crystals still exist with varying fluctuation after repeated dilutions."

The uses of very small doses of substances to promote sig nificant biological or chemical activity is not new to science or medicine. Hormesis is the modern scientific field that studies the effects of extremely small doses of otherwise toxic sub stances to stimulate growth or healing. Hundreds of studies from a variety of scientific fields have confirmed this phenomena, and the journal, Health Physics, even devoted an entire issue to this phenomena (May, 1987).

Also, one of the most popular alternative therapies in the world today is homeopathic medicine, a system of using extremely small doses of plant, mineral, chemical, or animals substances. Homeopathy has been derided by conventional physicians and scien tists since its inception in the early 1800s because they incor rectly assumed that homeopathic doses of medicines were too small to have a significant biological or clinical effect. Despite this antagonism, homeopathy has persisted and even has consist ently grown on every continent in the world today.

Dana Ullman, M.P.H., author of The Consumer's Guide to Homeopathy (Tarcher/Putnam, 1996) and numerous others and a leading spokesperson for the field, notes, "This new research confirms the existence of IE crystals and suggests that there may be something 'there' in homeopathic medicines after all. Many physicians and scientists have ignored homeopathy simply because they couldn't explain it. While we still don't know precisely how these IE crystals work in the body, at least we can now verify that homeopathic medicines are biologically active. This is a landmark discovery, both for homeopathy and for science."

The new research by Dr. S. Lo and the various other scientists who have confirmed it seems to verify the experiences of two centuries of homeopathic physicians. Dr. Lo notes, "There seems to be something unique in water that undergoes extreme dilution, and we now have the laboratory evidence and even the photographic evidence to verify it."

Dr. Lo acknowledges the links between his work and that of homeopathic medicine, but he also asserts, "Thus far, we have only systematically tested substances which have been diluted one to ten 13 times. Homeopathic doctors sometimes use medicines which are diluted one to ten 30, 200, 1,000, or more times, and we have not tested these extreme dilutions yet. However, I would not be surprised if IE crystals are also observed in these doses. Based on our research to date, every dilution beyond the sixth has found IE crystals in them."

When following the traditional homeopathic pharmacological method to diluting and shaking solutions, the American Technology scientists found that approximately 0.1-0.2% of the solution contained IE crystals. These scientists, however, have discov ered methods to increase this to 10%.