The following is taken from Deepak Chopra, M.D.'s text _Quantum
Healing_, pages 118-120 of the original hardbound edition:

The vast difference in scale between medicine and quantum physics safely
kept the two sciences on separate ground until 1987, when a French
immunologist, Jacques Benveniste, performed an experiment that is
outrageous to all nonquantum views of the world.  On the surfact, the
experiment becan innocuously.  Dr. Benveniste took a common human antibody
called IgE and exposed it to certain white cells in the blood called
basophils.  It is well known what happens when these two interact - the
IgE antibody clamps firmly to speciic receptor sites and waits.  What it
is waiting for is an invading molecule floating by in the bloodstream
that needs to be defended against.  In this case, the invader is not a
germ but an antigen, a substance that causes allergies.  (Lengthy
discussion of allergic response omitted to save space.)

This sets the stage for Dr. Benveniste's experiment.  He took some human
blood serum full of white cells and IgE and mixed it with a solution
prepared from goat's blood that was certain to trigger the release of
histamine.  This second solution contained an anti-IgE antibody.  When
the IgE and the anti-IgE hit, the reaction in the test tube went off
exactly as it would in a person with a bad allergy, and large amounts of
histamine were produced.  [Typist's note:  No big deal so far - perfectly
normal immune system reaction.]

Benveniste then diluted the anti-IgE tenfold and added it again - still
the same reaction.  He kept on diluting, time after time, and as
before, from 40 to 60 percent continued to react.  This was surprising,
because he was well past the limit where the solution should be
chemically active.  He diluted the anti-IgE even more, making it a
hundred times weaker each dilution, until he knew that there was no
anti-IgE at all.  His last dilution contained one part antibody to 10 to
the 120th power parts water; if written out, this number would be
expressed as 10 followed by 120 zeroes.  Using a constant called
Avogadro's number, he confirmed mathematically that it was impossible
for the water to contain a single molecule of antibody.  When he added
this "solution," which was not just distilled water, the histamine
reaction was set off with the same power as before.

Although his result was, in medical terms, an absurdity, Benveniste
duplicated it seventy times, and asked other research teams to repeat it
in Israel, Canada, and Italy - all came up with the same result.  They
all discovered that you can trigger the immune system with an antibody
that isn't there.  His results were reluctantly published in the June
1988 issue of the prestigious British journal _Nature_.  Its editors
frankly declared their repugnance at the result, stating quite rightly
that "there is no physical basis" for it.  The human white cells were
acting as if the anti-IgE was attaching them from everywhere when in
fact it was nowhere.

Medicine is reluctant to walk through the quantum door, even though this
experiment clearly opens it.  (Lengthy discussion of homeopathy omitted
to save space.)  In July 1988, a month after publishing his findings,
_Nature_ sent a team of investigators to France to view Benveniste's
experiment and clear up their disbelief.  He was unable to consistently
duplicate his results in their presence; some trails worked flawlessly,
others didn't.  Subsequently, _Nature_ repudiated his work, calling his
results a "delusion."  A heated controversy arose that has not been
settled to date.  Benveniste still stands behind his work, and his
original paper has been signed by twelve other researchers in four
countries.  Since the ability of water to remember is inexplicable, its
ability to forget can hardly be held against it.  These may be two sides
of the same coin.

(Typist's note:  this last point is addressed admirably by Dean Black in
the opening 30 pages of his book _Fine Tuning_, which discusses in
detail the application of chaos theory to human health and health care.
It reviews systems analysis views of mechanisms of health, and raises
the point that there are far more variables in play than we would like
to admit, including the expectations of experimenters.  Since many of
Dr. Chopra's patients have experienced complete disappearance of
"incurable" metastatic carcinoma after being trained in mental
techniques such as meditation, Chopra would certainly support the mind-
set of the patient as being one of the primary determining factors in
health care.  The understandings involved here make the failure some of
Dr. Benveniste's experiments to replicate fully in the presence of hostile
observers quite understandable.  It also makes even more clear the fact
that most of the medical community - people like Dr. Chopra excepted - does
not grasp anywhere near all the mechanisms of experimental design.  The
scientific method and double-blind investigation are not refuted; it is
simply that we are only beginning to understand the mechanisms involved.)

(More typist's note:  it's an interesting perspective on the mentality of
medical "science" in _this_ country, at least, to note that the discipline of
homeopathic health care is the official state health care system of Belgium,
is practiced by 56% of the medical doctors in France, and is utilized
extensively by the British royal family.  God forbid that such should occur
here, not for the patient's sake, mind you, but for the catastrophic loss of
income, power, prestige, and job security that would occur in the medical
health care industry and the public found out that they have been "protected"
from health care options which are far more effective, far less damaging, and
exponentially less expensive than current practice.  That would be as
horrible as letting chiropractors get away with healing people!)