At the Cutting Edge: Interview with Rachel Roberts and Dr Alex Tournier.
HRI Conference, London, UK, June 15, 2019
By Deborah Hayes, BSc(Hons), MBRCP(H), CCH, RSHom(NA), FNTP, RWP
This article was first published in The American Homeopath Journal, Volume 26, 2020, and is reproduced with permission.
The Homeopathy Research Institute conference took place in a historic location overlooking the Tower of London. The conference was a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the HRI and a tour-de-force of cutting-edge scientific research into homeopathy. For an account of the conference see https://tinyurl.com/yycccuek. I was fortunate to be able to speak with the driving forces behind HRI: founder and executive director Dr Alex Tournier, and chief executive Rachel Roberts. They had just finished their presentation on the history of the HRI and had received a surprise donation of £35,000 from homeopathy students in Hong Kong.
Deborah Hayes: Thank you for taking the time out of your obviously incredibly busy schedule to meet with me, and congratulations on the success of the conference so far.
Rachel Roberts and Alex Tournier: Thank you.
DH: As editor of The American Homeopath journal, I am really keen for homeopaths to understand or appreciate on some level the research and science behind homeopathy. From your point of view, how important is it for homeopaths to have that?
Alex Tournier: It’s very important for homeopaths to have enough understanding that they can answer the critics. Many homeopaths come to us desperate for answers, for ways to answer the critics, and also their patients. One of the tasks we set ourselves is to help homeopaths and everyday people have the tools, the answers that they need to answer those types of questions.
DH: What resources do you have for them to be able to do that?
Rachel Roberts: The best resource by far is the homeopathy FAQs on our website, because even though we think it’s important for homeopaths to have access to the scientific information, we know that they are not necessarily scientifically trained, in research specifically. They are trained very well in homeopathy, but not in research, and these are very distinct topics. So, what we’ve done on our website, actually with the entire site, but particularly with the FAQs, is we’ve written it in language that any intelligent person can understand. It’s not scientific jargon but we’ve managed to maintain the scientific quality and always, wherever we can, if we’re making a statement even in plain language, of saying for example, there’s evidence for “like cures like” in other disciplines, there’s then an immediate link to the actual peer-reviewed article that we’re quoting, and the correct citation and the correct referencing. So, it’s a balance we’re trying to achieve between easy-to-understand and academic rigor.
DH: That’s great. What are the key things that homeopaths should understand about research?
RR: Something I feel passionate about, practicing as a homeopath for 25 years, is I’ve heard so many homeopaths saying, “There’s loads of evidence that it works, why do we even need more research?” That actually isn’t true. And it doesn’t help to say that, because when the other side is saying there’s no evidence and you’re saying there’s tons of evidence, that’s such a big difference it makes people think, “What’s going on? They can’t both be right.” Of course, life is often boring and the boringness that’s true is in the middle. We don’t have tons, but we don’t have none. We have some. And some of it is very high quality and positive and that’s what matters. I’d really love homeopaths to get to know that message, that “some” is not nothing. And “some” is really important, but it’s not “tons.”
AT: Another thing we’ve been trying to answer is, often we get from homeopaths, “Well, you know homeopathy is beyond research, you cannot research homeopathy; the current research methods are not adapted to researching homeopathy.” That’s something we hear a lot, and we really want to make homeopaths aware that it is possible to research homeopathy using language that conventional medicine and conventional research understand, and we’re getting positive results. Look at the review by Robert Mathie on individualized homeopathy against placebo, randomized controlled trials. It’s completely positive, and you can show that to your patients, to your critics. Homeopathy works—the way you work in your practice has been validated. And homeopathy research can be done and done well.
DH: Anything else that homeopaths should know?
RR: These websites with long lists of research that’s meaningless? We need to explain that.
AT: Oh yes, I can talk about that. Homeopaths, especially people who have not been trained in research, often think that the amount of research, just lists of research, is going to be impressive. And actually, in science, that’s not how it works. You need the quality and the right pieces of research to show how and if homeopathy works. And that’s a lot of what we do—sort through the literature, through the evidence, what’s really good, what you can use with confidence. So, you can stand up and say, “This particular study, nobody’s been able to find a hole in it. Here you go—think about that.” Or, “This review summarizes this particular relevant piece of research, it’s good, it’s methodologically sound, have a look, see what you think.” You can really use these tools to inform other people.
RR: That’s more relevant than ever with online resources. Back in the day, you had textbooks in libraries. There was an element of editorial control. I’ve had people say, “I’m surprised there isn’t more evidence on the HRI website.” The website isn’t perfect, it needs updating and there’s a lot more we want to do, but there will never be as much on our website as everywhere else, because it is handpicked for quality. Not cherrypicked—there’s a big difference. It’s handpicked to be relevant, robust and it’s carefully curated. We know that if we make mistakes, it has a terrible impact on our credibility, so everything is treble-checked as much as we possibly can. We’ve seen websites where people have said to us, “Look at this! Why aren’t you doing this?” There’s a long stream of articles, but for a start, the first two are negative. They didn’t know that. So, “Be careful what you’re reading on the internet” goes for homeopathy research as much as anything else.
DH: Going back to homeopaths themselves, is there anything homeopathic practitioners can do to help you in your work?
RR: The best thing they can do is donate (laughs). After what we’ve just been through, I’m starting to think I should have just asked everybody… (laughs).
DH: Pass a collection bucket round the conference room…
RR: Exactly. We had always thought there was no point in that, partly because so many organizations that had tried to do grassroots fundraising amongst the homeopathic community quite frankly had failed, with causes that we felt were more obviously dear to their hearts than ours. So, we really thought there was no point. But on the other hand, we acknowledge that what we’re trying to do is quite expensive, whether it’s the trials or whether it’s the level of researchers we need to pay to do anything, even write a document. So, although we thought it’s not the way, I have to say, literally, those Hong Kong students have changed my mind on that—I was amazed that they could do that. They said to me, “The good thing is, we don’t ask anyone for much, we just ask everybody for a little.” I know we all know that concept, but to see it actually happen and work, I was stunned.
So, if people think, “Oh well, I like what HRI does but it’s expensive and there’s no point me donating,” I’m now realizing that if everybody who loves homeopathy gave us a tiny amount, we’d be able to do so much more.
DH: What would you like to do?
RR: Our existing structure right now, there’s only me and Chris Connolly, our communications person, who work full-time. Everybody else is part-time, and if you add everyone up, that’s three full-time personnel. That’s it, that’s all we are. If you look at what we do, it is insane. I first told people that explicitly in Rome in 2015, and I said this is not sustainable, because all that happens is, I work harder and longer and up to a point smarter, and multi-task, but there’s obviously a limit. And that was before the Australian report and before EASAC and before we had to research that.
So here we are four years later, the same amount of people, the same amount of money and now I am saying to people, “Yes, there’s more we want to do,” but even to continue in the same way, it’s got to the point where, it’s great that the awareness of HRI is so much bigger, but the attacks have spread to many more countries, so more and more people are asking us to help. The really sad fact for me is that I had to start saying “No” last October for the first time and that was hard. Because everybody’s in need. “But just for us, because it’s really bad here and they’re trying to do this and take this away” and that’s what every single person says when they contact me, and I am just one person. So of course, what I want is more academic personnel.
AT: We would like to fund strategies for the type of trials we think would be strategically the most optimal to do now in terms of shifting opinions. We would like to fund them or be part of that. Of course, as Rachel mentioned, these are expensive projects but if we could target those key conditions where we could make a difference, or those key experiments we could replicate, they would have a huge impact in terms of the credibility of homeopathy worldwide.
DH: What would be some of those experiments you would want to do?
AT: At HRI we’ve got this dual process happening where on the one hand we want to have clinical trials on specific key conditions which we know that any trial there will have a big impact because it builds the evidence for that particular condition and it gets it over the threshold to say that homeopathy works for that condition. That would break a lot of the criticism, because you could say that homeopathy for that condition works. So, you can’t say that homeopathy doesn’t work anymore. It works at least for one condition.
RR: That first one, it would make a massive difference.
AT: And then, in the lab, the idea that homeopathy is just water, we want to break that by showing, look, it’s not just water, there’s other things, new physics being discovered, new physical chemistry being discovered, that is very pertinent to homeopathy. You can’t just say, “It’s water.” So, doing that research fundamentally breaks those criticisms from the skeptics.
DH: I think there’s been a number of levels of research into homeopathy. One is the clinical trials, where orthodox medicine says, “No, no, but that’s just placebo. Because we think it can’t possibly work, all of those results must be placebo.” And then you’ve got research into the mechanisms: water structures, Montagnier, Benveniste and their work.
I love that side of research—if we can say that there is actually a mechanism by which what orthodox science thinks of as “just water” can carry information.
RR: Water is much more exciting in its own right.
DH: Water is fascinating!
AT: Homeopathy uses a phenomenon that’s obviously very relevant for health. If we can understand it, it will have huge implications.
DH: Right, but then there’s a third bit, that’s like, what is the mechanism in the body that recognizes that information?
AT: We are in the process of looking at cell experiments and that type of thing
RR: All the epigenetic stuff.
DH: Absolutely, that’s what really exciting, although how would you design research around that?
AT: Professor Bellavite’s group in particular have some very exciting experiments, gene expression experiments. And all the replication of the Benveniste experiments are very great in that respect.
DH: That’s really exciting, because if you can show that there’s actually something going on inside a cell when you give a remedy, that would blow the lid off everything.
RR: This is something we talked about for years, because we know the acupuncturists changed the game for them. Someone had the sense to use a pretty standard randomized controlled trial model. They didn’t try and be different and say let’s capture this in a nice holistic way, they did what they knew the other side wanted, which was a big RCT. They played it by the rules of the game. And what they showed was that you had endorphin release during acupuncture. And once people said, “Needle = endorphins” acupuncture was fine. That’s what we’ve always admired—they were smart in a way that homeopaths haven’t been, somehow. We haven’t been as focused in the research arena and haven’t played such a smart game at times.
DH: Yes. Are there any areas of research that you are especially excited about? In the Water Research Lab for example?
AT: I’m looking at near-infrared spectroscopy. Near-infrared spectroscopy is sensitive to the structure of water. It’s a very fine technique for looking at water structure. We’re using that with my colleague Dr van de Kraats who is a specialist in the technique, and we are making good progress. That’s the kind of thing I’m involved in. We also want to do nuclear magnetic resonance experiments. We have the instruments, but we don’t have the personnel. Again, NMR is very sensitive to structure—we’re looking for these water structures and we have a whole research program all around these ideas: structures and how structures could capture information that’s specific to the homeopathic remedy. But funding is an issue, so we aren’t able to roll out the whole research program at this point.
RR: So, we’re busy again fundraising after this conference, with major companies, trying to get that moving faster. The only answer is to make the evidence base more robust. It’s the only way for the sector to move. Hopefully that message is getting there
DH: That’s awesome. Unfortunately, I think we are out of time at this point. Is there any last thing you want to say?
RR: Only that, in meeting you today, one of the things I love about our conference is having people from over thirty countries coming to one place and being able to do something like this, however briefly—when else could we do it? It’s not the same on Skype! Thank you for coming for that reason, I love it.
AH: Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.
You can find out more about the Homeopathy Research Institute at https://www.hri-research.org
--
Dr Alexander Tournier, BSc DI,C MASt Cantab, PhD LCHE, RSHom, is the Executive Director of the Homeopathy Research Institute. Alex has a first-class degree in physics from Imperial College, UK, and a Master’s in Advanced Study in Theoretical Physics (a.k.a. part III) from Cambridge University. He wrote his PhD on the biophysics of water-protein interactions at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Alex worked for ten years at Cancer Research UK (the fifth institute worldwide for molecular biology) as a researcher working on problems at the interface between biology, physics and mathematics. Alex trained in homeopathy at the Centre for Homeopathic Education, London and is a registered homeopath. He founded the Homeopathy Research Institute in 2007.
Rachel Roberts, BSc(Hons,) MCH, RSHom, FSHom, FFHom(Hon), is the HRI’s Chief Executive.
Rachel has a first-class degree in Biological Sciences specializing in Physiology from the University of Birmingham, UK. She graduated from the College of Homeopathy, London, UK, in 1997 and was in private practice as a homeopath until 2012. Rachel has lectured in homeopathy and medical sciences at various colleges in the UK and overseas. She held the post of Research Consultant for the Society of Homeopaths from 2008-2012 and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship in 2013 to acknowledge her outstanding contribution to homeopathy. Rachel joined the HRI part-time in 2010 and now works for the Institute on a full-time basis. In 2018 Rachel was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Faculty of Homeopathy for her highly regarded work in the field of homeopathic research.
Deborah Hayes, BSc(Hons), MBRCP(H), CCH, RSHom(NA), NTP, has served as the editor-in-chief of The American Homeopath journal since 2009. Trained at the Institute of Classical Homeopathy in San Francisco, CA, she has practiced homeopathy since 2001. Deborah is also a nutritional therapy practitioner and certified metabolic balance coach. She is based in Mountain View, CA. Contact Deborah at [email protected].
The Homeopathy Research Institute conference took place in a historic location overlooking the Tower of London. The conference was a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the HRI and a tour-de-force of cutting-edge scientific research into homeopathy. For an account of the conference see https://tinyurl.com/yycccuek. I was fortunate to be able to speak with the driving forces behind HRI: founder and executive director Dr Alex Tournier, and chief executive Rachel Roberts. They had just finished their presentation on the history of the HRI and had received a surprise donation of £35,000 from homeopathy students in Hong Kong.
Deborah Hayes: Thank you for taking the time out of your obviously incredibly busy schedule to meet with me, and congratulations on the success of the conference so far.
Rachel Roberts and Alex Tournier: Thank you.
DH: As editor of The American Homeopath journal, I am really keen for homeopaths to understand or appreciate on some level the research and science behind homeopathy. From your point of view, how important is it for homeopaths to have that?
Alex Tournier: It’s very important for homeopaths to have enough understanding that they can answer the critics. Many homeopaths come to us desperate for answers, for ways to answer the critics, and also their patients. One of the tasks we set ourselves is to help homeopaths and everyday people have the tools, the answers that they need to answer those types of questions.
DH: What resources do you have for them to be able to do that?
Rachel Roberts: The best resource by far is the homeopathy FAQs on our website, because even though we think it’s important for homeopaths to have access to the scientific information, we know that they are not necessarily scientifically trained, in research specifically. They are trained very well in homeopathy, but not in research, and these are very distinct topics. So, what we’ve done on our website, actually with the entire site, but particularly with the FAQs, is we’ve written it in language that any intelligent person can understand. It’s not scientific jargon but we’ve managed to maintain the scientific quality and always, wherever we can, if we’re making a statement even in plain language, of saying for example, there’s evidence for “like cures like” in other disciplines, there’s then an immediate link to the actual peer-reviewed article that we’re quoting, and the correct citation and the correct referencing. So, it’s a balance we’re trying to achieve between easy-to-understand and academic rigor.
DH: That’s great. What are the key things that homeopaths should understand about research?
RR: Something I feel passionate about, practicing as a homeopath for 25 years, is I’ve heard so many homeopaths saying, “There’s loads of evidence that it works, why do we even need more research?” That actually isn’t true. And it doesn’t help to say that, because when the other side is saying there’s no evidence and you’re saying there’s tons of evidence, that’s such a big difference it makes people think, “What’s going on? They can’t both be right.” Of course, life is often boring and the boringness that’s true is in the middle. We don’t have tons, but we don’t have none. We have some. And some of it is very high quality and positive and that’s what matters. I’d really love homeopaths to get to know that message, that “some” is not nothing. And “some” is really important, but it’s not “tons.”
AT: Another thing we’ve been trying to answer is, often we get from homeopaths, “Well, you know homeopathy is beyond research, you cannot research homeopathy; the current research methods are not adapted to researching homeopathy.” That’s something we hear a lot, and we really want to make homeopaths aware that it is possible to research homeopathy using language that conventional medicine and conventional research understand, and we’re getting positive results. Look at the review by Robert Mathie on individualized homeopathy against placebo, randomized controlled trials. It’s completely positive, and you can show that to your patients, to your critics. Homeopathy works—the way you work in your practice has been validated. And homeopathy research can be done and done well.
DH: Anything else that homeopaths should know?
RR: These websites with long lists of research that’s meaningless? We need to explain that.
AT: Oh yes, I can talk about that. Homeopaths, especially people who have not been trained in research, often think that the amount of research, just lists of research, is going to be impressive. And actually, in science, that’s not how it works. You need the quality and the right pieces of research to show how and if homeopathy works. And that’s a lot of what we do—sort through the literature, through the evidence, what’s really good, what you can use with confidence. So, you can stand up and say, “This particular study, nobody’s been able to find a hole in it. Here you go—think about that.” Or, “This review summarizes this particular relevant piece of research, it’s good, it’s methodologically sound, have a look, see what you think.” You can really use these tools to inform other people.
RR: That’s more relevant than ever with online resources. Back in the day, you had textbooks in libraries. There was an element of editorial control. I’ve had people say, “I’m surprised there isn’t more evidence on the HRI website.” The website isn’t perfect, it needs updating and there’s a lot more we want to do, but there will never be as much on our website as everywhere else, because it is handpicked for quality. Not cherrypicked—there’s a big difference. It’s handpicked to be relevant, robust and it’s carefully curated. We know that if we make mistakes, it has a terrible impact on our credibility, so everything is treble-checked as much as we possibly can. We’ve seen websites where people have said to us, “Look at this! Why aren’t you doing this?” There’s a long stream of articles, but for a start, the first two are negative. They didn’t know that. So, “Be careful what you’re reading on the internet” goes for homeopathy research as much as anything else.
DH: Going back to homeopaths themselves, is there anything homeopathic practitioners can do to help you in your work?
RR: The best thing they can do is donate (laughs). After what we’ve just been through, I’m starting to think I should have just asked everybody… (laughs).
DH: Pass a collection bucket round the conference room…
RR: Exactly. We had always thought there was no point in that, partly because so many organizations that had tried to do grassroots fundraising amongst the homeopathic community quite frankly had failed, with causes that we felt were more obviously dear to their hearts than ours. So, we really thought there was no point. But on the other hand, we acknowledge that what we’re trying to do is quite expensive, whether it’s the trials or whether it’s the level of researchers we need to pay to do anything, even write a document. So, although we thought it’s not the way, I have to say, literally, those Hong Kong students have changed my mind on that—I was amazed that they could do that. They said to me, “The good thing is, we don’t ask anyone for much, we just ask everybody for a little.” I know we all know that concept, but to see it actually happen and work, I was stunned.
So, if people think, “Oh well, I like what HRI does but it’s expensive and there’s no point me donating,” I’m now realizing that if everybody who loves homeopathy gave us a tiny amount, we’d be able to do so much more.
DH: What would you like to do?
RR: Our existing structure right now, there’s only me and Chris Connolly, our communications person, who work full-time. Everybody else is part-time, and if you add everyone up, that’s three full-time personnel. That’s it, that’s all we are. If you look at what we do, it is insane. I first told people that explicitly in Rome in 2015, and I said this is not sustainable, because all that happens is, I work harder and longer and up to a point smarter, and multi-task, but there’s obviously a limit. And that was before the Australian report and before EASAC and before we had to research that.
So here we are four years later, the same amount of people, the same amount of money and now I am saying to people, “Yes, there’s more we want to do,” but even to continue in the same way, it’s got to the point where, it’s great that the awareness of HRI is so much bigger, but the attacks have spread to many more countries, so more and more people are asking us to help. The really sad fact for me is that I had to start saying “No” last October for the first time and that was hard. Because everybody’s in need. “But just for us, because it’s really bad here and they’re trying to do this and take this away” and that’s what every single person says when they contact me, and I am just one person. So of course, what I want is more academic personnel.
AT: We would like to fund strategies for the type of trials we think would be strategically the most optimal to do now in terms of shifting opinions. We would like to fund them or be part of that. Of course, as Rachel mentioned, these are expensive projects but if we could target those key conditions where we could make a difference, or those key experiments we could replicate, they would have a huge impact in terms of the credibility of homeopathy worldwide.
DH: What would be some of those experiments you would want to do?
AT: At HRI we’ve got this dual process happening where on the one hand we want to have clinical trials on specific key conditions which we know that any trial there will have a big impact because it builds the evidence for that particular condition and it gets it over the threshold to say that homeopathy works for that condition. That would break a lot of the criticism, because you could say that homeopathy for that condition works. So, you can’t say that homeopathy doesn’t work anymore. It works at least for one condition.
RR: That first one, it would make a massive difference.
AT: And then, in the lab, the idea that homeopathy is just water, we want to break that by showing, look, it’s not just water, there’s other things, new physics being discovered, new physical chemistry being discovered, that is very pertinent to homeopathy. You can’t just say, “It’s water.” So, doing that research fundamentally breaks those criticisms from the skeptics.
DH: I think there’s been a number of levels of research into homeopathy. One is the clinical trials, where orthodox medicine says, “No, no, but that’s just placebo. Because we think it can’t possibly work, all of those results must be placebo.” And then you’ve got research into the mechanisms: water structures, Montagnier, Benveniste and their work.
I love that side of research—if we can say that there is actually a mechanism by which what orthodox science thinks of as “just water” can carry information.
RR: Water is much more exciting in its own right.
DH: Water is fascinating!
AT: Homeopathy uses a phenomenon that’s obviously very relevant for health. If we can understand it, it will have huge implications.
DH: Right, but then there’s a third bit, that’s like, what is the mechanism in the body that recognizes that information?
AT: We are in the process of looking at cell experiments and that type of thing
RR: All the epigenetic stuff.
DH: Absolutely, that’s what really exciting, although how would you design research around that?
AT: Professor Bellavite’s group in particular have some very exciting experiments, gene expression experiments. And all the replication of the Benveniste experiments are very great in that respect.
DH: That’s really exciting, because if you can show that there’s actually something going on inside a cell when you give a remedy, that would blow the lid off everything.
RR: This is something we talked about for years, because we know the acupuncturists changed the game for them. Someone had the sense to use a pretty standard randomized controlled trial model. They didn’t try and be different and say let’s capture this in a nice holistic way, they did what they knew the other side wanted, which was a big RCT. They played it by the rules of the game. And what they showed was that you had endorphin release during acupuncture. And once people said, “Needle = endorphins” acupuncture was fine. That’s what we’ve always admired—they were smart in a way that homeopaths haven’t been, somehow. We haven’t been as focused in the research arena and haven’t played such a smart game at times.
DH: Yes. Are there any areas of research that you are especially excited about? In the Water Research Lab for example?
AT: I’m looking at near-infrared spectroscopy. Near-infrared spectroscopy is sensitive to the structure of water. It’s a very fine technique for looking at water structure. We’re using that with my colleague Dr van de Kraats who is a specialist in the technique, and we are making good progress. That’s the kind of thing I’m involved in. We also want to do nuclear magnetic resonance experiments. We have the instruments, but we don’t have the personnel. Again, NMR is very sensitive to structure—we’re looking for these water structures and we have a whole research program all around these ideas: structures and how structures could capture information that’s specific to the homeopathic remedy. But funding is an issue, so we aren’t able to roll out the whole research program at this point.
RR: So, we’re busy again fundraising after this conference, with major companies, trying to get that moving faster. The only answer is to make the evidence base more robust. It’s the only way for the sector to move. Hopefully that message is getting there
DH: That’s awesome. Unfortunately, I think we are out of time at this point. Is there any last thing you want to say?
RR: Only that, in meeting you today, one of the things I love about our conference is having people from over thirty countries coming to one place and being able to do something like this, however briefly—when else could we do it? It’s not the same on Skype! Thank you for coming for that reason, I love it.
AH: Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.
You can find out more about the Homeopathy Research Institute at https://www.hri-research.org
--
Dr Alexander Tournier, BSc DI,C MASt Cantab, PhD LCHE, RSHom, is the Executive Director of the Homeopathy Research Institute. Alex has a first-class degree in physics from Imperial College, UK, and a Master’s in Advanced Study in Theoretical Physics (a.k.a. part III) from Cambridge University. He wrote his PhD on the biophysics of water-protein interactions at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Alex worked for ten years at Cancer Research UK (the fifth institute worldwide for molecular biology) as a researcher working on problems at the interface between biology, physics and mathematics. Alex trained in homeopathy at the Centre for Homeopathic Education, London and is a registered homeopath. He founded the Homeopathy Research Institute in 2007.
Rachel Roberts, BSc(Hons,) MCH, RSHom, FSHom, FFHom(Hon), is the HRI’s Chief Executive.
Rachel has a first-class degree in Biological Sciences specializing in Physiology from the University of Birmingham, UK. She graduated from the College of Homeopathy, London, UK, in 1997 and was in private practice as a homeopath until 2012. Rachel has lectured in homeopathy and medical sciences at various colleges in the UK and overseas. She held the post of Research Consultant for the Society of Homeopaths from 2008-2012 and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship in 2013 to acknowledge her outstanding contribution to homeopathy. Rachel joined the HRI part-time in 2010 and now works for the Institute on a full-time basis. In 2018 Rachel was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Faculty of Homeopathy for her highly regarded work in the field of homeopathic research.
Deborah Hayes, BSc(Hons), MBRCP(H), CCH, RSHom(NA), NTP, has served as the editor-in-chief of The American Homeopath journal since 2009. Trained at the Institute of Classical Homeopathy in San Francisco, CA, she has practiced homeopathy since 2001. Deborah is also a nutritional therapy practitioner and certified metabolic balance coach. She is based in Mountain View, CA. Contact Deborah at [email protected].