For this year’s “World Homeopathy Awareness Week,” the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) issued a strong statement against the misleading advertising of homeopathic medicines and called on Congress to close the loophole exempting these quack products from certain FDA regulations.

“So-called homeopathic remedies may be the only products given a free pass to say they’re intended to treat disease, without any proof at all that they work.” JREF President D.J. Grothe said.

“Drugs have to be tested for safety and potency before they can be sold. Supplements have to carry disclaimers, telling consumers that their claims have not been evaluated by the FDA. Homeopathy is exempt from these requirements because of a law passed more than 70 years ago. It’s time to close the loophole and make manufactures of these quack medications play by the same rules as everyone else.”

On Feb. 5, the JREF put $1 million on the table for any manufacturer or homeopath who could demonstrate that their homeopathic products were effective under fair observing conditions. In the months since, none have come forward to claim the prize.

The JREF invites consumers to send a message to members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which oversees the FDA, and ask them to close the loophole that allows misleading claims by manufacturers of quack medicine:

Click here to sign the petition to Congress asking them to: Close the quack medicine loophole for homeopathic remedies

The facts about homeopathic remedies:

• No Ingredients: Homeopathic remedies are so extremely dilute that most do not contain a single atom of their claimed active ingredient. The most popular homeopathic remedy, oscillococcinum, is based on a dilution of one part duck liver to 10^{^400} parts of water. 10^{^400} is the number 1 with 400 zeroes after it. To make such a dilution, you’d have to mix a single molecule of duck liver with more matter than exists in the entire known universe.
• No Testing: Homeopathic remedies are exempted from regulations requiring drugs to prove they’re effective and accurately labeled with respect to dosage and potency. What’s more, homeopathic remedies were never even tested by their inventors to make sure they work. Homeopathic remedies are invented by a process homeopaths call “proving”: they give a substance to a healthy person, observe the symptoms it causes, and then take it on faith that homeopathic doses of the same substance will cure those symptoms. For example, coffee causes sleeplessness—that’s all homeopaths need to know in order to prescribe homeopathically-diluted coffee as sleeping pills, called “coffea cruda.” According to homeopathic principles, there’s no need to test whether it actually helps anyone sleep.
• No Facts: Major pharmacy chains like CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid sell useless homeopathic products right alongside real medicine, with no warning to consumers. Manufacturers and retailers profit by denying customers the facts they need to make up their minds. U.S. law exempts homeopathy from certain rules that govern drugs and nutritional supplements, so manufacturers can market homeopathic remedies for the treatment of illnesses despite the fact that reputable studies show homeopathy to work no better than dummy pills made of plain sugar.

Source: Randi.org

James Randi launched a bold challenge Saturday that aims to debunk so-called homeopathic drugs. The fraud-busting magician even offered $1 million to any manufacturer who could prove they work as directed.

Finding science and medicine experts to defend homeopathy isn’t easy. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine offers a primer complete with an explanation of homeopathy regulation, the status of research and more.

The first two “key points” are especially notable, the first for the explanation, the second for the context.

“The principle of similars [or 'like cures like'] is a central homeopathic principle. The principle states that a disease can be cured by a substance that produces similar symptoms in healthy people.

“Most analyses have concluded that there is little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment for any specific condition; although, some studies have reported positive findings.”

Respected skeptic Steven Barrett is more blunt. He says this about homeopathy: “Homeopathic ‘remedies’ enjoy a unique status in the health marketplace: They are the only category of quack products legally marketable as drugs.” That’s just the beginning of his essay. Read the full post on Barrett’s site,Quackwatch.

The National Center for Homeopathy would disagree, of course. And it helpfully distinguishes between “homeopathic” and “herbal” for those who consider all nonprescription or “alternative” products virtually the same. “Homeopathy is a system of medical therapy that uses very small doses of medicines, or remedies. These remedies are prepared from substances found in nature. Nevertheless, homeopathy should not be confused with herbal medicine. These two systems of medicine are very different. Herbal medicine uses tinctures of botanical substances, whereas homeopaths use ultradilute ‘micro’ doses made from not only plants, but minerals or any other substance found in nature.”

In the meantime, we’ll wait to see whether anyone takes Randi up on his challenge.

Source: LA Times

CBC Marketplace: Homeopathy – Cure or Con

Simon Singh: http://www.simonsingh.net

Delegates to the British Medical Association’s conference are expected to support seven motions opposing the use of public money to pay for remedies which they claim have ‘no place in the modern health service.’

Hundreds of members of the BMA have passed a motion denouncing the use of the alternative medicine, saying taxpayers should not foot the bill for remedies with no scientific basis to support them.

The BMA has previously expressed scepticism about homoeopathy, arguing that the rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence should examine the evidence base and make a definitive ruling about the use of the remedies in the NHS.

Now, the annual conference of junior doctors has gone further, with a vote overwhelmingly supporting a blanket ban, and an end to all placements for trainee doctors which teach them homeopathic principles.

Dr Tom Dolphin, deputy chairman of the BMA’s junior doctors committee in England told the conference: “Homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a disgrace that nestling between the National Hospital for Neurology and Great Ormond Street [in London] there is a National Hospital for Homeopathy which is paid for by the NHS”.

The alternative medicine, devised in the 18th century by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann, is based on a theory that substances which cause symptoms in a healthy person can, when vastly diluted, cure the same problems in a sick person.

Proponents say the resulting remedy retains a “memory” of the original ingredient – a concept dismissed by scientists.

Latest figures show 54,000 patients are treated each year at four NHS homeopathic hospitals in London, Glasgow, Bristol and Liverpool, at an estimated cost of £4 million.

A fifth hospital in Tunbridge Wells in Kent was forced to close last year when local NHS funders stopped paying for treatments.

Gordon Lehany, chairman of the BMA’s junior doctors committee in Scotland said it was wrong that some junior doctors were spending part of their training rotations in homeopathic hospitals, learning principles which had no place in science.

He told the conference in London last weekend: “At a time when the NHS is struggling for cash we should be focusing on treatments that have proven benefit. If people wish to pay for homoeopathy that’s their choice but it shouldn’t be paid for on the NHS until there is evidence that it works.”

The motion was supported by BMA Chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum, though it will only become official policy of the whole organisation if it is agreed by their full conference next month.

In February a report by MPs said the alternative medicine should not receive state funding.

The Commons science and technology committee also said vials of the remedies should not be allowed to use phrases like “used to treat” in their marketing, as consumers might think there is clinical evidence that they work.

In evidence to the committee, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain said there was no possible reason why such treatments, marketed by an industry worth £40 million in this country, could be effective scientifically.

Advocates of homoeopathy say even if the effect of the remedies is to work as a placebo, they are chosen by thousands of people, and do not carry the risks and side effects of many mainstream medicines.

A survey carried out at England’s NHS homeopathic hospitals found 70 per cent of patients said they felt some improvement after undergoing treatment.

Crystal Sumner, chief executive of the British Homeopathic Association (BHA), said attempts to stop the NHS funding alternative medicines ignored the views of the public, especially patients with chronic conditions.

She said: ” Homeopathy helps thousands of people who are not helped by conventional care. We don’t want it to be a substitute for mainstream care, but when people are thinking about making cuts to funding, I think they need to consider public satisfaction, and see that homoeopathy has a place in medicine.”

She said junior doctors’ calls for an end to any training placements based in homeopathic hospitals ignored the lessons alternative medicine could provide, in terms of how to diagnose patients.

Estimates on how much the NHS spends on homoeopathy vary. The BHA says the NHS spends about £4 million a year on homeopathic services, although the Department of Health says spending on the medicines themselves is just £152,000 a year.

Two weeks ago, a charity founded by the Prince of Wales to promotes alternative medicines announced plans to shut down, days after a former senior official was arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering.

The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health said its plans to close had been brought forward as a result of a fraud investigation at the charity.

George Gray, a former chief executive of the organisation, and his wife Gillian were arrested by Scotland Yard officers last month in an early-morning raid on their home in North London.

Source: Telegraph UK

Indian Homeopath Responds

The NHS should stop funding homeopathy, MPs say.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee said using public money on the highly-diluted remedies could not be justified.

The cross-party group said there was no evidence beyond a placebo effect, when a patient gets better because of their belief that the treatment works.

But manufacturers and supporters of homeopathy disputed the report, saying the MPs had ignored important evidence.

It is thought about £4m a year is spent on homeopathy by the NHS, helping to fund four homeopathic hospitals in London, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow and numerous prescriptions.

Homeopathy is a 200-year-old system of treatment that uses highly diluted substances – sometimes so none of the original product is left – that are given orally in the belief that it will stimulate the body’s self-healing mechanism.

Read More At: NHS money ‘wasted’ on homeopathy (BBC)

The organisation claimed several scientific reviews offered support for homeopathy in material submitted to the cross-party science and technology select committee, which is holding an investigation into the products. Robert Mathie, a researcher at the BHA, said the reviews found evidence for a difference between homeopathic remedies and sugar pills, which contain no active ingredients.

But the claim has dismayed some of the scientists who wrote the reviews and angered MPs on the committee who are in the final stages of writing their report.

One review cited was written by Edzard Ernst, a scientist who investigates complementary medicine at the Penisula Medical School in Exeter. He said the BHA’s interpretation of his study was “grossly misleading” because they failed to mention important caveats published in the study. Another review, by Jean-Pierre Boissel at the Hospitals of Lyon and University Claude Bernard in France, was quoted as evidence that homeopathic treatments differ to placebos. Boissel said his conclusion was that homeopathy tended to fare worse in the best-designed studies.

Read more at: Homeopathic society ‘misled’ MPs in inquiry (Guardian UK)

James Randi Makes Homeopathy Harder to Swallow

The Indian government has produced a number of ads that are now running on TV in the worlds second most populous nation. I guess it is cheaper to convince citizens that placebos are effective than it is to provide healthcare for the people. Watch as Indian tax payers money goes out the window!

Killing of Infants by Government? (Scientific Indians)

Dara O’Briain on Homeopathy (and other nonsense)

Homeopathy is an unscientific and absurd pseudoscience, yet it persists today as an accepted complementary medicine.

Ask many people what they think homeopathy is, and you’ll be told “it’s herbal medicine” or “it’s all-natural”. Few realise that it’s been proven not to work; even fewer know it involves substances so dilute that there’s nothing left in them. Homeopathy takes advantage of this uncertainty to sit alongside real, proven medicines on the shelves of our major pharmacies.

Sceptics and consumer rights activists will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homeopathic ‘pillules’ to demonstrate that these ‘remedies’, prepared according to a long-discredited 18th century ritual, are nothing but sugar pills.

The protest will raise public awareness about the reality of homeopathy, and put further pressure on Boots to live up to its responsibilites as the ’scientist on the high street’ and stop selling treatments which do not work.”

Read more at 1023.org.uk