Results for: provings

The “Incoherent Mess” That Is Homeopathy: Old and New Insights

Back in 1943 a Dutch physician, David Karel de Jongh, wrote a PhD dissertation on homeopathy. It was based on his experience working in a homeopathic hospital and on all the published information he could find, and was highly critical of homeopathy. It was an impressive opus, with over 200,000 words. It is way too long for the average reader to wade...

/ May 10, 2016

Battle of the feds: FTC tells FDA to do its job regulating homeopathy

Last month, the Society for Science-Based Medicine submitted a comment to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in response to its request for public comments on the agency’s current regulation (actually, lack of regulation) of homeopathic drugs. As the SFSBM pointed out, the FDA has, without legal authority, exempted homeopathic drugs from the safety and efficacy requirements applicable to other drugs under...

/ September 3, 2015

Society for Science-Based Medicine: Comment to FDA on homeopathic drug regulation

The Society for Science-Based Medicine has commented on the FDA's reconsideration of how to regulate homeopathic products.

/ August 6, 2015

Should physicians and managed care organizations offer homeopathy?

Anyone who reads Science-Based Medicine on even a semi-regular basis will know our collective opinion of homeopathy. Basically, at its core, homeopathy is pure quackery. I don’t care if it’s repetitive to say this yet again because it can’t be emphasized enough times that homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All. OK, there are others that compete for that title,...

/ July 20, 2015

It’s time for pharmacies to stop selling sugar pills

Why are pharmacies selling sugar pills to consumers that are packaged like medicine? And what will it take for pharmacies to stop?

/ July 16, 2015

FDA and Homeopathy: Part Two.

Friends, FDA, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Homeopathy, not to praise it. The evil that homeopaths do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Homeopathy. The noble Ullman Hath told you homeopathy was effective: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Homeopathy answer’d it....

/ April 3, 2015

Clinical trials of homeopathy versus “respect for science”

A few months ago, Steve Novella and I published an article in Trends in Molecular Medicine entitled “Clinical trials of integrative medicine: testing whether magic works?” It was our first foray together into publishing commentary about science-based medicine versus evidence-based medicine, using a topic that we’ve both written extensively about over the years on this blog and our respective personal blogs. Specifically,...

/ March 9, 2015

Homeopathy

Overview Index of SBM Posts Outside Resources Key Research   The ScienceBasedMedicine.org Reference Pages are reviews of topics relevant to science and medicine. Each consists of a concise overview of the topic from a scientific perspective, an index of the most relevant posts here on SBM, links to some external resources we recommend, and our summaries of the most interesting and important...

/ June 13, 2013

Homeopathic regulation diluted until no substance left

Homeopathy is quackery but it is perfectly legal to prescribe homeopathic products and to sell them directly to consumers in the United States as well as other supposedly civilized countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany. This makes as much sense as allowing the sale of batteries that don’t produce electricity. What makes this state of affairs even stranger is that...

/ April 4, 2013

Getting NCCAM’s money’s worth: Some results of NCCAM-funded studies of homeopathy

As hard as it is to believe, the Science-Based Medicine blog that you’re so eagerly reading is fast approaching its fifth anniversary of existence. The very first post here was a statement of purpose by Steve Novella on January 1, 2008, and my very first post was a somewhat rambling introduction that in retrospect is mildly embarrassing to me. It is what...

/ November 19, 2012