Category: Homeopathy

The Last Word on Homeopathy

No one will ever need to write about homeopathy again. Edzard Ernst has said it all in his new book Homeopathy: The Undiluted Facts. Far too many trees have died in the service of praising or debunking homeopathy in the two centuries since Hahnemann invented it. The forests can celebrate, because this is the definitive book about homeopathy. It is neither “for”...

/ November 22, 2016

FTC Homeopathy Win

I love to see a regulatory agency actually do its job. Especially within medicine, where it is most important, the lack of political will seems to get in the way of properly regulating health care products and services in the way that most consumers assume they are regulated. Homeopathy is perhaps the best example. Homeopathy is pure unadulterated pseudoscience and witchcraft. There...

/ November 16, 2016

Researching the Magic of Homeopathy

A Canadian academic, Dr. Mark Loeb, who is a respected infectious disease researcher who knows how to conduct high quality research, wants to study homeopathic nosodes. Nosodes are essentially homeopathic vaccines. Tim Caulfield, a Canadian professor of health law and policy, thinks the study is misguided and unethical. The two are having a respectful public debate about the risks and merits of...

/ October 12, 2016

FDA Warns About Homeopathic Teething Products

The FDA recently put out a consumer warning about homeopathic teething gels and pills. The warning states: The FDA recommends that consumers stop using these products and dispose of any in their possession. The warning is not because all homeopathic products are inherently useless. As we have discussed here often, the basic principles of homeopathy are pure pseudoscience. The practice of diluting...

/ October 5, 2016

Good Thinking Society’s successful challenge to NHS homeopathy

[Editor’s note: For no reason whatsoever other than to share great news, we bring you this contribution from Michael Marshall, project director of the Good Thinking Society and vice president of the Merseyside Skeptics Society.] As regular readers of this blog may know, skeptics here in the UK have been campaigning for some time to end the funding of homeopathic remedies by...

/ August 28, 2016

Deconstructing Homeopathy Propaganda

The definition of “propaganda,” like so many things, is a bit fuzzy. The dictionary definition is: “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” There is no sharp demarcation line, however. Speech occurs on a spectrum from obsessively objective, fair, balanced, and scholarly at one end, to deliberately deceptive...

/ August 17, 2016

Pharmacy and homeopathy: Will the profession change, or will change be forced upon it?

Retail pharmacy is giving itself a credibility problem. While pharmacists are highly trusted health professionals, there are increasing questions about the products sold in pharmacies. Many of the non-prescription products that you can find aren’t backed by good evidence. And the number of dubious products seems to be growing. Homeopathy is an extreme example. Homeopathic “remedies” look like conventional medicine, but unlike...

/ August 11, 2016

FDA efforts to improve compounded drug safety upsets naturopaths

Favorite naturopathic treatments comprise pumping patients full of dubious mixtures by injection, including IV drips. Naturopaths also employ topicals (salves, ointments and creams), rectal, and vaginal suppositories, and oral medications, such as bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, all made from “natural” substances. According to the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) these nutritional, herbal and homeopathic remedies are compounded to meet unique patient...

/ July 7, 2016

A systematic review about nothing

There is dubious content in PubMed that you won’t find unless you look for it, or stumble across it inadvertently. It’s the entire field of alternative medicine which is abstracted and complied along with the actual medical literature. In this world, the impossible is accepted as fact, and journal articles focus on the medical equivalent of counting angels on pinheads. I’ve been...

/ June 30, 2016

About Herbs: an app to avoid

Medicine has an intellectual hierarchy. Supposedly the best and the brightest are in the academic medical centers and are the thought leaders in their field. Those of us lower in the hierarchy are well aware of some of the warts present on our betters, but I would expect those at the top would adhere to the highest intellectual and ethical standards. People...

/ June 24, 2016