Results 1 to 5 of 5

Thread: Homeopathy

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Homeopathy

    I'm perturbed that we don't have a thread on homeopathy here. It's mentioned in several previous posts, but it needs its own thread.

    Or maybe not, if this news item is true...

    January 31, 2018
    FDA Declares ‘Virtually All’ Drug Products Labeled As Homeopathic Are Illegal


    LUCAAR / THINKSTOCK BY GETTY IMAGES HEALTH

    Julie Johnson

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reportedly declared that “virtually all” homeopathic drugs are illegal. Reports that the FDA is cracking down on the use of natural medicines have been circulating for a while. However, in a recently released “guidance document,” the FDA is now quoted as saying that homeopathic drugs are considered “new drugs” that are allegedly being sold illegally.

    The FDA released its new guidance document last month, and sources in support of the use of homeopathic drugs are still attempting to translate what the FDA is calling a “draft guidance” that’s been released for “comment purposes only.” Homeopathy is becoming an increasingly popular form of treating various diseases naturally for people worldwide.

    According to the Homeopathy Research Institute, more than 200 million people now regularly use homeopathic drugs, with over 6 million people in the U.S. alone using homeopathy “for self-care of specific health conditions.” More and more people are turning to homeopathic drugs versus prescriptions drugs due to alleged lower cost and fewer side effects. Natural medicines are also said to heal, rather than simply mask the symptoms of a disease.

    With a growing number of the adult population around the world turning to homeopathy, as well as the recent “war on opioids” in the news, the FDA decided to announce new policies on the use of homeopathic drugs. An article on the Alliance for Natural Health USA from just over two weeks ago states that the FDA has effectively labeled “virtually every single homeopathic drug” as illegal, as outlined in the homeopathic guidance document.

    USA TODAY
    about 2 months ago
    The FDA's move follows a string of warnings issued on specific homeopathic products such as baby teething tablets.



    FDA plans crackdown on homeopathic drugs aimed at infants, cancer patients
    It's a $3 billion industry, the FDA says, and the rules need an update.
    USATODAY.COM
    In an attempt to decode the “FDA’s current position” on the use and sale of homeopathic drugs, the previously mentioned article says that since not one homeopathic drug has yet to be approved by the FDA as being “safe and effective,” then “all homeopathic drugs” are effectively illegal, and therefore, currently being sold illegally.

    “A new drug cannot be marketed unless it goes through the FDA’s approval process. No homeopathic drugs have gone through FDA approval nor can any producer afford to take them through the approval process.”

    Citing the guidance document on the FDA website, homeopathic drugs are “marketed unapproved new drugs” with “potential safety risks” and “lack evidence of effectiveness.” The document goes on to say that homeopathic drugs are considered “health fraud products,” which, in turn, “present challenges” in getting the FDA’s approval as new drugs. The FDA then goes on to outline a “risk-based” approach to regulating homeopathic drugs.

    An article on Mercola from Tuesday states that both adults and children currently use homeopathic drugs because natural medicines are still considered “generally safe.” Unlike some prescription medications, homeopathic remedies are also said to not carry the same risk of dependency, and according to Mercola, are “unlikely” to cause “severe” side effects.

    However, as noted on Mercola, the FDA still plans to take a new approach of regulating homeopathic drugs that reportedly carry a greater “risk to patients.” After essentially determining that homeopathic drugs are “new drugs” that haven’t been approved for manufacturing, distributing or marketing, the FDA notes that it plans to enforce “regulatory actions” against “certain categories” of homeopathic drugs.

    Those categories include homeopathic drugs with already “reported safety concerns,” homeopathic drugs with ingredients that are determined to “raise safety concerns,” including products that contain multiple homeopathic ingredients, homeopathic drugs that are not for use orally or topically, as well as homeopathic products that claim to prevent or treat “serious” or “life-threatening” health conditions.

    Ohio Pharmacists
    @OhioPharmacists
    FDA takes more aggressive stance toward homeopathic drugs https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.c1831f203573

    11:49 AM - Jan 19, 2018



    FDA takes more aggressive stance toward homeopathic drugs
    Products containing potentially harmful ingredients or marketed for serious diseases will get the closest scrutiny.

    washingtonpost.com
    1
    See Ohio Pharmacists's other Tweets
    Twitter Ads info and privacy
    However, SmithsonianMag reported in November of 2016 that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had already announced a policy that requires a disclaimer on homeopathic drugs that state there is no scientific evidence to prove that homeopathy really works to treat illness and disease. The article on SmithsonianMag goes on to clarify that the FDA did not yet “police” homeopathic drugs and remedies.

    With the FDA recently joining the FTC in regulating the use of homeopathy, while basically stating that “all homeopathic drugs are illegal” and unapproved new drugs, supporters of natural medicine are speaking out. There are several petitions circulating online in support of legalizing all homeopathy, and other supporters are simply speaking their minds on social media and in forums and message boards.

    Gizmodo notes that the FDA is taking comments on the new “guidance document” for 90 days from its release date in December before deciding on regulations and enforcement policies for “illegal” homeopathic drugs. Comments on Gizmodo are mixed, from some supporters of homeopathy saying that people have died from doctor-prescribed medications to critics saying that there are “only a very few” homeopathic drugs that actually work.

    Patients who turn to homeopathy to treat health conditions often become fed up with conventional medical treatments, and the Huffington Post reported that a high percentage of homeopathic users in India would “not switch to conventional treatments,” while even physicians around the world are increasingly turning to homeopathic drugs as “alternative” treatments.

    When asked if homeopathic drugs are going to be removed from the market, the FDA clarifies on its website that “top concern is patient safety.”

    “FDA’s draft guidance states that it is intended to provide notice that any product labeled as homeopathic that is being marketed illegally is subject to FDA enforcement action at any time. However, the agency recognizes that many homeopathic products will likely fall outside the risk-based categories described in the guidance and remain available to consumers.”
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    Great Lakes State, U.S.A.
    Posts
    1,645
    I will have to stock up on the homeopathic medicine that I use for effectiveness just in case.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Rabid dog spit

    SMH

    My favorite line in this article -> "It’s hard to undersell just how inane homeopathy, which originated in the 19th century, really is."

    Homeopath Says She Used Dog Rabies Saliva to 'Cure' Misbehaving 4-Year-Old, Gets Yelled at by Everyone
    Ed Cara
    Yesterday 6:00pm Filed to: PSEUDOSCIENCE


    Not pictured above: a rabid dog.
    Photo: SNGPhotography (Pixabay)

    A Canadian naturopath is feeling the heat after she boasted about treating a young child’s behavioral problems with a homeopathic remedy made from the saliva of a rabid dog. But it’s really only the latest episode to highlight the absurdity of the popular alternative “medicine.”

    Earlier this February, Anke Zimmermann, an accredited naturopathic physician based in Victoria, British Columbia, wrote a blog post that went viral about her recent experiences treating a four-year-old patient known only by Jonah.

    According to the post, Jonah was brought into her care by his parents last October. For about three years, he had been acting out (including bouts of growling at people and hiding underneath tables), having trouble sleeping, and had a persistent fear of werewolves. Zimmerman then quickly zeroed on the “likely” source of Jonah’s problems—a nasty bite he got from a dog when he was two years old.

    “A bite from an animal, with or without rabies vaccination has the potential to imprint an altered state in the person who was bitten, in some ways similar to a rabies infection,” Zimmerman explained in the post.

    So Zimmerman decided to fight rabies with rabies. She gave Jonah a preparation of lyssinum, a homeopathic treatment supposedly made from the diluted saliva of a rabid dog. And afterward, Jonah’s growls reportedly quieted down and his behavior improved.

    To back up a bit here, the shaky theory behind homeopathy is that all illness can be treated by identifying someone’s symptoms and giving them a vigorously diluted solution of a substance (read: poison) that causes those exact same symptoms. According to the theory, this helps because through dilution, the memory of the substance is retained, but not its harmful effects. There is no evidence whatsoever to support this approach.

    It’s hard to undersell just how inane homeopathy, which originated in the 19th century, really is. Sure, you can point to volumes of research showing it isn’t better than a placebo for treating anything. But the simple fact is that a homeopathic remedy—if done “correctly”—contains zero molecules of the original substance used to prepare it. It is literally just water, usually dropped onto a sugar pill. And if done incorrectly, as is often the case, it can actually poison or even kill people.

    It wasn’t until April last week that Zimmerman’s post received any outsized attention, when critics of homeopathy and other complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM, noticed it. And after news outlets covered the post, so did Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s senior health officer.

    Henry, who has spoken out against homeopathy before, told CBC News Monday that she had “grave concerns” about Zimmerman’s claims, adding that she would write to Health Canada, the country’s public health agency, about the remedy.

    “There’s no way I can understand why we would have anything that was meant to be saliva of a rabid dog approved for use in this country,” she told CBC News.

    For her part, Zimmerman‘s bitten back against the criticism she’s gotten.

    “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have homeopathy not working [and] be toxic,” she told CBC News. “This child dramatically improved—the parents are very happy. Isn’t that something that’s interesting? Shouldn’t we be looking into that?”

    According to Jen Gunter, a Canadian-American gynecologist who has long debunked outrageous medical claims and wrote about the post, Zimmerman’s logic is about as flawed as the one underlying homeopathy.

    “Yes, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say your treatment has a dilute amount of rabies but also poses no risk,” she told Gizmodo. “It’s either rabies free, meaning water, or it’s not and hence unsafe. It is clearly water/a sugar pill and hence a scam.”

    Rabies, which I’ll remind you is universally fatal without early treatment, isn’t even the worst ingredient in the homeopathy tool box. Several homeopaths, during the height of the Ebola outbreak in Africa that began in 2014, advocated using the blood and saliva of Ebola victims to whip up antidotes for an outbreak that ultimately killed over 10,000 people. Eventually, the World Health Organization felt compelled to debunk the claim on Twitter.

    On the bright side, governments that once sunk millions of dollars into proving homeopathy doesn’t work are now getting tougher on it.

    Just this past December, the Food and Drug Administration announced it would start to crack down on homeopathic products that claim to treat diseases like colon cancer and the common cold (these products, much like supplements, aren’t allowed to state they can cure anything). That same year, the UK’s National Health Service, which provides free public insurance to residents, declared that it would stop covering homeopathic remedies.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Ed Cara
    Science writer at Gizmodo and pug aficionado elsewhere
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Manslaughter

    What a sad, sad story.


    Parents of boy who died after they treated earache with ****eopathy found guilty of manslaughter

    Seven-year-old fell into coma when he was not given antibiotics for common infection
    Colin Drury @colin__drury
    2 days ago
    The Independent



    The parents of a seven-year-old boy who died from an earache after they treated it only with homeopathic medicine have been found guilty of his manslaughter.

    Marco and Marie Bonifazi failed to give antibiotics to their son Francesco when he was diagnosed with a common infection in the central Italian town of Cagli.

    Instead, the pair saw a homeopath who “underestimated” the seriousness of the illness, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported.

    The youngster fell into a coma and died from encephalitis on 27 May 2017 – three days after his original diagnosis.

    His parents were given a three-month suspended sentence.

    Massimiliano Mecozzi, the homeopathic doctor who consulted on the case, will go on trial in September.

    Prosecutors accuse him of negligence, inexperience and "having underestimated the typical clinical picture of a highly serious local infection, prescribing a therapy based on homeopathic medicines in spite of the recrudescence of symptoms”.

    They also say he failed "to prepare any diagnostic analysis and avoided prescribing the necessary antibiotic therapies suitable for the treatment of the pathology".

    Speaking after the parents' hearing, Francesco’s maternal grandfather said that the couple did not have a problem with conventional medicine but had resorted to homeopathy because they feared their child had been taking too many antibiotics after a series of illnesses.

    The pair have said they will appeal the sentence.

    "There is bitterness, but we still believe in justice," the grandfather said.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    One of these days, I'll find a positive homeopathy news piece to post here.

    Maybe they should sell homeopathy remedies in the candy aisle?

    May 31, 2019, 05:37pm
    America's Largest Retailer Sued For Selling Fake Medicine
    Nicole Fisher
    Contributor
    Healthcare

    The United States' largest retailer has been sued for medical fraud. In a lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) alleges that Walmart is “committing wide-scale consumer fraud and endangering the health of its customers through its sale and marketing of homeopathic medicines.” This is similar to a 2018 suit that the same nonprofit brought against CVS, the largest drug retailer in the United States.

    Nick Little, CFI’s Vice President and General Counsel, contends that, “Walmart sells homeopathics right alongside real medicines, in the same sections in its stores, under the same signs. Searches on its website for cold and flu remedies or teething products for infants yield pages full of homeopathic junk products. It’s an incredible betrayal of customers’ trust and an abuse of Walmart’s titanic retail power.”

    A Walmart spokesman responded by saying, “We want to be the most trusted retailer, and we look to our suppliers to provide products that meet all applicable laws, including labeling laws. Our Equate private label homeopathic products are designed to include information directly stating that the claims are not based on accepted medical evidence and have not been evaluated by the FDA. We take allegations like these seriously and will respond as appropriate with the court.”


    GETTY

    Homeopathic medicine (or homeopathy) is a medical system that uses plants, animals or minerals that are administered as oils, creams, tablets or gels as treatment – with the premise that the body can cure itself. Those who practice homeopathy believe that natural substances stimulate natural healing. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, an estimated 5 million adults and 1 million children used homeopathic products in the past year. Most homeopathic products are self-administered and self-prescribed for ailments such as the common cold, migraines, allergies, and pain.

    Alternative remedies have long been contentious as an alternative to evidence-based medication. And in this case, CFI asserts that Walmart knowingly presented homeopathy like stress relief aids and cold and flu remedies as equal alternatives, both in store and online to customers. CFI is not seeking to have products removed from shelves, but seeking to ensure that Walmart labels its products in an honest manner for consumers.

    According to Mr. Little, “Walmart can’t claim it doesn’t know that homeopathy is snake oil, because it runs its own enormous pharmacy business and make its own homeopathic products. So whether it’s a scientifically proven remedy like aspirin or flatly denounced junk like homeopathic teething caplets for babies, Walmart sells all of it under its in-house ‘Equate’ branding. It’s all the same to Walmart.”

    While the NIH has determined that there is little evidence to support that homeopathy may be an effective treatment for any mental or physical health problems, the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and FTC (Federal Trade Commission) have not taken major steps to curtail the industry. Although, as recently as May 14, 2019 the FDA issued warnings to five manufacturers of homeopathic products for putting “consumers at risk with significant violations of manufacturing quality standards.” But most experts contend these actions are merely the agencies making an appearance at curtailing the products – as most homeopathic and nutraceutical products are never reviewed for safety or efficacy by government agencies.

    Despite CFI’s calls for tighter regulation of homeopathic products, very little has been done by federal agencies to date. However, the nonprofit has had influence in recent years as the FTC declared that marketing of homeopathic products for specific diseases and symptoms is only permissible if consumers are made explicitly aware, “that 1) there is no scientific evidence that the product works, and 2) the product’s claims are based only on theories of homeopathy from the 1700s that are not accepted by most modern medical experts.” The FTC asserted that over-the-counter homeopathic drugs would be held to the same standard as those for evidence-based products making similar claims. It also stated (without a real enforcement mechanism) that homeopathic companies must have competent and reliable scientific evidence to make health-related claims.

    In December 2017, the FDA also proposed a new “risk-based” enforcement approach to homeopathic products. The goal was to create structures for more careful scrutiny of products that posed a great risk to vulnerable populations.

    But how we got here is complicated. While consumers do lose money on “treatments” that are not proven to work and the possibility of prolonging and worsening health conditions is great, the “snake oils” of the world have always existed. But since homeopathy grew in popularity in Germany 200 years ago, it has been rooted in two primary theories:

    The notion that like cures like. What this means is that an ailment can be cured by a substance that produces similar symptoms in healthy people
    The notion that the lower the dose of medication, the greater the effectiveness. This leads to many homeopathic products being diluted by water or other means
    And these concepts have forever been appealing to humans. That nature can cure. And because these products are deeply entrenched in our history, and they carry (minimal) labeling that they are not approved by the FDA, the likelihood of CFI winning its lawsuit slim. But the filing itself has brought attention to the topic, which is also important.


    Nicole Fisher
    Contributor
    Nicole Fisher is the founder and President of Health & Human Rights Strategies, a health care and human rights-focused advising firm in Washington, D.C. She is also a health policy advisor on Capitol Hill and expert on health innovation, technology, and brain health - specifically as they impact vulnerable populations. Fisher contributes to Forbes, contextualizing health, and highlighting ideas, companies and people that are changing the health landscape. She also curates an international dinner series, 'A Seat at the Table,' bringing together thought leaders for off-the-record discussions for moving research, policy and planning forward. Fisher co-runs the nonprofit Brain Treatment Foundation, and is pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of North Carolina. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals and publications, and her talks can be found on the United Nations website and various news and sports outlets. Before pursuing her doctorate, Fisher earned a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate degree from the University of Missouri.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •