Marketing homeopathics
The Center for Inquiry has filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia on behalf of the general public against drug retailer CVS for consumer fraud over its sale and marketing of useless homeopathic medicines. CFI, an organization advancing reason and science, accused the country’s largest drug retailer of deceiving consumers through its misrepresentation of homeopathy’s safety and effectiveness, wasting customers’ money and putting their health at risk.
Click here to access the official complaint (PDF).
Homeopathy is an 18th-century pseudoscience premised on the absurd, unscientific notion that a substance that causes a particular symptom is what should be ingested to alleviate it. Dangerous substances are diluted to the point that no trace of the active ingredient remains, but its alleged effectiveness rests on the nonsensical claim that water molecules have “memories” of the original substance. Homeopathic treatments have no effect whatsoever beyond that of a placebo.
“Homeopathy is a total sham, and CVS knows it. Yet the company persists in deceiving its customers about the effectiveness of homeopathic products,” said Nicholas Little, CFI’s Vice President and General Counsel. “Homeopathics are shelved right alongside scientifically-proven medicines, under the same signs for cold and flu, pain relief, sleep aids, and so on.”
“If you search for ‘flu treatment’ on their website, it even suggests homeopathics to you,” said Little. “CVS is making no distinction between those products that have been vetted and tested by science, and those that are nothing but snake oil.”
I did a post back on January 17 2014 about the homeopathic asthma remedy for sale at my local chain drugstore. The bogus “remedy” for a disease that can kill you.
It clearly suggests it’s a treatment for shortness of breath, wheezing, tightness in chest – yet it has no active ingredient. It’s water. Strength to Nick’s sword arm.
Apart from being a waste of money, choosing homeopathic treatments to the exclusion of evidence-based medicines can result in worsened or prolonged symptoms, and in some cases, even death. Several products have been found to contain poisonous ingredients which have affected tens of thousands of adults and children in just the last few years.
“CVS is taking cynical advantage of their customers’ confusion and trust in the CVS brand, and putting their health at risk to make a profit,” said Little. “And they can’t claim ignorance. If the people in charge of the country’s largest pharmacy don’t know that homeopathy is bunk, they should be kept as far away from the American healthcare system as possible.”
“We made a number of efforts to discuss this situation with CVS, but the concerns we raised were ignored,” said Robyn Blumner, president and CEO of CFI. “Homeopathy is a multi-billion dollar consumer fraud. If CVS would rather line its pockets than protect Americans’ health, we have no choice but to take this fight to the courts.”
CFI has for many years lobbied for tighter regulation of homeopathic products, and has been invited by the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission to provide expert testimony. As a result, the FTC declared in 2016 that the marketing of homeopathic products for specific diseases and symptoms is only acceptable if consumers are told: “(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.” And last year, the FDA announced a new “risk-based” policy of regulatory action against homeopathic products.
“CVS should be warned, the evidence for our case is extremely strong,” said Blumner. “And if CVS’s endorsement of homeopathy is any indication, evidence will not be their strong suit.”
Git’em.
I once had a woman (a fellow student while I was in college, a woman going into Pharmacy as a career) insist that her husband, a chiropractor, could cure my asthma. Yes, cure asthma by adjusting my spine.
Scoff if you will, but Alexa Ray Joel’s life was saved by homeopathic medication:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/impossible-od-drug-article-1.433081
Back when I was a starry-eyed idealistic old man I was involved with a movement to stop Boots – a UK drugstore which is synonymous with ‘health’ and ‘trust’ (they used the word “trust” in their advertising for years) – selling dangerous pretend cures right next to actual cures on the shelves, as though they were the same thing. This included homeopathy, of course, plus a surprisingly wide range of other nonsense. We got a little traction, for a while, and Boots modified the way it placed and advertised products, for a while. People like James Randi (yeah, I know) and Rhys Morgan (remember Rhys? He just graduated with a 1st in Computer Science, that’s how old we all are) got involved. It was a thing. I had various promises by various fancy people at Boots that they’d do better and focus on health rather than profit.
But I was in Boots the other day and it has gone right back to how it was, homeopathic and other bullshit remedies peddled as real. For old time’s sake I stole some of the shelf labels on the homeopathic stuff, but I know I was pissing in the wind.
We truly are going back to the Gilded Age… Remember when there was no FDA?
‘Water memory’ is one of the best examples of Occam’s Razor. An entirely new ‘entity’ concocted to salvage the crackpot notion of near-infinite dilution. Hahnemann came up with the dilution idea before Avogadro came along. He actually believed that you could not dilute a substance until it was no longer present.
I’m not sure when the ‘water memory’ rationalization first surfaced, but it was a big notion promoted by Jacques Benveniste in 1979 paper that Randi exposed as fraud.
Of course I remember Rhys; we’re Facebook friends so I knew about his first. I’ve even met him (and his father) (at QED).
Infuriating about Boots. Asthma can kill, god damn it.
At my local chain (Bartell Drugs) the fake asthma med was right next to the real stuff when I looked in 2014, but when I looked again recently it wasn’t.