The worldwide war on homeopathy is continuing in Italy, where a new study that shows homeopathic treatment can ease pain in rats is raising a ruckus among critics. The study paper’s authors acknowledged that there were “some errors” in the analysis, but they stand by their overall conclusions, Nature said. The authors said they hope their findings encourage other researchers to conduct clinical studies to see if the same results can be achieved with humans.
The wisdom and logic of homeopathic medicines are that, instead of suppressing symptoms with fever-lowering drugs or other pharmaceutical elixers, a nano-dose of a medicine that might cause the condition you’re trying to suppress can be used to augment your immune system.
Generally, homeopathic medicines are not prescribed for specific diseases but instead for specific syndromes of each disease. For instance, the syndrome of symptoms one person with the flu may have (fever, body aches and a frontal headache worsened by all types of motion, increased thirst for cold fluids and irritability with a desire to be alone) will require a different homeopathic medicine from another (who may have a fever, great fatigue, a headache in the back part of the head and no thirst).
Unfortunately, homeopathy is frowned upon in the U.S., so much so that a recent draft guidance released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) takes aim specifically at homeopathic remedies. In a reversal of a long-standing decision to treat homeopathic remedies from other drugs, the FDA now has labeled virtually all of these products as “new drugs” subject to FDA enforcement and action.
On the flip side, homeopathic medicine is popular among physicians in Brazil. In fact, there are 15,000 physicians in Brazil who specialize in homeopathy, making it the 16th largest group of physicians of the 61 medical specialties. So what’s happening here? Why does one country embrace it and the other all but kill it?
Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that homeopathic products are now a close to $3 billion industry — and maybe that’s $3 billion too much for Big Pharma, FDA’s cozy partner in crime. “[I]n one fell swoop, the FDA has declared that virtually every single homeopathic drug on the market is being sold illegally,” the Alliance for Natural Health USA (ANH USA) wrote — and, of course, it couldn’t make Big Pharma any happier.