USA: Homeopathic ‘treatments’ must specify they don’t work

By order of the Federal Trade Commission

The Federal Trade Commission has demanded that manufacturers of homeopathic treatments specify on the label that their products do not work.

Though mainstream medicine has long dismissed homeopathic remedies, there is a huge market in the US for such products, and it is estimated that in 2007 alone, Americans spent more than $3bn on contraversial health products they erroneously believed to have medicinal properties.
Now the US government has insisted that manufacturers of alternative medicine products be able to prove their remedies are effective treatments, or else specify — on label — that there is “no scientific evidence that the product works.”
“Homeopathic product claims are not based on modern scientific methods and are not accepted by modern medical experts, but homeopathy nevertheless has many adherents,” said a notice that was issued earlier this month by the FTC.
US health policy expert Timothy Caulfield was reported to have recently said that: “To believe homeopathy works…is to believe in magic.”
There appears to be almost unanimous mainstream scientific consensus that homeopathy’s alleged mechanism of action — namely, the use of highly diluted substances to allow “like to cure like” — runs entirely contrary the basic principles of chemistry, biology, and physics.
The FTC said that a homeopathic drug claim not substantiated by scientific evidence “might not be deceptive if the advertisement or label where it appears effectively communicates 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.”
Source: Independent