Lawsuits against US pharmacy chains selling homeopathy to proceed

There are some products that have no medicine at all.

The Center for Inquiry filed a lawsuit on behalf of the general public against a pharmacy chain for selling a product they did not approve of. It filed a lawsuit against Walmart in the year 2019. The District of Columbia has a law called the Consumer Protections Procedures Act that gives merchants the right to tell the truth about consumer goods and services. There is no requirement for proof that consumers were misled, deceived or damaged when it comes to these lawsuits.

The lawsuits were thrown out. The dismissals were reversed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. There will be lawsuits.

Dilutions of Grandeur: The myth of homeopathy

Homeopath is the most implausible form of alternative medicine. Homeopaths were invented in the early 1800's by Samuel Hahnemann. While the practice of medicine slowly progressed to a scientific model based on objective observations, homeopaths have never advanced or evolved. Today's practices are the same as those of the past. The idea of a small dose of what causes a symptom being able to cure that symptom is what makes homeopaths unique. Like-cures-like is a pre-scientific belief and is the basis for homeopathy.

• Like-cures-like: in homeopathy, a substance that is believed to cause a symptom, is diluted to treat that same symptom. Any substance is thought to be an effective remedy if it’s diluted enough: cancer, boar testicles, crude oil, oxygen, skim milk, even vacuum cleaner dust or moonlight can be (and is) a homeopathic remedy. Deciding which substances will cure which symptoms is determined by a process called a “proving” which is equally without any scientific basis. (See the homeopathic “provings” for the Berlin Wall remedy and sunlight reflected off the planet Saturn, for an example of how remedies are created.)
• Water has a memory: the more you dilute the substance, the more powerful its effect. And I mean dilute. The 30C “potency” is a common dilution used in homeopathy – that’s a dilution of 10^-60. If something has been diluted this much, you would have to give two billion doses per second, to six billion people, for 4 billion years, to deliver a single molecule of the original, pre-diluted material. The result is that most homeopathic remedies are completely inert, and don’t contain a single molecule of what’s on the label. Whether bottled as a liquid or dripped onto lactose and sold as tablets, they are pure placebo.

Over time, it retained some popularity despite the fact that it was an alternative medical system, with a resurgence in the past few decades as an alternative medical system. Clinical trials confirm what basic science says. There are a lot of clinical trials that show that homeopathy works, but they are small, poorly controlled, and often biased. The 2010 Evidence Check from the United Kingdom's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council review reached the same conclusion.

Based on the assessment of the evidence of effectiveness of homeopathy, NHMRC concludes that there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective.

Homeopathy should not be used to treat health conditions that are chronic, serious, or could become serious. People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness. People who are considering whether to use homeopathy should first get advice from a registered health practitioner. Those who use homeopathy should tell their health practitioner and should keep taking any prescribed treatments. The National Health and Medical Research Council expects that the Australian public will be offered treatments and therapies based on the best available evidence.