Washington Post: FDA takes more aggressive stance toward homeopathic drugs

[Andy]

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday proposed a tougher enforcement policy toward homeopathic drugs, saying it would target products posing the greatest safety risks, including those containing potentially harmful ingredients or being marketed for cancer, heart disease and opioid and alcohol addictions.

Homeopathy is based on an 18th-century idea that substances that cause disease symptoms can, in very small doses, cure the same symptoms. Modern medicine, backed up by numerous studies, has disproved the central tenets of homeopathy and shown that the products are worthless at best and harmful at worst.

Under U.S. law, homeopathic drugs are required to meet the same approval rules as other drugs. But under a policy adopted in 1988, the agency has used “enforcement discretion” to allow the items to be manufactured and distributed without FDA approval. Agency officials don't plan to begin requiring that homeopathic products get approval — officials say that would be impractical — but they are signaling stepped-up scrutiny for items deemed a possible health threat.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...get-homeopathic-drugs-that-pose-safety-risks/

 

[Keela Too]

"Homeopathic DRUGS"?????

Surely the products cannot be described as drugs if no molecule of the original substance exists?

Homeopathic water, homeopathic sugar, or homeopathic products, might be valid names.... but drugs? What were they thinking?

This would seem to legitimise homeopathy rather than pull it properly down.

Unless of course they are using the word "homeopathic" to really mean organic/natural/alternative - in which case some of the ingredients may well be harmful.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

This appears to be an abject admission of failure:

"Agency officials don't plan to begin requiring that homeopathic products get approval — officials say that would be impractical"

Why would it be impractical?

The case that precipitated this seems to be one in which atropine (belladonna) was present in a teething powder. Belladonna is a homeopathic agent, being a cause of symptoms like disease, and homeopathy does not necessarily involve extreme dilution. In this case the belladonna may have been in a 'weak' form, being relatively concentrated, rather than a potent form having been diluted out of existence!

It would be very simple to say that toxic substances cannot be used in the manufacture of health remedies. That would rule out many of the agents used in homeopathy and a good thing too.

 

[Keela Too]

Ah... @Jonathan Edwards I stand corrected.

The irony of the "weak" version of a homeopathic remedy in fact being able to contain a drug at any significant concentration had escaped me entirely!