Scientists shoot down cowboy health claims
My piece last week about high street pharmacies that sell useless homeopathic products, such as Teetha for teething tots, brought an angry response from one reader.
Here it is, as written: “Hi just read your story on homeopathic remedy your wrong we as a family have used Geetha for 16years on our children when the are teething. it works every time an quickly. Yours Catherine turnbull”
Meanwhile, 29 respected scientific bodies that make up the European Academies Science Advisory Council have just demanded tougher regulation of these fake medicines.
Its damning report states: “There are no known diseases for which there is robust, reproducible evidence that homeopathy is effective.”
Homeopathy has also spread to farming and the pet industry – Prince Charles uses it on his diary cattle.
The Council warned: “The proliferation of unfounded homeopathic practices should not be encouraged in either veterinary or human medicine.”
It also criticised the obscure way that these products are labelled, which can give them “a spurious medical legitimacy”.
For instance, Teetha Gel – which is on sale in Boots and Superdrug – is listed as containing 12C of active ingredients including chamomile.
But not many customers are likely to know that this means it contains just one single molecule of chamomile for every 1,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000 molecules of useless sugar solution.
That’s not diluted, that’s just non-existent.
Boots and Superdrug justify selling these useless non-remedies by saying there’s a demand for them, adding that customers can seek advice from their pharmacists.