The practice of homeopathy and other unproven ineffective snake oil remedies are far from harmless. It's possibly deadly. Inaction can be more dangerous than action. There are people gullible enough, uneducated enough, or desperate enough that they will skip out or delay participation in necessary medical treatments, like a cancer patient delaying or forgoing chemo therapy or an AIDS patient skipping out on their ****tail of drugs, and die as a direct consequence of believing their snake oil remedy would or could save them. Of course, there are many people whose conventional medical treatments are unable to save their lives, but conventional medicine is the best-available remedy which medical science has yet been able to find; even if a cancer patient has a 33% chance of survival for the next year, 33% is better than 0% with homeopathy.Rogue, you've really opened a can of worms for me. I am curious what you think about the FDA trying to ban homeopathic medicine. If it truly has no effect whatsoever, why ban it?… By your own deductions homeopathy is physically harmless and at best could be considered fraudulent.
In America, the FDA doesn't 'ban' homeopathic remedies, which are under the same regulatory class as vitamins and herbal remedies, but it does require proper labeling and does vigorously pursue marketers who make unapproved unproven claims their products prevent, diagnose, treat or cure diseases. Homeopathy has a strong presence in the UK because strict libel laws make it exceedingly difficult for scientists or journalists to criticize homeopathic and other snake oil practitioners. See the case of science journalist Simon Singh against the British Chiropractic Association. I'd be surprised if homeopathic 'remedies' were banned in the UK, which would be a good step in the right direction. (I found a news report that the British NHS decided against banning homeopathic products.)
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