{uk} Homeopaths offer to rebrand products as 'confectionery'

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2012/aug/02/1

Under current UK law*, it is an offence for a lay homeopath to supply or sell unlicensed homeopathic medicines for which they do not hold a certificate of registration from the MHRA. Unlicensed remedies can only supplied by those with prescribing rights - medical doctors or registered pharmacists - and then only after a face-to-face consultation with the patient. Since very few homeopathic products are licensed, this means a huge swathe of Big Sugar's products are, in theory at least, not legal.

This has come as something of a shock to many homeopaths, who apparently only became aware of it in the last year or so, when UK medicines legislation was about to be consolidated under the Human Medical Regulations Act, which came into force in July. In the past, the law hasn't really been enforced, and a recent meeting between the Department of Health and the Society of Homeopaths suggested politicians have little appetite to start now.

We only have the Society's description of that meeting, but it fits with the Coalition's rejection of Parliament's homeopathy 'evidence check' - short version: "We checked, there wasn't any!" - almost exactly two years ago. At the time the government protested that:

'If regulation was applied to homeopathic medicines as understood in the context of conventional pharmaceutical medicines, these products would have to be withdrawn from the market as medicines. This would constrain consumer choice and, more importantly, risk the introduction of unregulated, poor quality and potentially unsafe products on the market to satisfy consumer demand'

[longship]

1. Given that homeopathy cannot do anything anyway

withdrawing the whole homeopathic pharmacopeia from the market would only help the credulous who think it does work.

Homeopathy is a fraud. Physics, chemistry, and biology says so. There's no such thing as magic water.