Boots, the high street chain that sells homeopathic remedies, has admitted that the products do not necessarily work.
Paul Bennett, professional standards director for Boots, told a committee of MPs that the pharmacy chain stocks such items for no other reason than that they are popular.
“There is certainly a consumer demand for these products,” he said. “I have no evidence to suggest they are efficacious.
“It is about consumer choice for us and a large number of our customers believe they are efficacious.”
His comments recall Gerald Ratner’s infamous admission in 1991 that one of the gifts sold by his chain of jewellers was “total crap”.
Telegraph (thanks, KirstyJ)
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They also sell face cream to make you look young, make-up to make you look pretty, diet aids to make you thin……. I can’t imagine they guarantee they work either
If people are foolish enough to buy homeopathic remedies, I don’t really think shops can be blamed for stocking them!
- with beauty products it’s fine, but when it’s your health I think that’s when people feel the regulation needs to step in – Phillis
Let the stupids spend their money on homeopathic remedies and die out quicker because of it. It’s Darwinism at its finest.
For a company that overprices stuff (tweesers for a tenner) it sure realises how gullible its customers are.
His words aren’t as direct as the title of this blog and I can see where people are coming from here… However homeopathic remedies are a complimentary therapy, the work in conjunction with medication and medical treatment. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves by saying they need to step up, where is the evidence to say they don’t work. If homeopathic remedies work or not that doesn’t matter, if it’s helping people get into a positive mind frame and become more well in their being then let’s do it!
” with beauty products it’s fine, but when it’s your health I think that’s when people feel the regulation needs to step in – Phillis”
Well Phillis it’s a consumer world out there, where’s the regulation to alcohol, cigarettes or even illegal drugs on the street. You seem to have your priorities all wrong? No?
Bennett’s wrong. People don’t think they’re efficacious, they think they’re effective: most people are in no position (I assume through their own ignorance, wilful or otherwise) to make intelligent assessments of the efficacy of these things, although if they find them effective (placebo, anyone?) then that’s down to the individual.
There’s only so much the state can (and, IMO, should) do to protect idiots from themselves. If they want to waste their time, money and health on unsubstantiated claims, despite evidence to the contrary and the availability of such, that’s surely their own look out. If they can’t be responsible for themselves, why should the rest of us pay for the privilege?
Saying that, I can’t in this instance consider Boots to be either a responsible retailer or pharmacy while they hold this attitude.
Surely if people take the remedies and the symptoms go away then that’s good – relief without drugs. If not, they go to the doctors for more “conventional” treatment. Sooner or later the remedies will either be confirmed as effective or useless. What’s the big deal?
I’ve only researched one Boots – but they were in an “Alternative Therapies” section, and not behind the prescriptions counter with the real stuff. I don’t care what Boots do, if they stick to this policy. I do think their reputation will suffer, as I will take them less seriously, and I’m sure a lot of readers of this and similar blogs will take them less seriously too.
The only thing that gets my goat, is if I have to pay for homeopathic nonsense to be supplied for free to other people via my taxes or national insurance.
If people are foolish enough to buy homeopathic remedies, I don’t really think shops can be blamed for stocking them!
Yeah?
well….
If people are happy to buy recreational drugs, I don’t really think dealers can be blamed for stocking them!
We have rules that prohibit the sale of all sorts of things. Why not control quackery?
The beauty and health business rakes in more money than Hollywood..
And have you seen the gunk they put in beauty creams.. cow placentas.. lactose.. they can’t even admit most of it is water so they label it aqua so you don’t feel cheated handing over X amount for yer posh face cream.. I know they’re luxury items but yer still getting ripped off even if it makes you feel better psychologically
i used homeopathy for an over active thyroid. i didn’t have an over active thyroid approximately 20 seconds after putting a single drop on my tongue. My symptoms eased dramatically and i had to go back to the doctors to tell him i didn’t need the medication because of homoeopathy. Of course he thought i was mad and insisted on testing me again. and my tests all now said my thyroid was working fine!
it makes me so mad when i see blogs like these or letters like the one sent to boots. they are usually written by good intelligent people who are convinced that they are doing the right thing and i can understand why they would think that. but they are wrong and they don’t realise the damage THEY are doing.
I can’t bring myself to care all that much, to be honest. As long as some fools think there is something worthwhile about homeopathy they will benefit from the placebo effect, so it does work, indirectly. And if they’re going to spend money on it, may as well go to a company that also seels useful things, as one that specialises only in crap.
Well said Phillis. Especially when the government wastes millions of pounds of OUR MONEY on this snake-oil every year that could be better spent on real, effective treatments, medicines and hospitals.
Paul B xx
It is no problem that a pharmacy sells ice cream or make-up as we clearly distinguish these from medicine. Unfortunately when they sell water or chalk as homeopathic remedies, it gives credence to the idea they work – after all they are sold in a pharmacy along with drugs. Thus they become part of the mainstream. It is all part of how suggestion works on our model of the world.
Well just yet Ben Goldacre published an article that sort of states that both the homeopathic and the medical industry need to be tested by outside parties instead of by their own research teams…..obviously both industries sell…
i think homeopathy should have very big lables on it about its effectiveness, ok some people ignore lables, well let them then. some people can’t be helped.
PS. read this post on my blog, it explores a simmilar issue.
http://lifeuniversemsandme.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/ms-and-vulnerability/
While we’re on the subject of snake oil, are there any bio-chemists out there who can confirm the existence of “Pro-vitamins”. You see them all the time on shampoo labels and I’ve done school biology classes which covered all the vitamins known to science at the time, but perhaps I missed that class.
Are pro-vitamins the ones that give prostitutes that extra energy boost when they need it?
Otherwise it’s a misleading label apart from anything else.
Hmm .. now where did I read this recently as well …
Yeah, commerce is everywhere .. can’t blame them .. as long as they dont claim to cure cancer, aids and such. All the wrinkle creams, fat burners etc sell for the same reason. Ofcourse, normal people would not buy it more than once .. but some just like pretending … or keep having hope their skin adapts to the miracles of the cream .. or that their fat simply melts as stated .. Curiosity is not a small reason either for buying, despite the fact that most people really know …
Well, people who buy alternative remedies are usually people who actually SEEK OUT the remedies and who feel they have an informed opinion. If they didn’t buy them from Boots, they’d buy them from somewhere else.
And Boots IS a for-profit organisation, if this supplements their income and mean they don’t follow Woolworths as another major chain crashing to the ground, then sell away!
I’d say let those who enjoy the placebo effect of homeopathic remedies buy away and help to keep our economy flowing.
You will find these in Boots in the “Placebo” aisle.
Sadly, I don’t think Mr Bennett’s comments will have the same effect that Gerald Ratner’s had. There are many people who will buy homeopathic stuff in the misguided hope that it will help with whatever ailment they are suffering from no matter what they are told about its efficacy. Being told a piece of jewellery that you are buying for a loved one is crap will inevitable send you to buy elsewhere.
Boots is a bit like the BBC, you just trust it because its always been there. So quite dissapointing they sell this mumbo jumbo. They may as well sell magic beans.
Homeopathic medicine is great, I don’t think it’s a waste of money. i’ve tried it and it has a very positive effect on the body in a gentle way. I reccommend it to alot of people. But it’s very important to find the right Homeopath .
This is one of the topics that you just can’t have an actual discussion about because everyone is so rooted in their opinions. I’ll say this much from my own experience:
German health insurance companies nowadays pay for homeopathic remides because there have been studies confirming that they work. But I think it’s important that they’re administered by someone who knows what they’re doing. I’ve had good results from that kind of treatment administered by actual doctors. But I’d never just go ahead and self-medicate with anything more serious than aspirin and throat sweets (and I consider homeopathic remedies to be much more serious).
Lastly, by far not all allopathic medicines work on all people. Think of antibiotics and the resistant strains of germs they create for instance. You wouldn’t self-medicate with those, would you?
@dream of sleeping homeopathic drugs solely work because of the placebo effect.
I do not know what it was you took (people mistake, herbal treatments with homeopathic drugs) and I do not know what values your doctor tested and what the deviation was.
But it is a fact that TSH and TRH values were because these tend to fluctuate. When T4 is subscribed the deviation is usually extreme. When taking T4 (or T3) for a few weeks it can kick the thyroid into gear but it will later slow down again. So it could be that this was measured (I don’t know how long or if you took T4).
@Aran, an infant can “subscribe” or indulge on homeopathic remedies without complications. When you start to realize that homeopathic drugs are based on an extremely extremely dissolved water bases –more lead is for instance found in tap water than homeopathic drugs fighting lead poisoning– than you realize that it is not the “drug” aka water that works but auto-suggestion.
I have read the research and indeed it shows that many people with common problems are getting “well” by using cheap homeopathic drugs compared to visiting the GP every other week. This is how Germany saves money by refunding cheap homeopathic drugs to solve people dropping by their (costly and overworked) GP.
Researchers have never ever claimed that suggestion aka placebo doesn’t work on psychosomatic problems.
@Aran
It’s impossible to self medicate on Homeopathic remedies because they aren’t medicine!
You can take an entire bottle of homeopathic sleeping-pills and suffer no ill effects, apart from a slight sugar-rush since they have no active ingredient whatsoever. (James Randi has already done this a few times to attempt to point out how homeopathic remedies are *not* medicines).
Paul B
LOTS of comments on this one – Here’s my two-penneth.
First ask yourself how any particular “potion” came to be accepted as beneficial.
If it was accepted as beneficial centuries ago, then it may be beneficial to some people – possibly the type of people who were unlike those tested (we are all different after all).
People differ in what they put into their bodies and also how often they put things in there as well as the varying amounts of energy they expend, how hot or cold they keep themselves etc.
so could it be possible that the active ingredients in some “potions” will be negated by aspects of lifestyle? for example – one remedy may not work if a person is a smoker or another remedy may only be effective if someone eats what “experts believe” is an unhealthy amount of salt.
Lager calms me, but i dont drink til I hurl
@Paul and Raymond:
So either, it doesn’t work because it’s not real medicine. But if it does work, what was being treated was not a real illness.
I congratulate you on winning the argument purely by the force of rhetorics.
I’m not sure how you’d explain how homeopathic remedies come to work on six-month-old babies where imho there can be neither autosuggestion nor placebo effect but I’m sure you have an answer to that as well.
You also should note that I’m by no means opposed to conventional medicine, but I think people should get their priorities straight. That swine flu vaccine which is now being pushed on children, the elderly, and pregnant women without ever being properly tested on these groups may be a bigger risk to national health than any “alternative therapies” that get bashed at will.
@Stu: THANKS. Couldn’t have said it better.
@Aran, Hi!
The fact that it “works” on babies is the fact that the human immune system is a marvelous complex system that is there to cure us human beings from about 85% of the illnesses around. So even without homeopathic drugs the baby or animal would have been cured.
I totally agree that these days we go extremely overboard with medicine. A slight pain or cold somewhere in our head or a mild lump and we are frantically seeking the doctors advice. We as a western society have been conditioned into hypochondriacs –the complete opposite of placebo
I thought long an hard whether to take the swineflu vaccine or not. In the end I decided to take it knowing that anything hits my asthmatic ridden chest. Deciding between two evils.
I am not against herbal medicine just homepathic drugs because it is just water!