Isn’t it wonderful when your long-held views are confirmed by someone with influence?
This, of course, is a rhetorical question – I can tell you: it is wonderful!
Matthew Stanbrook, MD PhD recently published an editorial in CMAJ which I find delightful; let me present you a few quotes from it:
The multibillion-dollar market for “natural” health products has flourished under lax government regulations. These regulations have enabled manufacturers to exploit the public’s difficulty in distinguishing nonprescription drugs, with scientifically proven therapeutic benefits, from herbal or homeopathic preparations and supplements that often make similar health claims with little or no evidence and are frequently grounded in unscientific belief systems about health and disease…
In pharmacies, supermarkets and convenience stores, natural health products are displayed side by side with nonprescription drugs. Both tout their approval by Health Canada as an implicit endorsement of efficacy and safety on package labels that make similar health claims. However, although nonprescription drugs and their therapeutic claims require scientific evidence that is carefully scrutinized by Health Canada, natural health products have a separate regulatory system that typically imposes such minimal requirements that it is effectively a rubber stamp. Unlike nonprescription drugs, if a problem arises with a natural health product, Health Canada has little or no authority to compel any changes to its manufacture, labelling or sale.
…Risk is often difficult to perceive accurately without direct evidence. For example, under the proposed framework, Health Canada would continue to classify most homeopathic preparations as low-risk products and, thus, exempt from scientific review. Recently, a homeopathic product sold in the United States that claimed to relieve teething pain in infants and supposedly contained a very dilute extract from the belladonna plant was associated with several deaths of infants who manifested classic signs of anticholinergic poisoning…
…If consumers are unable to separate products with no scientific proof behind them from products supported by evidence, then we need to separate them in stores. Natural health products should be pulled from the shelves where they are mixed with nonprescription drug products and confined to their own separate section, away from any signage implying a therapeutic use.
The double standard perpetuated by both regulators and retailers that enables the deception of unsuspecting Canadians must end. Alternative medicines with claims based on alternative facts do not deserve an alternative, easy regulatory road to market — at the very least, they need to be moved to an alternative shelf.
END OF QUOTES
This, of course, is Canada. But elsewhere progress is also being made.The Australian reported about plans in Australia whereby pharmacies would be banned from selling useless and possibly dangerous homoeopathic remedies. The Australian last year revealed a review of pharmacy regulation, headed by Stephen King from the Productivity Commission, identified a potential conflict of interest in pharmacists selling vitamins, for example, that may not have a significant evidence base, alongside more stringently regulated and government-subsidised medicines. In its interim report, the review panel was “concerned that the sale of complementary medicines alongside other medicines may mislead consumers”. It therefore concludes that “complementary medicines should be held in a separate area within community pharmacies, where customers can easily access a pharmacist for appropriate advice.”
“To avoid potential harm, or the confusion between the efficacies of different types of medicines, pharmacists need to be easily accessible to give needed advice when consumers choose a complementary or pharmacy-only medicine,” the review panel said. It was scathing of homoeopathy and the perception of legitimacy given to those so-called remedies sold in pharmacies. “The only defence put to the panel regarding homoeopathy was that it was harmless and able to be used as a placebo in certain circumstances,” the review panel noted. “The panel does not believe that this argument is sufficient to justify the continued sale of these products in pharmacies …”
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY (AJP) noted that the interim report of the Review of Pharmacy Remuneration and Regulation states that “there are unacceptable risks where community pharmacies are allowed to sell homeopathic products”.
In 2015 Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) said it did not support the sale of homeopathy in pharmacy. “Our position is that pharmacists must use their professional judgement to prevent the supply of products with evidence of no effect,” PSA president Joe Demarte said at the time. Ian Carr, of Saxby’s Pharmacy in Taree, NSW, and Friends of Science in Medicine member, told the AJP that “in terms of homeopathic products being recommended not to be sold by PBS-approved pharmacies, I one hundred per cent heartily agree with that finding. “I love saying that I believe homeopathy works. But it has never been shown to work better than placebo. There are many things that will work as well as placebo, but it’s not ethical to be selling them as a cure or treatment for something. I would have a bit more time for it if there was a plausible theory behind it, but its basis is entirely implausible – it pushes all the buttons for being a pseudoscience, so I agree it has no place in Australian pharmacy. However, I am at a bit of a loss to understand why they haven’t carried some of that logic over into the comments on complementary medicines generally.”
Mr Carr also told the AJP that “If one conceives of complementary medicines as being vitamins and minerals, that’s one thing. But the marketing of those items has become so diffuse and so wide that on most of these CM shelves we have traditional medicines, we’ve got herbal medicines, we’ve got items that are basically just marketing formulas for certain conditions. The evidence behind most of these things is very very slim, and we still have the possibility of health fraudsters just marching in and taking advantage of the lack of regulation in the industry.”
So, Canada and Australia are making progress in protecting consumers from bogus healthcare products and from pharmacists selling them.
Hurray!!!
When, I ask myself, are the UK, the US and other countries following suit?
3 Responses to Bogus healthcare products should have no place in pharmacies
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Yes, in this instance, it is, unfortunately, Canada.
Our certification process for “natural” products is so lack that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) program Marketplace licensed one with almost now work.
Marketplace created a children’s fever and pain remedy called Nighton, which claimed to provide “effective relief from fever, pain, and inflammation” for children and infants.drugstore remedies Natural health and homeopathic products are often stocked alongside over-the-counter medications and make similar claims, making it difficult for consumers to tell which are backed by scientific evidence and which are not. (CBC)
There is a growing market in natural children’s treatments. In 2008, Health Canada advised that over-the-counter cough and cold pharmaceutical products should not be given to children under the age of six, leading to a boom in natural alternatives as parents look for options on drugstore shelves.
To get a licence, Marketplace submitted an application in May, 2014, to Health Canada, and included photocopied pages from A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica by Dr. John Henry Clarke, a 1902 homeopathic reference book of ingredients, as evidence for its effectiveness.
In October, Health Canada approved the application for Nighton. (The product remains licensed, but was never manufactured or offered for sale.)
One gets the impression that one would have to have a label in lurid red reading Here be Poison before Health Canada would worry.
I believe there has been some mutterings in Health Canada and elsewhere about actually cleaning up their act but I don’t know what the status of this is.
I recently had a chat with the local pharmacy owner. She seems to be honestly trying to keep the supplements and junk products at a minimum but the competition with the big chain pharmacies is difficult and the customers simply go elsewhere if at least a basic selection of Raspberry ketones, Gingko bilopa, Echinacea and other fake is not available. The problem seems to lie primarily with the big chains that are mostly run by businessmen that have no professional scruples.
She knows it’s junk, but her goal is “minimum”. Not “none”?
Sounds like the actual problem isn’t with the big chains, but her understanding of ethics. Does she also sell “Am-I-Sort-of-Pregnant” test kits?
I trust you set her straight?