A recent report provided a sales prognosis of the future development of the worldwide market of homeopathic products.
… Homeopathic remedies are derived from substances that come from Plant Homeopathics, minerals, or animals, such as red onion, arnica (mountain herb), crushed whole bees, white arsenic, poison ivy, belladonna (deadly nightshade), and stinging nettle. Homeopathic remedies are often formulated as sugar pellets to be placed under the tongue; they may also be in other forms, such as ointments, gels, drops, creams, and tablets. Treatments are “individualized” or tailored to each person—it is not uncommon for different people with the same condition to receive different treatments.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the global Homeopathic Products market size is estimated to be worth US$ 854.4 million in 2021 and is forecast to a readjusted size of US$ 1388.8 million by 2028 with a CAGR of 7.1% during the forecast period 2022-2028…
Currently, the companies in the world that produce homeopathic products mainly concentrate in Europe, USA and India. The main market players are DHU, Nelson & Co Ltd, Hyland’s, Homeopathic, SBL and Apotheca etc, with about 14% market shares.
Europe homeopathic products is the world’s most flourishing area, homeopathic treatment sales in Europe accounted for 24%, North America area is about 16% of market share…
I feel that the agencies that publish such reports could do with a bit of proper research. This might result in fewer errors and less egg on their faces. Here are a few points that I think might need corrections:
- Homeopathics can also be produced from a complete absence of material, for instance, X-rays or vacuum.
- Some can also be injected.
- I fear that the sales predictions are far too optimistic; they fail to account for the almost worldwide realization that homeopathy is an obsolete placebo therapy.
- The market share of South American nations seems to have been forgotten.
- The worldwide main player is Boiron.
Of course, none of this is important; after all, it’s only one of those meaningless market predictions that seem to be made by looking at tea leaves rather than facts.
Am I too harsh?
I don’t think so, – not least because it is easy to find predictions that differ substantially, e.g.:
- The homeopathy market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.3% from 2020 to 2028
- The global homeopathy market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period, from 2021 to 2030.
- Goldstein Research analyst forecast the Homeopathy Product Market to grow at a CAGR of 16.8% during the forecast period 2016-2024 and attain the revenue of USD 16.2 billion by 2024.
Unimportant? Yes, except that homeopaths and their advocates (like Prince Charles, for instance) are bound to use such documents for claiming that, if millions continue to use homeopathy, it must be effective and science must be wrong. Readers of this blog got used to and can by now see through homeopaths’ fallacies – but far too many consumers still fall for them.
54 Responses to The market for homeopathics is predicted to grow significantly
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Whether it grows 6% or 106%, as long as it keeps growing, the word of its effectiveness will keep getting out. Word of mouth of the people who experience homeopathy is more important than articles and blogs by pseudo-skeptic critics whose understanding of homeopathy is limited to “Its too dilute, it cant work”.
https://edzardernst.com/2017/04/official-verdicts-on-homeopathy/
Its great how all those “Official” agencies cut and paste their conclusions from other agencies. When they all have the same puppet master, big pharma, they all sing in unison.
The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council had to throw out the first version of their report on homeopathy because it was positive. So they got someone else to write a hit job on it.
sorry to hear that you are more deluded than I thought.
The draft version, Stan.
Which was reviewed.
Have you read it?
I don’t think you have. Because if you had done, you’d know that it didn’t say what you’d like to think it did. It said that there was some evidence to suggest that homeopathy may be of use in the treatment of five conditions. But was otherwise useless.
It’s been ten years. Is homeopathy now the treatment of choice for those five conditions?
Nope.
Because the draft was just that. A draft. And flawed. Here’s the link to the annotated version of it, Stan. You might want to read it.
https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/attachments/Draft-annotated-2012-homeopathy-report.pdf
Thank you for posting the link, Lenny. I had read this before, and was looking for it again. Very helpful.
Not exactly:
“Considering the 40 reviews which focused on a clinical question {18 Category 1 reviews, 17 Category
2 reviews, 5 Category 3 reviews, they were generally of moderate quality, with 26 reviews meeting
three or four of the first five CEBM criteria. Only on ~ w met all five criteria. “
Are you trying to make a point, Stan? If so, you’re not doing it very well.
Go on then: explain homeopathy and how it works in a manner which has the remotest bit of plausibility and credibility.
And then go away and make your millions re-writing absolutely every science text book on the market, clean up on the Nobel prizes, and while you are at it re-write most of maths after you have demolished statistics and all the rest.
Seriously, that’s what is needed for homeopathy to work. Not just a couple of anecdotes.
Any chance of an explanation then, Stan?
Curious minds would like to know.
Look at one of my other comments in this feed. I gave an explanation.
That’s not an explanation of how homeopathy might work: it’s just more of your pro-homeopathy propaganda.
Got anything better? Y’know about actual mechanism which demonstrably work in human bodies, not just in fantasy?
If there was the slightest evidence that homeopathy actually did work then the search for a mechanism by which it works might have a point. But as there is no evidence it works there is no point.
Anyone know where I can get some unicorn shit for my roses? I hear it works wonders.
It works the same way as conventional drugs. Every single drug on the market that I have looked at has as a “side effect” the same symptom(s) that it is meant to treat e.g. the sleeping pill Ambien has a side effect of insomnia.
If conventional doctors used their drugs homeopathically, matching the entire constellation of symptoms mental, emotional and physical of the patient, instead of just trying to suppress the few symptoms of the conventionally defined “disease” they would be curative instead of palliative/suppressive in their effect. Conventional medicine is bad homeopathy.
And yes there is some energetic effect of diluted homeopathic remedies that we dont understand. But the same energy is present in the undiluted drugs. We dont begin to know how all the very specific side effects of the drugs are caused. Its not going to require re-writing all the physics textbooks. its going to require you and others like you to expand your minds to accepting that we dont know everything. There is some energetic effect in living beings that we dont understand yet. What is the difference between someone alive and the same person dead, one second later?
This comment is a string of so many mistakes that you cannot even count them. In school, something like this is called a “fail”.
Ok, lets start with the first sentence. Go and take a look at prescribed drugs and find one that does not have as a side effect any of the conditions/symptoms for which is prescribed. Then report back to us. I have looked at the top 50 so far.
The only exception I have seen are high blood pressure meds that are not prescribed on a physical symptom, but rather prescribed on the basis of a medical test. High BP is usually symptom-less.
@stan
In Germany, more than 100000 different drugs are officially approved. Your personal biased sample is a joke. 😀
stan,
Of course, my friend! Every pharma drug know to man has several side effects. Cowpathy has been in practice for thousands of years and its energetic effects are far superior to that of homeopathy with no side effects. One can drink gallons of cow urine and frolic in cow dung all day long without any side effects. Words can’t describe it; you just have to experience it yourself and you will come to know that cowpathy is better. If conventional doctors start prescribing cowpathy remedies, it will end all diseases known to mankind. But they will not do that because big pharma will go out of business.
Well said, stan! For homeopathy to work, one has to delude themselves into thinking that homeopathy works in mysterious ways. However, homeopathy is weak sauce compared to cowpathy. It is true that no one knows how cowpathy works, it has been a tough mystery to crack as science hasn’t caught up to the ancient wisdom of cowpathy. With cowpathy your body is directly interacting with highly energetic naturally produced bioactive compounds that works wonders as opposed to fleeting water memory of homeopathic preparations.
Cowpathy may seem gross to many people, but one just must keep an open mind and accept it for what it is to be able to reap the benefits. You don’t need no case reports to realized that cowpathy works. It has been tested for thousands of years by billions of people; the same can’t be said for homeopathy.
Stan, I fear you would certainly have to rewrite all the physics textbooks. You see, “energy” is quite a universal concept in physics, namely the amount of work a system is able to exert. And if there are some “specific energetic effects” around, that nobody has ever recognised yet, but are induced by everyday actions like diluting and shaking, this for sure would undermine one of the basic laws of physics, namely the sentence of conservation of energy.
So you better brace yourself for a lot of work.
but Stan is so smart!
He can do it!!!
In 200+ years of homeopathy’s existence, none of these so-called homeopaths figured out what those energetic effects are. Therefore, one has to have an open mind and be accepting of their delusional fantasies, is what I am gathering from stan’s arguments.
Love to know how homeopathy works for something like – ooooh just to pluck something off the top of my head – congestive cardiac failure and atrial fibrillation caused by dilated left ventricular cardiomyopathy of a non-ischaemic and idiopathic nature.
Y’know, a life-threatening and limiting condition for which there is no cure, just symptomatic relief and management…
Again, curious minds want to know…
Quite right, Stan. Believe what people say about their experiences, not those statistics which can be manipulated. My uncle Stan smoked forty a day until he died at 88. He knew where the truth lay. These so-called “scientists” and “doctors” know nothing of the experience of the real world.
You dont have to believe them or take it on faith. Go experience it for yourself.
But your statistics are not going to dissuade anyone from homeopathy whether you like it or not. People experience positive results from homeopathy and tell their friends. People who have bad experiences with conventional drugging will look for alternatives. Homeopathy will continue to grow. You will have to live with it.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Believe-What-You-Think/dp/1788360087/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&qid=1586017110
That book is tearing up Amazon. 9 reviews. Only two of which one can read.
The first one is titled “Lazy polemic”
“.. I ordered this with the expectation of a well organised review of the scientific literature concerning alternative medicine. Sadly this is not what we have here.”
I hope you have taken this criticism to heart.
yes, of course, I always take trolls to heart [one can laugh heartily about them]
No-one here is saying homeopathy doesn’t work. What we are saying is that it works NO BETTER THAN PLACEBO.
@stan
It would appear that you are the one who fails to understand homeopathy. Most homeopathic products are not just ‘too dilute’, they in fact contain no active ingredient at all. There is literally nothing there to have any biological or biochemical effect.
Another thing that you apparently fail to understand is the actual criticism, which extends way beyond just the lack of active ingredients. And critics do not just point out lots of different reasons(*) why homeopathy cannot and does not work, but they also have very good explanations how people can be fooled into believing that it does work.
*: Among which the following:
– No evidence for the basic principles of homeopathy (‘like cures like’ and ‘more dilute = more potent’)
– No evidence for the mechanism or even the sheer existence of ‘water memory’
– No evidence that giving healthy people a homeopathic preparation is a viable way to identify medicines
– Not a single homeopathic preparation showing a robust and independently repeatable effect
– Not a single condition that reliably responds to homeopathic treatment
– Nobody being able to distinguish homeopathic preparations from plain water
And please note that this is by no means an exhaustive list. There are several more good reasons why homeopathy is merely a system of belief, and not medicine.
The evidence is in the eye of the beholder:
“… meta-analyses can arrive at different conclusions despite being based on virtually the same material. They are not performed according to strict methodology and are, to a variable extent, guided by creativity, interpretation, and personal bias. This is why everyone can find arguments for and against homeopathy in the meta-analyses of the pooled clinical data.”
Dr Rober Hahn, MD, PhD, 2013“Homeopathy: Meta-Analyses of Pooled Clinical Data”
The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council had to throw out the first version of their report on homeopathy because it was positive. So they got someone else to write a hit job on it.
The paper, that homeopaths usually but falsely call “first report” states, that five out of 48 conditions reviewed showed “encouraging evidence” however not stating what this might be. In fact, for my ears this sounds like “not as poor as expected”.
These five conditions were fibromyalgia, otitis media, post operative ileus, URTI, some side effects of cancer treatment. Homeopathy failed even in this version for some of their often cited flagships like acute pain, headaches of any kind, ADHD, other side effects of cancer treatment and so on.
You really think this meagre outcome is a success for a treatment whose proponents claim to be more or less omnipotent? Look at it this way: If you propose to someone and you receive an “encouraging response”, does that mean you were successful?
How much is Boiron, DHU, etc. paying you to spread this nonsense?
stan, I wonder if you would reconsider what you have written here. It doesn’t seem to make any sense.
1) You seem to saying that anecdote trumps statistical evidence. Do you believe this applies only to homeopathy, or for other ‘alternative’ modalities too? How broadly do you apply this principle – do you think it’s not worth compiling any statistics at all in medicine?
2) Do you actually know people whose understanding of homeopthy is limited to “It’s too dilute, it can’t work”? In my experience, people who cite the implausibility of high centesimal serial dilution and succussion as a means of producing a medicine, speak from a broad, well-informed general understanding of the ideas of homeopathy. I’ve never encountered anyone with the limited understanding that you describe.
You’ll find plenty of people saying “it’s too dilute, it can’t be harmful” while simultaneously claiming it has powerful positive effects.
Yes but I was wondering who the people are ‘whose understanding of homeopathy is limited to “Its too dilute, it cant work”. ‘.
I don’t think there are people with that particular limited understanding.
What I am saying is that people dont make up their minds based on statistics (lies, damned lies and statistics). They make their minds up based on experience, whether you like it or not. So homeopathy will continue to grow.
Those like you, might intellectually understand having read all the biased meta-analyses. You should go and experience it.
Every article I have read on homeopathy at base, has the conclusion, its too diluted therefore it cant work, and goes no farther.
An empty cookie jar cant satiate ones hunger. Some things are so obvious that nothing further need to be said. Unless of course if one lives in a fantasy land where cookies don’t exist.
And yet you still don’t expalin how something which has been incredibly diluted, to the point of undetectability, actually has any effect in a human body.
@stan
Yes, this is how we have evolved, and how we have gone through life for hundreds of thousands of years. And from an evolutionary point of view, it was obviously good enough to survive as a species, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.
However, nowadays, we have something vastly better than personal experience: science. Science almost doubled our human life span, reduced child mortality from ~30% to 0.3%, and gives us a far healthier and more comfortable life, hugely reducing human suffering. And this science is not just a matter of a body of knowledge that we should all master before we can do anything useful with it – it comes with millions of experts in their own particular fields. All the ordinary person has to do is to simply trust those experts to do their job in order to reap the benefits of all that scientific progress. (Of course we also set up all sorts of safeguards to ensure that we can trust those scientists and experts to do a good job.)
Only rather less intelligent people keep insisting that we should favour ‘personal experience’ over scientifically (dis)proven facts. And homeopaths and their proponents are among the least intelligent of all, insisting that plain water is an effective medicine – but only if it is handled(*) and sold by them (which should tell you enough about their motives).
The only amazing thing about homeopaths is how they managed to keep fooling themselves and their customers for over two centuries already.
*: Read: shaken.
Leben und leben lassen
Well, how far does one apply that principle? Should no-one be prosecuted for consumer fraud because, well, “live and let live”?
That is the problem: homeopaths regularly kill people by convincing them that their useless ‘remedies’ actually work, especially when there is something seriously wrong with someone.
I have seen one such case up close: a friend of my parents consulted a homeopath with complaints of chronic fatigue. After a lengthy (and expensive) consultation, the lady sold him sugar crumbs that supposedly ‘helped his body restore its energy’.
When instead his situation got worse, she convinced him that this often happened with homeopathy, and that this was a normal sign that the ‘remedy’ was starting to work, and that ‘negative energy’ was leaving his body. According to her, he should first ‘reach the lowest point, before climbing back to complete health’. No need to consult a real doctor, she knew what she was doing. So the man trusted her, and kept messing around with her sugar crumbs, waiting for his faltering health to turn around and get better again.
After 8 or 9 months, he collapsed and ended up in the ER, only to die a few days later. Cause of death: cardiac arrest as a result of massive heart failure, brought on by a leaking heart valve – which could have been diagnosed and fixed easily, had he consulted a real doctor when he developed symptoms.
I guess the woman was right about reaching the lowest point: 6 feet under. It’s just the ‘climbing back’ part that I don’t see happen any time soon.
Conventional doctors regularly kill people on a colossal scale. Many orders of magnitude more than homeopaths. Some consider it the third leading cause of death in the USA. Lets address that real problem first. If you solve that one then I give you permission to go after homeopathy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
When the case is this extreme and people in this group advocate making homepathy _illegal_ then I think Whataboutism is perfectly justified.
who advocated making it illegal?
Advocating that the state go after anyone practicing homeopathy as many do on this list, is de facto making it illegal. Calling it consumer fraud, implies that there is a legal case to be made against it. Also is de facto making it illegal.
Who is advocating that the state go after anyone practicing homeopathy?
Stop foaming from the mouth and take a cold bath.
That claim about conventional medicine being the third largest cause of death in the US has been debunked so many times (Orac and SBM, to name but 2, have gone over that time and again) that one must question why some still drag it up…
Define “regularly”. That is BS. Homeopaths dont “regularly” kill people.
Conventional medicine regularly kills people many orders of magnitude more often than ever could be laid at the feet of homeopathy. Some people claim its the third leading cause of death in the USA.
When you solve that real problem then I give you permission to go after homeopathy! 🙂
@stan
You appear to be taking a lot of pride in demonstrating your extreme ignorance on matters of healthcare – something which, unfortunately, is all too common among quackery practitioners and their adherents.
First of all, real doctors very often deal with real sick, frail and elderly people, and those sick, frail and elderly people tend to die a lot more often than healthy people or those with minor ailments.
Also, many real treatments have serious risks and regularly cause death and disability – but those risks are accepted because NOT treating those patients will lead to even worse outcomes (i.e. MORE death and disability).
Homeopaths and other medically incompetent quacks don’t usually deal with real medical problems. Most people who consult them have little or nothing really wrong with them, or at worst have an annoying but harmless health complaint.
So those homeopaths can dream up bogus diagnoses, sell completely inert ‘remedies’ and ‘treatments’, and claim success when the complaints in question spontaneously resolve (as they do in most cases). Their gullible marks don’t even know that they were defrauded, and instead often even start believing in the quackery as a result of this ‘personal experience’.
However, some people who consult a homeopath unknowingly have a serious condition, urgently requiring diagnosis and treatment by a real doctor. When those unlucky people trust a homeopath who keeps messing around with sugar crumbs instead of actual medicine, they are putting their life at risk.
And when it finally becomes clear that the homeopath completely failed to recognize a serious heart condition, cancer or other life-threatening problem, guess who is supposed to clean up the mess? Yup: real doctors. And as a result of the delay, the patient’s situation is now far more dire than if they had consulted a real doctor in the first place. And guess who gets all the blame if the patient dies as a result of this more aggressive treatment? Yup: the real doctor, NOT the homeopath.
This is how homeopaths and other medically incompetent quacks kill lots of people – and keep getting away with it.
USD 16.2 billion in 2024 in this Goldstein paper vs. USD 0.854 billion in 2021 in this new report?? Really?
I wonder if there are other predictions about the market of homeopathy available, say from about five years past, where their predictions for 2022 could be compared to what actually happended by country or region.
I can’t claim to understand homeopathy but based on its own principles wouldn’t lower profits be more powerful?
In the long term, yes. But watch out for the Initial Aggravation…..