The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is raising alarms about new federal legislation that would make it easier for homeopathy groups to market and sell their products. Opposing homeopathy is at the core of CFI’s mission, given that it is dangerous pseudoscience and misleads American patients and consumers to the tune of millions of dollars every year.
HR 7050 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 14, 2026, by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), co-sponsored by Reps. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) and Mike Kennedy (R-UT). The bill seeks to ensure “continued consumer access” to homeopathic products by amending the existing Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA).
Any member of Congress who seeks to protect consumers from medical fraud should be fighting to remove homeopathic products from the marketplace, not ensure “access” to them. Homeopathy is grounded in pseudoscience from the late 1700s that claims the more dilute a medicine, the more potent it is. That is a demonstrably false claim. Homeopathic products typically contain no active ingredients that constitute medicine. They are no better than a placebo as a medical intervention.
The bill would prohibit federal consumer protection agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), from ensuring that homeopathic products meet objective standards of safety and efficacy. Instead, it codifies the so-called standards in the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States, effectively leaving it to the homeopathic industry to police itself. The Pharmacopoeia is shrouded in secrecy, and CFI has had to go to the length of suing the Department of Health and Human Services in an effort to access its contents.
Moreover, in 2016 the FTC expressly declared in a policy statement that homeopathic products can only be legally marketed if they communicate clearly to consumers that there is no scientific evidence the products work! It is this kind of consumer protection that the homeopathy industry hopes to defeat with this legislation.
Additionally, the bill exempts homeopathic drug products from doing the laboratory testing that would establish the potency of each active ingredient. Other drugs are held to these standards, but it’s clear that the homeopathic industry does not want it known that their ingredients have no discernible therapeutic value.
Finally, the bill directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services – currently Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – to create a Homeopathic Drug Product Advisory Committee to advise the Secretary regarding the regulation of homeopathy. The majority of the committee’s ten members would be representatives from homeopathic manufacturers, from the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia Convention, and from other groups with obvious ties to homeopathy (as well as one member who is a naturopathic doctor). Again, the theme is insider and deferential regulation.
HR 7050 is currently before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. CFI’s Office of Public Policy will be aggressively lobbying against the bill. We urge every CFI supporter to contact their Representatives and Senators in Congress and to call on them to vote against HR 7050.
19 Responses to The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is raising alarm about new federal legislation of homeopathy
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Well, HR 7050 fits seamlessly in this administration’s culture of lies, corruption and grift. Also note how constitutional freedom of speech is increasingly limited, but that quacks and grifters are getting more freedom to promote and sell their useless rubbish. Give it another year or so, and you can be thrown in jail for saying that homeopathy does not work.
So all that talk about “skeptics” not wanting to ban homeopathy but only wanting to “raise awareness so that people have the best information available and consumers can choose” was a complete lie. Because there are many examples of ‘skeptics’ saying that those who pointed out that they wanted to ban homeopathy were “conspiracy theorists.”
It seems I was right: you are just a ridiculously small lobby with a lot of power in the media and on the Internet, whose goal from the beginning was to ban homeopathy, which is why you always ignore all the studies presented to you. You went from an era of subtle, misleading claims (“war on homeopathy”) to a blatant admission that you are the conspirators. That means that the attempt to make you see reason is over and that you will never listen. I have always been skeptical of accusations that you are Big Pharma trolls, but after all, Lionel Milgrom was right that you (the most visible ones) are pharmashills “activists.”
“So all that talk about “skeptics” not wanting to ban homeopathy but only wanting to “raise awareness so that people have the best information available and consumers can choose” was a complete lie.”
I don’t think you have understood much.
firstly, this is not about banning anything
secondly, not all skeptics want the same.
Ah, it would seem that our resident troll has woken up again.
It is quite simple, really: produce significant amounts of consistent evidence that homeopathy is indeed beneficial for treating health conditions, and it will be accepted, nay, embraced as a viable form of medicine by doctors, scientists and patients alike.
Given that in well over 200 years, not a single homeopathic preparation 12C+ has been found to exhibit clear and consistent effects for any condition whatsoever, we can only conclude that homeopaths are fools, frauds and liars, and they should be prohibited from deceiving sick people with regard to their health. Informing and warning the public that homeopaths sell bogus treatments is the very least that we can do.
I personally think that homeopaths should be regarded and treated as criminals, just like any other con artists who sell useless products or services under false pretenses – also because their fraud can have severe consequences for people’s health and well-being.
Hey, that sounds exactly like evidence for homeopathy! A ridiculously small amount of agency with disproportionately large effects!
But no, we are not ‘just a ridiculously small lobby with a lot of power in the media’. We represent and propagate the scientific and medical consensus, i.e. that homeopathy is useless quackery. Well over 99% of scientists and doctors reject homeopathy, and know that it can only have placebo effects (which is in fact what some doctors consider a legitimate use, but that’s another discussion).
Nope, the goal is not to ban homeopathy. The primary goal is to ban fraudulent quackery, because it harms people. And yes, homeopathy happens to be a form of fraudulent quackery. Which does indeed harm people – mostly financial, but sometimes in worse ways. I’ve seen a close friend of the family die because he trusted one of those water-shaking clowns who told him that she could treat his ‘negative energy’ (complaints of increasing fatigue) with her sugar crumbs. Turns out that he had a pretty simple heart condition that, untreated, had developed into fatal congestive heart failure.
Wrong again. Scientists absolutely look at the homeopathic fairy tales that you call ‘studies’ – if only because they’re quite rare, with only 4 or 5 RCT’s per year. Which is utterly pathetic for something that considers itself a viable system of medicine. Over half of those studies comes up negative right away, and almost all, including the positive ones, are of low quality. Furthermore, in all the 200+ years of homeopathic history, only 2 or 3 such ‘studies’ were successfully replicated. The overwhelming majority is never replicated. And of course there’s the problem that there is a close correlation between outcome and study quality: the better the study, the lower the chance of a positive outcome. Which is exactly what you would expect from something that doesn’t actually have any effects.
Now of course you can try to belittle us, and accuse us of being pharma shills (I’m still waiting for my first shill check from Big Pharma), but then you should be fair, and also accuse the millions of other doctors and scientists of being fools who refuse to see the truth and who want to ban homeopathy because of Big Pharma etcetera.
The reality of course is that you are like that 6-year-old kid who refuses to accept that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, and keeps stamping his feet and screaming that you are Right and the rest of the world is Wrong. After all, every year around Christmas, we see millions of manifestations of good ‘ole Santa! There is in fact vastly more evidence for the existence of Santa Claus than for the viability of homeopathy.
You’re not reading the room Richard. People have lost trust in the medical establishment especially after COVID and are turning to Homoeopathy and alternative treatments in droves. They don’t particularly care about the lack of efficacy shown in clinical trials, they just want something that is deemed safer than pharmaceutical poisons.
which room are you referring too?
it must be your toilet!
@Mutus Bellator
Well, all the more reason to point out to them that they’re wrong, wouldn’t you say? In fact they’re not just completely wrong, but they’re being manipulated by a relatively small group of antivaxxers, quacks and grifters into believing the things that you mention.
Unfortunately, the current US regime is based on lies, misinformation, grift and corruption, so I wouldn’t be surprised if more people are lured by the lies and nonsense of homeopaths as well, increasing its popularity.
Richard:
1. How much is a “significant amount of consistent evidence”? Oh, wait, you don’t know, because you’ll say “it’s not possible because extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary proof.” But, as I’ve pointed out to you many times, you never manage to define “extraordinary” with a minimum number, nor have you explained why Hume only referred to uncontrolled and anecdotal cases of miracles. That’s why you first need to define what “extraordinary” is and set a threshold (without resorting to a double standard), signed by every female scientific academic in the world (not one less), and make it clear that if that threshold is met, you will retract your statement and your reputation will be destroyed, just like that of every opponent of homeopathy.
2. We’ve already discussed that, Richard. There is at least one case, Oscilloccinum, that meets the condition you’re asking for.
3. If you say that homeopaths are “fools, fraudulent, liars and criminals”, but at the same time you ask them for point 1, you contradict yourself. And you also contradict Ernst himself who in his book “Homeopathy: undiluted facts”:
“All Homeopaths Are Charlatans Who Have Nothing to Offer to Their Patients A charlatan is a person who falsely pretends to know or be something in order to deceive people. It would be wrong to claim that all homeopaths aim at deceiving their patients. And it would be misleading to say that homeopaths have nothing to offer to their patients. homeopathic remedy as secondary”.
The other point is that there are at least four “ex-homeopaths” (or so they claim) in pseudo-skeptical groups, but they continue to use the label “homeopath” (when it suits them) to try to convince the public (never mind that these “ex-homeopaths” weren’t recognized homeopaths and were strangely recruited immediately by pseudo-skeptical lobbies). So, if Ernst defines himself as a “homeopath” when it suits him, then he’s a “fool, fraud, liar, and criminal” (in your own words) and can’t be a reliable source of anything.
4. I’m laughing at how I say they’re a small lobby in the media; you deny it but then confirm it with other words. It’s similar to whataboutism. What consensus are you talking about, Richard? The one about the “verdicts” that Ernst always repeats and that have considerable errors? Who designated you or the “skeptical” groups as the “truth” group? Oh, yes, you did (under rather strange circumstances where unknowns suddenly become influencers overnight).
5. You talk about a “99%” consensus among scientists and doctors. But I’ve searched and haven’t found that figure reflected in any study. Assuming it were true, most of those who comment against it tend to cite Wikipedia, which already rules that group out as misinformers and liars. Then we have those who sometimes use studies, but know very few (like repeating Shang et al., NHRMC, Ernst 2002). How many of that fictitious 99% would you have left? Probably less than 1% who ignore those references.
6. Again, I have to laugh at how you deny things and then reaffirm them with other words. So supposedly you don’t want to ban homeopathy, even though Ernst says you do, but rather you want to ban homeopathy because you consider it “quackery”: that’s called begging the question, Richard.
7. How many people has homeopathy harmed in terms of health and money? Oh, wait, you don’t know, even though there’s supposedly a “99% consensus.” I’ve seen the pamphlets published by “skeptics,” and most of them are cases unrelated to homeopathy (but rather to herbal medicine, which you claim can’t be homeopathy, or a homeopath who used other procedures). Basically, your activism stems from resentment over a close case that happened in your community: “I’ve seen a close friend of the family die because he trusted one of those water-shaking clowns who told him that she could treat his ‘negative energy’ (complaints of increasing fatigue) with her sugar crumbs.” What would you have done if your close friend hadn’t been treated with homeopathy but with conventional medicine and had died? Perhaps now you’d be one of the so-called “anti-vaccine” activists.
8. Richard, I’ve been talking about studies in general, not just RCTs. The only thing you can do is put “studies” in quotation marks. Something that really made me laugh is that you now say that “only 2 or 3 such ‘studies’ were successfully replicated. The overwhelming majority is never replicated.” It’s funny because all the “skeptics” say that not a single one has ever been replicated, but here you’ve already had to admit that at least 2 or 3 have been replicated! But you need to cover that up with cognitive dissonance with “the majority haven’t,” even though that happens with behavioral psychology and “conventional” medicine, which, according to you, are the ones that hold the “consensus.”
9. You keep talking about the correlation that a better study means less The chance of a positive result is higher, although that conclusion is practically the same in behavioral psychology and “conventional” medicine. What you don’t seem to understand is that this correlation isn’t always linear, and that in homeopathy, at least Mathie et al. and others like Linde et al. (ironically, also Shang et al. if you remove their data dredging) show that it doesn’t always hold true in all RCTs.
10. It’s funny that you complain about being called a pharma shill when you’ve accused me of being “paid by Boiron” (although you haven’t shown the check). What I’m pointing out here is the curious correlation between anti-homeopathy campaigns and suspicious attitudes (like those of many “skeptics” in the media who said they “don’t want to ban homeopathy because it’s a conspiracy theory,” but then, over time, they made it clearer and more open). Oh, wait, we also have to add the strange relationship between the 10:23 campaign and Sense About Science; it’s very curious that you never respond to this. You also never explain how trans studies never faced the same hatred as homeopathy years ago, despite the fact that, on average, trans studies are of very poor quality and were promoted by a bunch of “skeptics” from the GWUP, CSI(COP), and other organizations.
11. Richard, it seems like you’re the one shouting here, not me. I hope you can explain points 1 and 10, because point 8 is the funniest thing I’ve read from you this week—at least accepting that there are at least 2 or 3 replicated studies!
@Sundew
Nope, that is a lie that you keep repeating. And even if it wasn’t a lie, and this oscilloquackery may indeed do something, then this only demonstrates how completely pathetic as well as stupid you and other homeopaths are: after 230 years, you can only come up with one ‘remedy’ that maybe(*) does something in 2 or 3 replicated trials. Not thousands of ‘remedies’, as you quacks try to suggest, or hundreds, or even dozens, but just one.
*: IIRC, the most compelling trial (by Boiron) found that their oscilloquack sugar crumbs shortened the duration flu-like symptoms in a couple of dozen patients by an average of 5 or 6 hours. Woo-hoo!
So nope, Santa still doesn’t exist, and homeopathy cannot and does not work. Now be a good boy, and shut up and go away. And only come back when you have convinced the scientific consensus of your views, by presenting proper evidence(**). Because it’s not just us who think that homeopaths are frauds and a quacks; it’s literally millions of scientists, doctors and other highly educated people, as well as hundreds of millions of laypeople who looked into homeopathy.
**: As in: evidence of efficacy for at least dozens of ‘remedies’, which can be arbitrarily replicated by scientists and clincians, hundreds of times if need be – just like real medicines, in other words. Not just one type of sugar crumbs with maybe 2 replicated positive trials.
Wrong again Richard. Hundreds of millions of laypeople have woken up to how dangerous conventional medicine is and have turned to Homoeopathy after having looked into it.
@Mutus Bellator
A, the argumentum ad populum.
Yes, about 200 million people worldwide are fooled with homeopathy, 100 million of whom live in India – you know, the quack paradise where ‘medicines’ contain lead and mercury (talk about ‘dangerous medicine …), and where people ‘cleanse’ themselves by bathing in the most polluted river in the world, amidst sewage, industrial waste and even dead bodies. Yup, they’re truly a health-conscious bunch!
Now do these people choose homeopathy because they believe that real medicine is too dangerous, as you claim? Nope, they mostly ‘choose’ homeopathy because they in fact have no choice, and can’t afford real medicine. And of course because they’re lied to by their government about its efficacy. After all, shaken water costs nothing, and most patients with minor (and mostly self-limiting) ailments can be sent on their way with a friendly word and a few placebo pills. Just too bad that it doesn’t work when something is really wrong with them. Which is also reflected in public health figures in India: they still have a relatively high infant mortality (2.7%), lower life expectancy (72 years) and also a relatively poor age-corrected health. Homeopathy doesn’t do squat for these poor people, and I’m quite sure that the vast majority of them will turn to real doctors and real medicine as soon as they can afford it.
And even if 200 million people worldwide use homeopathy, then that means that 8.1 billion people (i.e. 97.5%) do NOT use homeopathy. Now why would that be, do you think?
And the figures are even far, far worse for scientists. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find even a couple of thousand scientists who believe in homeopathy. The numbers are higher for doctors (IIRC between 1% and 10%, depending on the country) but they mostly use homeopathy as a harmless placebo treatment for minor health complaints, and don’t actually believe that it has any real, clinical effects.
Let me tell you who the real clowns are Richard, medical doctors who try to poison their patients back to health.
@Mutus Bellator
Are these the same lay people who allowed themselves to be persuaded by an environmental lawyer, whose brain has been eaten away by a worm [*], that vaccinations are harmful? This has led to thousands of people being infected with a disease [measels] that has claimed lives and whose surviving victims will possibly suffer from long-term damage for years or even decades to come.
[*] The poor worm must have been starving.
I see you haven’t woken up to the dangers of conventional pharmaceutical medicine and turned to Homoeopathy yet. Maybe it’s high time you did.
@Mutus Bellator
Well, I am working in the pharmaceutical industry. Call me a pharma mafioso. 😉 So I know a little more than a dimwit and pompous storyteller like you when it comes to conventional pharmaceutical medicine and their effects and side effects.
Conventional pharmaceutical medicine help people when they are used correctly according to the instructions.
Homeopathic remedies only help the people who manufacture them. Namely, to line their pockets with money.
So you know more about me and the effects and SIDE EFFECTS of conventional pharmaceutical medicines. If you know more than me then you would know that side effects are just direct effects that aren’t marketable. I expect better from you, I hope you come to your senses one day and realise the dangers of these so called “medicines”.
@Mutus Bellator
Judging by your insane and frankly paranoid arguments that you forgot to take your pills.
Then again, you may of course be just trolling.
@Mutus Bellator
That is complete nonsense. Apparently Kennedy’s worm has eaten your brain, too. He must have enjoyed his meal. 😀 😀 😀
Says the one posting most of their message in bold.