Today, there is a strong scientific and medical consensus that homeopathy lacks reliable evidence of efficacy. Many of the strongest rejections come, after independent evaluations of the evidence, from national and international scientific bodies of undoubted repute. Here is my list:
- Advertising Standards Authority (UK) The ASA requires that efficacy claims for homeopathic products be supported by robust clinical evidence and has ruled that unsupported claims are misleading.
- American Academy of Pediatrics (USA) Warns that unproven alternative treatments, including homeopathy, should not delay or replace effective medical care, particularly in children.
- American College of Medical Toxicology & American Academy of Clinical Toxicology (USA) Jointly stated “no evidence exists” homeopathy is effective, noting it can be harmful by delaying evidence-based care; they recommended “against using homeopathic treatment for disease or prevention.”
- American Medical Association (USA) Issed statements that there is “no good-quality evidence” homeopathy is effective for any condition and opposed its integration into mainstream practice.
- Argentine Medical Association (AMA, Argentina) The AMA has criticized homeopathy’s inclusion in medical practice, stating it lacks scientific evidence and warning against its promotion as a valid treatment.
- Belgian Health Authority The Belgian Federal Public Service Health halted reimbursement for homeopathy in 2020, following advice from the College of Physicians that it lacks scientific evidence.
- Canadian Health Authorities Health Canada mandates warning labels on unlicensed claims: “This product is neither approved nor authorized for any indication,” aligning with evidence that homeopathy lacks reliable clinical support.
- Canadian Medical Association (CMA) Via editorials in its journal (CMAJ), the CMA has condemned the licensing of homeopathy as a “loophole” that implies efficacy without scientific proof, stating it “makes a joke of the regulatory process.”
- Chief Medical Officer for England (Dame Sally Davies) Publicly called homeopathic preparations “rubbish” that function only as placebos with no therapeutic benefit beyond psychological effects.
- European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) Issued a 2017 statement finding “no evidence that homeopathic products are effective” and reiterated that explanations for homeopathy’s efficacy are “scientifically implausible.”
- Federal Trade Commission (USA) Requires that homeopathic products must not claim effectiveness without evidence; otherwise, they must clearly state a lack of scientific support.
- Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Asserted “no convincing evidence” for homeopathy’s clinical efficacy, as its mechanisms contradict established chemistry and physics.
- Food and Drug Administration (USA) States “No homeopathic product is FDA-approved”; products are not reviewed for safety or effectiveness. The FDA also warns they may pose risks.
- French Academy of Medicine Rejected homeopathy as scientifically invalid, stating its theoretical basis and clinical evidence are inadequate or absent.
- German Medical Association (Germany) In 2020, removed homeopathy from the model further education curriculum for doctors, declaring it “is not a medical procedure based on scientific findings.”
- House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (UK) In its 2010 report, concluded “the systematic reviews and meta-analyses conclusively demonstrate that homeopathic products perform no better than placebos.”
- Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (UK) Followed committee advice by restricting licensing; homeopathic products should not make medical claims without evidence and are no longer endorsed as medicines.
- National Cancer Institute (USA) States homeopathy has “not been shown to be effective” for cancer treatment or symptom relief, with no rigorous studies supporting benefit beyond placebo.
- National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC, Australia) After reviewing over 1,800 studies, it concluded “there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective.”
- National Health Service (NHS, England) Formally stated “no NHS funding will be spent on homeopathic medicines,” with guidance that homeopathy performs “no better than placebos.”
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (UK) NICE does not recommend homeopathy in any clinical guideline and bases its recommendations on the best available evidence.
- Royal Society (UK) Numerous Fellows have publicly criticized homeopathy, and the Society has supported evidence-based medicine principles incompatible with homeopathy’s claims.
- Russian Academy of Sciences Described homeopathy as “pseudoscience” with principles that “contradict known laws of chemistry, physics, and biology.”
- Spanish Medical Associations (Collegiate Medical Organization of Spain) In 2018, rescinded recognition of homeopathy as a “medical procedure,” declaring it “not scientifically sound.”
- Swedish Medical Association The Swedish Medical Association and National Board of Health declared homeopathy scientifically unfounded in 2010, advising against its use in healthcare.
- Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences Concluded homeopathy lacks scientific evidence and should not be reimbursed by health insurance.
- Swiss Federal Office of Public Health After a 2005-2011 review, it rejected renewed inclusion in basic health insurance (though it was later reintroduced in 2017 under specific political conditions).
- World Health Organization (WHO) Explicitly stated homeopathy “should not be used” for serious diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, or malaria, warning reliance “can be dangerous.”
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And what about institutions supporting homeopathy? I am aware of just one:
- Ministry of AYUSH (India) “Homoeopathy is a cost-effective system of medicine and is widely practiced for both acute and chronic conditions.”
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Across decades of systematic reviews and independent evaluations by scientific and medical authorities worldwide, no credible evidence has emerged to support the efficacy of homeopathy. Its principles conflict with well-established scientific laws, and its effects are indistinguishable from those of placebo in rigorous studies. The broad convergence of expert opinion is therefore this: homeopathy has no effects beyond placebo. Its continued use represents a divergence from evidence-based medicine, and reliance on it, particularly as an alternative to effective care, poses a clear risk to public health.
28 Responses to If anyone tells you that only misinformed skeptics oppose homeopathy, show them this: a list of independent evaluations by internationally respected organisations
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They are all in the pocket of big pharma – which else explanation could there be?
irony off
I agree. These organizations have all been bought off by Big Pharma, which wants to sell its overpriced, harmful drugs and suppress the heroic efforts of homeopaths who simply want to prescribe affordable, side-effect-free natural medicine to patients.
*Irony off*
The explanation is either that you’re incredibly gullible and/or you lack the critical thinking skills to see homeopathy for the nonsense on stilts it truly is. Useless “magic water” sometimes dripped onto equally useless sugar pills. There’s not a single credible piece of evidence – emphasis on the CREDIBLE – that shows it to be better than placebo. You need to go back to school and pay attention in science classes this time.
I don’t think you understood Viktor’s comment.
Russian Academy of Sciences?? No.
Changes are taking place at the RAS. Academician Kolesnikov will become deputy head of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ commission to combat pseudoscience. He told RBC that homeopathy should be studied.
“Homeopathy has been around for over 200 years, and there’s evidence of its therapeutic effects. There’s virtually no evidence to suggest it’s pseudoscience. Therefore, the debate will continue because the mechanisms of homeopathy aren’t entirely clear,” Kolesnikov told RBC.
— https://www.rbc.ru/society/04/02/2026/6983241c9a7947c82bae2195
Dr. Kolesnikov says (in translation) “there is no need to ban what is incomprehensible and not fully studied”. Not fully studied? Not fully studied? One wonder just what Dr. Kolesnikov would consider constitutes fully studying?
At the moment I don’t think that you can trust official Russian institutions to adhere to scientific principles – much less so if their official standpoint is determined by one person.
That sounds spookily similar to the state of affairs in another major power….
I already thought I wouldn’t need to spell it out …
The lunatics truly have taken over the asylum.
An addition to the list:
Dutch law prohibits the sale of homeopathic products with indication (i.e. claims as to what it is supposed to treat) – unless clinical evidence of efficacy is provided.
Before this law took effect in 2012, manufacturers of homeopathic products were given 5 years to show that their products were indeed efficacious for treating any condition. Result: not a single manufacturer even tried to provide such evidence. IOW: they knew damn well that homeopathy is just a fraud, and that they could never show that it worked.
So now their nostrums have labels with the following ‘indication’:
“1. What is [homeopathic product] and what is it used for?
Homeopathic medicine without specific therapeutic indication, applied in accordance with the principles of homeopathic medicine.”
So, Dana, you can scream about there being ‘evidence’ all you want, but even the biggest manufacturers of homeopathic products – Boiron included – so far failed to produce any evidence that can stand up in the real world.
It is remarkable (!) that anyone would be surprised that conventional medicine is so threatened by homeopathic medicine. The mouse is roaring! And dinosaurs yell and scream the loudest before their fall.
Ironically, the field of “nanopharmacology” is blasting off…and homeopathic sized drugs are exploding.
So, Edzie, you and your cult members should still use your rotary phones and typewriters because the future is coming.
I am still laughing about your cult members’ comments about Darwin’s experiences with homeopathy…and how much you discount his real-life RESULTS under homeopathic and hydrotherapy treatment.
is that reall all yo can offer vis a vis 28 respected, independent organisations voicing their opposition to your placebos?
A hundred times, Mr Ullman, a hundred times. You know.
Indeed it is, Dana. But homeopathy has nothing whatsoever to do with nanopharmacology other than in your delusional imagination. You could of course show me how wrong I am by showing me the articles about homeopathy that have been published in nanophamacological journals. But you won’t be able to. Because there aren’t any.
Ahahahahaha, Dana. How long have you been saying this? We’re still waiting.
You remain the pathetic, petulant, witless, blinkered, arrogant, stamping, spluttering and utterly insignificant object of ridicule that you always have been. We just enjoy watching you. It’s a world of soup, Dana and you’re the one telling us forks are the way forward. Run along, now. You’re done here.
Dana is right, Homoeopathy is the medicine of the future, are you going to accept it Lenny or just sit in the corner and cry about it?
Let us know when the evidence arrives.
And, indeed, the future.
get off the bottle!
Look, the parrot is back.
Dana’s been saying it’s the medicine of the future for twenty years, Mutus. The evidence is taking an awfully long time to arrive.
40 years more likely!
Hummm, Dana.
I presume, NANO-pharmacology seems to become the the new „quantum technology“ or the new “water memory” of the homoeomagic church then?
By the way, which kind of nanomaterials (nanoparticles) have you exactly identified in your homoeomagic sugar remedies?
And even more URGENT: Wouldn’t you have to warn your faithful victims of possible NANOTOXOCOLOGIC side effects of these unknown „nanomagic“ particles since nanotoxocology is the REAL HOT SHIT in pharmacology nowadays!
Just asking for a friend!
🤭🤭🤭
@Rolf Stolt-Bechtold
There is in fact a
nanoparticleglobulegrain of truth in what you say. Allow me to explain by means of the following story.Almost 2 years ago, some water-shaking clowns from India published an article titled Arsenic album 30C exhibits crystalline nano structure of arsenic trioxide and modulates innate immune markers in murine macrophage cell lines.
– Basically, these people bought what they believed was a 30C (1:10^60) dilution of arsenic trioxide (or arsenicum album in homeopathy’s pig Latin) from a German quack company.
– They observed 2 things: 1) that this 30C dilution had some clear and consistent effects on certain immune cells from mice, and 2) that this dilution, upon examination using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), contained arsenic trioxide nanoparticles.
– At which point the water-shaking clowns went completely wild: not only had they proved that a homeopathic dilution (30C) had specific effects on living cells, they had even found the elusive nanoparticles touted by several other water-shaking clowns (including one D. Ullman) as the mechanism by which homeopathy supposedly worked. Slam dunk for homeopathy, and the article went viral!
There were, however, some teensy weensy problems with this ‘research’:
– A 30C dilution should not contain even a single molecule of arsenic trioxide. Yet these people, by their own admission, found lots of arsenic trioxide in their samples. In other words: the claims of using a 30C dilution and finding
– Those water-shaking clowns claim that they found arsenic trioxide nanoparticles in their dilution. This is a lie. They found arsenic trioxide nanoparticles in their TEM samples. Which are created by taking a liquid sample and evaporating the water. Which means that any materials dissolved in the liquid sample will clump together and solidify as – you guessed it – nanoparticles. This most certainly includes arsenic trioxide, which is quite soluble in water.
So instead of proving that homeopathy worked, it is astronomically more likely that the arsenicum album 30C that these water-shaking clowns bought in reality still contained appreciable amounts of arsenic trioxide, which 1) affected the mouse immune cells, as arsenic compounds are known to do, and 2) showed up as dried-up nanoparticles. A few months after I pointed this out to the journal’s editors, the article was retracted.
Which brings me to your comment: homeopathic manufacturers are known to make mistakes when diluting their original substances, sometimes with deadly consequences.
So yes, it regularly happens that homeopathic nostrums contain ‘nanoparticles’ – not because that’s how homeopathy works, but because the water-shaking clowns botched the dilution process, and manufactured products that still contained the original, often highly toxic substance. Which can indeed poison people, just like you suggest.
Whoops:
… significant amounts of the original substance – in any form – are mutually exclusive.
“So instead of proving that homeopathy worked”
Richard, every day you manage to outdo yourself in setting an example of how not to conduct research. The retracted study you refer to is not a clinical trial; it is an in vitro study combined with a physicochemical characterisation study. The fact that the editors have bowed to the pressure of your nonsensical comments makes it all the more clear that *Nature* prefers to listen to an electronics technician who has no idea what he’s talking about!
Richard, I can’t see any logic in your entire argument.
1. The now-retracted article in *Scientific Reports* does not contain any of the errors you have pointed out. You have admitted that it was retracted because of you, since, according to your own statement, you told the editors that the study did not demonstrate efficacy. This is a completely ridiculous claim, given that the study is not a clinical trial. Furthermore, the fact that the retraction itself states that there is no false data or manipulation, and that it was retracted solely on the basis of ‘theoretical’ objections, lends further credibility to the findings.
2. It is somewhat amusing that you call the authors “crazy clowns”, given that you have not even published a single piece of research in the literature (your letters to the editor with Ernst do not count). What you are doing here is not an argument; it is outright defamation and personal attacks that no serious media outlet would allow (but which, curiously, Ernst permits).
3. If the authors find quantities of nanoparticles, Richard should be able to present data refuting these findings, but he does not. He merely says that “it is a lie”.
4. It is somewhat curious because there are several pseudo-sceptical blogs that used to ask homeopaths to first carry out basic research and then try to prove that it works, but when they do, Richard comes along and complains that they haven’t first conducted a clinical trial.
5. If you claim that this is due to ‘manufacturing defects’, the burden of proof lies with you, Richard, and you should also explain how these nanoparticles continue to appear under controlled laboratory conditions. But you don’t.
What is the “strong scientific and medical consensus” based on “independent evaluations of the evidence”?
1. ASA: https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/health-homeopathy.html (zero references)
2. American Academy of Pediatrics (USA): None reference.
3. American College of Medical Toxicology & American Academy of Clinical Toxicology (USA): : https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/collections/choosing-wisely/121.html (references from 1997 to 2005)
4. American Medical Association (USA): no found.
5. (AMA, Argentina): fake. In fact, AMA Argentina offer a homeopathy course! https://www.ama-med.org.ar/especialidades/detalleCurso/21
6. Belgian Health Authority The Belgian Federal Public Service Health: not found.
7. Canadian Health Authorities Health Canada: “mandates warning labels on unlicensed claims: “This product is neither approved nor authorized for any indication,” aligning with evidence that homeopathy lacks reliable clinical support.” not found.
8. Canadian Medical Association (CMA) Via editorials in its journal (CMAJ), the CMA has condemned the licensing of homeopathy as a “loophole” that implies efficacy without scientific proof, stating it “makes a joke of the regulatory process.”: not found.
9. Chief Medical Officer for England (Dame Sally Davies) Publicly called homeopathic preparations “rubbish” that function only as placebos with no therapeutic benefit beyond psychological effects: piece of opinion https://theweek.com/104003/homeopathy-treatment-what-the-science-says
10. “European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC)”: biased report.
11. “Federal Trade Commission (USA)”: proposal only.
12. FASEB: only piece of opinion from 2006! https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1096/fj.06-0901ufm
13. FDA: not evaluation, risk based on one case (Hyland’s belladona low potencies).
14. French Academy of Medicine: not found.
15. German Medical Association (Germany): irrelevant.
16. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (UK): outdated and flawed report.
17. Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (UK): irrelevant.
18. National Cancer Institute (USA): nof found statement.
19. National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC, Australia): outdated and flawed report.
20. National Health Service (NHS, England): irrelevant.
21. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (UK): irrelevant.
22. Royal Society (UK) Numerous Fellows: irrelevant.
23. Russian Academy of Sciences: not oficial report from RAS.
24. Spanish Medical Associations (Collegiate Medical Organization of Spain): irrelevant.
25. Swedish Medical Association The Swedish Medical Association and National Board of Health: irrelevant.
26. Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences: statement not found.
27. Swiss Federal Office of Public Health After a 2005-2011 review: statement not found, only piece opinion from Felix Gurtner: https://smw.ch/index.php/smw/article/view/1626/2135
28. “World Health Organization (WHO) Explicitly stated”: false, the “statement” comes from Voice Young of Science (extinct astroturfing group from Sense About Science lobby)
Of the 28 so-called ‘consensus’ statements, most are not ‘independent assessments of the evidence’; others do not even exist or do not say what Ernst claims. If filtered by evidence assessments, there are only three:
A. 2015 Australian report (undeclared conflict of interest with Friends of Science in Medicine)
B. EASAC report (based on selectively citing only the 2005 meta-analysis by Shang et al, the Australian report and six Cochrane reviews, with undeclared conflicts of interest among several authors linked to pseudo-sceptical groups and pharmaceutical companies).
C. UK report (undeclared conflict of interest with Sense About Science and Merseyside Skeptics). It contains no original evaluation of the literature and its conclusions are based on the flawed meta-analysis by Shang et al. from 2005 and the flawed review by Ernst from 2002.
Of these three, none is an independent evaluation. So where is the ‘consensus based on independent evaluations’?
1. If your AI admits that nanoparticles contain an ‘extremely small’ amount, how can it conclude that this would become a conventional remedy? Could it be that Grok is a bit daft, Ernst?
2. No one I know of has claimed that imponderable homeopathic substances such as X-rays form ‘X-ray nanoparticles’.
3. The Berlin Wall is not a homeopathic remedy officially recognised by any pharmacopoeia. Nor, to my knowledge, does anyone claim that it ‘works’ against pain; the Berlin Wall has no basis and has even been criticised by Peter Fisher as a metaphorical remedy.
4. The “argument” Grok put forward makes no sense. You are criticising the ‘theory’ of nanoparticles but demanding clinical evidence for it. When what is actually being debated is whether nanoparticles exist after several ‘dilutions’!