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Every homeopathic eye drop should be pulled off the market, FDA says
- eyesarered 3y agoDamn, I've used msm drops and a few other homeopathic eye drops. I'll throw this out into the ether... maybe someone else has experienced it. Because I wore contacts too small in diameter the whites of my eyes now have extremely prominent red veins. There is no cure for this condition except a very expensive and barbaric procedure from a Beverly hills doctor. It's an extremely risky procedure that can cause all kinds of problems to the eye. I'm quite surprised there isn't a cure for this, many people have these veins. Anyway, I've tried every drop, supplement, and odd thing you can try to try and look like a person that isn't high or drunk 24/7. You would be surprised how something so small can affect a persons confidence. If you have semi white eyes thank the Lord above and be careful wearing contacts. Also if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.
- Detrytus 3y agoHomeopathy is a scam. We should stop pretending it has anything to do with real medicine and pull it off the pharmacies.
- acchow 3y agoI’ve noticed that even herbal remedies are labeled as homeopathic. Is that to address a larger market?
- nearting 3y agoIt might draw in potential customers who believe in it, yes. Or it might give manufacturers the cover to not include any quantity of said herbs in the product.
- financltravsty 3y agoNo more a scam than SSRIs. There’s an undercurrent within some research groups (a woman at Oxford, whose name escapes me at the moment) pushing forward research into the placebo effect and its mediation via — I want to say — the peripheral nervous system, lending some credence towards sham treatments like chiropractic practice. Along with the likes of osteopathy, homeopathy is one of the forgotten forms of medicine. Allopathy, in this day and age, is criminal. Lots of elective surgeries that do nothing more than line pockets of medical device manufacturers, fleece the elderly, and bring prestige to aristocrat wannabes (certain doctors). That is saying nothing about the endemic of overprescription of psychoactive drugs like stimulants, and the rest. Though that’s not to say homeopathy or osteopathy is any better. Once a field with research and experimentation, now relegated to fraudulent shamanism. There’s a lot of lost knowledge from the 19th century that hasn’t been passed down, nor digitized. Some of it remains in libraries here and there.
- mock-possum 3y agoSorry, what? How are SSRIs a scam?
- financltravsty 3y agoEfficacy vs placebo and side-effect profile compared to placebo. They're over-prescribed, in my opinion, when more fine-grained therapy and lifestyle changes can elicit similar benefits.
- tomatotomato31 3y agoWhen you say placebo effect you also have to say nocebo effect. And placebo even work for some if they know it. Which means we can easily give recommendations for modern placebo which is actually cheap to buy and produce. But the homeopatie shit is for sure also responsible for the people not believing in corona etc.
- nearting 3y agoThis argument is essentially whataboutism - any issues in the practice of modern evidence-based medicine does not in any way validate the efficacy of homeopathy or similar pseudoscientific approaches. On top of that, arguing that most medical recommendations are unnecessary and overpriced doesn't help the case of homeopathy or chiropractic either - I mean, at that point, why charge patients any more than the cost of sugar or a short massage?
- financltravsty 3y agoIt’s not an argument, it’s a discussion. All forms of popular and mass-market medicine are shit. See: Sturgeon’s law. Allopathic, “modern medicine,” and homeopathic. Allopathic medicine, I would argue, is pseudoscientific because research where placebo does better or negative results are achieved are thrown out and never published. Instead, it’s p-hacked and methodologically-massaged (knowingly and unknowingly) to achieve the results the grants paid for. And even when published, practice does not keep up with the research. Double blind studies on spinal surgeries are a great example where placebo, stemming from the belief of the patient that he received treatment, is just as effective in alleviating subjective pain. In the placebo case, simply putting the patient under anaesthesia and having him believe he had surgery is enough to resolve spinal pain. Or how about where common spinal surgeries stem from?: surgical experimentation with only flimsy research integrity. The first spinal fusions were essentially no different than lobotomies with how reckless and unethical the practice of experimenting based on loose evidence is. Not even in a research context, but a surgical, and informal one. And yet, the same results can be found with less drastic and life-changing means. Instead of fusing your spine with titanium screws, you could go to a chiropractor for unexplained back pain. Or better yet, figure out the psychosomatic and physical causes (stress, poor muscle tone, etc.), instead of band-aiding the problem. What a thought! Homeopathy, chiropractic, osteopathy, “holistic medicine,” etc. are better when they achieve the same results, for less cost (monetary, physical, what have you), when they work, and do not do further harm to the patient. That doesn’t mean they’re both not scams. But one scam is less harmful en masse than the other. Both use “woo” to achieve the same ends, but neither are honest about it.
- consumer451 3y agoI would agree, I mean of course. Except, doesn’t the placebo effect have something like a 50% efficacy rate for many ills? I always felt like that can’t be right. Is it? I had figured that this was how homeopathy “worked.”
- consumer451 3y agoToo late to edit, but I just to make clear that I think homeopathy is a total scam.
- mips_r4300i 3y agoA common number for improvements in outcome by placebo is typically 20%. Significant, but not a game changer.
- heisenzombie 3y agoAlso, I think the placebo effect is popularly misunderstood: https://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-weak-regression-to-the-mean-is-the-main-reason-ineffective-treatments-appear-to-work/ https://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-wea...
- mips_r4300i 3y agoThanks for that article, it confirms what I'd long suspected. The bit about traffic cameras is a good one, and the very same problem of trying to judge health supplements efficacy without RCTs.
- winternett 3y agoThe premise driving homeopathy is that modern medicine has harmful side effects, and it's also not quite trustworthy even when the FDA approves it. The shear cases of big industry drug settlements and major pharmaceuticals being pulled from shelves is proof that the entire industry of home medicine needs a serious reevaluation. There have been natural cures to many illnesses, like using witch Hazel for ear infections, that should not be simply thrown out, as those cures work much better, and with far less side effects, than taking pills. Big industry loves to suppress information about affordable cures, because it cuts into their profits. I think regulating the profitability and effectiveness of both homeopathy and big pharma is the best move to make sure that cures are valid, but I also think both sciences/practices should be allowed to exist when they are proven, because ultimately, we as humans stand to benefit from having the option of either for our best life/health outcomes overall.
- QuadmasterXLII 3y agoWhen you say Homeopathy, do you mean 10X dillutions, like opposes like, water memory etc? If not, what do you mean?
- winternett 3y agoI gave an example in my prior post... Witch Hazel is a homeopathic treatment that could easily be branded as a treatment for ear cleaning or ear infections. I was not referring to scam treatments and concoctions pushed by quacks of course, but homeopathy is a very big field.
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- wl 3y agoWhile I'm sure there's homeopathic preparations that use witch hazel, the witch hazel you buy at the drug store is not homeopathic because it actually contains witch hazel in a usable concentration. Homeopathic preparations are, by definition, diluted to the point where there's little or none of the allegedly active ingredient you started out with, the nature of that ingredient allegedly being imprinted on the water.
- Georgelemental 3y ago> The practice relies on two false principles: the "law of similars," aka "like cures like," meaning a substance that causes a specific symptom in a healthy person can treat conditions and diseases that involve that same symptom, and the "law of infinitesimals," which states that diluting the substance renders it more potent. These "principles" are actually true sometimes, to a certain extent in specific cases. Vaccines, for example, or hormesis. Similarly, bloodletting as practiced in the Middle Ages was actually the right treatment for a few specific diseases. But when these concepts become disconnected from empirical reality and turn into sacred doctrine, that's when the trouble starts.
- hn_acker 3y ago>> The practice relies on two false principles: the "law of similars," aka "like cures like," meaning a substance that causes a specific symptom in a healthy person can treat conditions and diseases that involve that same symptom, and the "law of infinitesimals," which states that diluting the substance renders it more potent. > These "principles" are actually true sometimes, to a certain extent in specific cases. Vaccines, for example, or hormesis. You're being too charitable with "true sometimes", in my opinion. I've unbent a paper clip into a nearly straight strip of aluminum before. The result was a "paper clip" in name and origin only. I would call it a "paper clip" for convenience, and I might jokingly consider it a paper clip "to a certain extent". But calling the strip a paper clip wouldn't be useful unless I were to describe it as "a paper clip if I bend it back into the original shape". The "law of similars" and the "law of infinitesimals" as described by the article are like the straightened "paper clip": understandable generalizations from a practical truth, but too far from the initial practical truth for "true sometimes" to be a useful rule of thumb. (It is useful, however, to find out how a useless "principle" came about.) A vaccine is not a cure. It's training for the immune system. The response to small amounts of a harmful substance can prepare the body to respond more quickly and/or more correctly to a future exposure. Giving yourself a vaccine while you're already infected with the virus would have little benefit if any. I could call a vaccine a cure "to some extent" if I wanted to be broad with my definitions, but would it be useful to do so? Not to me, so I might as well not call a vaccine a cure at all. Hormesis is less about "small amounts can be more potent than large amounts" than "small amounts can actually help you at all compared to large amounts".
- roydivision 3y agoAt the very least pharmacies should be prevented from selling anything as medicine that isn't backed by proper science. Pharmacies should be trustworthy establishments, by selling this garbage they are as complicit in this whole scam as the manufacturers. And although placebo is a scientifically proven effect, it is not a label for quackery to hide behind.
- browningstreet 3y agoI don’t know where you are but in the US pharmacies wouldn’t sell homeopathic eye drops, but the drug store in which the pharmacy operates would.
- timthelion 3y agoYes I strongly agree. I remember a friend bought coloidal silver cleansing spray at a pharmacy. She thought it was a normal antiseptic spray and used it to clean her kids wounds. She was very surprised when I explained it was just overpriced distilled water. I'm in Europe so there were no health claims on the packaging but other than that there wasno way to know. It is especially confusing in that case since silver is a real antiseptic, so it's not like obviously non plausible.
- tengwar2 3y agoColloidal silver is not a homeopathic medicine. It was briefly in vogue in the days before sulphanilamide and antibiotics, and some wound dressings contain silver. It works by giving bacteria heavy metal poisoning. Some people make the stuff themselves and drink it, which over time can give one argyria (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria). Definitely not a good idea to do that, but I suspect for putting on minor wounds this might be more a case of "there are better solutions".
- derbOac 3y agoI increasingly feel sort of isolated in my concerns about this sort of thing and how they are framed, and what it says about the power of the FDA and problems it might lead to in other areas. I think homeopathy is nonsense really, has no scientific evidence in its support, and makes no physical or biological sense. At the same time, I believe if someone wants to place such products on their shelves, they should be able to. In my opinion it doesn't matter if there is any placebo effect, or any effect of any kind, as long as the contents are correctly labeled and are uncontaminated. The lead-up in this piece is misleading. Yes, there have been problems with a number of eye drop products. But — and this is critical — those products were not homeopathic, and still had problems. That is, the homeopathic nature of the products was irrelevant to their safety. So now we're in a situation where, instead of aggressively pursuing eyedrop contamination in general, the FDA is focusing on the putative purpose of the eyedrops, which has nothing to do with the underlying problem. Meanwhile, we're facing ongoing problems with contaminated generic medications, that have been going on for years or even the scale of decades even (it's turned into an interesting exercise, Google "Indian generic medication" at any random time of any year and see what the latest scandal is; e.g., https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-04/big-pharma-india-s-drug-industry-needs-a-major-overhaul https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-04/big-ph...). These scandals, in contrast to homeopathy, seem to get slaps on the wrist from the FDA without any dramatic calls for complete market removal, because they somehow fit in the schema for science-based medicine. Homeopathic products with no evidence of active harm must be removed from the market because they have no efficacy, but tainted medications that are killing people or landing them in the hospital year after year are ok. Homeopathy and the FDA is an odd topic for me, because although I think homeopathy is completely unscientific nonsense, by the same token I also suspect it shouldn't be actively harmful unless there's a different problem, which should really be the focus. I guess I have problems with an agency regulating with reference to intended purpose rather than purity and safety, because for me there's a direct line from that to a failed drug wars, lack of access to needed medications due to overregulation, treatment protocols lacking in scientific or ethical rigor that become de facto standards, and inequities in medical care. I was expecting an article about how the FDA found homeopathic eye drops in particular as a class of eye drops to be systemically contaminated, and how they were going to pull them off the market until manufacturers complied with safety inspections. But that's not what I found at all. Put it a different way: what is the actual safety concern about these eyedrops? Is it about the homeopathy, or contamination? Is it possible for homeopathy per se to be unsafe? Which, then, should be the real focus of the FDA?
- torpfactory 3y agoI think pharmacies should have two sections: one for drugs that have been scientifically studied and are FDA approved. Another section (separate aisle) for all the bullshit supplements with a big disclaimer (sometimes called the quack miranda warning): "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease." Right now these products are often co-mingled.
- amazonslave 3y agoI think some people in this thread are saying there are 3 categories, not 2. Every medicine/supplement/remedy makes 3 claims: 1. Features ('What' it is - ingredient identity, potency, purity, quality) 2. Advantages ('How' it works and how it is different - the 'mechanism of action') 3. Benefits ('Why' the consumer cares - pain avoiders and gain creators) So, there are 3 distinct categories: 1. regulated Pharmaceuticals should have good evidence for Features, Advantages, and Benefits 2. Unregulated 'Nutraceuticals/dietary supplements' often have good evidence for Features and Advantages, that is they have SOME mechanism of action that does something, but sometimes they fail to deliver on Benefits (especially big marketing claims). 3. Homeopathic remedies and similar do not deliver on Advantages or Benefits. Sometimes they don't even deliver on Features (they have different ingredients than what they claim). These do not have a mechanism of action that makes any sense whatsoever. You couldn't even run a good Randomized double blind placebo controlled study if you wanted to because the proposed mechanism makes almost zero sense. 'pharmaceuticals' and 'nutraceuticals/dietary supplements' can both have legitimate mechanism of actions for them with good studies. Fish oil, Creatine, Protein Powder, and similar supplements all have very well-studied mechanisms of action (Advantages) for the benefits they provide. I understand that there are tons of scammy supplements, but they need to be treated differently than homeopathic remedies by consumers. One should be taken seriously, but treated skeptically, and the other should be dismissed from first principles.
- tengwar2 3y agoAgreed. An example of 2 is colchicine, thought to be the oldest drug still in use. It's an ancient Greek flower remedy, and the standard treatment for gout flares. It has long been known to be very effective, and also toxic. It was only in the past couple of decades that a formal trial was done in the USA, based on some legislation which gave the company a monopoly on the drug - which is now fantastically expensive in the USA. Elsewhere it costs pennies.