Health Canada by and large does an excellent job. But it slips up when it comes to regulating “Natural Health Products,” especially when it comes to homeopathic preparations. By law, in order for these to be marketed they have to be granted an identification number known as the DIN-HM which is supposed to mean that a safety and efficacy review has been conducted and a specific recommendation for use has been formally approved for the label. Quite naturally then, a consumer who sees a DIN-HM on a product assumes that studies have shown its efficacy and safety. This assumption is totally false.
Health Canada does not require studies that show a homeopathic remedy works. The “evidence” can come from what is called “traditional use,” meaning that over the years there have been anecdotal claims of effectiveness. For example, a homeopathic remedy called Oscilliococcinum has been granted a DIN-HM and is allowed to claim on the label that it is a homeopathic medicine to relieve flu symptoms such as fever, chill, body aches and headaches. So what is this medication? It is prepared by taking 35 grams of the liver of a duck and 15 grams of its heart and fermenting these for 40 days. The fermentation product then undergoes a hundred-fold serial dilutions two hundred times in a row with a drop finally being added to a tablet made of sucrose and lactose. At this dilution there is not a single molecule of the original duck solution left.
But why should anyone think that fermented duck organs should have any effect on the flu in the first place? Because of what are called homeopathic “provings.” The tenet of homeopathy as formulated by Samuel Hahnemann in the eighteenth century is that a substance that causes specific symptoms in a health person will cure those symptoms in a sick person but only after being diluted to an extent where there isn’t a single molecule of the original left. Of course Hahnemamm had no idea of molecules and never realized the folly of his dilutions. Why duck organs? Supposedly if the fermented duck brew is consumed by a health person he will develop flu-like symptoms. So an infinitely diluted version according to the homeopathic precept should treat these symptoms. If this sounds absurd, it is because it is.
These days homeopaths have to recognize that chemists know about molecules and can calculate concentrations and can show that homeopathic products contain nothing. So homeopaths have had to come up with an alternate explanation. According to Hahnemann’s regimen, after each dilution the remedy has to be “succussed.” This means banging into a leather pillow a set number of times. Homeopaths now claim that this process leaves an imprint on the water used to carry out the dilutions and it is this image of the original substance that does the curing. Leaving aside the nonsense of imprinting images on water, let’s ask the question of why such an imprinted image should have any healing ability? What physiological process could possibly be occurring?
Of course homeopaths have no answer to this but do offer a convenient “out.” There are many mysterious things in the world, they say. They don’t care about explanations because it is enough for them to know the remedies work! And how do they know this? Because their patients get results! Yes many do. The placebo effect is the most amazing effect in medicine, one that homeopaths base their practice on, of course without realizing it. There is nothing wrong with giving people placebos as long as they are not misled. But Health Canada granting a formal identification number to a placebo is misleading. If a health claim is made on a product the consumer has a right to assume that there is sufficient evidence for that claim. This is the case for prescription drugs. Why should homeopathic products be any different? The granting of official government sanction to a pill that makes a health claim despite containing no active ingredient is simply wrong. The public is being deluded.