Homeopathy is one of the biggest scams I know of. The products have no curative properties and yet people spend billions on them. And, as Dara O’Briiain says in the bit below, “It’s JUST WATER.” (h/t Andrew Petto:
First, the NIH describes its uselessness and the principles said to underlie it. Some products could even be dangerous!
What do we know about the effectiveness of homeopathy?
- There’s little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment for any specific health condition.
What do we know about the safety of homeopathic products?
- Some products labeled as homeopathic may contain substantial amounts of active ingredients and could cause side effects and drug interactions.
What Is Homeopathy?
Homeopathy, also known as homeopathic medicine, is a medical system that was developed in Germany more than 200 years ago. It’s based on two unconventional theories:
- “Like cures like”—the notion that a disease can be cured by a substance that produces similar symptoms in healthy people.
- “Law of minimum dose”—the notion that the lower the dose of the medication, the greater its effectiveness. Many homeopathic products are so diluted that no molecules of the original substance remain.
Homeopathic products come from plants (such as red onion, arnica [mountain herb], poison ivy, belladonna [deadly nightshade], and stinging nettle), minerals (such as white arsenic), or animals (such as crushed whole bees). Homeopathic products are often made 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’s common for different people with the same condition to receive different treatments. Homeopathy uses a different diagnostic system for assigning treatments to individuals and recognizes clinical patterns of signs and symptoms that are different from those of conventional medicine.
There is no empirical basis for either of these two “theories”, and many homeopathic products are basically water, since the “like” substance has been eliminated through multiple dilutions (see below), and in principle can have no curative properties.
The U.S. Homeopathy Market was valued at approximately USD 4.12 Billion in 2025 and is expected to reach approximately USD 13.38 Billion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of 12.50%.
The U.S. is the second largest market for homeopathic drugs globally in terms of revenues. OTC homeopathic remedies for symptoms such as cough, cold, pain, sleep aid, and pediatric use can be found at major retail outlets like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart as well as natural food stores. Hyland’s Homeopathic and Boiron are the leading brands. The FDA regulation of homeopathic products under the OTC drug paradigm has been increasingly progressive. The FDA’s risk-based regulatory strategy enhanced product regulation without taking out commercialized products from store shelves.
The world market for homeopathic remedies is $12-15 billion per year, but Americans spend more on this scam than any other nationality (India is second with about $1 billion/year). I’ve seen homeopathic remedies in most of the U.S. chains mentioned, and if you want to see the big array of homeopathic remedies in Whole Foods, go here. (You can go to any of the chains and simply insert “homeopathic” into their search function.)
The author is described in the article: “Mark Crislip, MD has been a practicing Infectious Disease specialist in Portland, Oregon, from 1990 to 2023. He has been voted a US News and World Report best US doctor, best ID doctor in Portland Magazine multiple times, has multiple teaching awards and, most importantly, the ‘Attending Most Likely To Tell It Like It Is’ by the medical residents at his hospital.”
His Wikipedia page also says that Crislip is a co-founder of SBM. Click headline to read:
It’s a bit of a strange article, disursive, and with the author bent on getting attachment to homeopathic remedies classified as a “delusional disorder.” It really is, but I doubt it would make the DSM given that many of us are subject to delusions like this. The problem is that this delusion involves not only a huge waste of money, but also potential damage to health. People should not be diagnosing themselves and buying nostrums when there are doctors around. And so Crislip reminds us again to stop using these fricking remedieds.
A few of the papers that Crislip mentions.
. . . . homeopathy continues to be inflicted on patients by homeopaths and naturopaths in lieu of useful therapy. Much to my ongoing wonder, research on the fiction continues with around 200 papers indexed on the PubMeds in the last year. Like my recent journey down the rat hole that is chiropractic, let’s see what those delusional homeopaths have been up to in the last year or so. Of course I am not going to discuss all 200 plus papers, just those of interest to me. You know, the crazy stuff.
And right of the chute, first reference, first paragraph, is gibberish in Homeopathy at a Turning Point [JAC: this is in the journal Homeopathy as a “letter to the editor” so it’s not a paper]:
In the Hippocratic conception, medicine is a synthesis of technique, philosophy and humanism, but in essence it is nothing more than the expression of the living being to counter predestination. Its foundation is the dose–response relationship that a living organism expresses when perturbed by an external agent. In practice, however, this interpretation is defined by the knowledge, thought, economic means, politics and religious sentiment of the community to which the organism belongs.
The author is out of Italy and perhaps this is the best translation ChatGPT could do, although the paper does not get much more coherent. For example, what to make of
These findings lead me to define a homeopathic remedy as a “clathrate of clathrates of gas molecules”, present as nanobubbles.
Well, I doubt that “peer review” in this journal means anything, though it looks as if the letter was reviewd, but the letter is long and typical of the word salad involved in defenses of homeopathy.
The Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine has a big summary of all the theoretical underpinnings of homeopathy:
Not everyone agrees that homeopathy is a “clathrate of clathrates of gas molecules”, present as nanobubbles and there have been numerous attempts to justify the delusion by a variety of mechanisms by which water could have a therapeutic effect. Some are summarized in Mapping the Theories and Models on the Mode of Action of Homeopathy: A Scoping Review and found 72 theoretical approaches to justify homeopathy but reduced them to 14 largely nonoverlapping frameworks. Those frameworks are water structures, general physics, nanostructures, mathematical models, chemistry, quantum physics, biochemistry, weak quantum theory, hormesis, quantum analogie, biophotons, complex systems, electrodynamics, and humanities.
Another tendentious paper from the journal Homeopathy. I quote the SBM article:
Why does homeopathy fail to show efficacy in clinical trials? Not because homeopathy doesn’t work, but that
In homeopathy, however, where treatment is individualised, past and present context-sensitive, and closely related to the therapeutic encounter, RCTs cannot readily capture the core principles of practice.
or so says in Improving the Relevance of Research in Homeopathy. It suggests other, less rigorous, more pragmatic, evaluations of the delusion, since
While it’s important for us to understand how homeopathy works, it’s equally important to demonstrate that homeopathy does work
This paper is a “special editorial”, and tries to dismiss randomized control trials as ways to test homeopathy. From the article (bolding is mine):
Reading these pages and having attended the recent congress of the Homeopathy Research Institute, I’ve been heartened to see an increasing quantity and quality of scientific research in homeopathy being conducted from around the world. While it’s important for us to understand how homeopathy works, it’s equally important to demonstrate that homeopathy does work and I would like to see more practice-related research submitted to Homeopathy.
As readers are well aware, clinical trials are regarded as the gold standard in medical evidence and randomised placebo-controlled trials (RCTs), in particular, are central to the concept of evidence-based medicine. In homeopathy, however, where treatment is individualised, past and present context-sensitive, and closely related to the therapeutic encounter, RCTs cannot readily capture the core principles of practice.
Indeed, the RCT model is built on assumptions that directly conflict with homeopathic principles, focusing on uniform interventions and outcomes, imposing strict eligibility criteria that exclude many potential beneficiaries, and minimising interaction between the patient and the practitioner. Such demands for homogeneity strip away the features that define homeopathy and create an artificial clinical environment for the sake of trial design,[1] a mismatch that helps explain why results from homeopathy RCTs are often equivocal or contradictory. Two systematic reviews led by this journal’s esteemed Editor found only limited convincing efficacy after methodological flaws were accounted for.[2] [3] Does this mean homeopathy is ineffective…or rather that the RCT method is an inadequate basis for forming such a conclusion?
Note the list of reasons why the “gold standard” of testing medicines cannot be used here (e.g., it “minimizes interaction between the patient and the practitioner”, which of course you want to do so there is no placebo effect). Indeed, the author (Lee Kayne) says that homeopathy has its own methods of demonstrating efficacy (they suggest case studies and “long-term cohort studies”. That, of course, is a red flag indicating quackery. From the paper:
Opponents argue the former and that, by virtue of our claim that homeopathy cannot be forced into a conventional trial framework that seeks to measure efficacy within tightly controlled parameters, we are admitting it does not work. Yet at the same time, they refuse to accept that alternative methods of investigation and reporting might better reflect the effectiveness of homeopathic practice and outcomes in the real world. So it’s not evidence unless it’s ‘their’ evidence? Except when their evidence does not produce the outcomes they desire – then they may fail to publish the results or simply note that “many RCTs can render…results of little relevance to clinical practice”.
To be sure, the journal does publish failures of the method. From the SBM article:
. . . if you have a rigorous study, like Homeopathy for Chronic Non-specific Low Back Pain: Randomised, Double-Blind, Crossover, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial Investigating the Efficacy of rigorhe Biotherapic Lumbar Vertebra (BIOVERT Trial), you find
No specific effect of the Lumbar Vertebra LM2 biotherapic was demonstrated. Improvements are likely due to non-specific effects such as the therapeutic environment, patient expectations and placebo response.
Although I could not find what the standardized homeopathic biotherapic (Lumbar Vertebra, LM2 potency) was. I was curious what was used applying the so-called Law of Similars. How does one use, say, chopping wood (gives me low back pain) as a homeopathic remedy. Not out of the question for a delusion that can prescribe moonlight. And homeopaths want to be taken seriously.
Here’s one in which Crislip cites a paper in the Journal of Ayurveda and integrative Medicine. It’s a case study, of course:
I do not think homeopaths are intentionally funny, but you have to wonder with articles like
Following a thorough case evaluation, the patient was prescribed Ruta graveolens 200CH, followed by Thuja occidentalis 200CH. The anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, and anti-cancer properties of both these medicines have been thoroughly demonstrated via many scientific experiments.
One in vitro paper each, both evaluating actual chemicals, would be two, so technically many. And where is the like cures like in the treatment?
The paper above touts homeopathy as a cure for cancer, and I believe “200CH” means the “curative” substance is diluted 1:100, and this is done 200 times in succession. Nothing remains of the original “curative” substance. This is considered “high potency”! Be sure to look at the dilution factor if you are foolish enough to buy homeopathic remedies. Also be sure to see what else is in there.
Cancer and tuberculosis? No problem for homeopathy. The last quote from the SBM paper:
Some papers seem to be written to scare those attached to reality:
Integrating Traditional Medicine with Conventional Therapies to Combat Tuberculosis: A Comprehensive Review. Yeah. Let’s treat TB with homeopathy. That’s gonna work.
and
Exploring Holistic Healing of Cancer: German New Medicine (GNM) and Homeopathic Treatment Beyond Traditional Therapies And let’s treat cancer with homeopathy, since cancer is due to emotional trauma and amenable to homeopathic treatment. OH GOD, OH MAN, OH GOD, OH MAN.
And that’s what I could suffer through, er, I mean, found for homeopathy in 2025.
I get angry when I see homeopathic “remedies” sold in presumably reputable stores, and think about the waste of money involved when poor suckers (and I include the ignorant) buy the stuff. And ignorance of science is no excuse, because it takes only a few minutes to find reputable sources online that tell you why homeopathy is worthless (e.g., here and here).



























