The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued an enforcement policy statement requiring the marketers of homeopathic products to “effectively communicate the lack of scientific evidence” on product labels (http://tinyurl.com/h8yzsla). This is the first time in the USA that homeopathic products will legally require a label stating that they don’t work.
Numerous submissions to the FTC report cited the National Health and Medical Research Council’s 2015 Statement on Homeopathy (http://tinyurl.com/zztzm4q), which concluded there is no reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective for any health conditions.
At the time, the NHMRC review copped some flak from both sides. Some evidence-based proponents argued that spending a couple of million dollars to confirm what we already knew was a waste, while homeopathy advocates argued that the report’s conclusion was, well, just wrong. This concrete outcome – regulating the world’s most profitable homeopathy market – must now provide a fillip to the hard-working NHMRC reviewers.
Although the evidence overwhelmingly supports the new FTC policy, much of their report deals with legal issues, possibly pre-empting industry arguments that regulating advertising...
