A homeopathic wolf in sheep’s clothing
The US Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, apparently turns a blind eye when it comes to homeopathic remedies. Why? Perhaps for the simple reason that there is nothing to regulate. An active ingredient so diluted with water that not a single molecule of it is left, added to a sugar pill and then packaged up in a shiny box – where is the harm in that?
Aside from the cases where patients take homeopathic treatments, which show no efficacy whatsoever in scientific trials, while their conditions go untreated by actual medicine with proven therapeutic benefits, there is another reason to take these so called medications seriously: some homeopathic drugs do actually contain active ingredients.
Zicam is one such example and just yesterday the FDA published an advisory that people not use their range of nasal products. The manufacturer, Matrixx Initiatives Inc., have also recalled the products in question. The reason: you may be at risk of losing your sense of smell.
Mistakes are made and recalls happen, but this case highlights the inadequate regulation of products which claim to be medicinal. Unfortunately, the FDA does not expect homeopathic remedies to meet the same standards as prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs.
In this case the product was labelled homeopathic and it might fairly be presumed to contain nothing at all. Not so. It contains a substantial amount of zinc, the only active ingredient, for which there is some scientific evidence to suggest it may be beneficial in treating the symptoms of the common cold. How they get away with classing this as homeopathic I do not know, because the pseudo-scientific thinking behind homeopathy is that something that can cause the ailment, such as caffeine for a sleep disorder, be diluted until it disappears altogether and the remaining water constitutes the cure.
In light of many complaints about Zicam nasal products, it came to the attention of the FDA that they did not qualify to be waived on through as homeopathic treatments usually are, but are actually misbranded drugs which require FDA approval before they can be released to market. The jury is still out regarding their safety, but at the very least I hope this case steers the unblinking eye of scrutiny to focus clearly on the whole homeopathic industry.
