Against all odds-the persistent popularity of homeopathy

Abstract

The use of homeopathy is remarkably popular. Popularity, however, is not an arbiter in a scientific discourse. In fact, the assumptions underlying homeopathy violate fundamental laws of nature. Homeopathy does not have any explanatory power and fails other criteria established for a scientific approach. Two large-scale efforts have recently documented that in spite of a plethora of clinical trials there is no evidence that homeopathic remedies have any therapeutic effect, which goes beyond that of a placebo. Relaxed regulations and lack of scientific literacy and of health education allow for continuous thriving of homeopathy. While the tide may be changing on the regulatory side, health education of the general public is presumably more important to support informed decision making by patients. Otherwise, the responsible patient, who is posited to decide on the medical choices, remains a convenient legal fiction.

Keywords: Clinical trials; Evidence-based medicine; Homeopathy; Placebo; Responsible patient.

Fig. 1

Prevalence of “complementary/alternative” medicine in Europe. Data are from a survey conducted in 2014 [7] and are based on 40,185 interviews of a representative sample of the population (sample size ≥1500/country). The prevalence (% of the population/year using acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal remedies, homeopathy, osteopathy and spiritual healing) is plotted for 20 European countries

Fig. 2

Correlation in the prevalence of different forms of “complementary/alternative” medicine in Europe. Each symbol represents the prevalence in the individual European countries shown in Fig. 1. Statistically significant correlations are only seen between the prevalence of homeopathy and of chiropractic and between the prevalence of acupuncture and of osteopathy. The blue lines indicate the 95% confidence interval

Fig. 3

Correlation between scientific literacy and the prevalence of homeopathy in six European countries of comparable socioeconomic status. The percentage of the population with high scientific literacy according to Eurobarometer 1992 [58] was used as a measure of scientific literacy in the individual countries (B Belgium, DK Denmark, F France, G Germany, NL The Netherlands, UK The United Kingdom). The blue lines indicate the 95% confidence interval