Homeopathy - Cond - Part 2

Claims for efficacy of homeopathic treatment beyond the placebo effect are unsupported by scientific and clinical studies.^{[7][8][9][10]} While advocates point to positive results reported in high-impact journals as evidence for its efficacy, the number of such high-quality studies is small, the conclusions are not definitive, and duplication of the results, a key test of scientific validity, has proven problematic at best.^[11] Meta-analyses of homeopathy, which compare the results of many studies, face difficulty in controlling for the combination of publication bias and the fact that most of these studies suffer from serious shortcomings in their methods.^[12][13][14] Homeopathy is scientifically implausible^[15][16] and "is diametrically opposed to modern pharmaceutical knowledge."^[17] For example, the common use of remedies that are so highly diluted that they contain no molecules of the substance being diluted is in contradiction to mainstream science's basic understanding of how nature works.^[18] The lack of convincing scientific evidence supporting its efficacy^[19] and its use of remedies without active ingredients have caused homeopathy to be regarded as pseudoscience;^[20] quackery;^[21][22][23] or, in the words of a 1998 medical review, "placebo therapy at best and quackery at worst."^[24]

Homeopathic remedies are generally considered safe, with rare exceptions,^[25][26] although homeopaths have been criticized for putting patients at risk by advising them to avoid conventional medicine, such as vaccinations,^[27] anti-malarial drugs^[28] and antibiotics.^[29] In many countries, the laws that govern the regulation and testing of conventional drugs do not apply to homeopathic remedies.^[30] Current usage around the world varies from two percent of people in the United Kingdom and the United States using homeopathy in any one year^[31][32] to 15 percent in India, where it is considered part of Indian traditional medicine.^[33] In the UK, the National Health Service runs five homeopathic hospitals,^[34] and in the 1990s, between 5.9 and 7.5 percent of English family doctors are reported to have prescribed homeopathic remedies, a figure rising to at least 12 percent in Scotland.^[35] In 2005, around 100,000 physicians used homeopathy worldwide, making it one of the most popular and widely used complementary therapies.^[36]