[karajorma]

A few years back I posted an article about babies dying as a result of their parents giving them a completely untested homeopathic remedy made from deadly nightshade. It seems like that wasn't enough of a warning for homeopaths to at lease not directly do harm to people with their bull****.

Homeopaths sell injections containing strychnine, lead, mercury. Seriously

The US Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday announced a crackdown on four homeopathic companies selling injectable products said to contain highly toxic substances, including lead, mercury, deadly nightshade, and strychnine.

These products—some meant to be injected directly into the bloodstream—are illegal and pose “serious risks to patient health,” the FDA said in an announcement. The agency also made public the warning letters it sent to each of the sellers, all dated June 11.

“These unapproved injectable drugs are particularly concerning because they inherently present greater risks to patients because of how they are administered,” Donald Ashley, director of the Office of Compliance in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “These products are further concerning given that they are labeled to contain potentially toxic ingredients intended for injection directly into the body. These warning letters reflect our continued commitment to patient safety.”

Homeopathy is a pseudoscience that involves the erroneous belief that “like cures like”—meaning that if taking a toxic substance causes similar symptoms to a disease, the substance can be used to treat that disease. Homeopaths also believe that extreme dilutions of toxic substances increase their healing potency. As such, many homeopathic products are so diluted, they no longer contain a single molecule of the ingredient—they are just water. Still, some homeopaths absurdly claim that water molecules have “memory” of the ingredients they think are curative.

Because many homeopathic products are nothing more than water and fillers, they’ve often been disregarded as harmless placebos. But there have been a growing number of cases in recent years of homeopathic products that have been improperly diluted or diluted with contaminated water containing disease-causing microbes. Many of the products were intended for children and infants.
Dubious dilutions

For instance, in 2016, the FDA reported that homeopathic teething gels and tablets had been linked to the deaths of 10 babies. There were reports of more than 400 other infants being sickened by the products, some suffering seizures. The products were supposed to have highly diluted amounts of belladonna, aka deadly nightshade, but FDA testing revealed elevated and wildly variable amounts of the toxic substance.

The cases make the idea of homeopathic products meant to be injected directly into the body far more worrisome. Injected into the bloodstream, they can “bypass some of the body's key natural defenses against toxins, toxic ingredients, and dangerous organisms that can cause serious and life-threatening harm,” the FDA wrote.

The four companies warned by the FDA are Hevert Pharmaceuticals LLC; MediNatura Inc.; 8046255 Canada Inc., doing business as Viatrexx; and World Health Advanced Technologies Ltd.

The companies sold a variety of products that claimed to help treat a hodgepodge of conditions from muscle and joint pain, waning immune responses, and “nervous disorders,” all the way to tuberculosis and hepatitis B and C.

Many of the products were said to contain toxic substances, including belladonna, mercurius solubilis (mercury), and plumbum aceticum (lead). Some were said to contain nux vomica, which the FDA noted contains strychnine, a potent poison used to kill rodents.

The FDA noted in its letter to the company doing business as Viatrexx that an FDA inspection concluded that the company had “failed to establish and follow appropriate written procedures that are designed to prevent microbiological contamination of drug products purporting to be sterile, and that include validation of all aseptic and sterilization processes.”

The companies have 15 days from the receipt of the letters to correct the violations or else the agency threatened to take legal actions, including seizure and injunction.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/homeopaths-sell-injections-containing-strychnine-lead-mercury-seriously/?comments=1&start=80


WHAT. THE. ****.

[starlord]

So it’s fine when in homeopathic treatments but somehow in vaccines it’s a conspiracy to kill us all?

That makes sense...

Take possession of all their capital, reinvest in research. My 2 cents.

Oh, and someone please bring Boiron labs down as well.

[Mito [PL]]

Homeopathy enthusiasts succumbing to Darwin's theory?

[starlord]

I guess it’s fine. We had a great need for jilly juice clones flooding the medical market.

What the hell is wrong with people nowadays?

[karajorma]

Homeopathy enthusiasts succumbing to Darwin's theory?

Yep. But the problem is that they often decide to give their dumb nonsense cures to their kids. And no one wants to see that.

[Nightmare]

Homeopathy enthusiasts succumbing to Darwin's theory?

Yep. But the problem is that they often decide to give their dumb nonsense cures to their kids. And no one wants to see that.

So in a way they put Darwin's theory to maximum by removing their children from the gene pool as well

[karajorma]

True, but let's not subscribe to the method of improving humanity that Joesph Mengele also subscribed to.

[0rph3u5]

Except there is little biological about why people chose to use homoepathy. I really wish I had an english language source to quote here, but the thesis goes like this: two of the major contributing factors to the appeal of homeopathy are a percieved lack of affirmative options when in medical care and perception that the gain of social prestige is increased if it is belated (i.e. vindication being a superior form of acknowledgement).

The first one cuts the heart of how medicine is parcticed or is percieved to be parcticed - and there is a good case to do that anyway, esspecially now as dealing with COVID-19 lays the faults in every state's health care systems bare. There is clearly an expectation of care both created culuturally and not being met physically; mix in the all the problems with the economics (both time and money) of health care and how these are encountered by laypeople (not just in terms of media reports but also, e.g. in contact with overworked and/or distracted professionals)...

[starlord]

The thing is technically the medical corps is at a disadvantage here: there are only 24hours in a day.

Homeopathy offers this amount of support because it can, given that there are comparatively fewer people going in a homeotherapy cabinet compared to, say, a GP or hospital service.

[Vidmaster]

I was brought up by a mother who believed homeopathic medical products were more "natural" (probably opposed to "chemical" or "artifical") and it took me 20 years to reconsider this stance.

**Why?**

Quite simply, I never actually reseached what that word even meant. It was always framed as "homeopathic = good" and when it is presented as a fact for so long, you basically have to actively start investigating. Especially considering homeopathic products are covered by German health insurances for various terrible and mostly historical reasons, which a whole admission process existing in parallel to proper, science-based processes.
This whole thing is comparable to how specific "trendy food" is often considered healthy by default Yes, there are in fact scientific reasons why spelt flour has its advantages but buying cookies made with spelt flour is still a mostly un-healthy thing to do.


The only thing to do is to tell people, getting the message out there. Like sharing videos like this one (german): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU3sAYRl4-k