Look at the headlines:
Boots: Homeopathic Remedies Please Customers Rather Than Cure
Distrust me, I’m a Pharmacist (registration required):
So why are so many nonsensical products available from Boots, our trusted family chemist? Has Boots become UK’s largest purveyor of placebos? Are pharmacists shopkeepers, only out to make a profit, or healthcare professionals keen to improve public health?
The NHS should not waste our cash on homeopathy:
Placebos, including homeopathy, don’t work as well as the therapies that have been tested against them and been found to be significantly more effective. The NHS has a fixed budget each year: if £4 million is spent on homeopathy, it means that £4 million is not available for more clinically effective treatments.
And check out this open letter to Boots from Merseyside Skeptics.
The Boots brand is synonymous with health care in the United Kingdom. Your website speaks proudly about your role as a health care provider and your commitment to deliver exceptional patient care. For many people, you are their first resource for medical advice; and their chosen dispensary for prescription and non-prescription medicines. The British public trusts Boots.
However, in evidence given recently to the Commons Science and Technology Committee, you admitted that you do not believe homeopathy to be efficacious. Despite this, homeopathic products are offered for sale in Boots pharmacies – many of them bearing the trusted Boots brand.
Not only is this two-hundred-year-old pseudo-therapy implausible, it is scientifically absurd. The purported mechanisms of action fly in the face of our understanding of chemistry, physics, pharmacology and physiology. As you are aware, the best and most rigorous scientific research concludes that homeopathy offers no therapeutic effect beyond placebo, but you continue to sell these products regardless because “customers believe they work”. Is this the standard you set for yourselves?
The majority of people do not have the time or inclination to check whether the scientific literature supports the claims of efficacy made by products such as homeopathy. We trust brands such as Boots to check the facts for us, to provide sound medical advice that is in our interest and supply only those products with a demonstrable medical benefit.
We don’t expect to find products on the shelf at our local pharmacy which do not work.
Not only are these products ineffective, they can also be dangerous. Patients may delay seeking proper medical assistance because they believe homeopathy can treat their condition. Until recently, the Boots website even went so far as to tell patients that “after taking a homeopathic medicine your symptoms may become slightly worse,” and that this is “a sign that the body’s natural energies have started to counteract the illness”. Advice such as this directly encourages patients to wait before seeking real medical attention, even when their condition deteriorates.
We call upon Boots to withdraw all homeopathic products from your shelves. You should not be involved in the sale of ineffective products, because your customers trust you to do what is right for their health. Surely you agree that your commitment to excellent patient care is better served by supplying only those products whose claims can be substantiated by rigorous scientific research? Or do you really believe that Boots should be in the business of selling placebos to the sick and the injured?
The support lent by Boots to this quack therapy contributes directly to its acceptance as a valid medical treatment by the British public, acceptance it does not warrant and support it does not deserve. Please do the right thing, and remove this bogus therapy from your shelves.
I would not be surprised to see pharmacists bumped off the top of the “Most Trusted” professional list, as a result of press like this.
Are pharmacists going to take responsibility for their own profession, advocate for science-based pharmacy, and stop selling homeopathy? Or will we be complacent, until we’re called out for allowing placebos to sit on pharmacy shelves?
Posted by Scott 
Posted by Scott 
Posted by Scott
One of my first encounters with “alternative” health was the “pH balance” idea. A customer approached me at the pharmacy counter and asked for “pH test strips.” I asked him about kidney stones, diabetes – the usual reasons you test your urine. He told me he was healthy, and he was just monitoring his body’s “acid balance” and that he kept his body “alkali” to be healthy. “You can’t change your body’s pH, sir – if your pH changes, you’ll die,” I explained, in my most reassuring pharmacist voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snapped at me, “I adjust my pH all the time.” I handed over the urine testing strips, rang it into the cash register, and wondered, what is this guy talking about? Where did he get the idea he could manipulate his body’s acidity? 


Recommended Skeptical References
December 1, 2009I’m a voracious reader, and I thought I’d share some of my favorite books over the past year that have challenged, inspired, or enriched me. Whether you’re a health professional or not, I strongly recommend you put these on your reading list. They’ve helped me a lot in refining my philosophy about pharmacy practice, and improving my skeptical viewpoint.
Those are my recommendations for anyone interested in pseudoscience, skepticism, and critical thinking. If you have any related books you’d recommend as a must-read, please list them in the comments. I’m compiling my “to read” list for 2010.