Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17644

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Smith P
Homeopath defies retraction order
Pharmacy News 2010 Apr 12
http://www.pharmacynews.com.au/article/homeopath-defies-retraction-order/515209.aspx

Full text:

The homeopath behind a website advertising homeopathic immunisation kits is ignoring demands by regulators to publish a retraction acknowledging the therapeutic claims made for its products were “misleading and unverified”.

The Homeopathy Plus! website claims homeopathic immunisation is effective against diseases ranging from poliomyelitis, chicken pox and meningococcal disease to cholera, smallpox and Japanese encephalitis.

Following an investigation, the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s Complaint Resolution Panel ruled that the website was in breach of its advertising code.

It also condemned the implication from the website that mainstream vaccinations were unsafe, suggesting it was likely to “create fear and distress in consumers by implying that vaccination is harmful”.

More than two months after the TGA ruling, Homeopathy Plus! has still not published a retraction.

Last week on the ABC’s Lateline program, Fran Sheffield, a homeopath in NSW who runs the site, said: “The research we have – and it is limited research – shows that the rate of protection that a homeopathic immunising agent provides seems to be similar and in some instances better than what the orthodox vaccines offer. In terms of safety they are way, way better than vaccines.”

She said she had not published the retraction because she disagreed with the TGA’s finding.

It follows figures which show that nearly a third of the rulings by the TGA’s Complaints Resolution Panel in 2009 were ignored by advertisers.