That's harsh. The average consumer doesn't have the time/expertise to go through scientific research on homeopathic medicine. Someone tells them "this is going to work" and they believe them. It might be sad, but not all humans are skeptical nor to they have the time or energy to invest in research. They may not even be aware they are buying homeopathic medicine. Homeopathic medicine is sold near the real medicine, once I picked up a pill bottle on the shelf (while buying another thing) because it caught my eye. I was like "I didn't know they could treat this." I turned it over to read the ingredients and that's when I noticed it was homeopathy. If I was in the store looking for a cure, I could have easily just picked up whatever I saw that was a "remedy" for what I was experiencing. My mother even once bought some homeopathic medicine because of a marketing campaign, having no idea it was homeopathy, and actually, I didn't know at first either, I didn't look closely at the label, it wasn't until later I saw it was. While purchasing medicine, do you turn over the bottle, examine each ingredient, then look up the science behind them? For example there "no good evidence for or against the effectiveness of OTC medications in acute cough"[1] and is probably just a placebo,[2] yet people take cough syrup all the time. Even heroin was developed to be a non-additive cough suppressant, and was marketed as such. [3]
That's harsh. The average consumer doesn't have the time/expertise to go through scientific research on homeopathic medicine. Someone tells them "this is going to work" and they believe them. It might be sad, but not all humans are skeptical nor to they have the time or energy to invest in research. They may not even be aware they are buying homeopathic medicine. Homeopathic medicine is sold near the real medicine, once I picked up a pill bottle on the shelf (while buying another thing) because it caught my eye. I was like "I didn't know they could treat this." I turned it over to read the ingredients and that's when I noticed it was homeopathy. If I was in the store looking for a cure, I could have easily just picked up whatever I saw that was a "remedy" for what I was experiencing. My mother even once bought some homeopathic medicine because of a marketing campaign, having no idea it was homeopathy, and actually, I didn't know at first either, I didn't look closely at the label, it wasn't until later I saw it was. While purchasing medicine, do you turn over the bottle, examine each ingredient, then look up the science behind them? For example there "no good evidence for or against the effectiveness of OTC medications in acute cough"[1] and is probably just a placebo,[2] yet people take cough syrup all the time. Even heroin was developed to be a non-additive cough suppressant, and was marketed as such. [3]
[1] http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001831/over-the-counter-otc-...
[2] http://www.uptodate.com/contents/acute-bronchitis-in-adults-...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin