Does Homeopathy Cause Death?

Homeopathy has gone through a lot of issues this year after Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided to review the regulations being implemented in this practice in response to complaints on what seems a loose policy on the approved homeopathic treatments. From being undermined by the founder of Wikipedia, to a losing battle on petitions, to being a laughing stock of the society as mere placebo, homeopathy has been doubted in its effectiveness. 2015 holds the lowest number of patients for homeopathy ever since it has been founded 200 years ago.

While all the issues were faced with a smirk, one topic is no laughing matter to both pro- and anti-homeopathy: claims of death caused by one homeopathic treatment or another.

In the past reviews of homeopathy written previously in the Peterson Group, homeopathy claims to be safer than clinical medicines and cannot, in any means, take a life. However, this claim has been faced with arguments and complaints from families of patients who now lay at rest in coffins.

As cynics have emphasized, homeopathic medicines are placebo. The effects may be a hallucination and you may have thought that you have been cured but the treatment given is created with the real ingredients, some of which composes elements which are hazardous to human health.

In another review written by the Peterson Group entitled, ‘Challenges in Preparing Homeopathic Medicines’, it is said that preparation of each homeopathic medicine requires proper observation of its intricacies and that “…Safety issues may arise if these preparations are neglected”. This in itself is being pointed out by critics to a proof that homeopathy can indeed lead to worse cases including death.

In an unfortunate account in Jakarta, Indonesia, a mother of a ten-year old boy suffering from pneumonia was arrested after she applied homeopathic treatment to her son by herself leading to the young boy’s death. According to reports, the treatment, which contains a huge amount of sulfur – a common ingredient used in homeopathy –, has poisoned the young boy only a few minutes after taking them.

A few campaigns against the practice are now being conducted by eager advocated of allopathy. One demonstrator said, “Given there is no demonstrable medical effect from using homeopathy, I’ve argued strongly that the sale of homeopathy in pharmacies is not only misleading to consumers, it is fundamentally unethical behavior from a health professional”.