Guardian reports that Boots -the most popular high street pharmacy chain, is “becoming the country’s largest seller of quack medicine“! Finally someone reported on this…

Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University launched an attack against Boots for

[...] breaching ethical guidelines drawn up by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, by failing to tell customers that its homeopathic medicines contain no active ingredients and are ineffective in clinical trials.

I think it is the first time I see three true statements in one sentence regarding quackery in a mainstream newspaper! “Breaching ethical guidelines”, “no active ingredients” and “ineffective in clinical trials”! But Ernst continues:

Very few people are aware that the underlying principles of homeopathy are totally scientifically implausible, and even fewer people are aware that the trials show it doesn’t do anything

and for the grand finale, the bottom line of non-scientific evidence based medicine (emphasis mine):

People could end up harming themselves if they think one of these products will help them or their child, when in fact it’s only a placebo. It’s certainly a rip-off and they could be losing valuable time to see a doctor. This makes a fool out of evidence-based medicine, it is back to the dark ages

Back to the dark ages of mysticism, supernatural “life forces”, irrational belief systems etc. That’s what it is, and thankfully there are people like Ernst that are alerting the public over the dangers of irrational health systems.

But what is Boots’ response to this?

Homeopathy is recognised by the NHS, and many doctors and other health professionals see it as a useful option for medical treatment, [...] In addition, many of our customers also choose to use homeopathy

Sorry but it is not enough for some doctors to “see” it as a useful option. It has to actually “be” a useful option as well. And this is where personal opinion goes out of the window and science enters. And science has said many times over: “no, homeopathy is quackery”… I wonder why people will not listen.