[Minnie]

....and Health Canada approved it.

Link

Like many Canadians who saw last week’s news article “Health Canada licensing of natural remedies ‘a joke,’ doctor says” in the lead-up to Friday’s Marketplace episode on CBC, I was very interested in learning the story behind it.

Unlike many Canadians, I wasn’t at all shocked or surprised by the outcome. This blog (and others) have been critical for years about the lack of oversight where the Natural Health Products Directorate (NHPD) is concerned. (The NHPD recently changed its name to the Natural and Non-prescription Health Products Directorate. (NNHPD))

See “Do the Natural Health Products Regulations Benefit Canadians?”, “Health Canada Gets Out a Big Rubber Stamp” & “Safe and Effective? A Consumer’s Guide to Natural Health Products” for some background.

To summarize, Marketplace applied for approval to market a homeopathic remedy they named “Nighton” to be used to treat fever and pain in infants and children. The proof of efficacy they submitted was a few photocopied pages from old homeopathic texts. They didn’t have to submit any clinical trials for this product, nor send in a sample for testing.

Not surprisingly, they were awarded approval and an official DIN-HM. Here is the listing on the Health Canada website, in all its glory.

As demonstrated by the parent focus groups they held, the average Canadian parent assumes that approved products have been thoroughly tested by Health Canada for both safety and efficacy. Needless to say it was quite eye-opening for them when host Erica Johnson revealed the truth.

Of course, the average parent doesn’t know the difference between “natural” medicine and homeopathy either, or they would have been skeptical much sooner. But why would they suspect a difference? Pharmacies display these remedies on the shelves alongside real medicine, a practice that has been widely criticized and has prompted class-action lawsuits. This episode was timely in that it aired on the heels of the recent Australian review on homeopathy which has been described as the final nail in the coffin.

Health Canada did have a response to the Marketplace episode for both Nighton and Mozi-Q: “Health Canada’s response UPDATED.”

Essentially, they dismiss concerns because these are (in their words) “low-risk” products. Clearly, they miss the main point that these products, while low-risk, inevitably end up replacing effective products, as illustrated by the recent tragic case of a child who died in Calgary after receiving homeopathy instead of antibiotics, and another Marketplace investigation into the use of homeopathic nosodes in place of vaccines.

Finally, kudos to Marketplace for the clever anagram, which sums up homeopathy perfectly:

Nighton = Nothing