Citizen Petition calls on US FDA to review regulation of homeopathic drugs

The Center for Inquiry (CFI) and its affiliate, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), both non-profit educational organizations in the USA, have filed a Citizen Petition with the Food and Drug Administration requesting that the FDA initiate rulemaking that would require over-the-counter homeopathic drugs to meet the same standards of effectiveness as non-homeopathic drugs. Although the FDA has the authority to require homeopathic drugs to undergo testing for effectiveness, it has to date declined to do so.

Homeopathic drugs were previously marketed on a relatively small scale, but their sales
have been burgeoning in the last couple decades. In 2009, consumer sales of homeopathic treatments in the USA reached $870 million, it was noted.

Homeopathic drugs are controversial because most scientists and physicians maintain there is no reliable scientific evidence to support the therapeutic claims made for these drugs. Homeopathic remedies were first developed in the late 1700s, before the advent of modern medicine. Homeopathic drugs are produced by taking a substance that is believed to cause disease symptoms and then diluting the substance repeatedly until, according to accepted laws of chemistry, there are no molecules left of the original substance. But homeopaths insist that by virtue of some scientifically inexplicable process, their drugs possess therapeutic value.