Center for Inquiry sues CVS, challenging homeopathic remedy sales

THE CENTER FOR INQUIRY is suing CVS challenging what it says is the company's deceptive marketing of homeopathic remedies as medically valid treatments. / BLOOMBERG NEWS FILE PHOTO/CHRISTOPHER LEE
THE CENTER FOR INQUIRY is suing CVS challenging what it says is the company's deceptive marketing of homeopathic remedies as medically valid treatments. / BLOOMBERG NEWS FILE PHOTO/CHRISTOPHER LEE

WOONSOCKET — The nonprofit Center for Inquiry is suing CVS Health Corp. and its subsidiary CVS Pharmacy, challenging the companies’ product placement, labeling, and marketing of homeopathic products as deceptively representing the substances as equivalent to science-based medicines and effective treatments.

The suit, filed in District of Columbia’s Superior Court, alleges, “a continuing pattern of fraudulent, deceptive, and otherwise improper marketing practices engaged in by Defendants in the District of Columbia, both through its physical, brick-and-mortar stores, and through its online sales presence, regarding the marketing and sale of homeopathic products,” in the District of Columbia, according to the document.

Specifically, the suit claims that, “Defendants deceptively marketed homeopathic products, including both their own line of homeopathic products and those manufactured and sold under the labels of other producers to District of Columbia residents by deliberately fostering the impression through display and placement that they are effective to treat particular complaints, and that they are comparable in efficacy, and regulation to science-based medical products.”

Homeopathy, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, part of the National Institutes for Health, is a medical system developed in Germany more than 200 years ago, based on two unproven theories: Like cures like – the idea that a substance that causes a disease can also cure it; and the “Law of minimum dose,” the theory that the lower the dose of medication, the more effective it becomes.

- Advertisement -

Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, homeopathic drug products are subject to the same requirements related to approval, adulteration, and misbranding. Homeopathic prescription and nonprescription drug products have been manufactured and distributed without FDA approval under the enforcement policies in FDA’s Compliance Policy Guide  since 1988.

Oscillococcinum, for instance, a highly diluted homeopathic preparation manufactured from wild duck heart and liver, is sold on the CVS website as a cold remedy. A 2015 NCBI study concluded, “There is insufficient good evidence to enable robust conclusions to be made about Oscillococcinum in the prevention or treatment of influenza and influenza‐like illness.”

CVS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Rob Borkowski is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Borkowski@PBN.com.

No posts to display