The recent push to integrate ‘AYUSH’ medicinal systems into mainstream health care to achieve universal health coverage and ‘decolonise medicine’ is a pluralistic approach that would require every participating system to meet basic safety and efficacy standards. Homoeopathy does not meet these standards. But its supporters have argued in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia recently for expanding its use by citing demand and decolonisation, disregarding its flaws.
Efficacy and safety of homoeopathy
Evidence on homoeopathy’s efficacy is weak. The first carefully conducted and well-reported double-blind randomised controlled trial (RCT), the Nuremberg Salt Test (1835), noted that “the symptoms or changes which the homeopaths claimed to observe as an effect of their medicines were the fruit of imagination, self-deception and preconceived opinion — if not fraud.”
