Homeopathic treatments are not medicines and should only be sold with warnings there is no evidence they work beyond the placebo effect, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has said.


The RPS statement, in response to an MHRA consultation on the products, warns that using the word medicine to describe a homeopathic product “may be viewed by patients as legitimising homeopathic products as medicines, which they are clearly not”.


The RPS calls for labels on homeopathic products to be required to state that any claims of efficacy “are not based on the same stringent testing requirements applied to conventional medicines”.


RPS chief science advisor Jayne Lawrence said homeopathy “must never be used for the treatment of serious medical conditions”.

Ms Lawrence said: “Given the lack of clinical and scientific evidence to support homeopathy, the RPS does not endorse homeopathy as a form of treatment. The RPS strongly believes that any advertising for any homeopathic product, regardless of its licensing status needs to include the statements that there is no scientific evidence for homeopathy nor any evidence to support the clinical efficacy of homeopathic products beyond a placebo effect.”Download the full RPS statement here