Why is Health Canada approving useless homeopathic ‘vaccines’?

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Why is Health Canada licensing homeopathic "vaccines"?

That question, posed in this month's edition of the British Columbia Medical Journal, is a good one. And the answer is disturbing.

Let's begin with the basics. When Health Canada approves a product, the public assumes is it safe and efficacious. It is reasonable to do so. It's like the official seal of approval.

In Canada, natural health products are now regulated. They get a drug information number (DIN), just like prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications. Homeopathic products are given a DIN-HM number. "A DIN-HM means that a product has been authorized for sale in Canada as safe and effective when used according to the instructions on the label," says Health Canada.

But, as Lloyd Oppel writes in the BCMJ, Health Canada has granted a DIN-HM number to 10 products marketed as homeopathic influenza vaccines, or influenzinum. There are also homeopathic "vaccines" licensed for prevention of polio, measles and pertussis. These products are also called nosodes, homeopathic remedies prepared from a pathological specimen.

The problem here is that these products are complete hokum. There is no evidence they prevent infectious disease transmission. They are not vaccines in any way, shape or form. Nosodes are nonsense.

Let's do a quick overview of the science.

A vaccine works by exposing a person to a tiny amount of a pathogen (virus or bacterium) to trigger an immune system reaction. (And, with most modern vaccines, the pathogen is "killed" – meaning it is not even infectious, it is just designed to trick the immune system.)

Homeopathy is based on the notion that you can treat "like with like," meaning if a substance causes symptoms in large doses, it can be used in small amounts to treat those same symptoms. In other words, to create a homeopathic vaccine, you take the pathological specimen and then perform "ultra-high dilutions" to make it "non-toxic."

The dilution also makes it impossible to mount an immune response. It's essentially water.

Health Canada licenses these products because they are deemed to be safe.

As Hank Campbell, the creator of Science 2.0 and co-author of the book Science Left Behind, writes: "Well, of course they are safe. It's magic water. No one should be spending money on that."

But people do spend money on it, in part because it has the Health Canada seal of approval. It is assumed to be effective.

When it comes to effectiveness, Health Canada splits hairs to an absurd degree. It argues that it approves products, not the underlying practice. It also allows makers of natural products to tip-toe around regulations by playing word games on labels.

Take a product like influenzinum. The label does not say "vaccine" because the product does not meet that standard of evidence. Rather, it is marketed as an alternative to traditional influenza vaccination. And it is embraced by anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists.

The standards for demonstrating that something is an effective "alternative" to vaccination are pretty lax. Worse yet, the legislation grants an exemption to homeopaths who do their own mixing, and to products specifically requested by clients; essentially there is no need to demonstrate these products are effective. Wishful thinking is enough.

Homeopathic "vaccines" are just the tip of the iceberg. The group Skeptic North has published a long list of dubious homeopathic products that have been approved by Health Canada.

They ask, rhetorically, if there is anything the Natural Health Products directorate of Health Canada will not approve?

The answer to that question, sadly, seems to be "No." In the name of consumer "choice" and "freedom," it seems that anything goes.

As Mr. Campbell notes, Health seems to have lost sight of the fact that its decisions should be based on evidence and it should not be approving products that mislead the public, no matter how benign.

"No evidence-based governing body should be conflating 'it won't harm you' with 'it is medicine.'"

The worst outcome of all, of course, is not that people use homeopathic vaccines (after all, it's just water), it is that they shun vaccines that do work.

This embracing of nonsense can be, quite literally, sickening, or even deadly. And there is no diluting that reality.

André Picard is a health columnist for The Globe and Mail.