Did you know that right now in Canada, you can sell some health care products without a need for clinical trials, systematic reviews, randomized control trials, or any study that proves the efficacy of that health product? For example: all a homeopathic medicine needs in order to be licensed in Canada is to simply show that they can be found in a "homeopathic pharmacopoeia".
Homeopathic medicine, as many already know, is a belief system in which the more dilute a substance is the more potent it is. Through a process called "succussion", in a typical homeopathic remedy a substance is diluted in water down to a point where not even a single molecule of the substance is remaining. It is effectively, water.
Right now Health Canada will gives licenses to any homeopathic Natural Health Product and therapy without the need for any scientific studies. Leaving many Canadians open for victimization by unscrupulous sellers who claim their products can do anything from curing sleep disorders to curing cancer through natural health therapies. All of which requires no science based studies in order to be licensed in Canada.
As a Canadian citizen I had expected Health Canada to be protecting me and my fellow Canadians from unscientifically proven health products. I, like many of my fellow Canadians, had placed my trust in an organization that we as taxpayers were supporting. I feel now is a time needed for change, and for Health Canada to update it's laws to reflect a more evidence-based way of thinking.
