Boiron Laboratories Disputes British Journal's Editorial on ...( NEWTOWN SQUARE Pa. Nov. 27 /- In ...),Health

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa., Nov. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- In its continued educational and research efforts for the advancement of homeopathy, Boiron Laboratories disputes an editorial comment published in The Lancet's Nov. 17, 2007 issue on the basis that its author has misinterpreted results of clinical trials on homeopathic medicines. (1-5)

The British medical journal features an editorial by Ben Goldacre on the "Benefits and Risks of Homeopathy." In his commentary, Goldacre suggests that the results from five large meta-analyses indicate that homeopathy produces no statistically significant benefit over placebo.

However, a thorough review of the studies' research evidence indicates positive principle conclusions in favor of homeopathy over placebo as quoted as follows:

1. The Kleijnen, et al(1) study states that "the evidence of clinical

trials is positive but not sufficient to draw any definite

conclusions."

2. The Boissel, et al(2) study reports that "[f]or 17 retained

comparisons, for each method used, the result is a p-value well below

.0001. This means that in at least one test, the null hypothesis (lack

of effect of homeopathy) must be rejected. ... The number of

significant results is not likely due to chance alone."

3. The Linde, et al(3) study concludes that "[t]he results of the

available randomized trials suggest that individualized homeopathy has

an effect over placebo."

4. The Cucherat, et al(4) study concludes that "[t]here is evidence that

homeopathic treatments are more effective than placebo."

5. The Shang, et al(5) study indicates that "21 (19 percent) homeopathic

trials and nine (8 percent) conventional medicine tests were of higher

quality. Most odds ratios indicated a beneficial effect of the

intervention. Heterogeneity of trial results was less pronounced for

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