I was looking for a homeopathy joke to start this episode, but the thing is, once you’ve heard 0.0000000000000000000000000001 of them, you’ve heard them all.

Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast, the Internets courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. Here, our host uses his experience as both an attorney and an atheist to put religion on trial. We solemnly swear that it is the most informative, educational, and entertaining jury duty you will ever do. And now it’s time for the cross examiner.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. My name is the cross examiner.

I am an attorney. I am an atheist, and I am alarmed. I’m alarmed by the rise of christian nationalism in the United States and abroad.

And more importantly, I’m alarmed by the.

Massive amounts of misinformation that are powering that rise. This is the third part of my.

Series on homeopathy, which really is backed by a ton of misinformation that I’m seeking to clarify here. Um, if you haven’t watched the last.

Two episodes, please do watch those.

You’ll see that these, ah, are the.

Beginning episodes of my second season.

I try to start each season with something that’s, uh, what I call common ground.

Something that regardless of your religious affiliation, your political affiliation, any sort of views.

You may have, I think we can all agree that the evidence is insurmountable.

Demonstrating, uh, that people are getting fooled.

And harmed by, uh, homeopathy. And in my last season, my common ground was about tort reform. Um, these are things that shouldn’t really be on the political spectrum.

The evidence is so overwhelming.

So the theme here is, if we.

Can all agree to use rationality and reasoning and evidence in these areas of.

Our lives, shouldn’t we use them in all areas our lives?

This is the best method that we have to discern fact from fiction, the.

Scientific method, evidence based policy making, things like that.

So when we ended part two, I.

Was about to explain the relationship between.

FDA and homeopathy, and I had just taken 240 or so pain relief pills.

And was had overdosed. And we’ve got to see what’s the.

End result and what happens when I contact the poison control center.

So please join me for this, the part three. I hope you enjoy it, and I’ll see you at the end. Okay, so, homeopathy, what is it?

Homeopathy. Homeopor. The same pathy for pathology, for sickness. Same sickness.

And what this means is the theory that if a lot of a substance, a certain disease, a, uh, certain, um, bacteria, uh, or viruses, make you have.

Certain symptoms or get sick, then a tiny amount of that thing will make you.

Well, where does this come from? You might say, well, I’m glad you asked, because that’s what we’re going to talk about. There was this man named Samuel Hahnemann. Uh, this is one of the most.

Notorious people in the history of medicine.

All right, so what Hahnemann was doing.

In 1796 was translating a work by the chemist William Cullen into German.

And Cullen’s theory was that sechona, uh, uh, which is in a plant, a flowering plant, there’s a lot of different species within it, uh, uh, cured malaria because it was bitter. This was the, because it was bitter.

This was the state of medicine during Hanneman’s time. It’s 17 hundreds right around just after.

The formation of the United States, 1796. And medicine was horrible. This guy’s writing a paper saying that sechona cures malaria because it’s bitter. And Hahnemann looks around at the state of medicine and he sees, uh, uh, horrible conditions. Medicine, uh, doesn’t work.

We’re still using humors and we’re still.

Using leeches, and we’re still, we’re still.

Guessing everywhere, and we’re not getting great results.

So Hahnemann ingested some bark specifically to investigate what would happen. And he experienced fever.

He self reported that he experienced.

We don’t know about this. He self reported that he experienced fever.

Shivering and joint pains, which are symptoms similar to those of malaria itself.

The symptoms themselves. From that, he became convinced that to be effective, you must produce symptoms of.

The disease that you are going to treat. This is what led to the concept.

Of homeopathy, same suffering pathos, you know, disease or suffering homeopathos, homeopathy. So this is what he turned into something that he called the law of.

Similars, which was shortened to, like, cures.

Like things that cause a certain type of symptom are things that will cure.

That symptom in very small doses. I don’t know how, quite frankly, he.

Got to the, you need them in very small doses, probably because he was worried, but they would kill people if.

He gave them a bunch of stuff.

That really did anything. So he became, uh, uh. He, he developed this system that he calls provings.

They’re not experiments, they’re not tests. They use the word provings.

And you’re going to see this throughout homeopathy, the terminology, like I said, it’s.

All part of the same thing where.

They’Re trying to look scientific. They call their tests or experiments. They don’t really do experiments.

They’re just people sitting in the corner thinking things up, imagining things.

But they call themselves provings.

And they call their drugs remedies. That’s the official name for it. And they call their.

Their list of drugs a, um.

Materia medica pura. That’s the name of the book. In Latin.

Fancy Latin. This was back still in the late 17 hundreds.

Early 18 hundreds when people fell for that shit, right?

That lawyers would write things using all.

Sorts of big fancy words to make.

Themselves seem important and try to create a, uh.

Basically do gatekeeping. I know what this means. You don’t. You have to pay me, a lawyer.

To use a bunch of fancy words.

To say the magic words to get.

You out of trouble.

Which is nothing could be further from the truth.

Which is why today, lawyers and doctors and everybody are really trying to keep.

The language simple, speak in the common tongue.

But back then, when they started this.

He wanted it to be all in Latin.

He wanted to seem like they were real doctors. So he just came up with this method out of thin air. He just hypothesized it and then just.

Started writing about it.

And people believed it. So what is approving?

Approving is just, hey, I tasted this.

Thing and it tastes like, you know, it made me a little have a fever. So this will cure any disease where one of the symptoms is a fever. That’s it. That’s homeopathy.

That combined with, uh, dilutions. So let’s talk about the dilution.

So the way that they make homeopathic treatments is you take a substance, let’s say in this case, we’ve got in my drug, hypericum perforatum, which is St. John’s wort. So you get a tiny bit of St. John’s wort and you liquefy it, you crush it up, mortal pestle, whatever you do. And you get some amount and you drop it into a liter of pure water.

You shake it up and dissolve it.

So it’s suspended or, um, in the water.

And then you take one drop.

I don’t know if it’s officially 1.

ML or what they do with the. What the ratio is, but then you take one drop of it and you.

Put that drop into another pure, uh, liter of water.

And you shake that up. And then you take one drop of that water, the second batch, and put it into a third pure liter of water.

And you do this over and over.

And over again until you reach the preferred dilution level. So you may remember on my package.

When I described what the product was.

It was hypericum perforatum. 30 C. You can see it there.

At the end, uh, under the big, big, uh, letters under the m. M, it says 30 c. So I’m going to pull up the list because I need a chart. I can’t remember everything here. So 30 C means we did what I just described 30 times, right?

I think.

No, 60 times is 30 c. So, uh, we did what I just described 60 times. Take a drop, put it into a.

Liter, shake that up. Take one drop, put it into a new leader, and keep in mind, each.

New liter is pure water. There’s nothing in it.

Take a drop, do that 60 times.

So the ratio of solution to original.

Ingredient is ten to the negative 60.

That’s a zero point. 60 zeros and a 160 zeros and a one.

This is the dilution that Hanuman originally said.

This is where we should be at for most purposes. So to give you an idea, I’m trying to come up with ways to.

Describe how ridiculous that is.

Okay. Um, to show you that there’s, by the end, when you get to the.

60Th time, when you get to 30 c, statistically speaking, there’s not one molecule of St. John’s wort left in that medicine. And here’s what Wikipedia lists, and I.

Think this is a really good one. So put on your thinking caps and try to understand what this is about.

To say as to what it would.

Take to get a single molecule of.

The original material of St. John’s wort into your body if you had only this 30 c solution pills available.

So, on average, this would mean that if you gave 2 billion doses.

So 2 billion of these pills, I just ate, right, every second. If I ate 2 billion of them every second.

And you did that for 6 billion people. So 6 billion people eating 2 billion pills every single second for 4 billion years, then you would be.

It would be more likely than not that one of those people, at some point during that process, had ingested one molecule of st. John’s wort. That’s what we’re talking about.

On year 3 billion.

3,999,999,999.

And that year, with 6 billion people.

Taking 2 billion doses every single second.

For just under 4 billion years, it would be less likely that anybody had one molecule of st. John’s wort in their body. You’d flip a coin, um, um, at right on the mark to see whether or not you even got one molecule. That should sort of be the end of it, right?

That people who can do math and.

Understand physics and medicine and science, uh, uh, should look at that and go, that’s ridiculous.

This is water.

This is nothing else. And that’s why I was felt safe.

Taking 240 pills in one dose and, and overdosing on this substance because there’s nothing in here. They, they call it hypericum perforatum. And believe it or not, I believe them. I believe that they’ve got a lab where they take one little tiny drop of purify, uh, of liquefied St. John’s.

Wort and drop it into, uh, a liter and drop, shake that up, drop.

One of those into a liter, shake that up, and do that 60 times to come up with 30 c solution. And then they take that solution and.

Put a drop on it on these.

Sugar pills, and then they bottle them.

Up, put a safety seal around them.

Put on a drug fact warning label on the back, and sell them to.

People as pain relief for $25 a pack. That’s, I believe that they are doing exactly what they’re telling you through this.

Coded language by saying hypericum perforatum, 30.

C, and hpus as their, um, drug, uh, name. Problem is, if you can do the math and if you understand science, you know, it’s just water. So, so how, the question then, in my mind is they’re marketing this as.

Being effective and safe for treatment of pain. That’s a drug claim under the FDA act. If you are claiming to treat, prevent.

Cure a disease, right, or, uh, and a disease is widely defined in, in the act, it can be, hey, I’ve got nerve pain.

That is a disease.

It’s not like it has to have a name. And like malaria is the only, the is a disease.

It can be any problem or issue.

With the human body, right.

Under the act, that means that they have to file out a new drug application, right? Wrong.

You don’t. As long as you are selling homeopathy.

That was originally listed in Hahnemann’s original set of works that describe traditional, quote unquote, that he just made up homeopathic treatments. You do not have to file a new drug application, which means you do.

Not have to prove that your drug is safe and effective.

How could that be? You might mind, why don’t you, is the FDA insane?

Are there administrators there going, eh, uh, we don’t have the time, we don’t have the money. It’s not a priority. Nope. I’ve got a little story to tell.

You that may sound familiar at this.

Point in the, in the podcast.

And the reason it may sound familiar.

Is because it has to deal with people using power that we grant them.

To their own advantage at the cost of the health and safety of the american people and the people, uh, in.

The world at large. So this is why we have to talk about the FDA. So we’ve, we heard about the very high level, if you want to go into it. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on in homeopathy, and later on we may hear how it’s, it’s turned religious. Like there are now mystical and woo aspects to it that are beyond just the science craziness. Like there’s a method when you dilute from leader to leader, that you strike.

The container and have a chant that you say.

And there’s even the sort of some christian stuff getting into homeopathy now.

But let’s just stick with the original.

The science level that, hey, this is just water. How are we able to market it.

With these false claims?

Why is FDA not shutting all of this down? So let’s talk about the author of.

The Food and Drug and Cosmetic act of 1938.

Oh, and I forgot, I forgot one key part. You may be asking. Um, how do the homeopaths, the fraudsters.

Explain how this works?

Right?

If we can do the math and.

We can see that this is just water, there’s nothing in it, how do they explain what’s going on?

What is in the scientific term, the method of action?

The method of action is, is when the drug companies say, hey, I’ve got a new pain relief thing.

The way it works is this molecule attaches to the pain receptors in the.

Human body at a, ah, high.

There’s a higher affinity for this molecule.

Than other things, which means when it’s attached to the pain receptor, the, the.

Human feels less pain.

So this drug will stop them from.

Feeling pain by taking up a space on the pain receptor in the human nerve system.

That is an example of a mechanism m of action or method of action. Uh, do you get that from homeopathy? Uh, no, from homeopathics, I should say. No, you don’t. They maintain, they argue that water has.

Essential properties in them, that somehow water.

Has memory, that if you put St. John’s wort in the water, the water.

Somehow has now has this essential property.

Of St. John’s wort infused into it and that it, quote, remembers, right? It remembers what was in it. Now, we are not going to go into, why does it remember all of the herbs that you’ve put in it, but it doesn’t remember all of the poop and pee and all of that stuff that’s been in it, and toxic.

Chemicals and waste and, uh, all sorts.

Of things like your water. The water that you have in your.

Body has been through lots of other human bodies in the history.

Like, you probably have some water in.

You that was in King Henry VIII. Some molecules, right? That, statistically speaking, is likely.

So they don’t explain that, but, um, they even since Hahnemann. Hahnemann spoke of a spirit like force, a healing force, and this is where.

This woo, this religion comes into.

So they don’t go beyond that. They just say, eh, basically they’re saying there is this mystical spirit like force.

That causes water to remember what’s been in it.

And so it remembers the, uh, St. John’s wort, and that’s how we’re healing you. I wish it was more to that. Like, I wish there was something like.

Some actual substantial set of evidence that.

They provided, but there’s not. It’s very frustrating, because I remember when I was first sort of realizing that I was, uh, an atheist.

The thing that made me passionate was going and reading the Bible, going and reading apologetic literature and realizing, holy shit, not only is this stuff kind of.

Like, there’s not a lot of evidence for it, like, there’s no evidence for it.

Like, these people are believing things based on nothing other than the words of.

Uh, obvious fraudsters and people who have.

A vested interest in you giving them money.

And I was so upset that, like, I thought, with the billions of people.

On this planet that believe this stuff, I had to be missing something. In my upbringing, I was missing something.

There were some documents, there was some archaeological evidence, there was something out there. More than just a book says a thing, right? A book that was, you know, where the gospels were written by anonymous authors.

Uh, generations after the events that they.

Describe, that there was something more and there wasn’t. And that made me so upset. Not at the religion itself, but at the people who perpetrate the spreading of.

That religion on people who are not as skeptical as the rest of us. And it’s the same thing here with homeopathy. I thought diving into it, I’d be like, oh, okay. Well, there is some research, and there, there is some indications, and there’s a few studies here, there’s a few studies.

Here that say this or say that.

And there’s this mechanism that we haven’t fully explored and more research is being done and all of that.

Nope.

Nope. Some guy in 1796 who was upset.

That medicine was shit took, you know.

Ate some substance, and it made him feel a certain way with relationship to malaria, which was the paper he was.

Writing, he goes, huh, huh?

I wonder if things that make you.

Feel bad can cure the things that.

Give you those symptoms as well.

If I put them in a really small thing, and probably that’s because I.

Uh, need to put them in a.

Small thing because of the spirit like.

Essence, essential property that water is going to have.

And he, it became basically a religion of medicine that many, um, many, many people practice. So how did that get to the point where FDA not only does not.

But possibly, depending on how you read.

Things, cannot pull this stuff off the market for being lack, um, for not being effective? Well, to do that, we’re going to.

We’Re going to talk about where the FDA came from.

Last episode, I spoke sort of the.

General political, uh, situation at the time.

Where, um, industrial revolutions had started happening.

And we needed agencies to try to.

Help prevent people who could do a.

Ton of damage now due to machines.

And chemistry and science, um, from doing that damage. And Congress was not fast enough, agile enough, didn’t, uh, want to employ the millions of experts it would need to.

Employ if it were going to run.

The FDA and the highway traffic Safety Board and all of the consumer Protection Agency, all of the agencies that sit under the executive, we didn’t want them under Congress. We put them under the executive so that the experts could come up with.

What the rules are. Congress just says, make food and drugs.

Safe in the case of drugs and effective. And then you, the experts, go figure out how that works. So the state of medicine at the.

Time, at the turn of that century.

Around the 19 hundreds, was still crap. But we did have the American Medical association and homeopaths, um, by 19 hundreds, wanted to be seen, uh, as serious people and make money off of what they’re doing. So they started modifying the claims that Hahnemann made.

Hahnemann said, anything in the world can be cured by homeopathy.

By 1900, their claims were changing to say, well, we will adopt more orthodox.

Sort of methods where we are going to see patients and we’re going to talk to them, and we may prescribe them drugs, and we may prescribe them homeopathy, and we’re going to limit our.

Claims, um, so that the AMA would take them a little more seriously.

And AMa finally relented in 1903 and invited homeopaths into the AMA.

And, uh, around that time, you start.

Seeing hospital, believe it or not, homeopathic hospitals being set up in Great Britain.

There’s a great clip. I’ll put it up on my website@thecrossexaminer.net. that is called the homeopathic er. It is hilarious. I’ll put it up. I strongly recommend you look at it, um, um, using the things you’ve learned here about, like cures.

Like you need tiny substances to fix anything.

You’ll find it very funny. But that’s the state of things around 19 oh.

319 oh six is when the first.

Act, homeopathy, didn’t make it into the first act, 1906.

But by 1938, when the second act.

The FDCA act, came along, federal food.

Drug, and cosmetic act, uh, came along, homeopathy is included in the act as a drug.

So, basically, the act itself gives credence to and tacit approval of homeopathy.

And here’s how that came to be. So, the author of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic act of 1938 was named Royal Copeland. He was a three term senator from.

New York, and he was also a practicing homeopathic doctor.

And he snuck in there, a section about homeopathy, which at the time was actually, uh, maybe not snuck.

Snuck is the wrong word.

He put it in there strategically, and.

In the act, it describes drugs. And in section 201 G and J.

It provided that anything that was listed in the original homeopathic pharmacopoeia of the United States, this was the big book at the time that listed all of the provings that could be used for different purposes. That anything that was listed in the homeopathic pharmacopoeia of the United States, which is hp us. Excuse me? Hp us, which is where that comes from. On the labeling that I read you.

Um, it would recognize as a drug. So what does that tell us?

Right?

What does that show us? That people of New York elected this.

Guy to be senator. He was a doctor.

Like, I’ve read some of his papers that he wrote. Um, he very much was in the.

Tank, so no pun intended, for homeopathy.

He wrote a lot of books that are still cited today as arguing for.

Why homeopathic medicine should be treated like any other medicine.

But it’s all based on very old fashioned ideas of evidence where he’s just.

Making arguments and telling anecdotes and things.

Like that, rather than saying, look at all these studies that have proven that this stuff is effective.

One cannot deny that he had a financial interest in this. Right? He was the president of the homeopathic association.

He was a practicing homeopathic doctor.

He was the author of this bill. He put it in there, this line.

That basically said, anything in HP us. Excuse me, I always want to say HP uss, anything in HPUs, HP us is considered a drug, um, um.

And that passed and got signed into law. So ever since then, homeopathic medicine has been embedded in the very enabling act that created the modern FDA, and it, um, is told that it is a drug. At the passage in 1938, things didn’t have to be proved effective before you marketed them.

You just.

They had to be safe, and you.

Had to work with the FDA, et cetera.

It was only after that thalidomide disaster.

That we spoke about in the last episode that they then, uh, added the.

Requirement that the drug company must prove.

That things are safe and effective before marketing them.

But even then, that didn’t touch homeopathy.

So there’s this framework in the act that when they started this program up.

They had a genuine question, which is.

If we have to start proving that.

Drugs and medical devices are safe or.

Safe and effective and that food is safe for use, does that mean the instant that we enact this new rule, that people can’t eat apples and bananas.

Anymore and they can’t take aspirin anymore?

Like, are we just shutting down the.

Whole thing until everybody submits their approvals.

And we go, no.

There’s these concepts in the enacting legislation.

And in the initial regulations of, especially in the food. They called it grass.

G r a s, generally regarded as safe.

So, pretty much the act says, anything.

That was in regular circulation as food.

At the point that we established the.

Act is generally regarded as safe.

I’m dumbing it down, and quite frankly, I don’t remember all the details about the specifics, but apples were generally regarded as safe, so that there’s no extra stuff you have to do there. They had a similar framework for drugs. Right.

We’re not going to say you can’t take aspirin anymore.

The instant this goes on, this goes into effect.

Well, because homeopathy is listed in the act itself, not a regulation, but the act itself as, hey, anything listed in this HPUs document, this book, is considered a drug. The implication there is that it is not subject to the new reviews, right.

That this would be sort of generally.

Regarded as safe, even though grass was.

A food concept, they also have the. The concept of it was a round and being used prior to the act.

And it wasn’t killing anybody, so we’re.

Not going to worry about it. So, um, royal takes advantage of this.

And he puts this into the act. It gets signed into law, and since then, the FDA has been very hands.

Off on the claims made by, um, homeopathic drug manufacturers. Now, the act gave regulation about marketing of claims advertising. They gave authority to the, um, FTC, Federal Trade Commission.

Let me make sure.

That’s right. It’s not. The Consumer Protection Agency also has things there, but I believe that came later. Let me check the history.

Yes, it’s the FTC.

In fact, I found an article, a, uh, recent article, um, by the Food.

Drug Law Institute, who publishes a bunch of papers and keeps an eye on.

What the FDA is doing. The title of the article is FTC.

Reminds industry of their authority over all.

Health related advertising, including prescription drugs. So, yes, the FTC has authority over.

This advertising from a false advertising perspective.

Right. So if you make claims here that, uh, you are effective for pain relief.

The FTC will come after you. But that’s why on this package, again, you see the asterisk?

I’m holding it up right there, there.

And in other places, there’s an asterisk.

Everywhere that says, hey, this is for pain relief.

Asterisk claims based on traditional homeopathic practice.

Not accepted medical evidence, not FDA evaluated. And that’s what makes them okay with.

The FTC, as long as you tell.

People this is based on traditional practice.

Of homeopathy under the hpus, which is in the actual. You can’t come after me and take.

My thing off of the market. So I hope that’s clear. That was a long way around. Maybe I can edit it down. Maybe it’s just me ranting about what.

I know, but the whole point of this.

And by the way, it’s been, uh.

Quite a while now since I’ve taken my drugs.

Um, I haven’t had any noticeable side effects, but maybe I’ll drop dead sooner or later after I took my 240 homeopathic, uh, pain pills.

Uh, but the whole point of this is to say there is a regimen to make sure that our drugs are safe and effective. It’s written in blood.

We’ve.

We heard about the sulfonylamide disaster. We heard about the thalidomide disaster. There’s many more of those types of things in the history of our regulations.

Where we say, okay, we need to regulate this stuff because it can do.

Massive damage and kill a lot of people if people don’t know what they’re doing and don’t know what they’re eating.

And one guy who was elected to Congress got to write in an exception for his preferred industry, homeopathy, because he was a practitioner of it. Um, and that was in 1938. And ever since then, we’re coming up on 100 years uh, FDA has been able to.

Not been able to do anything about.

It for the longest time. They did literally nothing about it.

Back in, uh, 2022, they issued new guidance.

So anytime, uh, FDA is considered really.

Changing a position on something, they just don’t turn on a dime.

They issue what’s called, uh, guidance, and.

They will issue it in a proposed guidance form. So they’ll say, hey, industry, whatever it.

May be, cosmetic industry, diet, uh, coke industry, diet soda industry, drug industry, homeopathic industry.

We’re thinking about this to be our new guidance as to how we think you should operate within our regime, because we’re thinking about changing our philosophy. So we’re putting you on notice years.

Ahead of time that, hey, things might.

Change, and we’d welcome your feedback.

This is what’s called, um, a form.

Of notice and comment rulemaking.

It’s part of, uh, the Administrative Procedures act, uh, in the United States, which basically says, if you’re gonna. If you’re gonna.

There’s lots of ways to enact regulations.

But they have to be constitutional.

And one of the constitutional ways of doing it is through what’s called notice and comment rulemaking, which means you provide a notice to everybody, usually through a.

Website and press releases.

Hey, we’re going to do a new regulation. Hey, we’re going to issue new guidance.

And then you take comments from anybody, literally anybody. So if you go out, there’s a website for notice and comment rulemaking.

If you just google it, notice and.

Comment rulemaking, united, uh, states government, you’ll go to the website with all of.

The pending notices from all of the.

Federal agencies, and anybody in the world.

Can go on there into the website.

And file a comment. Now, the big boys, right, Procter and.

Gamble and those folks in the drug.

Industry are going to file massive comments.

They’re going to do attachments with all sorts of research and 500 page studies.

And all this stuff when they’re trying to support something or object to something. And I can get on there and.

Just type two sentences.

I think this is dumb, right? I could put that comment in there.

But by law, under the Administrative Procedures.

Act, the agency must review, categorize, and.

Address and respond to every comment.

So Procter and Gamble’s comment may get.

A one to one response. They may say, oh, we have processed the study. We find objections with its methodology here, here, and here. Therefore, we don’t think it’s scientifically sound.

Or they may say, we read your study.

We agree.

That’s right. And we’re actually going to change the.

Procedure to exempt this or to add.

This method or whatever. And then for the comments from Joe.

Blow that just says, this is dumb.

I hate you, I don’t want to do this. They’re going to categorize those and say, we received 1248 comments that were of.

The category, we don’t like this, but didn’t supply any specific arguments or didn’t supply any evidence. We are ignoring those, but they have to at least address every single one.

So they did a notice and comment, uh, rule make. They proposed, I should say proposed, uh, guidance a few years ago on how.

They were going to change their treatment of homeopathy. And they were switching from a very hands off approach to what they called.

A risk based approach, which says, we.

Are going to address the safety risks associated with homeopathic drugs.

And they put everybody on notice. And that is now in effect. And what that means is we are going to.

Assign our resources proportionally to working on things where homeopathic, homeopathic drugs pose an actual risk to human health.

Like you take this pill and you die type of risk, or you get hurt or you get injured or you get sick, versus the other problem with homeopathy, which is the opportunity cost. You’re saying, take this drug to cure, um, your flu.

So I take it, it does nothing and I die. And if I had sought other treatment.

Right, vaccines, uh, or, uh, theraflu, or, um, being admitted to a hospital to get iv treatments, I might still be alive. So instead of doing those things, being admitted to the hospital or going iv or getting treatment, uh, I abstain from that and I forgo from getting that. And instead I go with the homeopathy.

Solution and I end up dying.

That’s an actual risk. That’s, that’s why we say a drug must be both safe and effective. It’s not effective.

I’m doing it instead of what I should do, which is the evidence based medicine that has been proven to be.

Effective and I die.

FDA is not going there because it doesn’t happen very much with homeopathy.

What actually happens is, uh, people, uh, suffer, right?

I take this for pain relief. I don’t get any relief after several.

Days, and then I go see my doctor. I have a toothache, I have a backache. That’s what this drug that I’ve taken advertised, right? Toothache, backache.

Take this. And it says on there, keep taking it. And if you don’t get relief in three days, then maybe go see a doctor. So they are selling me sugar pills knowing that I’m going to suffer potentially.

For three days and get worse and.

Then go see a doctor. And I’m paying them $25 for the privilege. So, FDA says we’re not going to.

Worry about that because it doesn’t actually.

Kill people too often, may make them hurt.

But we only have a limited number.

Of resources, and we’re going to focus.

On what is the real risk here.

And the real risk these days is.

In manufacturing processes here we’ve got, um.

Boiron, the french company, and I chose them very specifically because they are well.

Known, large company, with, as far as.

I can tell, established good manufacturing processes. I researched them before I bought their product. I went on to the FDA’s website.

Where you can go look up adverse, uh, uh, events for this company.

There are none.

You can go and look up, uh.

Instances where they got in trouble. There’s this thing called the red list with the FDA. When you try to import a good.

Into the United States and it’s proven.

To be bad or defective or corrupted.

Or whatever you want to call it, um, you can be put on the.

Red list, and you have to work very hard to get off of that red list.

The red list means you can’t import.

Anything else without paying for all the testing yourself and doing thorough testing, which.

Basically means you can’t make a profit importing that drug or product into the United States anymore. It’s basically a death sentence for importing into the US.

So Boiron’s never been on that list either.

So as far as I could tell.

They had good manufacturing processes.

I was very careful.

And I should say that as a.

Disclaimer, during this entire episode, I didn’t do this lightly.

I did my research.

I practiced FDA regulatory law for five years.

I know what I’m doing. I advise multiple doctors, friends and doctors.

That I know professionally about doing this stunt before doing it. So, um, that’s the approach that FDA.

Is taking now, is they’re going after.

Companies who have poor manufacturing processes, because you can run into two problems. One, there’s actually St. John’s wort in your product, right? If you don’t actually do what you’re.

Saying you do, and you just dump a bunch of St. John’s wort into some sugar and you sell it as pills, people may have allergic reactions, like.

And it’s not just St. John’s wort, like any substance. People rely on the fact that they.

Know there’s nothing in your sugar pills to take them. If you accidentally put a massive amount of a substance in there and you don’t dilute it. You could hurt somebody.

And since you’re not normally regulated, we’re.

Not normally paying attention to you. Prior to 2022, when we changed our.

Ways, this could happen. People could have bad effects because you’ve actually put something effective into your product. That’s kind of ironic.

And the other thing that can happen.

Is, because you have bad manufacturing processes, you’ve now got a foreign substance in your product. It’s what’s called adulterated. It’s got stuff in it that it.

Doesn’T match what’s on the label.

So you’ve got a mold or bacteria.

Or something else in there, and you.

Eat a bunch of them like I just did, and you get sick because.

Of this foreign contaminant.

That’s the other way that you can. You can run into problems.

And because the people in this industry.

Are crooks and thieves and quacks and hucksters, they are more likely to lie to you about their manufacturing processes.

They’re more likely to be selling you bullshit.

They’re more likely to selling you a cup of sand pressed into a pill.

Rather than actual sugar. So the FDA has decided only very.

Recently to start attacking the industry. In that respect, you better have good manufacturing processes, and you better have nothing in your product like you say you do in your HP us, uh, document.

From back in Hahnemann’s time in 1796.

I think HP us came around later than that. But that’s Hahnemann’s work.

So, obviously a long episode.

We’re at the point where I think I better do what they say on the label, because it’s been an hour.

Or so since I ate 240 of these pills, and they only tell me to eat five.

So I have overdosed in a massive way.

So they tell me I should contact the poison control center.

So I’m going to do that. So I’m going to cut out the part where I do all the lookup. But I will tell you, I’m going to put the result of my communication.

With the poison control center up on.

My website, and I’m going to describe.

To you what they said.

So you can go to the poison.

Control center center website.

You can type in the barcode, the.

Name, anything to identify the product. So I typed in the barcode.

It popped right up.

It took. Had a picture of the product in question.

It asked me, uh, two, uh, questions that were relevant.

How old I was. 54. Male? Female.

I’m male. It did not ask me how much I weigh.

It did not ask me how much I took as soon as it had that information. And, oh, by the way, you can.

Put this, uh, app on their site.

Into a mode, a test mode.

They have a checkbox to say, I’m just testing. This is not a real case, which I thought is very good of them.

They also ask a few other questions.

About, was this a suicide, was this.

An accident, or are you being prescribed this drug?

Sort of surrounding questions, but not related to the health issue directly. I answered all of those, put all of that into their website. They said, based on the information you.

Provided, it is unlikely that significant toxicity will develop. You do not. In caps and bold.

You do not need to go to the emergency room.

Follow the instructions provided regarding what to do next, symptoms to watch for, and when to call the poison control for additional help.

What should you do now?

Drink a few small sips of water.

To rinse remaining material into your stomach.

So if any didn’t get in there.

Make sure it gets in there now. Then they have call immediately if any.

Of the following happen. Allergic reaction, persistent diarrhea, persistent vomiting.

Also call if you have serious, all.

Sorts of serious conditions.

And at the very, very bottom, they have a note that says, why didn’t.

We ask how much you swallowed or how much you weigh?

They know that you’re curious. Like, normally, you need to know that.

For any drug, even the prescribing physician.

Needs to know how much you weigh.

If I’m going to give a certain.

You know, if you go out to drunk, the short people with not a.

Lot of body mass are the cheaper drunks.

The fewer drinks to get drunk, uh, than the heavy guys. Right.

You need more of a substance to.

Actually affect somebody, uh, that is bigger.

Than a small person. Why didn’t I ask how many pills.

You took and how much you weigh?

And, uh, they said, quote, this app uses ingredient algorithms to make a recommendation. It is designed to ask the fewest questions necessary to get an accurate and safe answer. Accurate and safe. You weren’t asked for an amount because any amount of the substance you swallowed is unlikely to cause serious effects no.

Matter what you weigh. Toxicologists call these products and substances, quote, minimally toxic. Rest assured that we are very careful. If that doesn’t seal the deal on.

What we as scientists know about homeopathy.

I don’t know what does.

I could have taken 10,000 pills. They don’t care. I could weigh 50 pounds. They don’t care. They’re saying, oh, this homeopathic product by.

This company, I don’t care.

None of it will do. Anything to you.

In fact, what should you do now?

Rinse any remaining pills into your stomach. So, yeah, that should be the death knell, right. Of most of this stuff.

I will end with a quick, uh, story, uh, and a few notes. So the story is I did this.

Because of amazing, uh, Randy. He would do this stunt in front of audiences.

He was a debunker of paranormal claims.

Of pseudoscience claims, woo, religious claims, all sorts of things.

He started out as a music magician.

Became a debunker, much like Harry Houdini.

So I will put a video up on my website.

I’ll put a picture of the results.

Of the, uh, poison control center up on my website at, uh, www.thecrossexaminer.net. i will also put up a video of randy doing this stunt at a ted talk where he, he eats a.

Whole bottle of sleeping pills at the beginning of the talk and then proceeds.

To demonstrate that they don’t affect him. Um, but amazing Randy did this for.

Years and this is an ode to him.

But he also had a tragic experience.

That sort of demonstrates the cost of.

Alternative medicine and woo.

Thinking. He was dear friends with a magician named Doug Henning. Doug Henning, if you were alive in the seventies and eighties, you know who he was.

He was a famous magician and his.

Shtick was he was the hippie. He had long hair, he had big buck teeth. He smiled all the time and he would say, oh, it’s all an illusion and life is happy. And his tricks would be filled with fanciful colors and sequins and bunny rabbits and peace and love and happiness.

The hippy dippie guy, really, uh, really nice.

Every report says he’s genuinely a really nice person. He and Randy became dear friends. He grew up admiring Randy.

Randy met him when he was a.

Kid and encouraged him and gave him.

His autograph and stuff like that. They knew each other from the magic castle in California, um, uh, where a lot of magic magicians would hone their.

Craft before going out, uh, nationally.

It was also subject of a joke.

In the show arrested development.

If you know about, uh, job’s, uh, affinity with magic. Um, and, uh, they got to be very close friends.

Well, Doug, later in his life, had a Broadway show.

He finally got onto Broadway and it flopped.

It bombed.

The critics hated it. Uh, Randy wrote him a letter and.

Said, I was there.

I was there on opening night and.

I was amazed and transported to a different place by this young man that I’d known so long ago. When I signed your autograph as a.

Child, I am so happy that you did this show. It was wonderful. I’m one of the best magicians out.

There, and I thought it was brilliant.

He was really trying to make his friend feel better. And a while later, Doug wrote back and said, thank you. I don’t know how long the time was that passed.

The research on this is sketchy because.

The records have sort of been hidden away. Um, but the reason we know, by the way, is this letter that Doug wrote back to amazing Randy was stolen.

Back in 2005, and it ended up on eBay. Somebody was trying to sell this letter.

So, uh, Cory, doctor. Oh, uh, posted a story about that.

On the blog Boing boing back in.

2005, which is when I first read about it.

Now the links to the letter are.

Dead because eBay’s taken it down and all the archives are down. And I’ve been in touch with the James Randi foundation and other people. Nobody has a copy of this yet, so this is anecdotal evidence. This is my story as best I.

Can remember what the letter said, but the gist of the letter from Doug.

Henning was, thank you so much.

FYI, uh, I’ve been diagnosed with cancer.

I’m not doing well.

Uh, Doug, at the time, had become a member of the transcendental meditation movement, TM, as it was called.

It was a hippie dippy, cultish, pseudo scientific, pseudo medicinal group that wanted to.

Bring world peace through meditation and happiness. And he was in TM, and he.

Told Randy in the letter, this will.

Be my last letter to you. As the TM leaders have told me, one of the reasons I’m sick is I’m talking to people outside of TM. I need to cut off my relationship with you so that I can get better. He cuts off his relationship with Randy.

And then at some point after that, he dies from his cancer.

No record of him seeking serious medical treatment at all, just being sucked up by this guru led TM movement, and he dies.

So the amazing Randy experience in this.

Area sort of demonstrates everything I’m talking.

About in this episode. Right?

We can find common ground.

We know that science works.

The scientific method works.

We know that if we establish double, uh, blind tests that we can prove.

Whether or not a substance can do the thing it claims to do, we can determine if it’s safe, we can determine it’s effective.

And we know that homeopathy and other forms of alternative medicine that don’t prove.

Those things can’t be trusted, both because you’ll have an opportunity cost, you’ll use that instead of real treatment. And you’ll die like Steve Jobs and Doug Henning and many other people that we know of.

And because it’s run by frauds and.

Hucksters who just want to take your.

Money, the people who take alternative medicine.

Wants to rant and rave about big.

Pharma when the irony is when the opposite is true. They’re in the pockets of big cam.

Complimentary alternative medicine, right?

They’re the ones, uh, shelling out, I.

Should say, of shilling. That’s a freudian slip. Shelling out $25 for sugar that does nothing. That when I eat 10,000 of them and call the CD, the poison control.

Center, they say, I don’t care how much you took, and I don’t care what you weigh. Go to bed and make sure you.

Wash the rest of the pills into.

Your stomach, because they don’t do anything. That’s the fraud. Pharmaceutical companies have their problems. See the, uh, opioid epidemic?

Nobody is hiding the cure from cancer, right?

The cure for lots of diseases. A because they would be billionaires, trillionaires.

If you, if you developed a cure.

For cancer, you would be a trillionaire.

No doubts about it, right? You would save the world, and you’d create actual problems of overpopulation because so many people were living so long.

But they are also good people.

They’re not fraudsters. They’re telling you on their labels what they do, and they back it up.

With evidence, unlike all of these other cam frauds. So I think we can all agree.

We should regulate it more. We shouldn’t buy homeopathic products for our kids. You’re going to hurt your kids, and you shouldn’t rely on yourself in filming this.

I went to every pharmacy near me. I took video, and I’ll put what I can find off of my phone. I just. There’s all sorts of video I took. It’ll probably be very boring, but I videoed all the products.

And you can search, go to target.

And search for homeopathy, and you’ll see all the products they offered.

Same for Walgreens, same for Walmart. I went to all of the pharmacies.

Near me, and I spoke to every.

Single pharmacist and gave them my card, cross examiner.

Here’s my podcast, my email address. Reach out to me, and I told them what I was doing. I told them, hey, I, uh, practiced FDA regulatory law. I am interested in investigating how homeopathy.

Is sold and marketed.

And I see that you offer homeopathic.

Products on your shelves, and every single one did, by the way, every single one offered multiple homeopathic products. Would you guys like to comment on.

The record, off the record, anonymously? Uh, do an interview, anything like that? And all of them said, I don’t.

Want to get involved, right. Some of them said that decision is made by corporate. I don’t get to decide what goes on the shelves.

But all of them did not want to comment because I’m some crazy guy with a business card that’s telling me m about a podcast, but also, I think, because they don’t want to piss off target and Walmart and all those things except for one pharmacist. And that pharmacist started talking to me, and we talked for 20 minutes, and she told me, I wish I don’t control the purchases, but I wish that I could have more homeopathic products on my shelves. And my jaw hit the floor in 3 seconds. I tried to have a good poker face. I hope I did.

And I started doing an interview, not being a skeptic.

I just said, oh, why is that?

And what sort of effectiveness does it have, and how do you decide what to give people and all those things?

And her story was not science based. It was. I grew up in India, and in my village where I grew up, we have homeopathic treatments and all sorts of.

Other mystical treatments, and that’s what my culture raised me to believe in, and I believe it works.

And we have people in my community.

Now that also believe the same thing. And I want to put it on my shelves.

And I asked her, oh, is this.

Just a financial thing?

You want to sell more of it?

She said, no, no, no.

I want to treat these people.

This really helps people. And I recommend these products when people come in, even if they’ve never heard of them.

I was so disappointed, right. And it made me realize, oh, when you go become a pharmacist, you don’t do clinical studies. You don’t, you’re not required to do all of the science that, that a.

Researcher would normally do.

You’re taught about risk, and you’re taught.

About safety, and you’re taught about procedures and controlling your labs and all of.

Those sorts of things.

But even very, very intelligent, well educated people can become prey, because why they.

Were raised to believe this, that was her argument, which is the same thing you hear for religion.

But even if we leave religion out.

I I hope we all agree that because some pharmacist was raised in a.

Community that believes that magic will heal your child is not a reason for you to use magic to heal your child. Can we all agree on that? That’s a great starting point.

So thank you for this rant ramble.

I hope it’s very educational. This is the state of medicine in the world. It’s one of a thousand examples of.

Where humans get it wrong on a.

Regular basis because their friends tell them to believe a thing or their family.

Tells them to believe a thing. Um, we’ll move on to more things.

In my next episode.

I know that I said we were going to talk about creationism in public schools. Uh, reviewing the Kitsmiller v. Dover case next, however, um, just came out just yesterday that Alito was, uh, flying the.

January 6 insurrectionist flag at his house. So I think we need to talk.

About the religious takeover of the supreme Court and their conspiracy to delay Trump’s. Their decision on Trump’s, uh, immunity challenge and other things that are going on with the court that should now give you real pause. Um, so we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about current events. We’re going to talk about kits Miller. We’re going to talk about, um, more faith healing.

We’re going to talk about christian science.

Um, another area where we can all agree that people are killing their kids. And we will, uh, start talking about the recent revelations about the Mormon church.

And why many, many people are leaving the Mormon church.

A lot to talk about. I’ll be.

I’ll be recording a lot, so thank you very much.

It’s my first video episode, so you can see me eat the stuff, probably won’t do it again. And I apologize for any edits or awkwardness or things I’ve missed. Um, I’ll leave you with the thought that even with homeopathy out there and acupuncture and crystals, I truly believe that most people really, really love their kids.

And my research on christian scientists, which.

Are the most strident, the most, uh, some of the worst offenders, as far as letting their kids die, I truly believe that the vast majority of them love their kids and would love to.

Find a way out of christian science.

So they could take care of their kids. And they get tied up in the.

Social pressure of family and friends and.

Community, to the point where kids end up dying. So I think we can convince those people to stop doing that. But we’re going to need help, and we certainly need to get the government out of it. And we’ll go into the history of that later. Thank you for your time. I’m the cross examiner. I’ll see you next time.

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