For Immediate Release: April 18, 2012

Contact: Paul Fidalgo, Communications Director

press@centerforinquiry.org - (207) 358-9785

AMHERST, NY – The Canadian affiliate of the Center for Inquiry (CFI) is lending its scientific expertise and support to assist in a monumental $30 million lawsuit against two Canadian retailers for their peddling of a useless homeopathic product in violation of consumer protection laws. CFI stands ready and eager to take on similar cases in the United States to curtail the fraud of homeopathy.

The product known as Oscillococcinum is marketed as a remedy for flu-like symptoms but is in reality merely sugar water with no medicinal properties whatsoever (other than a possible placebo effect). The lawsuit in which CFI–Canada is participating is against retailers Shoppers Drug Mart and Boiron Canada for their sale and marketing of this product.

“In both the U.S. and Canada, people are unconscionably being misled in their time of greatest vulnerability: when they’re sick,” said Ron Lindsay, President and CEO of CFI. Lindsay called for those Americans who have been ripped off by the traffickers of homeopathic medicines and remedies to reach out to CFI and tell their stories. “We intend to stand up for U.S. consumers and their right to be told the truth about the medicines they spend their hard-earned money on. We will take the fight to the perpetrators of homeopathic fraud in the media, in legislatures, and yes, in the courts.”

CFI and its affiliate organization the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry recently filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration requesting that the agency institute regulations that would require over-the-counter homeopathic drugs to meet the same standards of effectiveness as non-homeopathic drugs, which is currently under consideration [PDF]. Although the FDA has the authority to require homeopathic drugs to undergo testing for effectiveness, it has to date declined to do so.