By CHRISTOPHER WANJEK - LIVE SCIENCE
Added: Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:08:02 UTC

When is a sugar pill deadly? When it is substituted for real medicine, the Japanese public has come to understand.

The Japanese government is investigating numerous deaths that occurred over the past year resulting from the practice of homeopathy, which has been growing in popularity, particularly among midwives. Several lawsuits are pending.

Deaths include a 2-month-old baby girl born with a vitamin K deficiency, whose mother's midwife administered a homeopathic treatment instead of the much-needed vitamin K injection, well-known to prevent hemorrhaging. The infant died from bleeding in the skull.

As more cases surface, the nation's top science group, the Science Council of Japan, has weighed in, with its president, Ichiro Kanazawa, stating at a press conference on Aug. 24 that "homeopathy's therapeutic value has been scientifically and utterly disproved." Homeopathy treatments are nothing more than sugar pills, he said.

Japan may soon join Switzerland and Germany, where governments have concluded that homeopathy is ineffective; national health insurance no longer reimburses for homeopathic treatments there. (Ironically, homeopathy originated in Germany 200 years ago.)

Other European nations might follow suit, too. After a scathing report on homeopathy by the U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee in February 2010, the British Medical Association this August called upon the U.K. National Health Service to refuse payments for homeopathy, to eliminate funding for homeopathic hospitals, and to otherwise instruct doctors to not prescribe, refer, or recommend homeopathy to patients.
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TAGGED: ABUSE, MEDICINE