Heidi, clinical research has indeed shown that acupuncture has the same level of effect when the needles are placed as per traditional Chinese medicine as when placed randomly.

People are interested in making it clear that homeopathy doesn't work because if it doesn't work, then it's not worth spending money on, and if it doesn't work, then it oughtn't be given to baby girls with eczema, say, when they should be receiving conventional medicine that would cure them.

No-one is saying that the system for testing drugs as it currently stands is perfect, and drugs companies have done very questionable things in the past, but this does not prove homeopathy, or acupuncture, or any other aspect of CAM works. Each treatment must stand by its evidence base. The situation with Big Pharma can't be improved by throwing double-blind controlled trials out of the window, but there are measures that can be put in place that will make it much more difficult for there to be another Vioxx, such as an international trial registry, legal compulsion to publish and state- or industry-funded negative findings research journals.

Homeopathy has been put to the test time and time again and has always failed. A quick peruse of the Cochrane Collaboration should convince you of that. The more robust a trial in CAM is, the less likely it is that it will show an effect above placebo. So much money has been poured into homeopathy that to spend any more time on it would be to the detriment of science and medicine.

Dagny - how much money do you think companies like Helios or Bionordic make a year? Seriously? It's something you might want to look into.