Does anyone know if "Big Pharma" owns any homeopathy businesses?

[asydhouse]

I followed a link from a thread here to Daryl Cunningham's excellent comic strip about homeopathy, and in the discussions that followed someone posted a link to a company website to show that Boiron makes millions every year... a neat illustration that "vested interests" are for sure pushing "alt med", which could open the eyes of the smug anti-science "alternative" types who automatically assume they are somehow fighting the powers that be, or whatever... There was also a mention that some pharmaceutical company had bought out Patrick Holford's pill company for half a million pounds or so... I was writing a letter to our local free woo magazine to point out the absurdity of this "vested interests" argument, and wanted to use this information, but had remembered it as being a homeopathy company owned by a pharm company... having tracked down where I thought I had read that, I now discover I've conflated the two pieces of information, thus ruining this part of my anti-homeopathy argument.

I know that people on this website have been fighting the good fight for quite a while, and so I was hoping somebody might have some information as to whether any pharmaceutical companies have in fact branched out to milk the fat of the homeopathy cow... because it's such a sweet point to take the legs out from under that vested interests argument, if there is!

So, not really knowing how to research such a question, and hoping to short cut, any such info would be gladly received... please?

And thank you!

[Pebble]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_&_Barrett

1997 NBTY acquired Holland & Barrett in 1997. Before they were bought out by The Carlyle Group, NBTY owned many well known brands including: Solgar, Nature’s Bounty and Ester-C.

2010 The Carlyle Group, the US private equity group, agreed to buy NBTY in July 2010 for $55 a share, estimated to be about $3.4bn to $3.8bn. The Carlyle Group's owns Alliance Boots, which includes Boots The Chemists in the UK and Alliance Pharmacies in the UK.

All of Holland and Barretts's own brand vitamin and mineral supplements are made by the company itself.


http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/pag...ies.asp?cid=29


Homeopathy is a natural and gentle discipline suitable for both adults and young children to use. It is essentially a natural healing process, providing remedies to assist the patient in regaining positive health by stimulating the body's own natural forces of recovery. Browse our range of Homeopathic Remedies to find the right formula for you.


So far the best I can do is that the people who sell homeopathic remedies are owned by the archetypal capitalsits (hedge funds), who in turn own pharmaceutical business. It would make sense that H&B or Boots manufacture own brand Homeopathic remedies, but can't see any evidence of that.

[asydhouse]

Thanks for that Pebble! Looks like I'll have to settle for a general observation about the amount of profits being made and the "vesting" of interest in any cash cow by the capitalist infrastructures... what would be a better word than infrastructure here?, since "infrastructure" makes capitalism sound like a positive constructor of beneficial systems... at least from a European perspective, where infrastructure is generally the product of investment by social institutions (which includes the state, in our European social democracy type ways, generally speaking... I admit I am not educated in these matters, and these are simply my perceptions... please correct me if I am making unwarranted assumptions, thanks!).

PS Why was the forum so incredibly slow last night? Anyone know?