Walmart and CVS will go to trial for placing bogus homeopathic products next to legit over-the-counter meds

CVS and Walmart are due to go to trial over claims that they displayed pseudoscientific remedies alongside legitimate over-the-counter medicine in their stores, duping customers into thinking the products were legitimate, Ars Technica reports.

The nonprofit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI) filed nearly identical lawsuits against CVS and Walmart in 2018 and 2019 in an effort to eradicate homeopathic products from shelves, claiming that the deceptive placement of the products violated the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA).

As Ars Technica points out, homeopathy is "a debunked pseudoscience that dabbles with toxic substances intended to be diluted into oblivion."

"The practice rests on two nonsensical concepts: that a toxic substance that produces the same symptoms as a disease can be used to cure that disease (like cures like); and that the therapeutic potency of a substance increases with more and more ritualistic dilution, even far beyond the point at which not a single atom of the starting substance remains (the law of infinitesimals). In fact, some homeopaths believe that water molecules can have 'memory' of substances," writes Ars Technica's Beth Mole.

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In its ruling, the CFI panel said "factual allegations plausibly support an inference that, through their product placement practices, Walmart and CVS mislead consumers into believing that homeopathic products are equivalent alternatives to FDA-approved over-the-counter drugs."

Read the full report over at Ars Technica.