It is HPCUS, a non-profit volunteer organization, that publishes the official compendium of standards for homeopathic drug manufacturing and quality in the U.S. (such as they are), which purportedly ensures what they deem to be “safety and efficacy standards” for homeopathic products. Of course, although one might think ‘efficacy’ should mean efficacy, homeopathic products are not efficacious in the sense that they have health benefits, so the HPCUS has their own standards of quality, strength, and purity based on purely pseudoscientific homeopathic theory. Since 2021, the president has been one William Shevin, a retired MD who early in his career fell victim to the lure of the dark side of lucrative pseudoscience and has been a practicing homeopath for 40 years. Its current (and long-time) Secretary is Todd Hoover, a major figure on the American homeopathic scene who has also served as President of the American Institute of Homeopathy, President of the Council on Homeopathic Education, and the U.S. representative to the Liga Medicorum Homoeopathica Internationalis, an aggressive international organization of homeopathy apologists. He is currently affiliated e.g. with something called the Academy of Homeopathic Education.
It was also Hoover who represented HPCUS at the 2015 FDA public hearing on homeopathic remedies, and he made a poor showing, admitting that homeopathic remedies haven’t been properly scientifically tested (which is, of course, false – it’s just that they fail every half-decently constructed test), but quickly invoked a type of special pleading familiar with homeopathy apologists: homeopathic remedies and regimes are so specifically tailored to particular people and their conditions that systematic testing is impossible, which, of course is a very obvious lie (95 % of homeopathic remedies are over-the-counter, exactly in line with the preferences of HPCUS). Unfortunately, homeopathy and their over-the-counter products are lucrative, and despite the fact that the FDA hearings clearly displayed the nonsense and pseudoscientific underpinnings for what they are, homeopathic regulation ended up so diluted that there was little substance left, which presumably made the HPCUS happy even though the legislation should therefore, by their standards, be even more powerful – it’s almost like they are a bit selective as to how and when they apply their own theories.
Hoover has also apparently been “a clinical preceptor” for Hahnemann Medical College for over twenty years. We are not sure what that involves, but it sounds thoroughly cargo-cult-scientific. His research areas include “provings, clinical studies of homeopathic medicine, and applicability of homeopathic principles in allopathic medicine” and he has ostensibly published “many articles in both homeopathic and allopathic journals”, though at least for us PubMed yields meager results, especially with regard to actual studies related to efficacy for homeopathic remedies published in real medical journals. He has apparently written a number of books on yoga and ayurveda, too.
Diagnosis: Though a crucial part of the cogwheels of one of the major engines of pseudoscience and quackery in the US, Todd Hoover appears to be working mostly a bit behind the scenes: he doesn’t show up that much in discussion of the pseudoscience of homeopathy; we suppose that by his own lights, the less he is present, the larger his power should be. But whatever the outcomes of his efforts, they are surely not good.
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