News Review
20 MARCH 2026 ausdoc. com. au
The bizarre tale of one doctor’ s fight against the quacks
GETTY IMAGES
Dr Cyriac Abby Philips.
Paul Smith Australian Doctor Editor
Dr Cyriac Abby Philips explains why he is harassed and abused for condemning homeopathy as nonsense.
THERE have been court injunctions, police summonses, a social media ban( later lifted) and the spectacle of watching his research being retracted by journals fearful of the litigation it might attract.
Over the last 10 years, Dr Cyriac Abby Philips has become the most visible— and most legally vulnerable— critic of alternative medicine in a country where pseudoscience is not merely tolerated but institutionalised.
The hepatologist’ s crime is insisting that science matters, because in India, that insistence has placed him on a collision course with an alternative medicine industry armed with dollars and the necessary political connections.
As you will discover, there are more than 300,000 formally registered homeopathic practitioners. They hold government appointments and positions in tertiary hospitals. There are even homeopathic hospital beds where patients with metabolic disorders and early- and latestage cancer are managed with homeopathic remedies.
Legally entitled to call themselves doctors, homeopaths also get special protection from anyone willing to say the obvious.
“ Calling them a‘ quack’ or‘ bogus doctor’ is a legal violation of their constitutional rights and can be considered defamatory,” Dr Philips explains,“ even though the practice of homeopathy is pseudoscientific, based on zero evidence for benefits or safety.” He says he has faced relentless campaigns of harassment and abuse for his crusade.
“ My activism has triggered high-stakes legal battles,” he adds, referring to a criminal defamation case and the unjustified attentions of the medical authorities.
The journal
As reported in Australian Doctor, it is against this backdrop that Dr Philips recently found himself at the centre of the European Journal of Pediatrics’ entanglement with homeopathy research.
The journal had published a study in late 2024 so methodologically incoherent that its conclusions bordered on parody.
‘ Calling them a‘ quack’ or‘ bogus doctor’ is a legal violation.’
It purported to show that homeopathic treatment in the first two years of life was associated with better health outcomes than conventional care.
In the text, it notes that antibiotics were required for 14 sickness episodes in the children in the homeopathic group compared with 141 in the conventional group.
“ Integrating homeopathic treatment with routine conventional infant and child healthcare may offer a safe, effective and inexpensive alternative to antibiotics,” this peer-reviewed study suggested.
According to the authors, the homeopathic group also experienced fewer sick days, cost less to treat, and even demonstrated superior growth outcomes.
The implication was clear, at least in their conclusion: homeopathy, using conventional medicine as a safety backdrop, is a“ safe and cost-effective primary care modality”.
In India, at least, it made national headlines.
“ My initial reaction when I first read this paper was a mix of disbelief and professional outrage,” Dr Philips says.“ It was bonkers.
“ They split the children into two groups. One group gets conventional medicine alone and the other group gets homeopathy— but also conventional medicine as‘ rescue’.”
The study was designed, if it was designed for anything, to track the placebo effect, given what homeopathy is at the level of biology.
But then there was no actual blinding taking place, another flaw.
There was also the problem you encounter when using‘ needed no treatment’ as an outcome measure to document your treatment’ s efficacy.
In the homeopathic group, for instance, you discover some 25 % of the cohort did not get sick at all, although when the numbers were crunched, this was attributed to the wonders of homeopathy.
Dr Philips wrote letters to the journal editor, and after more than a year while the investigations took place, the paper was retracted in December 2025.
The authors, co-led by Dr Menachem Oberbaum, a trained doctor and homeopath from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel, vigorously defend their study, saying the criticism is misinformed.
Yes, children in the homeopathic arm received conventional medical care, but only for serious conditions.
“ The study was not a conventional drug-versus-drug trial, but a pragmatic attempt to document widely observed real-world homeopathic practice in India,” they said.
“ A placebo-controlled, blinded design was neither feasible nor ethical, in line