The Facts

• In 2008 The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus referred advertising for Dr. Frank's Joint Pain Relief for Dogs to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) because the claims it made about relieving your dogs pain completely no matter what the cause were unfounded and not backed by conclusive research.
  
  The NAD asked that all testimonials containing unfounded product performance claims, including Dr. Frank's own testimonial, be removed from the website and infomercial. When the testimonials were not removed after two compliance reviews the NAD referred the matter to the FTC.
  
  

Definition

• Another issue that the NAD had with Dr. Frank's advertising is that it didn't sufficiently explain what homeopathic means. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, homeopathy is "a system for treating disease based on the administration of minute doses of a drug that in massive amounts produces symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the disease itself."
  
  

Benefits

• Despite the fact that Dr. Frank's Joint Pain Relief for Dogs cannot support its claims on the drug's effectiveness and the lack of widespread support for homeopathy in the medical community does not mean you should dismiss homeopathic remedies all together.
  
  In 2000, there was a study published in "BMJ," a peer reviewed medical journal, on whether the effects of homeopathic treatments have any real effect or if they just act as a placebo. The study concluded that the effects of homeopathic dilutions differ from that of placebos.
  
  

Theory

• Homeopathy is an alternative form of medicine based on the theory that if a substance causes a symptom of a particular illness in a healthy person, then giving a person with that particular illness a small amount of the same substance can cure the illness. In theory, a homeopathic dose enhances the body's normal healing and self-regulatory processes.
  
  

History

• According to "Complementary and Alternative Medicine," homeopathy is a medical philosophy founded in the late 1700s in Germany and was widely practiced throughout Europe. The popularity of homeopathic medicine declined in the beginning of the 1900s, and the last medical school in the United States devoted wholly to homeopathy closed in 1920. In the 1970s, during a time of rising interest in holistic medicine, the nation saw a resurgence in homeopathy.