Homeopathy has become the focus of increasing interest and use as a complementary and alternative treatment for both human and animal disease. However, from the point of view of academic medicine, this type of therapy is controversial. The use of highly diluted remedies cannot be reconciled with the scientific theories on which the current understanding of disease and its treatment is based, and clinical research in the field is considered to be neither extensive enough nor of a high enough standard to determine whether homeopathic treatments are clinically effective.