Homeoprophylaxis: A B.C. Homeopath Gave Up Her Medical Licence to Keep Selling "Homeopathic Vaccines" — and Is Expanding Her Children's Practice in 2026
Anke Zimmermann was a licensed naturopathic physician on Vancouver Island until the College of Naturopathic Physicians of B.C. told her to stop advertising anti-immunization material. Rather than comply, she let her licence lapse and kept practicing as an unregulated "homeopath" — still offering homeoprophylaxis, still treating children with a therapy her own former college has banned, and still expanding. Health Canada named her directly in a 2019 investigation launched during a Metro Vancouver measles outbreak. She's building a new autism day-clinic for 2026.
What homeoprophylaxis actually is
Homeoprophylaxis is the practice of giving children homeopathic "nosodes" — remedies diluted from disease material, bodily fluids, or other substances — in place of, or alongside, conventional vaccination. The foundational English-language text promoting the practice to parents, The Solution: Homeoprophylaxis, the Vaccine Alternative (2012), was written by two U.S. homeopaths, Kate Birch and Cilla Whatcott, and continues to be sold today, including through the Weston A. Price Foundation's marketing channels.
⚠️ Health Canada: "There are no alternatives to vaccines"
Health Canada has approved certain nosode products for sale, but explicitly not for marketing as vaccine alternatives — a distinction critics say is lost on parents when a federal agency's approval stamp appears on the label at all. In 2015, then-Health Minister Rona Ambrose and Canada's chief public health officer issued a joint statement declaring plainly that there is no substitute for vaccination. The Canadian Paediatric Society went further in a formal position statement the same year, finding scant evidence for nosodes' efficacy or safety and recommending labels warn parents outright that the product "has not been proven to prevent infection."
Meet Anke Zimmermann
Zimmermann built a Vancouver Island practice specializing in children's developmental and behavioural conditions — autism, ADHD, sensory processing disorders, OCD, and vaccine-injury claims — alongside homeoprophylaxis. Her website has advertised the practice as capable of helping prevent scarlet fever, cholera, smallpox, polio, meningitis, influenza, whooping cough, leptospirosis, and Japanese encephalitis, despite an absence of controlled clinical evidence for any of it.
The lyssin case
In one widely reported case, Zimmermann gave a four-year-old boy who had been bitten by a dog a year earlier a remedy called lyssin — described as a heavily diluted preparation of rabid dog saliva — to address behavioural changes she attributed to the earlier bite. The case drew a formal letter of concern from B.C.'s Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, to Health Canada, and reignited debate over whether homeopathic remedies derived from infectious or otherwise hazardous material should be regulated as health products at all.
Following multiple complaints, the College of Naturopathic Physicians of B.C. required Zimmermann to bring her advertising into line with its policy barring anti-immunization material. Rather than comply, she let her ND licence lapse. Her own website now describes her as "trained and experienced" as a naturopathic physician but "not currently practicing as an ND in BC" — a framing that preserves the credential's credibility while shedding the college oversight that came with it. She continues to see clients as an unregulated homeopath in a province where homeopathy itself has no licensing college.
Named in a federal outbreak investigation
In early 2019, as Metro Vancouver experienced a growing measles outbreak, CBC News identified Zimmermann as one of at least four B.C. homeopaths actively advertising homeoprophylaxis, prompting a Health Canada review of the claims being made. Dr. Henry warned publicly that parents "may be lulled into a sense that their child is protected" and forgo vaccines that actually work. Zimmermann did not respond in detail to questions about the legality of her advertising at the time.
CEASE therapy: banned by her own former college, still offered today
What the college she left specifically prohibited
CEASE ("Complete Elimination of Autism Spectrum Expression") is a homeopathic protocol claiming to reverse autism by "detoxifying" children of vaccines and other substances. After CBC reporting identified three B.C. naturopaths offering it, the College of Naturopathic Physicians of B.C. banned the therapy outright in 2018, stating the name itself implied claims that were inaccurate and unverifiable, and warned members that ignorance of their own marketing was not an acceptable excuse. Zimmermann's current practice materials describe her approach as built on "classical homeopathy, CEASE therapy, homeopathic detox therapy, timeline therapy and more" for children with autism — the same therapy her former regulator moved to ban, now offered from entirely outside that regulator's reach.
Still growing in 2025–2026
- 2015 Health Canada and the Canadian Paediatric Society issue statements against nosodes as vaccine alternatives.
- 2018 College of Naturopathic Physicians of B.C. bans CEASE therapy after CBC identifies practitioners offering it.
- 2019 Metro Vancouver measles outbreak; Health Canada investigates B.C. homeopaths, including Zimmermann, over homeoprophylaxis advertising; B.C.'s Provincial Health Officer writes Health Canada directly about the lyssin case.
- 2025–2026 Zimmermann runs a recurring monthly "homeopathy training program" for practitioners and parents focused on autism management, by her own account managing more than 1,500 autism cases over the past decade and seeing 80–100 children a month; she is fundraising for a new clinic and day-program facility for autistic children, with a targeted November 2026 opening.
The stakes are not hypothetical
This isn't an abstract regulatory dispute. The largest U.S. measles outbreak in three decades tore through under-vaccinated communities in West Texas in 2025, killing multiple children, while the sitting U.S. Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — already documented on this site for his financial and ideological ties to anti-psychiatry advocacy — downplayed vaccination and promoted unproven alternative treatments during the outbreak response. Homeoprophylaxis and nosodes are marketed into exactly this same climate of eroding vaccine confidence, to parents who are often acting out of genuine love and fear for their children rather than negligence.
Why this belongs on QuackeryWatch
The pattern here matches Kerri Rivera's chlorine dioxide protocol, the Weston A. Price Foundation's homemade infant formula, Action4Canada and Vaccine Choice Canada's organized advocacy, and the chelation-for-autism cases already documented in our Dubious Rx section: a practitioner offering unproven treatment for a real and serious childhood condition, a regulatory body that acted only after public pressure, and a practitioner who simply moved outside that regulator's jurisdiction rather than stop. What's different here is the target isn't a rare or fringe condition — it's routine childhood immunization against diseases that still kill children when vaccination rates fall.