To be horrified that you can get homepathic treatments on the NHS

[brightonlad]

It seems extraordinary that with the NHS experiencing major funding problems and people being turned down for treatments on the grounds of cost that we're paying for people to have this kind of therapy.
If you read the theory behind it it's obviously bogus and the results of all the trials that have been done have consistently shown it to be no better than placebo.
The only way to justify it that I can see is as a form of faith healing and I wouldn't expect my GP to tell me to see my Priest least of all make a generous donation to the roof fund.

Why do medical professionals need to practice "joined up thinking" to homeopathy? They are trained scientific professionals and the whole thinking behind homeopathy is based on illogical and nonsensical premises. Its a bit like criticising an atheist for not advocating catholicism, only worse.

Many medical professionals advocate for and promote complementary therapies. Doctors recommend acupuncture, chiropracters, reflexology, all kinds of things. They do not have to (and should not, in mine and many others opinions) promote homeopathy, reiki, crystals, or prayer healing. These things are all available if you want to find them and pay for them. But medical professionals with a duty of care to patients should not promote untested, unproven, illogical and downright bizarre "alternative" treatments. Homeopathy is NOT medicine. Its not in a doctors permit, and neither should it be part of the NHS.

I think some of you are confusing homeopathy with other alterantive remedies such as natropathic medicine.

homeopathy is the use of heavily diluted remedies. That's it.

I said that repeatedly earlier Nancy, no-one listened. But then homeopathy beleivers don't actually like to listen to reason.

Oh did you - sorry.

Homeopathy is a crock of shit but i do believe certain herbal medicine does and can work - after all lots of conventional medicines are derived from plants.

Nacy66 - agreed; opium, coca, and cannabis are herbs... I have no doubt they work! And acupuncture has some research in its favour too, I think? Homeopathy, on the other hand, hasn't been shown to do anything much, and it seems a bit dubious to provide millions at taxpayer expense, given that situation.

I have a lot of time for the argument that the placebo effect is powerful, and if homeopathy harnesses it, and is harmless, what's the problem? But given how rationed NHS care must necessarily be, I'd rather the funding went to treatments that were more useful. If people believe in homeopathy, and so benefit from it, that's great. But I do think that treatment should be funded by the individual in question.

I asked brightonlad WHERE the figures are on how much it costs to send a patient to a homoeopath via the NHS, compared with the estimated cost of treating that patient long-term and without recourse to placebo on the NHS. I mean, this work will have been done and in more permutations that that: there are brighter minds than ours sorting out NHS policy (possibly...maybe...one hopes).

I assume there are some figures somewhere or else there's a lot of outraged bluster and hot air.

I have not heard a dickybird.........

Also, there are two things going on here, aren't there?

There's the financial argument: is it a valid use of NHS money? Given that a proportion of patients will benefit.

The question of whether or not there's a place for unproven, 'unscientific' remedies within the NHS is another matter.

I wonder also (different question again...), if homoeopathy was effectively endorsed by the orthodoxy, would it lose some of its potency for the users? If it was just another NHS service, with the pressures and underfunding that brings, the scabby consulting rooms and lack of time....would it be less 'different' and therefore less effective?

"I assume there are some figures somewhere or else there's a lot of outraged bluster and hot air."

Why? If someone thinks a treatment that has been proven not to work doesn't deserve funding, why do they have to prove the figures to your satisfaction for that opinion to be worthwhile? If they think the treatment is a waste of money however much it costs, what possible relevance to that viewpoint is your demand?

Personally I tend to agree that the fact the treatment is largely private is a large part of the placebo effectiveness. Seeking your own treatment is empowering in itself, and the better service/extra time is probably helpful, too. But it's a tad unfair to say that someone must provide details on costs to the taxpayer of an NHS-provided ineffective treatment, or their resentment that said treatment is state-funded is just "outraged bluster and hot air". A debate needn't only have validity in the terms one person participating frames, IMO.

Hang on

If people are saying right left and centre "How can the NHS pay for this? It's an outrage that they would be spending money on this..." then yes I DO want to see the figures behind that! Why is that unreasonable? What's the problem with asking to see what THAT argument is based on??

Don't assume that I am challenging the OP because I think homeopathy is fine! I don't. But I do like a logical argument and so far what I can see is people saying 'it cannot possibly work in a scientific way (I agree with this) therefore it should not be funded by government'. I want to know WHY it is being considered for funding by government in the first place: is it possible that they are, for example, trying to SAVE money?

Pruneurs, did you hear BG's R4 prog on the placebo effect a few months ago? He made similar arguments, but his conclusion (as I recall) was that in order for NHS funding of such things to be ethical, each homepoathic remedy would have to have a big disclaimer attached saying 'we have absolutely no reason to believe that this will be effective'.

Apparently the placebo effect doesn't rely entirely on belief - some studies have given people sugar pills and told them that they are sugar pills, but there was still a measurable effect. Weird stuff.

Yes there's all that stuff about hierarchy of vehicle for administering the placebo

operation more effective than injection more effective than syringe or something

It's totally fascinating. I am never, ever going to believe that homoeopathy works at a quantum level or any of that stuff, memory of water molecules, pah, but whatever is going on is worth harnessing, given how many people report success.

Some posters have mentioned acupuncture as a proven therapy which is also funded by the NHS on occasion.

Having had acupuncture in the past, accompanied with vague hand-waving over my prostate form and talk of chakras and auras, I was appalled on hearing this.

However, the chiropractor I've been seeing recently explained that the 'acupuncture' practised within the NHS is actually known to those using it as 'dry needling,' and works on the trigger points - basically knots in muscles which cause direct or referred pain - rather than aiming to get the 'chi' flowing.

If traditional acupuncture works, it is apparently by luck rather than stealth - some of the pressure points used by acupuncturists happen to correspond with known trigger points, so having the effect of easing the pain but having nothing to do with yin/yang/chi/woo.

The 'acupuncture' funded by the NHS is a branch of conventional medicine and is only called this as it's a widely used term that people understand.

Personally I think it's an unfortunate term to use and would much prefer they called it by its proper name.

Ha, yes, I'd forgotten that bit.

I think there are quite a lot of people who approach their GPs for treatment when what they really need is to sit with a sympathetic person for an hour or so, have someone make them a cup of tea and occasionally make helpful noises. (NOT talking about anyone with genuine health concerns, obviously.) Would probably make a lot of sense for the NHS to set up an army of entirely unqualified but nice people to perform this function and adminster injections of pure H20 at the end of each session. It would free up a lot of GP time.

Chiropractic is another controversial one, though, isn't it? Viz. the recent business with Simon Singh.

Pruneurs, it's a completely reasonable request, absolutely. I'd be interested in seeing the figures, too. Saying that a failure to meet it invalidates their position, and is "just outraged bluster and hot air" however isn't reasonable, because someone doesn't need to know the figures to know they strongly disagree with NHS funding for worthless treatments. The distinction's clear, no?

Ourlady, that's interesting. I did rather wonder when I heard that trials on acupuncture (for back pain, iirc) showed effectiveness, but not being any expert I was happy to accept that was the finding. (Being needlephobic it would take a bit more than that to interest me, anyway!)

Completely agree pw
Have had several long conversations with gp family member about just that.
He says his job is mainly counselling people in ten-minute (ie uselessly short) slots, when he is largely trained to spot medical problems and either treat or refer on.

I keep coming back to the fact that homeopathic remedies are WATER - nothing else - they simply CAN@T work - irrespective of whether individuals believe they do. Agree with policywonk - except we don't need to train people to give injections of H2O - could just give folk a glass of tap water?

Meh...I do think it's a bit naff of the OP to have SUCH a strong feeling about the financial aspect of it, but no real data to base that on!

If it were the case that nobody ever reported any good effects from homoeopathy then yes, obviously, it would be unacceptable in the extreme to fund this. But since people DO report success, and since it MIGHT save money - then it's not that simple for me...even as a long-time cynic.

I don't think it saves money at all as its usually a therapy of last resort -so only given when folk have tried everything else?

Yup, they are water and sugar. Quite ridiculous.

It's utterly incredible to hear the arguments for people having "recovered" after having these "treatments" - their blinkered supporters are totally oblivious to the thousand other things that person did in the same week which are equally (un)likely to have had an effect.

You may as well say they recovered because they watched BBC rather than ITV one day. Or wiped their shoes six times on the mat rather than four. It's the old correlation/= causation equation again.

But placebos do have an effect, UQD - surprisingly strong effects. So in that sense, people who say homeopathy is effective aren't wrong - they're just wrong about the reasons for its effectiveness.

But unless you test everything else you have no way of knowing if it's the placebo or something else they have done/eaten/ drunk/ watched/ sunbathed in which has had the positive effect.

Well, no - but studies that have been done on placebos show that people do derive benefits from homeopathic sugar pills, independently of whatever else they might derive benefit from. It's not true to say that homeopathic remedies have no effect at all.