'Stop NHS Funding of Homeopathy" urges Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee

[Snorbs]

The Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee, a cross-party group of MPs, has been taking expert evidence concerning homeopathy over the last year and has come to the conclusion that homeopathy is no more than placebo. "There has been enough testing of homeopathy and plenty of evidence showing that it is not efficacious." Also that "Homeopaths treat the kinds of illnesses that clear up on their own (self-limiting) or are susceptible to placebo responses". Its report concludes:

"The Government should stop allowing the funding of homeopathy on the NHS.

We conclude that placebos should not be routinely prescribed on the NHS. The
funding of homeopathic hospitals ? hospitals that specialise in the administration of placebos - should not continue, and NHS doctors should not refer patients to
homeopaths."

Full details and the report itself available in PDF format here.

The Government has not yet confirmed how it will respond to this report.

Herbal treatments have something in them. Homeopathy doesn't.

The thing is with the whole lot of woo-bollocks remedies (which include homeopathy, past life regression, sticking a hosepipe up one's arse and, to an extent, aromatherapy) is that they 'work' on conditions which either get better by themselves, or are down to generalized mild stress or the patient being a gullible whinyarse in the first place. People who have a vague collection of symptoms such as collywobbles, sniffles, a funny pain in their ear that comes and goes, tiredness etc might benefit a lot from eating less processed food and taking a little gentle exercise but (particularly the gullible whinyarses) are oddly resistant to doing this when a harassed, overworked GP tells them to go away and get on with it. However, if a woo-peddler tells them the same thing and throws in a packet of chalk and icing sugar Magic Dust, they will do it.
Unfortunately, if the vague collection of symptoms actually add up to leukemia, or AIDS, or the onset of diabetes, ignoring the GIP in favour of the woo-peddler can kill the patient. So woo should NOT be funded by the NHS.

Tis true TA after all where would we be without aspirin

I thought ear candling just cleared out the wax

snorbs - you are 100% wrong about that as far as acupuncture is concerned. There IS very clear evidence for acupuncture in low back pain and for other indications IIRC. See NICE guidance.

As for placebos only working if people believe in them - very possibly, but it's much more complicated than that. The question is, given we know placebos work, is it ethical to deny people a treatment that works? That would alleviate their pain or anxiety or whatever? Especially in those patients where everything else has been tried, but it doesn't work, or it has distressing side effects?

There was one trial where people were, quite correctly, given a well-known form of pain relief (think it was after minor surgery IIRC). Those who were told they were having morphine (for the sake of argument, can't remember quite what it was but something that obvious) did OK, as you'd expect. Those who were told but didn't actually receive it did quite well. Those who were given morphine but weren't told that's what it was did very badly indeed. A drug that we know is chemically active and has what everyone would generally agree are fairly predictable effects did fuck all if people didn't know they were taking it.

The placebo effect is not merely 'real' in one direction - a sugar pill helps you feel better - but works on several different levels as well. Licensed medicines are also placebos. People on the placebo arms of RCTs get better.

You've got it the wrong way round, SGB. When doctors and nurses, or the NHS as a whole, condemn complementary medicine, patients don't tell you what they are up to. THEN you get problems. Because Patient Y is taking St John's Wort and it affects their warfarin - but Patient Y doesn't tell you because they believe you will disapprove. Or, even worse, Patient Z distrusts you and doesn't even come to see you in the first place. They turn to a charlatan instead.

That's the real tragedy. That this current campaign against complementary medicine will stop patients talking to their doctors openly and honestly about their lives.

One very worrying aspect is that use of complementary medicine, especially certain types of herbal medicine, is much higher amongst some ethnic minority populations. So if this campaign to stamp complementary medicine out of the NHS gets its way, there is likely to be a real problem for (some) SE Asian/Chinese/African-Caribbean people in particular. Let's hope they happen to have sympathetic GPs.

Edam: a good point. But the answer is not to indulge the woo-peddlers, surely.

I wonder if the real solution wouldn't be for the woo-peddlers (plenty of whom are self-aware con-artists anyway) to sign up to some sort of Code of Conduct to the effect that they refer patients back to proper medicine if in doubt, or if there's a really obvious problem (I haven't heard of woo-peddlers offering to regrow severed limbs, for instance) or if the patient is getting better.
The worst of the trouble caused by woo-peddlers is caused by the deluded idiot variety - sincere, well-meaning, fucking clueless and peddling useless crap. Whereas the con artists want the patients to stay reasonably healthy so they can carry on fleecing them, therefore the con artists rarely 'prescribe' anything really ill-advised.

"A drug that we know is chemically active and has what everyone would generally agree are fairly predictable effects did fuck all if people didn't know they were taking it."

I'd really like to know more about this. Where can I read the report?

"Two wrongs don't make a right."

I'm not addressing it as two wrongs make a right. I'm addressing it as a positive benefit.

"First, do no harm." -- remember? At least homeopathy can say that.

To get all mired up about a small amount of money spent on this when there are vast amounts wasted, vast amounts lost in compensation, and thousands of lives affected or even ended by conventional medicine well, ironically, it's rather irrational.

Homeopathy is such an easy target -- challenging the damage done by conventional medical error is much harder and more complicated, so I can see why you've made the choice you have.

"The shortcomings of conventional medicine aren't the issue here." Well quite it's something you'd like to avoid a much more complex issue but when it goes wrong, so much more damaging.

I don't agree that homeopathy does no harm actually.

Potentially, it could stop people seeking proper medical help until too late.

But in my opinion, the serious harm it does is to people's thinking. We need a society where people think clearly and rigorously and question, question. question. Why isn't it allowed to apply rigorous analysis to alternative medicine? If it passes, then it ceases to eb alternative and becomes"medicine". If it fails - as most have, then why should I pay for other people's wooly minded belief in "water memory"?

Not in an NHS hospital. I don't use homeopathy myself but I'm sure that under the aegis of an NHS hospital the practitioners have a fairly active code of referring to conventional medicine if necessary.

It does so little harm compared to conventional medicine -- and it evidently does some good, even if it's just the placebo effect and keeping hypochondriacs out of waiting rooms. And the cost is so low relative to the NHS budget, not just for treatment, but for compensation, that it's insane to focus on this when there is so much to work on elsewhere.

The damage done to thinking? That's just nannying. People are capable of independent thought and thank God it is still allowed, though plainly you'd like to see that come to an end and the choices that follow from it.

How can you talk about "damage done to thinking" when you are looking at the list of damage caused by conventional medicine and you care less about that? It's simply not rational at all.

My goodness you'd be paying a lot more if those hospitals closed. Why, you pay enormous amounts for the appalling side effects of prescribed drugs -- how come you don't get upset about that, and about faulty trials, and hidden results? It's just so easy to feel you're that much sharper than all those woolly-minded others, but really this is such an easy intellectual target it's just lazy thinking.

probono, your argument seems to be "conventional (ie, science-based) medicine sometimes goes wrong, so let's all pretend that a placebo isn't a placebo." Huh?

"I thought ear candling just cleared out the wax "

a) it can be dangerous, as people have suffered burns in the ear canal from melted candle wax trickling down the candle, and

b) it doesn't remove any wax whatsoever.

Who said I don't care about the damage done by converntional medicine? Start a thread about that and I'll be there. But this thread is about whether tax payers money should be spent on giving the worried well sugar pills.

Have another read Snorbs. Why do you care so much about this, which does so little harm, and so little about the significant harm done by conventional medicine? Can you even begin to answer that? Why don't you answer the other points I've raised? It's a much more difficult question than you've considered.

Basically, the committee talks about the function and purpose of informed choice in healthcare.

However the function and purpose of informed choice in health care serves another, higher purpose: it is only a means to an end. That higher purpose is improved healthcare.

What the committee should have been asking itself is: will this decision improve healthcare?

It doesn't look like they have examined the hospitals themselves, the patient demographic, the conditions treated, the role the hospitals fulfil. That's what they should have done, this new committee that has to find things to do.

In order to take the decision on whether or not closing the hospitals would improve health care, they should have examined all that data. But they didn't seek that information: they don't have the data, and they've decided to take away the choice anyway.

It's just a lazy show of "we're right rational, we are". No, you aren't: you've forgotten your remit in the name of boxticking.

I know you don't care about it as much Seeker because when I brought it up there was no agreement. To imagine they are separate issues is quite wrong: it has a bearing here.

Seeker, what about the other points I raised wrt your own posts?

Quite apart from anything else, providing this on the NHS probably ensures that the NHS homeopathy customers/patients(whatever) are referred to conventional medicine when necessary.

Correct that to 'very expensive sugar pills that pretend they are something else', seeker

edam, I've looked at the results of the trial that NICE used as evidence to recommend accupuncture. That trial showed that mock acupuncture - where people were just prodded with a toothpick - was just as effective as having needles shoved in their skin. And that's proof enough for you that acupuncture works, is it? Smells like placebo to me.

"People are capable of independent thought and thank God it is still allowed, though plainly you'd like to see that come to an end and the choices that follow from it."

Is this you point you mean? I thought that was just a gratuitous insult so I ignored it.

Happy for people to make choices - just don't want to pay for expensive sugar pills myself. Than as wants 'em can pay for 'em themselves.

I tend to think of things like homoeopathy as another method of Darwinism. If people want to throw their money at it and want to believe it works then that is their business - not actually my problem if they get themselves sicker/killed by believing in snake oil.

If, however a Government is going to provide medical care, then the medical care needs to be properly researched etc.

So whatever floats your boat, but don't expect other people to pay for it.

I agree that homoeopathy is ridiculous with no evidence, however I don't have a problem with the NHS funding it. It is a cost effective way of treating anxious patients. My in laws are big on "woo" and the difference between the private homoeopathist they see, who tells them to avoid mainline medicine completely and the NHS ones, who say "never trust anyone that claims this is an alternative treatment, it is complimentary at best," makes me glad that people wanting this treatment are not cut off. The only homoeopathic doctor (NHS) I have met was fully trained in conventional medicine as well, whereas the private ones have no recognisable qualifications and quite often other agendas.

There is still quite a lot of debate about many of the antidepressants having not much more than placebo effect, yet they are a billion dollar industry. There is quite often moaning on here about not being able to get a GP appointment, if the people clogging up all the appointments with their non specific symptoms and hypochondria could be sent elsewhere and free up some GP time, in a name other than homoeopathy, would you mind so much?

I mind because the fact that it is available on the NHS gives it legitimacy. People understandably use the fact as proof that it works. "It wouldn't be available on the NHS if it didn't work, would it?"