'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.

Maybe the government should stick a tax on dream-catchers, crystal geodes, wind chimes and pictures of unicorns to fund it.

Seeker, excellent point!

I am a huge fan of the NHS, doctors, nurses, and all who work in her.

This, however, annoys me. The placebo effect is well documented, so whether there is anything in homeopathy or not is irrelevant. If people believe that something is going to be helpful, then, in many cases, it almost certainly will be.

This stems from pharmaceutical companies who don't want anyone else muscling in on their profits.

No, Seeker, all the other points. Stop taking the easy way out!

Sorry - I thought I had answered them. Not sure which ones I've missed. C and P and I'll reply.

It utterlu utterly pisses me off BIG TIME.

In my job (NHS) i am tasked with making changes and savings.
I recently identified a huge saving opportunity. However as the change was not supported by substantial evidence base, i could not institute the change.
Thats fair enough, but i am pulling back to save £1k here and £3k there, when this huge chunk of money is spent year in year out on something with NO sound clinical evidence. What exsactly is the point in me slogging day in day out to do this??
This is MY money and YOUR money, i want it stopped full stop and NOW. GRRRRRrrr

'The placebo effect is well documented, so whether there is anything in homeopathy or not is irrelevant. If people believe that something is going to be helpful, then, in many cases, it almost certainly will be.'

It's an interesting point, this. OTOH, as you say, placebos are relatively harmless.

But for an NHS doctor to prescribe a placebo, s/he is going to have to effectively lie to the patient: 'take this because I have reason to believe that it is an effective medicine for your complaint'. But of course the doctor doesn't believe any such thing.

There are knotty problems of medical ethics here. Is it OK for doctors to lie to patients, even if the placebo effect means that the patient might get some relief from his/her symptoms?

I also read somewhere recently that the placebo effect is fairly short-lived when compared with pharmaceuticals.

pronobo- of course there are problems with conventional medicine - noone's denying that. However the need to ensure better patient safety is a different issue to providing services which provide no benefit? Perhaps if NHS stops wasting money on treatments with no clinical benefit the money thats saved can be reinvested into providing safer treatments/services which work?

On the ethics of GPs prescribing placebos - could they not truthfully say to the patient "I believe that this is going to help you feel better" - on the basis of all the evidence that placebos do work? Do they really have to say "I believe that this is going to help you feel better even though it contains no active pharmaceutical ingredients and the effect is purely in your mind"? (Or, they could just send the patient to Boots and tell them to go buy some over the counter sugar pills because that might make them feel better - thus avoiding the Rx cost). That would seem ethical to me - and GP would give more information on placebo effect if asked for more info - doesn't need to lie and say that there's magic in the pills. But I guess many people would never ask. And patient would remain engaged with the system, so go back to GP if needed.

When they prescribe, say, my asthma meds they don't say "this is going to make you feel better because drug A is going to act on pathway B etc etc". I know they could, but realistically they don't.

"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 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. In order to take the decision on whether or not closing the hospitals would improve health care, they should have examined all that data."

There's no evidence this would improve patient care and health -- it wasn't even looked for.

Placebos don't work if you know it's a placebo.

The patient can not know it's a placebo: the committee addresses this point and says placebo medicating is not sufficiently researched to justify spending public money.

"its insane to focus on this when there is so much to work on elsewhere" - but focussing on the other areas means resources need to go on those areas, and not on areas with no clinical benefit? When not on maty leave I work for NHS and as meantattypie says we're constantly being told that we need to make savings. Although in the great scheme of things £2m might not seem a great deal, its a hell of a lot when you're faced with cutting services because you need to save 20k

How do you know there is no clinical benefit lal? You don't at all.

ah, the points you cut and pasted were addressed to snorbs, not me. Which is why I didn't answer them.

I stand by my point that there is no need to go into the finer points of the actual hospital conderned. The fact remains that NHS funded homeopathy gives it a legitimacy that it has not earned, and which might make people believe that it has proven effectiveness. Which it doesn't. This pointalone is a good reason for stopping NHS funding.

I wish the NHS could prescribe placebos too. They are clearly important. As is talking to somebody when you are anxious about something.

I had a friend who was having a bad time. She paid £40 for a nice chat with the neighbourhood homeopath and she cheered up in no time. She didn't take her "remedies" that night as she kept forgetting to leave that crucial hour between peppermint tea/coffee/toothpaste/food and so on, and then forgot again the next day. She suddenly realised she was feeling a lot better. Why? She'd offloaded onto a neutral, caring neighbour who had listened kindly for an hour. Of course when the homeopath rang a few days later to see if the remedies had worked my friend just muttered that she was feeling a lot better now, thank you. This isn't the side of the anecdote you normally hear homeopaths mentioning.

They were general points

What is the focus here? Improved patient care or not?

Would it improve patient care and health to close these hospitals? The research hasn't been done. Stopping funding might be a disbenefit to patient health.

I think it could be (reasons above) but the committee doesn't actually know and hasn't bothered to find out.

But what do you think of my point about the ligitimizing of homeopathy by giving it NHS funding?

I think it doesn't matter: what matters is patient health. It's a principle that might not contribute to patient health.

I have to go.. will be back.

a client of my company was in drug trials of a new drug which we were getting ready to launch as all signs were good. Then the results showed that the placebo did better than the drug and th elaunch was pulled. My suggestion that we lanch the placebo instead didn't go down well

Jux, if big pharmaceutical companies thought homeopathy was a threat, they'd be peddling the stuff themselves imo.

Sorry thought I would be longer.

Yes, I think it doesn't matter as much as patient health.

I agree with Jux, I really do.

Not homeopathy specifically: all complementary/alternative/natural therapies threaten the medicalisation of our lives.

You're not far wrong, Skoda -- in fact pharmaceutical companies do very much want to profit from the boom for example in vitamin and mineral supplements: and have tried to make it impossible for independents to supply them, tried to remove some supplements from supply and tried to reduce "legal" dosages to what many believe are ineffective levels.

probono - did you get a response from MNHQ yesterday regarding the link I posted on the Wakefield thread? Just wondering really.

sorry, as you were

just that it was being looked into

I guess it's enough that we can flag up any contributions from now on as not worth responding to

seeker - re. the 'patients who didn't know they had been given morphine felt no pain relief' study - I'll have to go back to my notes on that, think it might have been a conference presentation by Peter thingy (McIlwraith?) from the Christie Hospital in Manchester (where they have a complementary therapy service that obviously works carefully in conjunction with oncologists and chemo/radio/etc regimes). Cancer is horrible, cancer treatments are horrible and cancer patients (and carers) seem to derive a lot of benefit from complementary therapies. Clearly massage or acupuncture or whatever can never and should never claim to cure cancer, but therapies can give some valuable relief from the stress of living with cancer.