'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.

Oh, and the NHS DOES spend an awful lot of money on some very expensive placebos atm. Many of them bought from drug companies. Every drug has a placebo effect. As does every consultation with a health professional. If you look at the studies gathered during the history of a drug that has just come off-licence, as a rule of thumb. you'll see it is only just better than placebo - although oddly enough a decade ago when it was licensed the evidence showed it was the best thing since penicillin. (Ask the editor of Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin if you don't believe me!)

Some of that is probably down to publication bias, including the fact that studies that show drugs work are far more likely to be published in peer-reviewed journals in the run up to licensing/early days of the drug being on sale.

(I have no wish to carp at drug companies in general, if Glaxo didn't make Lamictal I'd be dead or brain damaged by now, probably. But it's just not as simple as 'conventional pharmaceutical drugs are good, evidence based and safe while complementary therapies are woo'.)

Btw, as for woo-merchants, one very good reason for providing complementary therapies on the NHS is to limit the market for irresponsible snake oil salesmen, or well-meaning but ill-educated/under-trained would-be therapists. Many of the therapists who take referrals from GPs do NHS work on a voluntary basis, btw.

Where are all the healthy prescription takers?

i think there is a deeper aspect of alternative therapies to consider.
if the nhs continues to approve homeopathy peoples health will be put at risk.

it was recently suggested to me that i should try homeopathy for my allergic son, by a medical proffsional, who should have known better that a ige allergic reaction would not respond well to homopathy.

it certainly would NOT cure his allergies, and if the medicine contained even the smallest amount of his allergen, it could tip him in to a reaction.

i have heard of a problem from someone who took their allergic and intolerant child for homeopathy.
she had to explain that the drops being put on a tablet, was not ok, that the tablet should be lactose free, as her child was milk allergic.

one day he made a mistake, and the child was pretty ill. if that sort of mistake was made with a ige allergy, that person would have the potential to die from anaphylaxis.

you could say that anyone could make a mistake, but in general if you understand the importance of life and death, they are more careful. alternative practices have no idea , they have had little to no medical training and make mistakes.

by approving such untested treatments, it also gives the go ahead for those other practices, that people swear by, the NAET for instance, a treatment that killed a peanut allergic man in ireland last year, after he was 'cured'

the vega machines in health stores, are everywhere, and kids can get tested, get a long list of foods to avoid, and without proper dietary advice make long term damage to health.
certainly immunologists are seeing children with milk allergies who have developed rickets, following such stupid dietary restrictions, sometimes without allergy being there at all.

i am not totally against these treatments, some like chinese herbal stuff could be very benifical, but what i do want , and what we , the public deserve, is the right to have these treatments tested and approved.

when we part with our health, we need to know if this is working , and most importantly is safe.