After receiving some severe setbacks homeopathy has won the last round in its battle with the medical profession. England’s Department of Health has rejected demands to stop funding the use of homeopathy in the NHS. Local primary care trusts should be left to make up their own minds as to whether the treatment is appropriate for their patients.
Click here to see the full report.
In the week that doctors have described homeopathy as ‘nonsense on stilts’, a Nobel prize-winning scientist has made a discovery about the nature of water that suggests the therapy does have a scientific basis. Professor Luc Montagnier, a French virologist who won the Nobel prize for discovering a link between HIV and AIDS, has shocked fellow Nobel prize-winners by telling them that water has a memory that continues even after many dilutions. The idea is one of the foundations of homeopathy, which maintains that the potency of a substance is increased with its dilution.
Montagnier has discovered that solutions containing the DNA of viruses and bacteria “could emit low frequency radio waves”. These waves influence molecules around them, and turn them into organised structures. These molecules in turn can emit waves. He has discovered that the waves remain in the water, even after it has been diluted many times.
Montagnier’s statement couldn’t happen at a worse time for doctors. Last week, the UK’s British Medical Association (BMA) – the trade union of doctors – passed a resolution to stop homeopathy being made available on the National Health Service. It also wants all homeopathic remedies to be placed in a special area marked ‘Placebos’ in health shops and pharmacies. The NHS currently spends around £4m a year on homeopathy, mainly by funding four homeopathic hospitals in the UK.
(Sources: Sunday Times, July 4, 2010; British Medical Association).
Homeopathy can prevent Japanese Encephalitis (JE) infection that infects 50,000 and kills 10,000 in South and Southeast Asia each year, report Indian researchers in the American Journal of Infectious Diseases. A study by researchers at Kolkata’s School of Tropical Medicine and the Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy found that the homeopathic medicine Belladonna prevented infection in chick embryos infected with the JE virus.
For the full article, click here.
Scores of pro-homeopathy supporters demonstrated outside the Brighton Centre today ahead of doctors voting on whether homeopathic remedies should be banned on the NHS.
Medics at the British Medical Association (BMA) conference voted three to one in favour of banning NHS funding for homeopathic remedies and removing support for the UK’s four homeopathic hospitals.
They said NHS doctors should not be trained in homeopathy and remedies should be taken off shelves “labelled medicines” and put on shelves “labelled placebos”.
One doctor described homeopathy as “nonsense on stilts” while another said patients would be better off buying bottled water.
But some doctors said their patients seemed to benefit despite no clinical trial evidence that homeopathy worked.
Proposing the motion, Dr Mary McCarthy, a GP from Shropshire, said homeopathic doctors claimed it made people feel better.
“Lots of things make you feel better – a sunny day, the smell of the sea, a hug, retail therapy,” she said.
“It can do harm by diverting patients from conventional medical treatments.”
She said the issue was about NHS funding and promotion and would not prevent homeopaths from practising.
While doctors call for a total NHS ban on homeopathy, Nina Lakhani wrote this report in The Independent on 27th June 2010 which shows patient support. Click here for the article.
Doctors will this week call for a total ban on all homoeopathic treatment on the NHS. Hundreds of delegates to the British Medical Association’s conference are expected to support seven motions all opposed to the use of public money to pay for remedies which they claim are, at best, scientifically unproven and, at worst, ineffective.
Critics of the 200-year-old practice also want junior doctors to be exempt from working at homoeopathic hospitals because it goes against the principles of evidence-based medicine. Sugar pills and placebos have no place in a modern health service, they say, especially as the NHS must find £20bn in savings over the next few years.
But supporters claim homoeopathy helps thousands of patients with chronic conditions such as ME, asthma, migraine and depression who have not responded to conventional medical treatments. The British Homoeopathic Association (BHA) points out that less than 0.01 per cent of the massive NHS drug bill is spent on homoeopathic tinctures and pills.
Nevertheless, the conference will also hear calls for homoeopathic remedies to be banned from chemists unless they are clearly labelled as placebos rather than medicines. The over-the-counter market is worth around £40m a year, and rising, according to Mintel, the consumer research organisation.
The increasingly vocal dissent follows a report from MPs on the influential science and technology select committee earlier this year, which also urged the NHS to cease funding homoeopathic treatments due to a clear absence of scientific proof about its efficacy. The MPs criticised current licensing and labelling regulations which “lend a spurious medical legitimacy” to homoeopathic products which are no more than sugar pills.
But supporters of homoeopathy are passionate and are unlikely to take this lying down.
David Tredinnick, the Tory MP and outspoken supporter of complementary therapies, tabled an early day motion last week calling on the Government to reject calls for a centrally driven ban and instead allow local services and clinicians to continue making decisions. A protest will take place outside the BMA conference in Brighton on Tuesday.
Homoeopathy works on the principle of “like cures like”, so patients are treated with diluted substances that would cause the same symptoms in a healthy person. More than 55,000 NHS patients are seen through four homoeopathic hospitals every year, while thousands more are treated by dually trained GPs. This costs the NHS an estimated £10m, a tiny fraction of the overall £80bn health budget. But this is too much for some.
Dr Gordon Lehany, a psychiatrist and chair of the BMA’s Scottish junior doctors committee, who has proposed one of the motions calling for the ban, said it was wrong to spend even a few million pounds of public money on useless homoeopathic treatments when new cancer drugs were being rejected on the grounds of cost. He said: “We’re not saying homoeopathy shouldn’t happen, just that it should not be funded on the NHS. While placebos can work, they are not medicines, there is no active ingredient, and so if people want to access these expensive sugar tablets, they have to find the money themselves.”
Cristal Sumner, the BHA’s chief executive, said: “While we are in the grip of new financial austerity measures, the BMA is launching an attack on a field of treatment that helps thousands of people in a cost-effective way. Patients have been able to access homoeopathy on the NHS since its inception. It is an important treatment choice for both patients and doctors.”
The patient: ‘It saved my life. Isn’t that worth something?’
Helen Llewelyn, 31, from Haringey, north London, suffered from chronic physical pain and depression as a result of endometriosis which conventional medicine, including surgery, failed to help. She was referred to the Royal London Homoeopathic hospital in 2007.
“My homoeopathic treatment includes two medicines for physical pain and one for my mental state. I saw a homoeopath three times and it worked. I come from a very scientific background; I’m certainly not someone drawn naturally to homoeopathy. I didn’t think the medicines would work but they did. I thought anti-depressants would work but they didn’t. So I don’t put a lot of merit on the placebo argument. To say that funding for homoeopathy on the NHS is a waste is extremely short-sighted. It will save thousands on useless medicines. More importantly, it saved my life. Isn’t that worth something? I would still be clinically depressed otherwise. It made me much more productive in society.”