National headlines ask for cuts in homeopathy funding

Local Homeopath Cathy Morris-Adams responds to this weeks national headline about Complementary/alternative healthcare.

On Tuesday this week, some of Britain's leading doctors urged NHS trusts to stop using complementary therapies and to pay only for medicine "based on solid evidence". About half of GPs are thought to refer patients to alternative therapists. In a letter, reproduced in the Times, the doctors (organised by Michael Baum, emeritus professor of surgery at University College London), raised concern that the NHS is backing "unproven or disproved treatments", like homeopathy and acupuncture. The letter described homeopathy as an "implausible treatment for which over a dozen systematic reviews have failed to produce convincing evidence of effectiveness".

This was headline news on the same day Prince Charles was due to make a speech in Geneva urging foreign ministers to back complementary therapies. He was putting forward the case for alternative medicine in the fight against serious disease, in a speech to the World Health Assembly.

Perhaps these doctors are forgetting the horrors of the recent drug trial that went horribly wrong. Yes conventional medicine can show immediate effects on the human body as it works against the natural processes. Whereas complementary health care works with the body giving perhaps slower, but longer lasting improvement and without side effects.

BBC tv and radio interviewed 93-year-old Jane Gilchrist, homeopathy advocate. "It has been in the NHS since 1948. It's the best kept secret in Britain," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. She said it was difficult to collect data because it was hard to prove the effectiveness of a therapy "based on people, not on symptoms".

Doctors are criticising the fact that much of the evidence for homeopathy is anecdotal. The Daily Mail has been running an Internet poll on homeopathy’s effectiveness, at present it stands at 83% of voters say yes it works. The reason homeopathy claims it’s success by word of mouth is that there is a fundamental problem with scientific tests on homeopathy. It will not fit into orthodox medical models where a particular ailment is treated by a specific medicine.

However, in trials that allow for a treatment of the person not the symptoms, then homeopathy is shown to be very effective.

A recent six-year study at Bristol Homeopathic Hospital shows over 70% of patients with chronic diseases reported positive health changes after treatment. More than 6,500 patients took part in the study with problems ranging from eczema to menopause and arthritis. The biggest improvements were seen in children - 89% of under 16s with asthma reported improvement. Theses types of studies also dismiss the placebo effect, as tiny babies also show vast improvements in health.

With the current growth in the organic food market we will also see more evidence of the effectiveness of homeopathy in animals that cannot have improvement in health due to the placebo effect.

This group of doctors who hit the headlines are claiming that much needed money is being wasted on complementary health. What is so frustrating about this is that most complementary health therapies are also forms of preventative medicine, which could therefore in the long run save billions of pounds to the NHS.

I am not suggesting that complementary health care should take over from conventional (it’s name alone says it all), but it should be embraced as an extra tool in the search for good health. Most complementary therapies are based on hundreds of years of clinical evidence why throw it all away?

Perhaps David Cameron was right this week. "It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general well-being," he said.

If you are have a point of view about this complementary health issue that you would like to share publicly, please contact Cathy Morris-Adams on 01749 899 228.