Yet Another Nail in the Homeopathic Coffin?
Question by Gary Y: Yet another nail in the homeopathic coffin?
From news.scotsman.com:
NHS funding cut for homeopathy because it has ‘no clinical benefit’
Published Date: 06 October 2010
By JOHN ROSS
A HEALTH board has become the first in Scotland to begin phasing out homeopathic treatments on the NHS, after deciding they provide no clinical benefit.
NHS Highland spends a minimum of £13,000 a year on referrals to two homeopathic practitioners in Inverness. But it decided yesterday to withdraw support for the alternative therapy, which has come under fire recently by doctors and a cross-party group of MPs.
In February the Commons science and technology committee said the NHS should stop funding homeopathy, which it said acted only as a placebo. In June the British Medical Association also urged the Scottish NHS to withdraw the £1.5 million spent each year on homeopathic treatments.
NHS Highland has decided to set up a clinical board to ensure services it provides are evidence-based and cost-effective. It agreed to phase out funding to some non-drug treatments, including those where there was “no evidence of clinical benefit, such as homeopathy”.
Margaret Somerville, the board’s director of health policy, said patients offered an ineffective treatment might delay getting the most appropriate help for their condition, with possible serious consequences.
“I’m very clear there is a good evidence base out there (about homeopathy]. It’s been looked at very closely by people a lot more expert than me and they are happy there is no clinical benefit to be had from homeopathy.”…
http://news.scotsman.com/news/NHS-funding-cut-for-homeopathy.6567228.jp
NHS Highland’s intention to set up a board to ensure that its services are evidence based sounds like a step in the right direction, and should be major blow to quacks.
So when will the rest of the UK catch up?
@deif, you’re a glowing example of an altie, aren’t you? I was hoping for some slightly more intelligent answers from your crowd.
@thomas, its a copy/paste, I didn’t write it. Do you have anything better to offer than criticizing the punctuation and name calling?
Hi Rhianna. No we won’t see any supporting evidence from any of them, thenoseknows included. They never do. Because they can’t. Just look at the quality of their answers. And that itself represents even more nails in the homeopathic coffin.
@brad – you do realize that homeopathy is water or sugar pills – no active ingredients, don’t you? How do you know it worked for you? Did you have a control?
Best answer:
Answer by Rhianna does Medicine Year 1
Hi Gary. Hopefully the rest will follow suit….but I’m not holding my breath for that to happen anytime soon.- And certainly not if Charlie Windsor has anything to do with it.
Homoeopathy is very clearly bunk, it’s ludicrous to spend money on activities that have never worked in any high quality trial and contradict everything we know about science.
Pseudoscience should be left in the 18th century where it belongs.
How is wasting money on something with zero plausibility and efficacy an appropriate use of NHS funding? Frankly, we shouldn’t be endorsing such stupidity.
========================================
Edit: As you can see Gary, when the quacks cannot present evidence to support their position, their only recourse is fallacious arguments.
And thenoseknows STILL knows nothing.
“and it’s still going strong on the NHS anyway. ”
Evidence for this claim please. How many referrals are there per year? Be more specific. Popularity does not demonstrate efficacy. There were only 5 homoeopathic clinics in the UK, the one just down the road from me in Tunbridge-Wells shut awhile back. If it’s still going strong on the NHS, then please explain why 95% of our hospitals ignore it? In reality, very few GPs offer homoeopathic referrals to such placebo clinics.
French virologist Professor Luc Montagnier did no such thing. His “study” is not evidence that homoeopathy works or that water has memory. Harriet Hall gives a very thorough trashing of his “study” here: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2081
“Until Montagnier’s research, the bulk of mainstream doctors and scientist had maintained that there was no scientific way that multiple dilutions used in homoeopathy could possibly work.”
And that is STILL the case, because water does not have memory and it’s never been demonstrated to. You can’t diluted a preparation to the point that there isn’t a single molecule of the chemical in the final preparation and expect it to have any biological effect.
Also avoid the appeal to authority and popularity in your posts please.
The alties lie.
Give your answer to this question below!
Fox News calls “Aaron Bacon” a Powerful Film! – On March 31st, 2010, Fox News covered the Scottsdale, AZ premiere of the film “Aaron Bacon,” written and directed by Nick Gaglia. They called the movie “A Powerful Film!” Includes interviews with Nick Gaglia, and Aaron’s mother Sally. “Aaron Bacon” is based on the true story of a 16-year-old kid who dies at the hands of abuse, starvation, and maltreatment in a tough-love, wilderness, drug-treatment facility called North Star.
CDF widens inequalities in UK access to cancer drugs
Filed under: drug treatment news 2010
More than 13,000 patients have now received treatment funded by the government's Cancer Drugs Fund between its (interim) launch in October 2010 and March 2012, accessing 94 different drugs under the scheme, according to a report by UK charity the …
Read more on Pharma Times
Lilly pulls plug on drug to treat schizophrenia
Filed under: drug treatment news 2010
“I'm disappointed in what these results mean for patients with schizophrenia who still are searching for options to treat this terrible illness,” said Jan Lundberg, president of Lilly Research Laboratories. He said the drug's failure points up the …
Read more on Indianapolis Star
Tags: homeopathic practitioners, fox news, drug treatment
9 Responses to Yet Another Nail in the Homeopathic Coffin?
Leave a Reply
One misguided move by one little jurisdiction does not a “nail in the coffin make”. Try to avoid making mountains out of molehills, but isn’t this what the pharma industry does on a regular basis?
The so-called Science and Technology Committee’s little grandstand to try to attack homeopathy failed, and it’s still going strong on the NHS anyway. It had actually no impact at all. Just more proof that the pharma industry is running scared of the competition, which is growing by 20% a year and they know it.
And the good news is, that since these silly attacks on homeopathy have surfaced, more independent research is confirming its validity:
(NaturalNews) At a time when the British Medical Association is calling for an end to national funding for homeopathy and detractors are describing it as “nonsense on stilts”, a Nobel prize-winning scientist has made a discovery that suggests that homeopathy does have a scientific basis after all. In July, Nobel Prize winning French virologist Professor Luc Montagnier shocked fellow Nobel prize-winners and the medical establishment by telling them that he had discovered that water has a memory that continues even after many dilutions.
Until Montagnier’s research, the bulk of mainstream doctors and scientist had maintained that there was no scientific way that multiple dilutions used in homeopathy could possibly work. In part, such views stemmed from lack of understanding. In larger part, such views likely stemmed from a desire to stem the rising popularity of homeopathy and eliminate it as a competition to mainstream medicine – much the same as happened in the United States a century ago.
One of the foundations of homeopathy maintains that the potency of a substance is increased with its dilution. Montagnier discovered that solutions containing the DNA of viruses and bacteria “could emit low frequency radio waves” and that such waves influence molecules around them, turning them into organized structures. The molecules in turn emit waves and Montagnier found that the waves remain in the water even after it has been diluted many times. To a lay person, that may not mean much, but to a scientist is highly suggests that homeopathy may have a scientific basis.
In Britain the market for homeopathy is estimated to be growing at around 20% a year. Over 30 million people in Europe use homeopathic medicine. Homeopathy is supported in Britain by Prince Charles and the physician to the Royal Family has been a homeopathic physician since the late 1800s.
While homeopathy is also experiencing a resurgence of popularity in the United States, it is far more popular in much of the rest of the world. In India, approximately 130 million people use homeopathy. In Brazil, homeopathy is a recognized medical specialty where 15,000 medical doctors are certified as homeopathic specialists
Where I come from, “skeptics” are known as quackpots.
All this means is that they will have to go to the private sector and charge people outrageous fees for “private homeopathic consultations so effective and secret the government doesn’t even want you to know about it!”
If anything homeopaths will spin this to make even more money.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that tax payer money ever went to paying towards treatments that weren’t evidence based – especially when here we have so many people that have a hard time trying to treatment from their HMO’s that IS evidenced based.
Baffling.
And Luc Montaigner? I simply can’t believe a Nobel Prize winner self-published a study so shot full of holes. Between Duesberg and this, I’m beginning to lose credence in judges who bestow that award.
Which is why I stick with being impressed with Lasker award winners.
http://www.laskerfoundation.org/pdf/2010_anniversary_supplement.pdf
Evidence for this claim please. How many referrals are there per year? Be more specific. Popularity does not demonstrate efficacy. There were only 5 homoeopathic clinics in the UK, the one just down the road from me in Tunbridge-Wells shut awhile back. If it’s still going strong on the NHS, then please explain why 95% of our hospitals ignore it? In reality, very few GPs offer homoeopathic referrals to such placebo clinics.
This answer seems to be removed by a temporary failing of the human system. Our excuses : As a seeker for Truth, and for the sake of Truth, here is it again : Rhianna, it’s clear where you want Gary’s skepdick. I don’t see why you want to declare it so publicly. Pseudoscience? Not because you are an underdeveloped nurse, now going to study medicine to cover up for your lack of true mental abilities and authority, that you should call things you don’t understand pseudoscience. Let’s just have a simple look in the hospital where medicine, is materializing. If you call that science, that proves how clever you are. I hope you are aware of the mirror, your comments reveal so clearly. (Sally, profoundly aware of other things going on, but reported through the same anti-Truth commision, clearly stated that Weise Ente had something with Rhianna. I just mention this, it’s not peer reviewed and double-blind so you can leave the comment for what it was)
EDIT :
@Sally Are you sure: isn’t Weise Ente a neo-nazi? That would mean that the Germans and the British, once in big war, have found peace. How romantic history can be? You may be right, but I want to see this peer reviewed, sure you are not hallucinating because of allopathic placebos?
@Gary : I am not an example of anything, at least not for measurable time. And that’s what it’s all about :measurability. You should know that. I hope you understand me, but at the other hand, I am sure you don’t. That’s a pity. I could advice you to grow up, but that’s not my responsability (in my opinion).
even if it was, it doesn’t make your cult the least bit more credible or respectable.
No dude.
Its been around for a long time it ain’t going anywhere.
I’ve used it myself and I would use it again because it helped me.
wouldn’t be what I’d ask for if 1/2 my leg was hanging off after a chain saw incident but..
Hi Gary,
I seriously think that all funding should be cut.
We are way too much people on this planet.
Maybe funds for the military should be highly raised.
From governmental side there should be much more clever complots to set up groups against each other, and those groups should have easier access to weapons, because the problem is really urgent, no placebos will help here to make the weak think themselves dead. Or are we simply going to wait until nature will resolve the problem. Why not simply help evolution a hand and be the creation of the chaos that will come whatsoever?
If you have the intention to report me, for whatever reason,
think about what an asshole you are,
apart from being spiritually retarded.
About your comment to Thomas : be careful of what you copy/paste. Thomas is completely right in his comment
About deif. He shows great intellect. Just your reactions towards his contributions prove, another time, your spiritual retardation.
Gary, when are you finally grow up, you and your little peer reviewed and double blindly controlled nincompoops?
You are the intelligent ones, as you claim. You should give the right example. That is called true leadership. I hope your next contributions prove you are on the right way, or I take you to Vietnam and put my knife right where you like it.
Good luck.
these people obviously know other people in high places if they were all guilty but only one person went to jail for? 2 MONTHS!