The Downfall of Homeopathy

Maybe no more water and sugar pills on the NHS?

 

Today a colleague of mine mentioned an article on the blacklisting of homeopathy on the NHS. How did I miss that in my morning news feed? Thank you Apple news. But yes, the NHS is considering blacklisting homeopathic prescriptions, meaning your local GP will not be prescribing you any overly expensive water. Homeopathy played a massive part in the NHS House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (SciTech) concluded that it was nothing more than ‘magic’. There was a victory back in 2013 when the Advertising Standards Agency stated that homeopathic medicines have to be labelled as ‘homeopathic remedies’.

Costs

The article states that the total NHS bill for homeopathy and homeopathic hospitals is around £4 million per year. See here, the Bristol homeopathic hospital, because this is the world we currently live in - where homeopathic hospitals actually exist. £110,000 is said to be allocated to prescriptions from GPs for homeopathic medication whilst the rest is allocated to these hospitals. There appear to be four of which in the UK. With the money strains put on the NHS and the ridiculousness of homeopathy combined with the lack of any evidence, this just sounds on the face of it: utterly ridiculous. 

  

Here in the UK, we have certain classes of prescription drugs. Schedule 1 drugs are drugs that your GP should not prescribe. These are for many reasons, such as efficacy or costs. The question of the article is, if blacklisted, will we see a political move to make homeopathic medication a schedule one drug? I certainly hope so. Homeopathy is a booming market that is multi-million pound industry in the UK alone, which, luckily, has faded over time.

Evidence

I have written before about Homeopathy and its complete lack of evidence. A lovely meta-analysis carried out by excellent physicians and statisticians; NHMRC Information Paper: Evidence on the effectiveness of homeopathy for treating health conditions found the following conclusions:

• Homeopathy should not be used to treat health condition
• There is no evidence that homeopathy is effective in treating health conditions.
• Homeopathy has zero effect on anything – except dehydration, as that is essentially what homeopathy is; expensive water. 

 

Scitech itself also ruled that homeopathy was pure bull and had zero evidence (PDF). This isn’t anything new. These are a drop in the ocean of studies that prove homeopathy doesn’t work. So why is it still popular? It appears to be hard to justify the NHS pouring money into something that has been time and time again proven not to work. Even the people who are proponents of it seldom use scientific evidence to back it up, because the studies just do not exist. 

 

The article details the side of Dr Helen Beaumont, a GP and president of the Faculty of Homeopathic Drugs said:

“other drugs such as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) for depression would be a better target for saving money, as homeopathic pills had a "profound effect" on patients. She told the BBC News website: "Patient choice is important; homeopathy works, it's widely used by doctors in Europe, and patients who are treated by homeopathy are really convinced of its benefits, as am I."

That argument really doesn’t follow. Other treatments, such as treatments such as SSRI, come under a lot of fire due to their efficiency and side effects, but that doesn’t mean homeopathy works. She states she is convinced of the benefits of homeopathy. What benefits are those? If there was indeed ‘profound effects’, why have they not been found through double-blind clinical trials? Oh wait, they have? Yes…with zero net positives in the support of homeopathy. I think patient choice is highly important in medicine, especially more so when you are clued up on it. But this isn’t a question of choice, people are being given treatment that simply does not work at all. If people were informed correctly on what homeopathy actually is and its lack of evidence, they probably would not use it as a choice. Obviously, the placebo effect is a great and powerful thing. However, does this justify treatment in cancer for example? Placebo effects are objective, they are not actual benefits or cures, just because you feel better through delusion, does not mean that you actually are better, which can lead to further medical complications. 

Conclusion

How is it that this is still a thing? I didn’t think homeopathic hospitals existed in the UK anymore and was quite shocked to see how much money is plied into them. I mean, how much does water and lactose cost anyway? Let’s hope the MPs that are reviewing this in 2016 just put it straight onto the schedule 1 list where it belongs. Homeopathy should not be practiced or used by anyone, we live in a world that demands and uses evidence to prove assertion. Why on earth is this subject not been obliterated? Oh yeah, because people like Treddinick legitimately weigh in on scientific subjects  in our government. It makes perfect sense.