Search This Blog

Monday 30 November 2009

Evidence for Homeopathy

The Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons are currently looking at the 'evidence base' for Homeopathy. Whether this is just another example of homeopathy bashing (those called to give evidence includes all the usual detractors of homeopathy, Ernst, Goldacre, et al) we will just have to wait to see, but one opportunity this has given the homeopathy community is the opportunity to put together a really quite large, and impressive 'evidence base'.

This evidence base for homeopathy can be seen in submissions to the Committee given by the ARH, and the Homeopathy Research Institute, in particular, and I am hopeful that the positive message - that homeopathy works, and that there is good scientific evidence that homeopathy works - will be published more openly in the coming months.

The Committee, perhaps unsurprisingly, seems to be discussing homeopathy on the basis of accepting what our detractors have said, consistently over the last few years, that there is no evidence base. They are wrong, of course, but continue to work on the basis that if you repeat a lie, over and over again, people will believe it to be true!

Unfortunately, there appears to be little if any recognition of the fragile 'evidence base' for conventional medicine, other than the assumption that there is one. Every pharmaceutical drug is tested before it is marketed. But the evidence of these trials, whilst proving they have an initial impact on illness and disease, does not tell us about the disease inducing effects (DIEs) of the drugs, or the fact that a large majority of them are eventually found to be ineffective, at best, at dangerous, or even lethal, at worst.

This is galling, to say the least. Perhaps the Science and Technology Committee should examine the integrity of evidence base for conventional medicine next.

For more information about scientific studies on the safety and effectiveness of homeopathy, click here.