Patients love homeopathy - when they are allowed access to it!
In April 2018 I wrote a blog outlining the fact that patient loved homeopathy. I referred to a considerable number of studies from Britain and around the world that demonstrated it. One of these studies was the evaluation of the complementary and alternative medicines pilot project undertaken in Northern Ireland, published in May 2008.
You might like to know what has happened to this report. Absolutely nothing! It is gathering dust on the shelves of the Department of Health in London. Why? It came to the wrong conclusions, it reported that people actually liked homeopathy, and other natural medical therapies. So let's go down memory lane and find out what the people of Northern Ireland were allowed to discover.
The pilot study determined that alternative and complementary (that is, natural) therapies offered significant health benefits for patients. It also found that it made significant savings in health costs. And that of all the therapies used in the project homeopathy did the best of all!
You might think that patient satisfaction, and reducing NHS costs would have been attracting to the NHS, and the Department of Health. But far from it....
If was a disastrous conclusion. Health benefits to patients? Reduce spending on drugs and other conventional medical treatments? The pharmaceutical industry would certainly not have liked this, and they must have lobbied government intensely to ensure that the report went no further! No doubt they would be forced to move all their factories to eastern Europe - or something similar.
Several other natural therapies were involved in the pilot - including acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathy, reflexology, aromatherapy and massage. But it was patients who received homeopathic treatment that had the greatest improvement, 79%, followed closely by acupuncture, 77%, then chiropractic or osteopathy, both 56%.
The report must have been an existential threat for the pharmaceutical industry, and indeed the entire conventional medical establishment!
Moreover, these were not just a few isolated treatments, involving a handful of minor illnesses. Doctors in Northern Ireland had referred patients to the pilot project who had not responded to conventional medical treatment. The drugs had just did not helped over the years. In other words they were TEETH patients (Tried Everything Else Try Homeopath). The report listed all the following illness and diseases that were treated in the pilot.
- Arthritis
- Joint, back and neck pain
- Fibromyalgia
- Myalgic encephalitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)
- Stress related problems
- Anxiety
- Panic attacks
- Depression
- Insomnia
- Anger and aggressiveness
- Headaches and migraines
- Shaking and trembling
- Chest infections
- High blood pressure
- Obesity
- Psoriasis
Perhaps many doctors had referred these patients because they thought natural medicine would be unable to help them. After all this is what doctors had been taught. This is what they have been telling us for years (and continue to tell us). This is the assumption that the mainstream media never questions.
So perhaps the doctors thought - let them have a go at these incurable patients, we have tried, and nothing works for them. Then people will see that natural therapies have nothing to offer either.
So the conventional medical establishment must have been surprised and disappointed when patients began to report improved health, and a feeling of enhanced well-being. The pilot study produced a high level of positive patient outcomes, for instance...
- Over 80% of patients reported an improvement in their symptoms and physical health
- 67% recorded and improvement in their general wellbeing
- 55% reduced their use of painkillers
Indeed most patients reported improvements in some symptoms that conventional medicine always finds to be the most intractable, including...
- Relief of long-term or chronic illness
- Reduced pain
- Improved mobility
- More energy
- Better emotional stability
- Reduced health concerns
- Less time off work
- Patients returning to work
What a surprise that must have been to the Department of Health! What a threat to the arrogant domination of the conventional medical place-men who work there! But what could they do? Argue against the findings of the study? Announce that the patients were misinformed? Or worse, agree to increase NHS funding of natural therapies?
No, by far the best response was to ignore it, to file it away on some shelf to gather dust, and hope that no-one would refer to it again. And this is just what the Department of Health did in 2008. When your prejudice is under threat, ignore the evidence. When your science proves to be wrong, don't acknowledge the truth. It is a strategy that medical science always uses.
Since then successive Chief Medical Officers have had nothing but venom to say about homeopathy. Dame Sally Davis called homeopathy 'rubbish' in 2013. In spite of this, in 2014, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, asked her to commission expert reviews on three homeopathic remedy studies. In response Dame Sally dismissed homeopathy as a waste of time and money. Her response.....
"I am perpetually surprised that homeopathy is available on the NHS"
So in 2018 the Department of Health has seen fit to take further steps to reduce spending a homeopathy. Never mind patient choice, or patient outcomes. Never mind about inconvenient evidence. Homeopathy is rubbish. That's what the conventional medical establishment thinks, that is what they say, and anything that runs contrary to that - just ignore it.
AND IT DOES SEEM TO WORK!
AND WE SHOULD REMEMBER THIS WHEN NEXT WE ARE TOLD THAT
CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE IS 'SCIENCE-BASED'.
