Don’t have time to go into the detail that it deserves, but the House of Commons science and technology committee has published the results of its evidence check on homeopathy. The results won’t, of course, come as any surprise to anyone who has been following the debate. But I have to admit to be impressed by the lack of ambiguity in their conclusions. This is paragraph 157:
By providing homeopathy on the NHS and allowing MHRA licensing of products which subsequently appear on pharmacy shelves, the Government runs the risk of endorsing homeopathy as an efficacious system of medicine. To maintain patient trust, choice and safety, the Government should not endorse the use of placebo treatments, including homeopathy. Homeopathy should not be funded on the NHS and the MHRA should stop licensing homeopathic products.
Absolutely no equivocation there.
So what’s the next step? When to the homeopathic “hospitals” get closed down? When does the NHS get that money back for real medicine?
Update: The Woo-mongers in the House of Commons don’t plan to take this laying down. They’ve proposed an Early Day Motion criticising the committee’s report. Of course, only MPs with no grasp of science will be signing it. If your MP is on this list, then I suggest a strongly worded email might be in order.
It might sound silly to say this, but I wish people would stop using the word “efficacious”. It is a difficult word to say, and one I only actually heard said out loud for probably the first time in my life today – on the radio – still waiting to hear it in real life. I do not think it is widely understood.In the fight against stupidity, we should use words that people understand.
I think every one who is opposing for licensing homeopathy products is thinking it just in a way of sugar pills. I think for them there is no other relevance of this medicine. Much research has been done from time to time in this field and they might have forgot to gone through that according to me. Before giving the consideration to the report much more analysis should be done in this. The questions asked above is the next step. But I want to ask, if there was no faith on the science of Homeopathy why from so many years the hospitals were running and people cured?