NHS Should Stop Funding Homeopathy, Says Parliamentary Committee

An anonymous reader writes "Homeopathic remedies work no better than placebos, and so should no longer be paid for by the UK National Health Service, a committee of British members of parliament has concluded. In preparing its report, the committee, which scrutinizes the evidence behind government policies, took evidence from scientists and homeopaths, and reviewed numerous reports and scientific investigations into homeopathy. It found no evidence that such treatments work beyond providing a placebo effect." Updated 201025 19:40 GMT by timothy: This recommendation has some people up in arms.

Comments

Re:Heomeopathy = Placebo

[sumdumass]

IMHO a lot of this is culture. In the past, there were some treatments that worked. These have been adopted by the medical system, regulated, and now most of what's left is the useless but harmless treatments. Beneficial herbs became pharmaceuticals, spinal manipulations that work are incorporated into osteopathic medicine and physical therapy, and even leeches and bloodletting are valid medical procedures.

It doesn't hurt the idea of alternative medicine any when you have political forces railing on the pharmaceutical industry as being dishonest or in it only for profits leading to many others claiming that they only treat-not cure illnesses because that's where the money is. It opens the door for the eternal optimism that the secret cure the pill makers don't want you to know about really works.

Then you have idiots claiming that Native Americans never had cancer or that isolated tribes in Africa never had a recorded case of diabetes before the white man met them. Of course this is ignoring the fact that they had no way of checking those things until the outsiders met them. But hey, if it pushes their point, then what the hell, I guess it's fair.