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UK May Blacklist Homeopathy (bbc.co.uk)
New submitter Maritz writes: Vindication may be on the horizon for people who defer to reality in matters of health — UK ministers are considering whether homeopathy should be put on a blacklist of treatments GPs in England are banned from prescribing, the BBC has learned. The controversial practice is based on the principle that "like cures like," but critics say patients are being given useless sugar pills. The Faculty of Homeopathy said patients supported the therapy. A consultation is expected to take place in 2016. The total NHS bill for homeopathy, including homeopathic hospitals and GP prescriptions, is thought to be about £4m.
I can't figure out how this brand of witchcraft was ever seen suitable to refer patients to.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
All real drugs have side effects. Therefore the metric used is based on risk vs. reward.
If your reward is zero, then any risk at all - even just the risk of not having your money to spend on proper medicine - is sufficient to tip the balance hard over to the "don't use this" side.
Sean Ellis
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Note how sympathetic the BBC is to homeopathy, giving a soft ride to someone who makes money from punting it.
Apparently that's "balance".
Next week the BBC will run an article on the different viewpoints on the square root of 16, giving equal time to those who say it is 8.
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
The Faculty of Homeopathy said patients supported the therapy.
Who cares what the patients "support"? Patients for the most part demonstrably have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to medical treatments. We have highly trained medical professionals and we rely on treatments that can objectively be shown to work better than placebo for a reason.
Demonstrate to me that homeopathy is more effective than a placebo and I'm fine with it. Until that happens it is nothing but snake oil and anyone who supports it is harming people with fake treatments.
It's no different than prescribing a placebo, which does have a proven effect
Placebos by definition have no effect. The "placebo effect" doesn't mean placebos themselves have an actual chemical effect. Placebos are designed such that they cannot have a chemical effect that is relevant in treating the condition. Placebos are the measuring stick for whether a treatment actually works.
Selling treatments for cash as if they are actual medicine without proof of efficacy is fraud. Anyone selling homeopathy and representing as a cure for a specific condition is committing a crime.
You say that like it's a bad thing. If the state is paying for your medicine, at the very least it has the right to ensure you aren't spending the money on candy rather than medicine that works. The point of state funded healthcare is that it is in the nations interest for you to be healthy, and therefore productive. If you want candy, buy candy, if you want medical super-expensive-wasp-sting-magic-water-candy, pay for "homeopathy insurance" or some other bullshit.
9/10 homoeopaths will prescribe homoeopathic malaria "cures" to travellers, instead of, rather than as well as, the real treatments. The same problems can be seen for cancer and HIV, albeit at lower levels.... every time we legitimise them we increase their power to kill though their delusions.
The most common placebo is antibiotics prescribed for viral infections. Homeopathy is certainly better than that, since at least it is harmless (since there is nothing in it).
Let's say you are a doctor and you prescribe antibiotics for what you believe is actually a viral disease. In many cases they don't actually know for 100% certain that it is viral and cannot because they did not do any test to confirm that thesis. In some percent of the cases the disease will turn out to be bacterial. In most cases the antibiotics will have little to no short term negative consequences for the patient. It's not a placebo because it isn't actually clear that it won't treat the disease and we know for a fact that it has an actual medicinal effect. We know for a fact that homeopathy does not and indeed cannot have a medicinal effect because there is no chemical reaction.
So let's say you prescribe homeopathy instead of antibiotics and the disease progresses and the patient gets very ill or dies. Now you are guilty of malpractice because you prescribed something you knew to be snake oil. You would have been better off either prescribing the antibiotics or even doing nothing. When you get dragged into court the first thing the lawyer is going to do is ask you why you didn't prescribe an actual medicine.
It seems silly to ban homeopathy while overprescription of antibiotics is still rampant.
Those are separate problems and homeopathy is NOT the solution to over prescription of antibiotics. Let's not conflate two issues and give homeopathy credibility when it deserves none.
You are correct, but so is the person to which you are responding. Due to the placebo effect, a placebo *is* more effective than no treatment.
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There was an article on Ars yesterday that a single course of antibiotics can disrupt the flora in the gut for a whole year.
That's not a credible argument in favor of homeopathy. Yes it is a problem but homeopathy is in no way, shape or form a solution to that particular problem.