Junk Science? Number 73: Australian review slams homeopathy
Australian review slams homeopathy
I have always had this complete puzzlement over homeopathy. I used to receive e mails all the time in the early days of CANCERactive asking why I didn’t cover it. I also received a lot of e mails from cancer patients – usually breast cancer patients – telling me their stories how it really made a big difference to their orthodox treatment programmes and helped them through their times of trouble. Grown sensible men I respected switched from being Doctors to becoming Homeopaths. But.
I tried to get articles written for icon. Over the last ten years there have been two areas I have consistently failed on. Homeopathy and Radiotherapy. I get lots of people interested in writing an article for our magazine and our website, but then when I mention the ‘R’ word, they back off, never to be heard from again.
The ‘R’ word? We have a little requirement at CANCERactive that if you write an article and make a claim, you have to give a clue about the research that supported the claim. References are good, but readers find them boring and unnecessary – a decent clue will do. In the case of Homeopathy and Radiotherapy, would be writers run away.
Yet still I got protests from patients. So, I made light of it. I remember Henry Ford’s quote about advertising – ‘Half my advertising budget is wasted. I just don’t know which half’. I borrowed it for Homeopathy.
I tried to find research. I was sent some by third parties, sporadically. A report by WDDTY about Indians and MD Anderson – the link to MD Anderson’s website no longer works, although the research was there for a while.
Then there are famous scientists who say water has a memory. It’s possible, of course. But.
Then there’s research about the German football team all using homeopathy not drugs to treat their injuries. And the Swiss approving Homeopathy. But.
But – the fact is that Homeopathy has been around for a very, very long time – too long not to have any decent research about it. (Although, yes, I did find a couple of clinical trials, but I looked very hard).
I made the same point to Charlotte Gerson when I met her. If you want someone to believe your claim, get some numbers. The Block Centre for Integrative Medicine in Chicago do it – they monitor everyone who comes through their door and they can then show the survival rates of people on Integrative Therapies vs only Orthodox and the improved survival.
But, Gerson, Homeopathy? Numbers? It’s either lazy, or incompetent or the truth is, ‘it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny’.
And I know I am going to be attacked by ladies in Leicester who used homeopathy with their breast cancer, or women in the Wirral who used Gerson for saying this. And I am sure that some people do get a benefit, just like some women do have their breast tumours shown up correctly on screening mammograms. But.
Here is the news.
The Australians have researched Homeopathy extensively and there’s nothing in it. Sorry homeopaths – you only have yourselves to blame.
The report concluded that there was NO reliable EVIDENCE that homeopathy can treat health conditions. The review came from the National Health and Medical Research Council.
They looked at reviews and research covering asthma to eczema, never mind the complicated stuff like cancer and diabetes.
Sure, the report is only a draft and homeopaths are now working hard to discredit it. But.
“There is no reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective for treating health conditions”.
”People who choose homeopathy instead of proven conventional treatment may put their health at risk if safe and evidence-based treatments are rejected or delayed in favour of homeopathic treatment.”
I’ll go along with that. It’s been exactly what I have thought since 2004. But, I did try. Promise.
The draft is now open for public consultation until May 26.
