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IN DEFENCE OF ‘DISPROVED’ HOMOEOPATHY
by Tony Edwards
Several months ago, a number of doctors banded together to denounce homoeopathy as unproven and a waste of the National Health Service’s limited resources. Periodically, the medical profession has offered similar ‘proof’. But what does the scientific literature actually say?
On May 23 of this year, 13 semi-eminent British scientists and doctors signed a statement - with all the stylistic authority of a Papal Edict - condemning homoeopathy as “unproven or disproved”. No doubt about it, they said, homoeopathy is useless, and a waste of money, too. They urged the NHS to stop using it - a negative message widely accepted by the media, at least initially . . . .
The 2005 Lancet Study
Doubtless, uppermost in the minds of the 13 would have been a very recent survey of homoeopathy, conducted by Swiss researchers less than a year ago (Lancet, 2005; 366: 726-32). This attracted a lot of publicity at the time, partly because Dr Richard Horton, the Lancet editor who published the report, penned an accompanying editorial, “The End of Homoeopathy”, which condemned homoeopathy outright: “Now doctors need to be bold and honest with their patients about homoeopathy’s lack of benefit.” . . .
The researchers initially analyzed 110 trials, and found “a beneficial effect”, i.e. homoeopathy worked. However, they decided to reject 102 of these trials as being of inferior quality. Among those rejected were eight trials on upper respiratory tract infection, whose findings were so positive that the authors decided “the results cannot be trusted”. Ultimately, therefore, their final meta-analysis was confined to just eight studies, which unsurprisingly, showed no beneficial effect of homoeopathy.
“This was a dubious and biased study,” says Dr Peter Fisher, clinical director of the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital. “If they had chosen nine or even seven of the very best trials, they would have got a positive result.” . . .
One of the areas rarely covered in the homoeopathy debate is the evidence from vets . . .
One of the pioneers of veterinary homoeopathy is Oxfordshire vet Christopher Day. He runs a thriving practice for “last-resort” pets, and over the last 20 years has amassed thousands of case histories of animals he has saved using homoeopathy, often after conventional medicine has failed. His most impressive cases, however, are with farm animals. He has been able to eradicate difficult-to-treat conditions like New Forest Eye and udder disease in cows, simply by adding a homoeopathic remedy to the animals’ water . . .
In another classic double-blind study, he compared the rates of mastitis in two groups of 40 cows. Although housed in the same shed, the cows were physically separated and had different water supplies. A homoeopathic remedy was added daily to the water of one group, and a placebo remedy to the other’s. The results were staggering. While there was a 48 per cent incidence of mastitis in the untreated cows, the figure for the treated cows was just 3 per cent (Inter J Homeop, 1986; 1: 15-19).
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