Homeopathy UK: ‘The Sick Man of Europe’?

Abstract

In India, Latin America, and Europe, homeopathy thrives: in the UK, all one ever hears is negativity. Here, homeopathy is described as ‘(...) just a placebo’, ‘(...) contrary to the laws of science’, ‘(...) quackery practiced on the weak-minded’, and ‘(...) those who believe in it are deluded’ [1]. In addition, ‘there is no evidence homeopathy works’, ‘(...) homeopathy is unethical’ [2–5], and from the British Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir John Beddington, the ‘(...) National Health Service (NHS) must be crazy to continue funding it’ [6]. Part of the NHS since its beginnings in 1948, homeopathy is free at the point of access and costs the UK very little compared to its spending on the NHS. Yet there is a determined effort to get rid of it. With just 3 homeopathic hospitals, and general practitioners (GP) seemingly loath to refer patients to them [7], homeopathy is not easy to obtain on the NHS. This is due partly to the increased hegemony of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). Originally ‘an approach to health care that promotes the collection, interpretation, and integration of valid, important and applicable patient-reported, clinician-observed, and research-derived evidence (...)’ [8], EBM in 1992 was seen as a pluralistic evidence package for the benefit of patients. EBM’s founders never meant it to be based exclusively on evidence derived from scientific trials (e.g., Randomised Controlled Trials or RCTs) [9]. But this is what EBM has become: an inquisitional ‘monoculture’ based solely on RCTs; evidence from patients and clinicians is downgraded, if not completely ignored [10]. Yet, to progress, every therapeutic modality (homeopathy included), depends crucially on a constant stream of observations from individual patients and clinicians. In the UK, EBM’s advent coincided with increased scepticism against homeopathy, and among some scientists, a wish for more and better science communication [11]. Indeed, in his 2012 BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture, the President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse, called for a ‘New Enlightenment’, and for Britain’s scientists to help spread its message [12]. In a media age, however, sound bites rule. Science competes for time and space in a crowded and increasingly commercialised media marketplace, necessitating readily accessible, media-friendly modes of scientific commentary. This has the effect of oversimplifying complex scientific issues. The trouble is that this oversimplification has philosophical roots in naive inductivism and scientism, and they had their shortcomings exposed by Karl Popper [13] and other later philosophers of science [14–17]. The subtleties of such philosophical arguments, however, rarely concern the British chattering classes, so repeated negativity against homeopathy goes unchallenged. Could such repeated negativity convince even those who have used it, that homeopathy doesn’t work? UK sceptics hope so. By organising mass ‘overdoses’ [18], they hope to ‘prove’ how ineffective homeopathic remedies really are. Truly, as far as homeopathy is concerned, the UK is ‘The Sick Man of Europe’, perhaps even the world. Mounting effective and robust challenges to this negativity is not easy. Arguments favouring homeopathy are rarely heard, as the media appear unwilling to countenance them. Still, one tries. For example, the fashionable broadsheet columnist Rod Liddle wrote a typically inflammatory anti-homeopathy piece recently (complete with ‘overdose’) in the Murdoch-owned newspaper, the Sunday Times [19]. Below is my response. Mr Liddle has yet to reply: I am not holding my breath.