Blacklist For Homeopathy?

Homeopathy may go on GP blacklist as the NHS admits: "..no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition"

17:27 16 November 2015

Ministers are currently considering whether to ban GPs from prescribing homeopathy on the NHS to save millions of pounds. The NHS has previously said that "there is no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition” while critics say patients are being given useless sugar pills.

 

Homeopathy is based on the principle that “like cures like.” It involves diluting a version of a substance that causes illness healing properties. One part of the substance is mixed with 99 parts of water or alcohol and combined with a lactose (sugar) tablet. Common homeopathic treatments are for asthma, ear infections, hay-fever, depression, stress, anxiety, allergy and arthritis.

 

Simon Singh, the founder of the Good Thinking Society, said: "Given the finite resources of the NHS, any spending on homeopathy is utterly unjustifiable.

 

"The money spent on these disproven remedies can be far better spent on treatments that offer real benefits to patients."

 

However, Dr Helen Beaumont, a GP and the president of the Faculty of Homeopathy, believes that homeopathy is an effective form of treatment. She said: "Patient choice is important; homeopathy works, it's widely used by doctors in Europe, and patients who are treated by homeopathy are really convinced of its benefits, as am I."