7 Logical Science-based Reasons in Favour of Homeopathy and UK NHS GP Homeopaths [And Why Ben Goldacre Seems Such an Idiot]

Do please write to former NHS CEO Lord Simon Stevens of Birmingham in the House of Lords to point out the following because it seems he has a science-free zone between his ears – I wrote and told him but I got no reply. Contact details below.

He put patient safety at risk in my view when he banned homeopathy on the NHS. Only people who can afford it use it – like the late Queen Elizabeth II who lived to nearly 100 and would probably not have been allowed to use it if it didn’t work.

THE SEVEN REASONS

1) Ben Goldacre “The placebo effect is the extraordinary phenomenon of people getting better even when they have only had a dummy treatment“

So if homeopathy is just a placebo, the science indicates it works – regardless of any other claims for it and Ben helpfully confirms that is true. You can see him do it here:

BUT WHY DOES BEN SEEM A COMPLETE AND UTTER IDIOT WHO CANNOT PROPERLY INTERPRET SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE UNDER HIS OWN NOSE?

In this next video Ben is telling us that homeopathy is a fraud when in the other video he praises the only proven scientific reason pseudo-sceptics like him might accept for why homeopathy works [if they were willing to admit it, which they aren‘t and don’t as you can see in these two videos by Ben]. Totally and entirely bonkers – another science-free zone.

Ben asks ‘is it right to deceive patients’ when everyone knows thanks to and according to Ben and people like him that homeopathy has got to be a fraud [although there is evidence it is not – see Further Reading below]. In other words, who is being deceived? He discusses the placebo effect but fails to mention that if homeopathy has no other effect it must at the least be a placebo. He also fails to mention placebos work whether you believe they work or not.

Notice also how agitated he seems – watch the remarkable facial contortions – a man on the edge. What on earth has he been taking? I’m afraid he looks a bit odd to me – not someone whose opinions I can trust.

2) if it were the main first-line NHS treatment patients would be safer because a GP has the training to assess the most appropriate treatment and whether it is worth trying homeopathy first;

3) homeopathy is extremely safe – no harmful adverse effects of prescription drugs;

4) it is inexpensive so will save the NHS loads-a-money;

5) many patients get better all by themselves – our immune system is remarkable and people just get better by themselves – [confirmed by email in a comment from that famous quackery sceptic Simon Singh. Singh admitted knowing very little about the placebo effect. He put himself and his family through hell on a big litigation case for calling chiropractic – another potentially effective placebo-type treatment – ‘bogus‘. What an idiot with a PhD in physics. He only needed to use a different word and he could have said much the same thing with none of the aggravation];

6) homeopathy seems to work – even if our current science knowledge suggests it should not – and as for scientific knowledge we have no idea why placebos work so why should we understand homeopathy?;

7) the late Queen used it. And she lived to nearly 100. If it didn’t work she probably wouldn’t have been allowed to use it.

FURTHER READING

Scientific evidence & homeopathy Dr Peter Fisher. Physician to the late Queen Elizabeth II HM. Director of Research and Consultant Physician at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine (RLHIM). A Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, he was a member of the World Health Organization’s Expert Advisory Panel on Traditional and Complementary Medicine, involved in drafting its Traditional and Complementary Medicine Strategy 2014-2023, and Editor-in-Chief of the international medical journal Homeopathy.

Is Homeopathy Explained by the Placebo Effect? MIT Technology Review David Ewing Duncan March 30, 2007

In a 2000 article about the placebo effect published in the New York Times Magazine, the writer Margaret Talbot offered:

“The truth is that the placebo effect is huge – anywhere between 35 and 75 percent of patients benefit from taking a dummy pill in studies of new drugs – so huge, in fact, that it should probably be put to conscious use in clinical practice, even if we do not entirely understand how it works. For centuries, Western medicine consisted of almost nothing but the placebo effect. The patient who got better after a bleeding – or a dose of fox lung, wood lice, tartar emetic or any of the other charming staples of the 19th-century pharmacopoeia – got better either in spite of them or because of their symbolic value. Such patients believed in the cure and in the authority of the bewigged gentlemen administering it, and the belief gave them hope and the hope helped make them well.”

Scientists say homeopathy is not just placebo

Homeopathy Research Institute

CONTACT DETAILS FOR LORD STEVENS OF BIRMINGHAM

In any email or letter make sure you are polite and make it clear any email is for Lord Simon Stevens of Birmingham as the email address given is generic:

BY POST: Lord Simon Stevens of Birmingham, House of Lords, London, SW1A 0PW

Phone: 020 7219 5353 Email: contactholmember@parliament.uk