The recent figures say it all:
- 37% of the 132 NHS health care trusts still have contracts with homeopathic services
- 200,000 people are treated annually on the NHS using homeopathic remedies
- 55,000 appointments with homeopaths are paid for by the NHS each year
There are some signs that the position is improving and that GPs are finally getting the message that medieval magic is not the way to go... Spending on these quack cures has dropped from £593,000 in 2005 to a still lamentable £321,000 last year.
But of course, it's big business... something like £40 billion per year is spent worldwide on alternative therapies. And that's despite more than twelve authoritative and exhaustive studies which have shown repeatedly that there is no evidence to support them.
The latest exposé is the recent book by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst: Trick or Treatment - Alternative Medicine On Trial. The former is a well-known science writer who has a doctorate in particle physics, and the latter is a man of unusual background. He is now a Professor of Complementary Medicine though he trained as a physician, picking up a PhD on the way, and he has specialised in the clinical investigation of alternative medicines. Not only does he understand the world of alternative medicines, but he has the scientific rigour to investigate them thoroughly... which has made him the scourge of the alternative therapy world.
He has conducted several dozen systematic trials and over a hundred clinical reviews. In the course of his studies he exposed the assumption that alternative therapies were free of potential harm, identifying among other things that around 13% of acupuncture patients suffered side effects, that chiropractic spinal manipulation carried a risk of rupturing the arteries in the neck leading to strokes, and perhaps most irritatingly, that the flagship remedy of homeopaths, Arnica, has no more than a placebo effect in dealing with post-operative pain, bruising and swelling.
His results were so thorough and conclusive that he has been rewarded with no fewer than thirteen scientific awards, and two visiting Professorships. He is someone to take seriously when considering complementary medicine.
He argues convincingly that £500 million of NHS funding ought to be spent other than in selling water to gullible patients.
It is interesting that so many people, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, still adopt an uncritical attitude to the peddling of medieval remedies. Some considerable time ago, Theodor Adorno looked at astrology to try to understand the psychology of people who have irrational beliefs(The Stars Down To Earth).
He came to the conclusion that it was largely about the need for an abstract authority figure and where the individual had something of a rebellious streak, rather than trusting their own thinking, they delegate it to another abstract authority, which is opposed to convention. In doing so, we convince ourselves that we are being different, not accepting the status quo, and that we are asserting our individuality. In practice we are taking the very easy route of abnegating our responsibility to think for ourselves. (Adorno went on to argue that this sort of thinking predisposes people to acquiesce in authoritarian politics... but that's another story.)
It certainly seems that there's more than a hint of this type of psychology in the pandering to alternative medicines. But surely, it's about time that those working in medical roles should have the confidence to acknowledge the gains made during the Enlightenment rather than leading their gullible patients back into the dark ages.
