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The NHS should stop funding homeopathy, MPs say.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee said using public money on the highly-diluted remedies could not be justified.

The cross-party group said there was no evidence beyond a placebo effect, when a patient gets better because of their belief that the treatment works.

But manufacturers and supporters of homeopathy disputed the report, saying the MPs had ignored important evidence.

It is thought about £4m a year is spent on homeopathy by the NHS, helping to fund four homeopathic hospitals in London, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow and numerous prescriptions.

Homeopathy is a 200-year-old system of treatment that uses highly diluted substances – sometimes so none of the original product is left – that are given orally in the belief that it will stimulate the body’s self-healing mechanism.

Read More At: NHS money ‘wasted’ on homeopathy (BBC)

The British Homeopathic Association has been accused of misrepresenting scientific evidence on alternative medicine in documents it gave to a parliamentary inquiry.

The organisation claimed several scientific reviews offered support for homeopathy in material submitted to the cross-party science and technology select committee, which is holding an investigation into the products. Robert Mathie, a researcher at the BHA, said the reviews found evidence for a difference between homeopathic remedies and sugar pills, which contain no active ingredients.

But the claim has dismayed some of the scientists who wrote the reviews and angered MPs on the committee who are in the final stages of writing their report.

One review cited was written by Edzard Ernst, a scientist who investigates complementary medicine at the Penisula Medical School in Exeter. He said the BHA’s interpretation of his study was “grossly misleading” because they failed to mention important caveats published in the study. Another review, by Jean-Pierre Boissel at the Hospitals of Lyon and University Claude Bernard in France, was quoted as evidence that homeopathic treatments differ to placebos. Boissel said his conclusion was that homeopathy tended to fare worse in the best-designed studies.

Read more at: Homeopathic society ‘misled’ MPs in inquiry (Guardian UK)

James Randi Makes Homeopathy Harder to Swallow

The Indian government has produced a number of ads that are now running on TV in the worlds second most populous nation. I guess it is cheaper to convince citizens that placebos are effective than it is to provide healthcare for the people. Watch as Indian tax payers money goes out the window!

Killing of Infants by Government? (Scientific Indians)

Dara O’Briain on Homeopathy (and other nonsense)

“At 10:23am on January 30th, more than three hundred homeopathy sceptics nationwide will be taking part in a mass homeopathic ‘overdose’ in protest at Boots’ continued endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies, and to raise public awareness about the fact that homeopathic remedies have nothing in them.

Homeopathy is an unscientific and absurd pseudoscience, yet it persists today as an accepted complementary medicine.

Ask many people what they think homeopathy is, and you’ll be told “it’s herbal medicine” or “it’s all-natural”. Few realise that it’s been proven not to work; even fewer know it involves substances so dilute that there’s nothing left in them. Homeopathy takes advantage of this uncertainty to sit alongside real, proven medicines on the shelves of our major pharmacies.

Sceptics and consumer rights activists will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homeopathic ‘pillules’ to demonstrate that these ‘remedies’, prepared according to a long-discredited 18th century ritual, are nothing but sugar pills.

The protest will raise public awareness about the reality of homeopathy, and put further pressure on Boots to live up to its responsibilites as the ’scientist on the high street’ and stop selling treatments which do not work.”

Read more at 1023.org.uk

Alexa Ray Joel Out Of Hospital After Homeopathic Overdose (MTV)

Homeopathy is a form of “alternative medicine”  first proposed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. In Homeopathy patients are treated with heavily diluted preparations which are thought to cause effects similar to the symptoms presented.  Homeopathic remedies are prepared by shaking minute quantities of substances into large amounts of water.

It is supposed that the greater the dilution the greater its intended effect. Homeopaths call this process “potentization”.  Dilution often continues until statistically, none of the original substance remains.

Richard Dawkins takes a look at Homeopathy.

James Randi explains Homeopathy

More Videos at 1023.org