http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/homeopathy-allies-pledge-to-fight-axe-1-2979191

CAMPAIGNERS have vowed to fight a decision to axe ­homeopathy on the NHS.

Members of the NHS Lothian board unanimously agreed the controversial treatment, which costs £240,000 per year but has not been proven to work by any study, will no longer be publicly funded.

Surely the less funding it gets, the more good it will do? The homeopaths should welcome this vindication of their theory.

They should ‘NO!’ on a tree, cut it the forest it’s standing in, make it into paper, then send a blank sheet to the dirty turncoat NHS Lothian board. That should do it.

Maybe they could carry on funding one homeopath per billion patients?

i prefer the mass overdose principle by breathing in

£240 grand? You could fund half a gagging order with that amount of cash!

Top responses! Someone post the armstrong and miller sketch, I can’t from work.

Serious response- it’s not medicine but placebos can be effective. It’s not as simple an argument as it looks.

Top responses! Someone post the armstrong and miller sketch, I can’t from work.

Serious response- it’s not medicine but placebos can be effective. It’s not as simple an argument as it looks.

Hope that works!

Surely the less funding it gets, the more good it will do? The homeopaths should welcome this vindication of their theory.

🙂

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVV3QQ3wjC8&feature=youtu.be[/video]

I’m sure I could undercut their £240k with no loss of services provided I had access to a tap

Serious response- it’s not medicine but placebos can be effective. It’s not as simple an argument as it looks.

This

Although it is obviously twaddle Homeopathy is actually a stupendously cheap way of administering some first class placebo effect to the constantly aflicted.

I wish I believed in Homeopathy. I’m missing out on a zero side effects Placebo.

Serious response- it’s not medicine but placebos can be effective. It’s not as simple an argument as it looks.

My M-in-L, who’s been a nurse for her whole career, said they used to give “sleeping tablets” to the patients on the night shift.

They were just paracetamol – but as patients believed they were legit sleeping pills – it sent them straight off to sleep.

Can’t to that these days!

If a placebo works is it a placebo?

Cheers

Danny B

Yes

Northwind – Member

Top responses!

8)
Five bangers in a row. Hats off to you gents, you all had me chuckling. 😆

So, 240k saved on homeopathy, and another twenty million spent in unnecessary doctors appointments, cat scans, consultants, MRI’s and drugs investigating and treating non existent health problems that could have been cured with water?

I saw an interesting Dawkins programme on the topic, one of the bog things that went for the alternative stuff was that consults were 2-3 times longer than conventional medicine and there was a lot of sympathy and listening going on.

One of the conclusions was that people felt better because someone had listened to their problems and (possibly pretended)understood them. This had more effect than the 2 drops of nothing prescribed.

Dawkins, NHS and homeopathy? Add 29ers, tattoos and obesity and you have the perfect STW storm!

good, hippy crap like ­homeopathy has no place in the civilized world.

“placebos can be effective”. I would prefer an active and efficacious medicine.

I suspect a randomized controlled trial of 1 placebo Vs another might demonstrate a lack of efficacy with a subsequent lack of effectiveness in practice.

There’s a placebo effect. It seems it goes both ways.

suspect a randomized controlled trial of 1 placebo Vs another might demonstrate a lack of efficacy with a subsequent lack of effectiveness in practice.

Far from it. The evidence base for Placebos is huge. Some one realised that as many medecines are trailed against a Placebo and a trial group with no medication that we have loads of Placebo data. Apparently stomch ulcers are the condition of choice as its possible to measure recovery through observation rather simply asking how people feel. The placebo group do better than the no treatment group. Not only that it is clear that one small blue pill works better that a medium red pill. Both of which are eclipsed by two large pink pills

The evidence base for Placebos is huge

+1. I work in commissioning of pharmaceuticals for the NHS (for one more day – new job on Monday!) and a lot of my time is spent looking at the evidence to support their use, commonly from placebo controlled trials. It’s not unusual to see pronounced improvements in the placebo arm, for parameters over which patients have no subjective control – not just ‘ooh, I feel better’ (patient reported outcomes) but changes in biochemical measurements taken from blood samples. All in people who have been told as part of the trial that there’s only a 50% chance they are receiving any active treatment.

Homeopathy *could* be a very cost-effective way of administering placebo, if we could wrestle it out of the hands of the quacks and charlatans.

But then again, maybe the quacks and charlatans give it a bit of extra placebo-power? Nobody’d believe that messing with a rosary will make them feel better if it wasn’t for the associated woo.

Yes I know I have just accidentally advocated NHS faith healing.

In Asia Chinese medicine is equally funded to Western style treatments. It’s the patients choice.

The vested interests in the Pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession are huge. The Pharmaceutical industry conducts it’s own trials to prove it’s own expensive drugs “work”.

Ben Goldacre medical trials

there is no such thing as alternative medicine, there is medicine that works and can be proven so buy scientific double blind studies, and there’s a load of shit, new age crap that does nothing apart from take money from fools.

The vested interests in the Pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession are huge. The Pharmaceutical industry conducts it’s own trials to prove it’s own expensive drugs “work”.

Ah the ‘big pharma’ conspiracy. I’m with Goldacre on this one – make all trial transparent.

But then again, what about ‘big homeopathy’? Homeopaths/quacks are not little old ladies in bide-a-wee cottages selling pills for a few quid. They can be, and are, large corporations. big homeopathy

Surely Homeopathy is nothing more than witch-doctoring? The more impressive and expensive the remedy the better the power of the juju.

I have experienced the power of the placebo – many years ago I was teaching in Spain and very unhappy, depressed and homesick. I went to see my GP at Christmas and he gave me some tablets to cheer me up. I definitely felt better and significantly, the day I left the place, I packed and walked out leaving the tablets on my bedside table. Didn’t realise I’d left them until I reached Seville an hour later. Soon after that my sister, who is a nurse, told me they were just placebos.

I think the problem is that the NHS can’t just buy a load of sugar pills and shovel them out to the homeopathy fans stickered as whatever ‘proper’ pill they think they need. They’d have to buy the ‘real’ pills from the manufacturers which would cost a load more.

Happy with placebos – just not ones that come with a homeopathy badge.

Oh, if I do get prescribed placebos I would like to get a discount….