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THE SMART NEWS SOURCE | Feb 10 2010 02:18 | LAST UPDATED Feb 10 2010 02:18 |
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British scientists have appealed to the World Health Organisation to publicly condemn homeopathy as a treatment for serious diseases, such as HIV/Aids, TB and malaria. The researchers, many of whom have worked in developing countries, called on the WHO to act amid fears that vulnerable patients are dying after turning to homeopathic preparations instead of effective medicines. The WHO works with national organisations that promote homeopathy and other alternative medicines in their public health programmes. Homeopathy practitioners have opened clinics throughout Asian and sub-Saharan Africa and offer to treat patients with HIV, malaria, influenza and childhood diarrhoea, none of which have been shown to respond to homeopathy. Many patients are told that conventional drugs work only temporarily and that homeopathic preparations are cheap and effective alternatives with fewer side effects. "Those of us working with the most rural and impoverished people of the world already struggle to deliver the medical help that is needed. When homeopathy stands in place of effective treatment, lives are lost," the scientists write in an open letter to the organisation. Homeopathic medicines are made by repeatedly diluting preparations with water until there is no trace left of the original compound. The overwhelming medical opinion is that homeopathic treatments are no more effective than placebos. "The WHO's strategy is very unclear on homeopathy and that is shocking. They are supposed to be articulating evidence-based medicine, but their stance is very wishy-washy," said Dr Daniella Muallem, a biophysicist at University College London, who signed the letter. "Homeopathy is cheap, but there is no evidence that it works for these diseases, and the way they are being sold by practitioners is dangerous and completely unethical. There are medicines that do work and we should be advocating trying to get those to people," Muallem added. According to WHO estimates, 33-million people were living with the HI virus at the end of 2007, and during that one year, two million people died of Aids, including 270 000 children. Two-thirds of the world's HIV cases are in sub-Saharan Africa.  CONTINUES BELOW The organisation recorded 247-million cases of malaria and nearly one million deaths in 2006. A child dies of the disease every 30 seconds. In the letter, early career medics and researchers from the Voice of Young Science network highlight homeopathy projects in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana and Botswana that all offer to treat patients with HIV, malaria, diarrhoea or the flu. "Many people in developing countries urgently need access to evidence-based medical information and to the most effective means of treating these dangerous diseases. The promotion of homeopathy as effective or cheaper makes this difficult task even harder. It put lives at risk, undermines conventional medicine and spreads misinformation," the letter says. Raymond Tallis, emeritus professor of geriatric medicine at Manchester University, said: "The catastrophic consequences of promoting irrational and ineffective treatments for serious illnesses have been demonstrated in South Africa, where Thabo Mbeki's policies have led to an estimated 365 000 unnecessary premature deaths. The prospect of replicating this reckless behaviour elsewhere in developing countries by advocating homeopathic treatments for Aids and other potentially lethal conditions is appalling." - guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009 TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
Comments
Hettied de Pettie on June 1, 2009, 8:13 am
About time they started to make a fuss. Homeopaths have been claiming for a while now that their magic water can successfully treat HIV - even going so far as to say that sounds played over the radio can do the job. It's time for official bodies and the press to end the lethal relativism and to quit being intimidated by manufactured controversies.
Science has been quite happy to test alternative therapies because it is a mechanism to seperate our natural human wishful thinking from practical realities. Where alternative therapies have occasionally done what they claim in scientific tests, science has continued to investigate them. But many (not all) of them don't work. In homeopathy's case, the "mechanism" is so implausible that, were it true, the laws of physics would be rewritten. Science would be prepared to do that if there were some evidence for it. But there is none. It's time to abandon the conspiracy theories. While there are commercial pressures on science, it is also peer reviewed - meaning that anyone can check the work at any time, including scientists funded by competitors in the market or independent watchdog bodies (for example, the phoney science sponsored by tobacco companies claiming their product was harmless was overwhelmed by the work of independent scientists, and the evidence linking the MMR vaccine to autism was independently discovered to have been manufactured by the original researcher who was funded by a company that stood to gain from the link being established). Homeopathy, and many equally implausible alternative therapies, are even more influenced by the commercial pressures of their multi-billion Rand industry. But they have no independent peer review mechanism.
Alan Millar on June 1, 2009, 9:27 am
The overwhelming medical opinion is that homeopathic treatments are no more effective than placebos
Wrong. It is a proven scientific fact that homeopathic treatments are no more effective than placebos.There is a distinct difference between the court of opinion, and proven scientific fact.
Robin Grant on June 1, 2009, 10:24 am
Finally! Someone is standing up to the truth.
David Xu on June 1, 2009, 12:22 pm
I can't believe that qualified homeopaths would claim that homeopathic medicine cures AIDS. However, it certainly can ease the symptoms of fevers, dysentery and all the more distressing infections around the syndrome. And my family has personally used homeopathic medecines for generations with excellent results. It is unfortunate that the young doctors quoted are not open to various useful adjuncts such as homeopathy to their main training. But this story sounds more like the effects of poverty than a problem with homeopathy.
Sandra Jones on June 1, 2009, 12:35 pm
Hi Hettied de Pettie, I'm one of the scientists who have sent this letter. The full list of signatories can be found at http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/331/ where you can view a copy of the letter by clicking on the link in the top right corner. You will see that the scientists are not just from Britain but also from South Africa, Cameroon, India, Ghana, Australia. If you have any problems let me know.
We are mainly early career scientists concerned about the promotion of an ineffective treatment for serious illnesses. I note that Peter Fisher (of the Royal Homeopathic Hospital in London) agrees with us on this issue. I hope you would agree that he understands the principles of homeopathy, and I can assure you that I understand these principles very well too. To answer your question, I personally have no links with pharmaceutical companies (I am funded by the European Union and work at St Andrews University in the UK). I do not know how each of the other signatories on the letter are funded, but you will see that none of them work at a pharmaceutical company.
Robert Hagan on June 1, 2009, 7:21 pm
Homeopathy clearly has its place in maintaining the overall health of the individual. With HIV infection as well as cancer it must be considered. A healthy individual is more likely to deal with with these afflictions, and the power of self preservation cannot be ignored. Viral infection, or metathesis of cancer cannot be ignored, no voodoo is going to change that initial diagnosis. More than half of common drugs are natural products that have come down from ages of testing. The modern process of drug development is often very crude but cannot be criticized for either its crudeness or expense. Viruses have long evolved along with us, they utilize our basic molecular biology, and that makes them difficult targets. Cancer even more so. If a plant or whatever helps with these complex diseases, it is by even more chance than someone inoculating a plate of t-cells or rapidly growing cancer cells with man-made medicinal chemistry. Sorry, but we have to try it, it is crude and expensive. Negative stranded viruses are targeted because of their difference in replicative mechanism, yet we use these mechanisms ourselves for other purposes, and therefore there is toxicity. Show me some homeopathy that actually works, let us see the actual mechanism, and lets walk that one step beyond wishful thinking, please.
David Hurst on June 2, 2009, 2:47 am
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Clearly these "scientists" don't understand the principles of homoeopathy and in their arrogance condemn it.
A human being is not just a body - hello! And drugs and the "scientists" who test and administer behave as if humans are just a body with little thought to the cause of the disease and the side effects.
Pharmaceuticals stand to make huuuuge money out of a disease like HIV/Aids.