Here is the final draft of my letter to my MP about homeopathy. I have included links which will not go into print, but are there in case the reader doesn't know which bits of the discussion I'm referring to, or wants to check the details themselves. Please leave feedback, I haven't sent it yet.
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Dear Ms Thornberry,
Your responses are, as ever, considered and fruitful. I am glad to hear that you are not intending to sign Mr Tredinnick’s EDM. You are not, however, happy with the results of the Science and Technology Select Committee. You give heartfelt reasoning: “making people with chronic conditions feel a bit better is a worthwhile endeavour for the NHS.” I would be a fool to deny that. I would, however, humbly but strongly suggest that there is a flaw in your reasoning.
That people are happy with the treatment they receive from homeopaths is undeniable. The stronger claim that people get better after visiting homeopaths is also undeniable. That the NHS should try to make people feel better would be ridiculous to deny. So it seems reasonable to say that the NHS should provide homeopathic treatment, because it makes people feel better. The problem is, it isn’t reasonable to say this.
Scientists have been testing to see if homeopathic treatment makes people feel better more effectively than if they used sugar pills instead. They have found it doesn’t. In the words of the Committee: “the Government acknowledges there is no evidence that homeopathy works beyond the placebo effect”. This doesn’t stop people getting better. This doesn’t stop people feeling happy about the treatment. It just means that it’s no better than giving them nothing-in-a-pill. That means that no matter what anybody says about how well it works or how happy they are with the treatment, it has been shown, by people who really did a lot of work on it, that they are not getting better more than if they were getting nothing-in-a-pill. Why is that so bad, if it’s still making people feel better? Here’s what the committee has to say:
“Prescribing of placebos is not consistent with informed patient choice – which the Government claims is very important – as it means patients do not have all the information needed to make choice meaningful.
Beyond ethical issues and the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship, prescribing pure placebos is bad medicine. Their effect is unreliable and unpredictable and cannot form the sole basis of any treatment on the NHS.”
So, prescribing placebos is deceitful and unreliable; homeopathy is no better than a placebo; yet the NHS still prescribes homeopathic pills, so the NHS still provides a deceitful and unreliable service. All this, while it could be spending money on things like improving palliative care for those with chronic conditions, or increased contact time with patients in General Practices, or other things that actually work and don’t involve lying to the patients.
I see that your other disagreement with the SciTech Committee’s report was based on the choice of witnesses. I can understand that you may feel the ‘side’ of the homeopaths was under-represented and so the positive effects of homeopathy have been ignored or swept under the carpet. I hope I have made it clear that the positive effects of homeopathy are not being ignored; that they are instead being factored-in by people whose job it is to be aware of those sorts of things and then being tested rigorously to eradicate any bias. I would urge you to reconsider the evidence before you, perhaps in the way I have presented it here, and notice the ethical implications of a government that knows the facts about homeopathy, and so is at risk of lying to the patients of the Royal National Homeopathic Hospital.
Yours,
etc.
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Wxx
