Homeopathy Under Threat Following New Legislation in the UK

Staff at Ainsworth Pharmacy in London make up homeopathic remedies. Homeopaths are concerned that the new Human Medicines Regulations 2012 will restrict their ways of purchasing medicines. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Homeopathy has a long tradition in the UK, yet this alternative system of medicine may now be under threat.

The legislation regulating the safety and prescription of medicines is undergoing a major review in July to update and simplify it. Homeopaths worry the anti-homeopathy lobby may use the law to restrict the practice.

It has become established custom and practice for many homeopaths and patients to procure remedies via the internet and telephone. 

But under the 1968 Medicines Act, a person may only purchase medicines that are exempt from licensing in person from a pharmacist. This means that the 2,000 practising homeopaths and the 6 million to 9 million patients who use homeopathy are technically acting illegally.

With just five licensed homeopathic pharmacies in the UK, homeopaths say it is logistically unworkable to pick up remedies via a face-to-face consultation with a pharmacist.

They are calling for an amendment in the law to recognise the modern ways of purchasing homeopathic medicines.

“This law was made decades before mail order was a common business practice, and the internet had become a primary driver of commercial enterprise,” says Karin Mont, chair of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.

From July 1, the new law, which will be renamed the Human Medicines Regulations 2012, will not contain an exemption to include homeopaths’ modern prescribing methods, according to the government agency the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). 

“We are concerned that our ongoing access to unlicensed homeopathic medicines may be restricted by the retention of an obsolete law,” Mont says.

She fears that the manufacturers (pharmacies) will suffer the most if the law is enforced, because it would mean a serious loss of trade for them.

Homeopaths say that a simple solution to the anomaly would be to make homeopathic medicines exempt in the new law.

The main stakeholders within the homeopathy profession have worked together for over 18 months regarding the Act’s revision, and had consultations with the MHRA, but “the efforts and suggestions that we made have fallen on deaf ears”, says John Morgan, managing director of Helios Homeopathic Pharmacy.

A spokesperson for the MHRA said they have no plans to change their position on homeopathic medicines in relation to the Medicines Act. “We will investigate any complaint concerned with the manufacture and supply of medicines for human use. Each case will be considered on its individual merits,” the MHRA said in an e-mail.

Continue  Homeopaths tailor remedies to the individual patient’s needs

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• http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Little/565071363 Paul Little

  It’s about time the fraudulent practice of prescribing nothing and charging for it came to an end. Homeopathy is one of the biggest shams of the century and the practice should be outright illegal.

• ReallyGoodMedicine

  Interestingly, there are 600 studies including basic science studies and clinical trials showing that homeopathy has a biological effect and can produce significant to substantial health benefits. Approximately 200 of them are published in 92 respected, peer-reviewed, national and international journals. Some of those studies can be seen at:

  http://www.nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org/articles-research
  http://www.extraordinarymedicine.org
  http://avilian.co.uk/

  The Swiss government performed the most comprehensive analysis of homeopathy done by any government. It included ALL the scientific literature on homeopathy and found that it is as effective as conventional medicine, vastly safer and 15.4% less expensive.

  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16883077

  The Swiss cost effectiveness analysis was done separately and is discussed at:

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/swiss-homeopathy_b_1340506.html

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathic_medicine-_b_1258607.html

• http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

  No, the Swiss Government did not prepare that report.

  The Swiss “cost-effectiveness analysis” was conducted by homeopaths (who failed to declare their vested interest). They start from the premise that homeopathy is effective and cheap and from that by a series of questionable steps arrive at the conclusion that homeopathy is cheap and effective. Among their significant errors are: giving the weakest form of evidence more value than the strongest; misrepresenting studies with negative conclusions as being supportive; excluding reviews with negative findings for no objective reason; including reviews with positive findings despite substantial weaknesses; using utterly bizarre measures of effect taken form the occult anthroposophical movement which lack any basis in reality.

  On the basis of the report as submitted (which is not the same as the translated version, by the way), the Swiss government rejected reimbursement of homeopathy. It has been reintroduced for a further 5 year trial period only as a result of a referendum, itself the result of extensive lobbying by vested interests in the CAM industry (how would you react if the pharmaceutical industry lobbied via patient support groups for a referendum to override a scientific decision to stop using Vioxx, say?)

  In fact, the homeopaths’ HTA report has been described in a Swiss medical journal as a “case study of research misconduct”. It is that bad.

  Dana’s description of the report contains so many inaccuracies that I wonder if he even read it. See http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Homeopathy_in_Healthcare:_Effectiveness,_Appropriateness,_Safety,_Costs for further analysis.

• lauriej1

  It’s about time the fraudulent practice of licensing dangerous pharma drugs and charging patients thousands of dollars a month for them came to an end. Those companies should be shut down as the fines amount to little more than a slap on the wrist.

• ReallyGoodMedicine

  It’s also worth bearing in mind that the BMJ’s 2010 analysis of 3,000 common medical treatments shows that only 11% of them — that is, 11% of the treatments offered on the UK’s NHS — are proven to be beneficial. Interestingly, “skeptics” are not calling for the other 89% to be removed from the NHS.

• http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

  That is a very common misrepresentation by homeopaths, yes. In order to understand why it’s an irrelevance, consider how you would design an ethical randomised placebo controlled trial of, say, vaccination for malaria.

  I can tell you how to conduct an unethical one: tell a group of people that you are giving them something that protects against malaria, but which offers no such protection. We know what the result of such an unethical trial is: people get malaria. Guess what the ineffective product was?

  BBC News – Newsnight – Is bad homeopathic advice putting travellers at risk?

• http://www.facebook.com/oliver.mccormack.37 Oliver McCormack

  You could do the experiment on your self ie. try Homoeopathy for your self. Yes honestly.
  after all there is no material there, so why not,
  If only 10% is true it is still of great value to humanity

• http://twitter.com/miltonline Milton Mermikides

  “Homeopathy has a long tradition in the UK” Argument from antiquity fallacy.
  “We can’t explain why something that has been diluted 10,000 times or 1 million times can have a tremendously powerful effect on the human body” Replace “explain why” with “demonstrate that”
  “No one is dying of homeopathy.” http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html
  “The Queen and Prince Charles take homeopathy,” They are also can’t dress themselves. And they go straight to real doctors at the hint of any real illness.

• ReallyGoodMedicine

  No conventional doctor would claim to cure every case of eczema simply because conventional treatments are not capable of doing that. In addition, they are linked to skin cancer and lymphoma. No parent wants to subject a child to such a risk.

  On the other hand, studies show that homeopathic treatment of eczema is as effective as conventional treatment but poses no risks. Not surprising that the Sams chose to use it.

  For studies on homeopathy and eczema see:

  http://www.nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org/content/research-on-eczema-homeopathic-medicine

• http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

  When you say “studies show”, I presume you mean the usual poor quality studies conducted by homeopaths, because several systematic reviews of all published evidence for homeopathy have found no evidence of any effect beyond placebo, which is of course consistent with other branches of knowledge (let’s not forget that if homeopathy were correct, we’d have to completely discard pretty much everything we’ve learned in the last century about the nature of matter – either homeopathy works or lasers and GPS do, the two models are mutually exclusive).

• lauriej1

  Nobody dies of eczema, it is not a life-threatening condition.
  Conventional medicine has no effective treatment for necrotizing faciaitis, however there are holistic remedies including homeopathic treatment that actually work. You can stick with the useless mainstream treatments if you like…
  You seem to be blissfully unaware that many mainstream treatments, like surgery, have never been subject to anything other than good old-fashioned trial and error. Why do you think patients are required to sign extensive waivers of legal liability?
  Wake up. Mainstream medicine for anything other than emergency trauma care is highly ineffective and none of it carries any guarantees. It’s a crap shoot. You have obviously not read any Health Technology Assessments which conclude that well over 50% of conventional treatments are of ineffective or questionnable reliability.
  You are doing nothing more than parroting “science-blog” armchair opinions about a system of medicine you obviously know very little about. You don’t seem to know much about conventional medicine either.

• http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

  Except that this child did die of complications of eczema, as a direct result of her parents using a fraudulent alternative to medicine.

  I know that denial of reality is normal for homeopathy advocates, but when the facts are there in front of you in the shape of a prison sentence based on a court’s findings of fact I am afraid you can’t really get away with sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting “laa laa I’m not listening”.

• http://www.facebook.com/russell.cunningham.792 Russell Cunningham

  The difference is that when a pharmaceutical company like Merk kills 60,000 people with the drug Vioxx they only get a fine.

• http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

  Issues with medicine justify homeopathy in exactly the same way that car crashes justify magic carpets.

• http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

  Did you notice what homeopathic remedy they gave Prince Philip when he had a heart attack? And when he had a bladder infection? Oh, wait, he was treated with conventional medicine for both.

  I do understand homeopathy in some detail. I understand that there is no reason to suppose it should work (similia is a hypothesis, not a theory and certainly not a law of nature, and is known to be generally false); there is no way it can work; and there is no credible evidence it does work other than as placebo. I also know that when subjected to fair tests, the tests show precisely that. See for example: Homeopathy has clinical benefits in rheumatoid arthritis patients that are attributable to the consultation process but not the homeopathic remedy: a randomized controlled clinical trial

  This is a trial conducted by homeopaths – they find that it is the “tea and sympathy” that has the effect, not the inert pills they “prescribe”. This is entirely consistent with other branches of knowledge but sadly inconsistent with the claim that pills containing no trace of something that has no known relevance to a condition, can cure it. Sorry about that.

• http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

  No, people use homeopathy because they *believe* it works. What actually happens is simply the placebo effect. No other response is possible, since the “medicines” contain no active ingredient at all.