Hypocrisy of attacks on homeopathy to be exposed soon

Followers of this blog are familiar with my position with regard to the relentless attacks on homeopathy by the likes of Prof. Edzard Ernst and others who use evidence based medicine as a club with which to attempt to batter homeopaths into submission. Over and over they repeat that there is no valid evidence to support the view that homeopathy works.

Supporters of homeopathy claim otherwise. We say that scientific trials of homeopathy generally show a positive effect. We say that the fact that many thousands of patients with difficult to treat conditions claiming to have been helped at NHS homeopathic hospitals for the past 200 years is also ‘evidence’ of efficacy as is the fact that homeopathy has survived this long while many other forms of therapy have come and gone.

Ernst, Baum and a group of physicians then managed to persuade PCTs (patient care trusts) to prevent GPs in many areas from sending patients for homeopathy on the NHS, a tactic that for this author implies that they think both patients and GPs are too ignorant or stupid to realise they are being duped and need to be protected from themselves. The nanny state agreed in many (but by no means all) areas and many GPs who wanted to send patients from getting homeopathic treatment on the NHS were prevented from doing so by people (in the PCTs) who are not doctors!

I’ve written about this many times and when Ernst accused homeopaths of lying to their patients I challenged him to a duel on this blog. Well a duel of words, but unsurprisingly I never heard from him. I simply read of him calling for ‘tighter controls’ on alternative medicine. Obviously he continues in his quest to protect the gullible British public (and GPs!) from their own ignorance. But in a society that seems to welcome and bleatingly acquiesce to more and more regulations, Ernst has perhaps found his time and place in the world while more libertarian people like myself blog on in the hope that people will wake up and say they are not stupid and don’t need nannies like Ernst protecting them from their own ignorance.

My next blog will be a final word on this. There is a limit to how much time I am prepared to read, think and talk about those who wish to control and coerce people whom they think are unable to think for themselves. In that blog, which will appear within a week, I will expose the incredible hypocrisy of the attacks on homeopathy using a simple pie diagram. After that, this voice will address other important medical issues of the day. However the challenge of a duel still stand, Prof. Ernst...