With thanks to the British Medical Journal
How much do we know?
For clinicians and patients we wish to highlight treatments that work and for which the benefits outweigh the harms, especially those treatments that may currently be underused.
We also wish to highlight treatments that do not work or for which the harms outweigh the benefits.
Read about more scientific research into homeopathy
For the research community our intention is to highlight gaps in the evidence, where there are currently no good RCTs or no RCTs that look at groups of people or at important patient outcomes.
So what can Clinical Evidence tell us about the state of our current knowledge? Figure 1 illustrates the percentage of treatments falling into each category. Dividing treatments into categories is never easy hence our reliance on our large team of experienced information specialists, editors, peer reviewers and expert authors.
Categorisation always involves a degree of subjective judgement and is sometimes controversial. We do it because users tell us it is helpful, but judged by its own rules the categorisation is certainly of unknown effectiveness and may well have trade offs between benefits and harms.
However, the figures above suggest that the research community has a large task ahead and that most decisions about treatments still rest on the individual judgements of clinicians and patients.
We are continuing to make use of what is ‘unknown’ in Clinical Evidence by feeding back to the UK NHS Health Technology Assessment Programme (HTA) with a view to help inform the commissioning of primary research.
Every six months we evaluate Clinical Evidence interventions categorised as ‘unknown effectiveness’ and submit those fitting the appropriate criteria to the HTA via their website http://www.ncchta.org/.
#1 by Louise Mclean on June 10, 2010 - 6:52 pm
Scientists continually complain we must have evidence-based medicine and now the BMJ says only 11% of treatments on NHS are evidence-based. That is a pathetic figure.
Yet 70% of patients get better using homeopathic medicine – that is a GOOD figure!
#2 by Balbir Harbias on July 3, 2010 - 8:27 pm
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am concerned about the recent attacks on Homeopathy.Recently a group of people
took large amounts of Homeopathic remedies.I do not understand the purpose of this
demonstration because it does not prove anything.If it is to prove that the remedies have no
action it does not make sense because the remedies will only work on a particular person
with a particular illness with a particular remedy based on a legnthy consultation and
gathering of all the symptoms the person has.But there demonstration only proved that homeop-
athic medicines are safe.Still I would like to know exactly what this group was trying to do
or demonstrate.I also hear people criticize the suggestion of water having memory.I am not
sure if this is true or not true but there is something that cannot be explained at the
moment.There are many things that cannot be explained in fact there are many things that could
not be explained at one time going back just a few hundred years or thousands of years.
So at the moment stands the history of Homeopathy of two hundred years or so,used by the elite,
people in important positions of office,as well as the ordinary people.Science cannot prove
everything at the moment.After all they are imperfect humans like everyone else but I do give
them credit as they have made many discoveries and they continue to do so. Coming up to the
present day,if its good enough for the Queen,its good enough for us the ordinary people.A
person should have the ability to choose if they want to use homeopathy or not.If a treatment
does not work for a person then that person will not keep going back for more.I recieve medical
treatment from my GP and I also use homeopathy at times.I find that both provide me with
benefits.As for the placebo effect this I believe can happen with any kind of therapy either
natural or otherwise.In fact there are many other therapies who`s benefits can`t be explained
but homeopathy is the one that is picked out for the attacks.Correct me if I am wrong but the
placebo effect to occur requires an adult human being not a animal and not a child and also it
requires faith in the person providing the placebo and in the placebo itself whithout the
reciever knowing that it is in fact a placebo.I dont` think I myself could get a placebo effect
as I have taken medicines which I strongly believed would work particularly if I was seeing a
new practitioner or a new therapy but I did not get the response I expected on the other hand
I have tried a new therapy or remedy whether homeopathic,pharmaceutical,or other treatment not
believing it would work but it worked well to my surprise.I think to much credit is given to
the placebo effect.
Yours Sincerely
Mr Balbir Harbias
#3 by Sue on July 3, 2010 - 9:13 pm
Hi Balbir
Of course homeopathy works and it is backed up by 200 years of research. The current attacks on homeopathy are being carried out by people who like to have victims they can abuse because it makes them feel taller… because they are in fact very small….
Homeophobia is no different to homophobia, racism, sexism – or prejudice of any other kind. The tactics of bullying are exactly the same in all of these unpleasant cases, and such attacks are always perpetrated by people who are afraid of difference… afraid of diversity… afraid of the World…
These attacks on homeopathy are a throw back to earlier centuries and smack of inquisitional attacks on heresies.
We have freedom of religious thought now, and no one has to stand on hustings to register their vote anymore, but freedom of medical treatment… the freedom to decide for yourself how you manage your body, mind, illness, disease? Oh no! That’s not allowed is it?
We have to do what the people in suits tell us to do, don’t we! We have to take toxic pharmaceutical drugs that you can commit suicide by ingesting, and which cause the untold misery of iatrogenic disease all around the World each year, don’t we! We have to do what powerful vested interested tell us to do, don’t we!
Why else do these so called ‘scientists’ pour such vitriol onto homeopathy (which has nevertheless thrived for 200 years despite such attacks?)
Homeopathy invented scientific trials in 1829 to defend itself and to demonstrate the effectiveness of homeopathy (see Cosmo Maria De Horatiis and Francis I of Naples who issued a Royal Decree to set out conditions for scientific clinical trials which are the precursor to today’s procedures, including blind trials, security arrangements to prevent fraud, parameters set for diagnosis and the inclusion of subjects for the trials, accurate record keeping, signed off by appointed staff under clinical conditions – http://homeopathy.wildfalcon.com/archives/2009/06/04/cosmo-m…)
Homeopathy has therefore 200 years of scientific trials to prove its worth, and has never had to use poison figs or attack dogs to bias the results in its favour.
Is this why the Goliath of ‘science’ so scared of the homeopathic David?
Sue
#4 by Balbir on July 6, 2010 - 7:49 pm
Hi Sue,
Thank you for your reply I appreciate it as well as the link you provided.It was very interesting and fascinating to read about the trials that took place just over 2 centuries ago in such a methodical and fair way even though the orthodox physicians tried to sabotage the results.
Balbir