With thanks to the Daily Telepgraph 22.6.09

Aconite, gelsemiun, ignatia… just a few things you might want to have handy when Andy Murray steps out at Wimbledon this week.

For these homeopathic remedies can be helpful if, in respective order, you’re feeling anxious and fearful, suffering pre-match nerves in the stands at Centre Court or, worse still, concerned that you might be grief-stricken when the umpire calls game, set and match.
You won’t be alone in relying on homeopathic help; in the commentary box, former England women’s number one Annabel Croft, now a TV presenter and mother of three, will be reaching for a cocktail of remedies to see her through the tournament.

Annabel, who is reporting from Wimbledon for BBC Radio 5 Live and GMTV, has been taking homeopathic medicine in advance of the competition to prepare for whatever comes her way this week.

But her first encounter with homeopathy – a form of complementary treatment based on the premise that tiny quantities of certain substances can stimulate the body’s natural forces of recovery – came in rather more dramatic circumstances.

In 2003, Annabel, now 42, began suffering throbbing pains on her lower left-hand side. The pain was sometimes so intense that, on several occasions, it caused her to faint. At one point, her daughter Amber, now 15, was so frightened she was on the verge of calling an ambulance.

After referral from a GP, an ultrasound scan from a private doctor showed that Annabel had developed a cyst on her left ovary. While ovarian cysts – fluid-filled sacs – are common and usually painless, if they swell, they can cause acute pain and may need to be removed. Annabel’s pain was “unbearable”, she says, and her GP thought she would need an operation.

When cysts become a serious problem, they fall into three types. According to the NHS Choices, an online compendium from the health service, if a cyst is growing on a stem from an ovary, the stem can become twisted. This stops the blood supply, causing severe discomfort in the lower abdomen. Alternatively, it may burst, with very painful results.

The effects you feel depend on what the cyst contained, whether it is infected and if there is any bleeding. Lastly, occasionally, a cyst is an early form of ovarian cancer. However, about 95 per cent are non-cancerous.

When Annabel mentioned her cyst to a friend, she was advised to see local homeopath Hilery Dorrian, but was sceptical. “I’d grown up believing diseases were out there waiting to get us. When I saw Hilery, I was astonished to see my ideas of health turned on their head. She explained to me that homeopathy treats the real causes of illness in the body, not just the symptoms – as conventional medicine does. The whole concept made so much sense to me. It was a huge turning point.

“Hilery didn’t perform a physical examination. Instead, she asked me about my background, my personality, my emotions, what made me stressed – even my parents’ health. She constructed a picture of me and gave me a remedy made up exactly to treat my left ovary.”

Homeopathic remedies can be taken in several ways, the most traditional being to place small white pillules – pin-head-sized sucrose pills containing an active ingredient diluted down to microscopic quantities – under the tongue, several times a day. They can be dissolved in warm water if preferred, and creams and tinctures containing the key ingredients are also available.

Annabel left Dorrain’s homeopathy centre with an open mind, but not expecting a miracle. However, after taking the prescribed pillules, her cyst gradually became less painful; the throbbing stopped; and she never went back to her GP. She is convinced that the homeopathic remedies she took enhanced and perhaps speeded up the healing process.

Annabel has been back to see Hilery – at a cost of about £30 a time – every six weeks in the past five years to get what she describes as an MOT. “And at home we all rely on homeopathic medicine. When I or one of the children [Amber, Charlie, 13, and Lily, 11] have a cold, we take pulsatilla [a native British flower]. And I always have handy some arnica for bruises, calendula for cuts and grazes, belladonna [not poisonous at this level of dilution] for a throbbing head, and nux vomica [a tree extract that contains traces of strychnine], which I take after the occasional over-indulgence. It gets rid of that ‘uhhh’ feeling in the morning.”

When the family went to Thailand for a wedding, Amber suffered severe food poisoning. “I gave her arsenicum album, which worked very quickly. She went from throwing up all night to dancing at the party.”

Annabel’s husband, Mel Coleman, a 46-year-old former yachtsman and now businessman, is also a convert (”although he rarely gets more than minor ailments”).

Annabel’s most recent illness was a bout of tonsillitis; she took a remedy mixed by Hilery, and began to recover within an hour. “I’m passionate about homeopathy,” she says. “I sing its praises at dinner parties where I find my audience is one half sceptical and one half increasingly curious.”

And she backs the notion that homeopathy might be useful at Wimbledon. “I’ve used gelsemium in the past to calm my nerves before presenting Wimbledon, but it’s possible it may also work for Andy. However, homeopathic remedies are designed to help with specific symptoms and Andy’s may be different to mine.”

As the patriotic money is on Andy Murray to win Wimbledon this year, perhaps we should follow Annabel’s lead and stock up on nux vomica, the traditional cure after you’ve been celebrating too much, just in case.

In the 40 years ending 1890 during which homeopathy had been practised in England, the columns of the daily Press had but rarely been opened to discussions upon it.

This prolonged silence with regard to a matter that was so intimately connected with the vital interests of the whole community, was broken by The Times in 1881, at the period when Lord Beaconsfield (who was a patient of homeopath Joseph Kidd) lay dangerously, ill; and again in December, 1887, on account of the high handed action of the committee of a newly established institute called the Queen’s Jubilee Hospital against Kenneth Millican, who had been duly elected its surgeon for throat diseases.

The only grievance the committee of the Jubilee Hospital had against Kenneth Millican was that he belonged to an institution where liberty of opinion on therapeutics was accorded to the medical officers.

The committee of the Jubilee Hospital could not find any fault with the practice of Kenneth Millican, but they, nevertheless expelled him and appointed another in his place. Kenneth Millican brought all action against the committee for wrongful dismissal and got judgment in his favour, which judgment, however, was reversed on appeal.

Edmund Becket, Lord Grimthorpe in a letter to The Times called attention to the bigotry of the committee of the Jubilee Hospital in dismissing an able and competent member of their medical staff for no other cause than his acceptance of a post in another institution where liberty of opinion and practice was allowed to its medical officers.

This conduct he characterised as a flagrant instance of the Odium medicum. A considerable number of representatives of allopathy replied to the letter, protesting that Edmund Becket, Lord Grimthorpe was altogether wrong in attributing to their side and Odium medicum, and unconsciously proving his accusation up to the hilt by the very strong language they used against homeopathy and its adherents.

After the controversy had gone on for ten days the editor of The Times joined in the fray with a leading article in favour of homeopathy.

This elicited an outburst of still more violent denunciations of homeopathy.

When the discussion had raged in the columns of The Times for another fortnight, the editor closed it with another leading article claiming that Edmund Becket, Lord Grimthorpe had been successful in establishing his original contention.

The good example set by The Times in treating of homeopathy with the respect and deference it merited was followed by many newspapers and periodicals, both at home and abroad.

The subject excited great interest, even in Australia, and the beneficial effect that this prolonged discussion had on the proper understanding of homeopathy by the general community is felt even at the present day.

Our facetious friend Punch published (January 28, 1888) a humorous account of the battle of the rival schools, in which the partisan of the globule was represented as having the best of the fray.

Complementary healthcare should be offered ‘free, as of right’ on the NHS, a former government minister told the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health.

Calling for governments across the UK to act, Peter Hain, the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, praised a pilot scheme in the province that allowed GPs to refer patients for complementary therapies funded by the health service.

Speaking at the first annual conference of the Foundation, Peter Hain said:

‘This is the first example of the successful integration of health care on the NHS in the UK.

‘I believe it shows conclusively that governments in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should now draw the lessons and establish integrated healthcare available for all our citizens.’

Peter Hain hit out at some in ‘the conventional medical establishment’ for resisting progress.

“Critics of complementary medicine must ‘change their attitude,” he said. “One in five people in Britain use complementary therapies, while nearly half the GP practices in England provide access to some form of complementary healthcare”, he added.

In 1998, 19 million visits were made to complementary practitioners in the UK, compared to 14m visits to A&E.

‘The growing popularity of such treatments is ultimately down to the fact that they deliver real benefits, and because patients welcome an approach which treats them holistically as a person, looking at their individual needs, not just the symptoms,’ said Peter Hain.

“Conventional medicine needs to take this on board and stop being in denial.”

“Supporters of integrated healthcare had to challenge their opponents”, Peter Hain warned.

“The fact is that complementary medicine still has an image problem. Too many people still dismiss those of us who use such treatments as wackos and pill-poppers, while practitioners are branded quacks and confidence tricksters.

“This is a perception that we must tackle head on,’ Peter Hain added. “Complementary medicine can only play a role in the NHS if it can be shown to benefit patients.”

Syed Mahboob Alam, a doctor working towards his doctoral degree under the supervision of former Chairman of the University of Karachi (KU) Pharmacognosy Department Dr Mansoor Ahmed, has discovered that various types of cancer could be treated by administering herbal medicines to the patients in the homeopathic system.

It was usually perceived before this research that there was no cure for cancer in allopathic or homeopathic system of medicine.

Alam has, to date, received 107 patients suffering from different types of cancer including throat, breast, mouth and bone cancer and has successfully treated 104 patients. Two patients withdrew and one died of the ailment.

Out of 104 patients, 38 chose homeopathic system without seeking treatment elsewhere, while 66 patients turned to Alam after becoming disillusioned with other systems of treatment.

The successful treatment of patients came to knowledge of Alam while working on his PhD thesis Investigation on the different maligns curing properties of Herbal Homeopathic Drugs, Thuja Occindentalis, Taraxacum Offincinalis, Conium Maculatum, Chelidonum Majus, Cistus Canadensis.

It might be of some interest that Conium Maculatum was the drug given to Socrates.

Alam and Ahmed conducted the clinical studies at Dr Nadir Homeopathic Hospital, Super Highway, Hussaini Institute of Alternative Medicine, Old Hussaini Blood Blank opposite Nishtar Park, and Sindh Medical Centre, Hilal-e-Ahmer, Clifton, Karachi.

Ahmed told The News that they have opened Al-Murtaza Homeopathic Hospital in Ancholi Society to treat the patients for research and humanitarian purpose.

The researchers took detailed histories of prior illnesses from each patient. They were specifically asked about environmental exposure (including smoking history), tuberculosis and autoimmune disorders, previous immunosuppressive therapy, hepatitis B or hepatitis C, HIV infection, abnormal Papanicolaou test, human papillomavirus infection, etc.

Alam claimed that cardiac disease is number one ailment in the world followed by cancer.

“More specifically we can say that there is no complete cure of cancer in the allopathic system of medicine.

“However, we have the cure of cancer by herbal medicines through homeopathic system.

“These drugs act when they are administered to the patient in diluted form. They inhibit the cancerous cells and provide immunity against unwanted physiological process.

“The treatment can be administered regardless of age, intensity and period of disease,” said Alam while explaining the treatment process.

Ahmed said that the patients were also asked in detail about the exposure to chemical carcinogens if any at their workplace (Occupational History).

“It is very important for us to know what type of work a patient does. Aromatic amines cause bladder cancer, arsenic cause lung and skin cancer, Asbestos cause lung cancer and Mesothelioma Benzene causes Leukemia, Chromates cause lung cancer and Diesel exhaust causes lung cancer.”

In most cases the patients are unaware that they have been victim of cancer. It only comes to light when they (patients) grudgingly come to the doctors to get treatment.

By that time it is already very late.

“Herbal medicines work like magic,” Ahmed said.

He hinted that in this clinical study, 106 diagnosed cases of cancers of different types were studied and in majority of the cases, the standard allopathic treatment that is surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy had failed; homeopathic treatment was then compared to surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

“Homeopathy is a system of natural healthcare in which extreme dilutions of substances from nature are used to stimulate a healing response.

The basic principle of homeopathy is that the substance that elicit a particular symptom picture in their physical form (for example onion causing itching mostly and running nose with discharge that burns) can be used in diluted form to stimulate the healing of the same set of symptoms.”

Francis I decided to definitivly manage this outcry with a series of clinical trials under his auspices, and Francis I issued a Royal Decree to open a homeopathic clinic and conduct clinical trials into homeopathy.

The articles of this Royal Decree set out conditions for scientific clinical trials which are the precursor to today’s procedures, and they included 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.

Cosmo Maria De Horatiis and Francesco Romani were to be the homeopathic practitioners, and allopathic physicians were also appointed as part of these clinical trials.

Of course, the allopathic physicians did their absolute utmost to upset the clinical trials, with antagonistic behaviour, making sinister predictions, refusing to attend the hospital and publishing vitriolic texts against homeopathy.

Albanese was actually accused of trying to poison the patients to prevent their recovery under homeopathic treatment, distributing poisoned figs and loudly predicting the death of the patients under homeopathic treatment!

False reports of patient deaths were circulated by the allopaths, which proved unfounded when the Duke of Calabria investigated these false claims.

Forty days into the clinical trials, the allopaths withdrew and refused to co-operate, issuing a damning report which was reported to the President of Public Instruction, finding its way to the Minister of the Interior and eventually to the Council of State.

Francis I demanded to see the reports on which these damning claims were founded, whereupon the offices were searched, the documents sealed and presented to Francis I who personally read every detail, pronouncing himself perfectly satisfied with the results of the homeopathic treatment, and he recommended that the clinical trials be continued, much to the disgust of the allopaths, who continued to do everything they could to disrupt the trials.

However, the trials continued for 155 days, ending only when Francis I had to travel abroad and refused to do so without his physician Cosmo Maria De Horatiis. Francesco Romani was not suited to face such implacable odds alone, so he resigned and the trials ended.

The results of these trials were published in State Papers which severely condemned the antics of the allopathic physicians. The report concluded that the results could not be verified as the allopaths refused to co-operate with the Articles of the Royal Decree.

The State also decreed that henceforth, any citizen should have the right to choose the style of treatment they preferred for themselves, and Francis I decided to open a homeopathic hospital.

The disembling and disinformation of the allopathic physicians proved to be very unpleasant lies. Esquirol even went so far as to claim that the trials had ended after 40 days and that Cosmo Maria De Horatiis had himself given up homeopath due to the results of the trials against homeopathy!

This is despite the fact that two of the allopaths, Marchesani and Alessi actually converted to homeopathy on the strength of the results they had witnessed during the trials, and Des Guidi, the Inspector of the University of Lyon, who was not part of the trials, but who was visiting Italy, also converted to homeopathy as a result of observing the trials from a distance, and he had his wife treated by Francesco Romani and Cosmo Maria De Horatiis. As a result, Des Guidi converted to homeopathy and became the first homeopath in France.

The astonishing behaviour of the allopaths eventually enabled homeopathy to triumph in Naples, and in France, and across Europe.

Also, note that Oliver Wendell Holmes repeated all the same old lies and inuendos of the Naples allopaths in his defamatory Currents and Counter currents in Medical Science, choosing to ignore the actual facts, puff up the reputations of the allopaths who took part (or otherwise) in these clinical trials, and to simply repeat the same tired old false accusations against homeopathy, revamped for a new age in 1861.

The New Zealand Council of Homeopaths (NZCH) welcomes a survey of the use of Homeopathic medicines that reported 92% of people who have taken Homeopathic remedies experienced a positive effect.

The study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal surveyed 124 people in Doctors’ surgeries [1]. Of these 65% said they had used homeopathic remedies with 92% reported experiencing a positive result. These findings confirm the results from studies conducted overseas (2,3,4). This study revealed that positive responses to homeopathic remedies were achieved even though patients did not understand how homeopathic medicines worked.

Gwyneth Evans, spokesperson for the NZCH states, “The results demonstrate that an adult, child or, animal does not have to know how a remedy works for it to be beneficial.”

Consumer demand for a system of medicine that is natural, safe and effective has driven the rise of homeopathy in New Zealand and throughout the world.

However, very few surveys on homeopathy have been conducted in New Zealand to date so it is pleasing to see that funding is being made available for this purpose.

Homeopathic consultations are individualised to each patient, taking into account all presenting symptoms, together with a detailed family and personal history, including the context in which the patient became unwell.

A homeopathic prescription is then selected based on the client’s unique symptom presentation. Homeopathic treatment facilitates the body’s ability to fight infection and to decrease susceptibility to disease by gently stimulating the body to heal itself.

“This research is the beginning of an exciting development into adding to previous studies understanding homeopathy. I hope that funding will be made available to conduct further surveys and trials with practicing homeopaths in their clinics, to further add to the body of scientific knowledge of the natural healing powers of homeopathic remedies” said Ms Evans.

References -

1. Holt S and Gilbey A,. (2009) Beliefs about homeopathy among patients presenting at GP surgeries, New Zealand Medical Journal, Vol 122 No,1295

2. A meta-analysis of three trials on homeopathic immunotherapy. Result: significant effect in favour of homeopathic treatment.

3. Reilly D, Taylor MA, Beattie NGM, Campbell JH, McSharry C, Aitchison TC, Carter R, Stevenson RD. Is evidence for homoeopathy reproducible? Lancet. 1994; 344:1601-1606.

4. Cucherat, M., Haugh, M. C., Gooch, M., & Boissel, J. P. 2000, “Evidence of clinical efficacy of homeopathy. A meta-analysis of clinical trials. HMRAG. Homeopathic, Medicines Research Advisory Group“, Eur.J.Clin.Pharmacol., vol.. 56, no. 1,

With thanks to the BBC

Patients with persistent low back pain should be offered acupuncture, massages or exercises on the NHS, says guidance.

It is the first time the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has explicitly backed the use of complementary therapies. The rationing watchdog said evidence suggests they help and will be cost effective if doctors stop providing less proven back services like X-rays.

The move was welcomed by some charities and experts but criticised by others.

Low back pain is a very common problem affecting one in three adults in the UK each year, with an estimated 2.5 million people seeking help from their GP.

For many people the pain goes away in days or weeks. But for some, the pain can persist for a long time and become debilitating.

NICE says anyone whose pain persists for more than six weeks and up to a year should be given a choice of several treatments, because the evidence about which works best is uncertain.

Complementary therapies

In addition to painkillers and regular advice to stay active and carry on with normal activities as much as possible, patients, together with their doctor, can decide to opt one of three complementary treatments.

This includes up to eight exercise sessions or 10 sessions of acupuncture over 12 weeks, or a course of manual therapy, which includes up to nine sessions of spinal manipulation, mobilisation or massage. Professor Peter Littlejohns, NICE Clinical and Public Health Director said NHS providers now had the opportunity to look at the services they provide and decide what changes are needed.

He said: “There is variation in current clinical practice, so this new NICE guideline means that for the first time we now have the means for a consistent national approach to managing low back pain.

“Importantly, patients whose pain is not improving should have access to a choice of different therapies including acupuncture, structured exercise and manual therapy.”

Patients who fail to benefit from their first choice may be offered another of these options, he said.

If that doesn’t work, they can try an intensive treatment programme combining exercise and psychological therapy.

Contentious

He said the costs to the NHS would be minimal - in the order of £77,000 - because they are offset by the savings in terms of reducing future disability and healthcare needs and moving away from treatments with little supportive evidence.

The guidelines, which apply to England and Wales, say doctors should no longer offer spinal x-rays or MRI scans or injections of therapeutic substances into the back for non-specific low back pain.

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy welcomed the guidelines, as did Dr Dries Hettinga of the charity BackCare.

He said: “This offers a real choice for patients.

“This guideline will help patients understand what treatment and care can help them with their back pain and shows that there can be a positive outlook for treating this condition.”

But others were critical of the recommendations.

Professor Edzard Ernst, an expert in complementary medicine at Peninsula Medical School, said he was surprised by the guidance and particularly by NICE’s recommendation of spinal manipulation.

“It feels as though the panel was biased in favour of this approach thus over-rating its effectiveness and under-estimating its risks which can be considerable. In my view, a critical risk benefit analysis of the most reliable data fails to come out in favour of chiropractic.

“We must remember that no optimally effective treatment for back pain exists.”

With thanks to The Irish Times.com

Switzerland became the first country in Europe to enshrine complementary medicine into its constitution when more than 67 per cent of national voters opted in favour of a new constitutional article on complementary medicine last week.

That result, which followed a public campaign, will now make it more likely that certain complementary therapies will be re-instated into the basic health insurance scheme available to all Swiss citizens.

Therapies including homeopathy, herbalism and traditional Chinese medicine were removed from the basic health insurance scheme in 2004 and put into additional optional private health insurance schemes.

The constitutional article on complementary medicine is also likely to speed up standardisation of training for complementary therapies in Switzerland. Currently, each canton regulates the complementary therapists within its region.

“The constitutional text itself is very short – it states that the Federal government and the cantons will ensure that, within the scope of their jurisdiction, complementary medicine is taken into consideration,” explains Alexander Harbaugh, a spokesman for the public campaign which brought the complementary medicine proposal to parliament.

In Switzerland, a new constitutional article can be proposed to the Swiss parliament if it is supported by 100,000 signatures gathered within 18 months.

In this case, the parliament rejected the initial proposal on complementary medicine and put forward its own counterproposal on complementary medicine which was then put to a vote.

A majority of citizens in all cantons voted in favour of adopting this new constitutional article. Historically, counter-proposals have been three times more likely to be voted in by the public than original popular proposals.

“It shows that we are beginning to come out of the two camps – one for orthodox medicine and the other for alternative medicine. In the future, hopefully, it will mean that medical students will study complementary therapies as part of their medical training and be able to integrate some of them into their practice,” says Harbaugh.

One of the aspirations of the pro-complementary therapy lobby group is that professorships of complementary medicine will now be created in Swiss universities.

“The parliament will decide what concrete measures will be taken on complementary medicine in the next few months,” says Mona Neidhart from the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health. She expects that the representative bodies of specified complementary therapies will submit new applications to gain approval for inclusion in the basic health insurance scheme.

“Complementary therapies can currently apply for inclusion in the basic health insurance scheme but up to now, they haven’t managed to be included. This vote will mean the parliament can change the criteria for inclusion,” explains Neidhart.

The current criteria requires that the therapy benefits the patient, that it is cost-effective and appropriate for the patient’s condition.

Commenting on the vote, Daniel Kieffer, president of the European Association of Naturopathy, said naturopathy was already prominent although not widely accepted in Switzerland. “This vote puts naturopathy on the road to freedom and is a model for all other European countries,” he said.

Dutch pharmacist turned naturopath Jan de Vries worked for years with the Swiss naturopath, Alfred Vogel. He says Switzerland has a long tradition of homeopathy and herbal medicine. “A lot of regulatory work on complementary therapies has already been done in Switzerland and there is greater recognition for complementary therapists. I wish the same thing would happen in Germany because then other European countries could benefit from it,” he says.

De Vries, who has worked in Ireland for 40 years, says, “There is a great longing for natural medicine in Ireland. Irish people are very interested in finding out more about natural forms of medicine.”

In Ireland, the 2006 report of the National Working Group on Regulation of Complementary Therapies represents the current state of play in Ireland in this area.

This report recommended that statutory regulation be put in place for so-called high risk therapies.

These therapies are acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine and herbalism. It recommended that practitioners of other complementary therapies form federations and self-regulate their practitioners and standardise their training courses. Therapies such as yoga and homeopathy currently follow this model.

Earlier this year, the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) began the process of validating complementary therapy courses in acupuncture, herbal medicine and traditional Chinese medicine as the first step towards statutory regulation of these therapies.

Does the campaign against CAM indicate that powerful factions feel threatened?

A complacent CAM world has been slow to collect supporting data, but the waning of big pharma’s once unassailable economic and clinical dominance may be a significant motivator for some who oppose integration.

With biotech innovation slowing down, and adverse event scandals and research irregularities, users are distrusting flagship revenue producing medications.

As healthcare policy reshapes mainstream medicine we will need to understand the forces ranged against integrated medicine….

….. One could go to great lengths trying to understand why CAM narratives have gained such momentum at the end of the second millennium.

One element of any explanation would have to include the fact that the mainstream narrative is defective, especially in chronic diseases.

Many patients do not experience the benefits promised by biomedicine.

Many medications do not work for a lot of people, and in those for whom they do work, deeply unpleasant side effects are the price paid.

Often treatments are short term, getting rid of one problem only to produce another one in its wake.

Patients are not stupid.

They often realise these problems sooner than doctors too enamoured of their own theories to see the situation as it is.

But even the push given by these obvious deficiencies in the mainstream system and its narratives are not enough to explain the rise of CAM.

There are also many pull factors.

Patients have adopted a more holistic view of the world themselves, incorporating spirituality, ecology, body mind connections and so on, and are seeking treatments that respect, reflect and ideally work with such a background model.

In such a situation, it is easy to create a veritable counter culture.

It is then ‘them’, the stupid, reductionists of the mainstream culture, against ‘us’, the truly enlightened, insightful, holistic, patient centred ‘complex systems’ therapists.…

…. Although most pharmaceutical interventions have gone through rigorous RCTs and survived (otherwise they would not be on the market), many don’t stand the test of time or of real life: patients don’t like them because of their side effects; doctors don’t like them because they are unpredictable in their efficacy for individual patients; the public purse does not like them because their efficacy is too small compared to their costs (and the danger of the side effects).

The latter has been the reason why NICE refused to take any of the newly developed anti dementia drugs on to the books for public reimbursement.…

…. So I have come to the conclusion that big pharma is scared, and I would argue that the current witch hunt to weed out allegedly non evidence based practices is the consequence of twin developments.

On the one hand the favour CAM has found with the public, and on the other the increasing pressure that the pharmaceutical companies have come under.

So big pharma is doing the only sensible thing it can by attacking where it knows its enemy is weakest…..

…. I have a suspicion that whoever rides into battle for big pharma does so because they are well protected and well paid….

So have we asked the pertinent questions about conflicts of interest in research; have we investigated where the money is coming from that supports the anti CAM campaigners; have we found out enough about the funding structures that keep those groups afloat, and the dinners and cocktail parties where promises and nice ideas are exchanged?

It is time for a counter campaign; for some critical analysis, some investigative journalism, some discourse and social analysis to uncover the background that supports the campaign against CAM?

I also suggest we start collecting the sort of data whose absence allowed the campaign to begin in the first place: data about CAM’s real world outcomes and effectiveness.

And I think it would be wise to demonstrate to our colleagues struggling with the realities of conventional medical practice just how short sighted and silly the current concept of evidence really is, since it is only modelled along the lines of pharmacological research.…

Read the actual article in Holistic Health.

Our military thinking and our medical thinking have a surprising amount in common. It isn’t just happenstance that doctors proudly assert that they seek to attack illness, combat disease, kill infectious agents and create a war on cancer or on any disease.

Physicians seem so stuck in this medical mindset of militaristic thinking that it isn’t surprising—they have a long history of attacking other viable strategies that seem to be less medical or less militaristic.
To treat a patient, the doctor must provide a diagnosis that determines the existence of a “Western medical disease,” or WMD, even if this diagnosis is sometimes based on faulty medical intelligence or just selective intelligence.

Doctors usually choose to “shock and awe” the body. An elaborate attack ensues, utilizing our most sophisticated technological armamentarium, including the newest painkilling drugs, antibiotics and chemotherapeutic agents.

This militaristic medical solution takes precedence over other strategies that strive to re-establish health through forces that augment the body’s defenses. While some doctors offer dissident opinions and propose less invasive treatment strategies, these voices are muted by the medical-industrial complex.

The military-industrial complex is but a dwarf next to its medical counterpart. In 2002, for instance, the combined profits of the 10 largest drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) exceeded the combined profits of the remaining 490 companies ($33.7 billion).

The medical-industrial complex is ready, willing and able to declare a scientifically validated victory, even if this triumph is temporary or provides only symptomatic relief.

As soon as the shock and awe treatment “works,” doctors proudly declare “mission accomplished.”

However, much to our surprise—but obvious and predictable to many others—thousands of new “terrorist cells” are created.

The shock-and-awe use of medication creates its own side effects. The painkilling drugs kill the pain but don’t heal the underlying disease and generate their own tolerance, addiction and pathology.

Antibiotics kill the bad germs but destroy the good bacteria in the gut that are so important for digesting and assimilating food. And the chemotherapeutic drugs poison and ravage the immune system, creating a perfect environment for new organisms to infect an increasingly weakened and susceptible body.

However, side effects aren’t really “side” effects at all. From a pharmacological point of view, drugs’ “effects” and “side effects” are arbitrarily determined.

Does a bomb that destroys buildings and kills people have one or the other as a “side effect”?

Both are the direct effect of the bomb.

Likewise, a drug may effectively suppress a symptom, but the cough was the body’s way to clear its bronchial passageway so you could breathe, and the fever was a vital innate strategy the body deployed to burn out infectious organisms.

Although the drugs provide temporary relief (and bless them for that), they also tend to suppress the body’s self-healing ability and disrupt its inner ecology.

Side effects and collateral damage are accepted as the price of our war on disease, even if varied strategies for creating the peace are inadequately explored.

Doctors may even be able to go to the next step and surgically remove a symptom or an obstructive agent, but the assumption that removing a single symptom or pathological agent will create health is simplistic and incorrect.

Getting rid of a symptom, the equivalent of capturing a political leader, doesn’t create a cure or a revolution.

As it turns out, conventional medicine often has no tools with which to deal with the more complex problems in play, or no plan to establish health once a symptom is vanquished.

The nursery rhyme about the fall of Humpty Dumpty may provide important insights. This old verse acknowledges, “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

Despite this unsuccessful effort, no one recommended the requisition of more horses and more men to solve the problem.

Our medical generals, however, haven’t been as insightful, and a “surge” in military efforts has been prescribed.

Typically, solutions to health problems have been a call for more doctors (and more specialists), more drugs (newer and more expensive ones) and more surgery (after all, medical insurance and the increasing national debt will cover it).

And if and when critics assert otherwise, they’re branded unpatriotic—or worse, unscientific.

It’s as though we’re living under a “doctatorship.”

But now that the body is seriously ravaged, we’re told we can’t leave it on its own.

Physicians assert that we must be there to defend it against new attacks, even if our presence creates ever more dramatic terrorist actions, the way our presence in the hospital results in the increased risk of exposure to virulent strains of infection.

Strategies that nourish or nurture the body’s wisdom, treatments that stimulate or augment our inner doctor and therapeutic modalities that help to establish a dynamic balance between the unity of body-mind-nature are called quackery.

This name-calling is a wonderfully clever way to trivialize something potentially useful and important.

And ironically, physicians often attack alternative healing systems even though these professionals have an inadequate understanding of what the systems are, what history of use and efficacy they’ve been shown to have or the high satisfaction rate in the wake of their use by the public.

The fact that physicians maintain such an unscientific attitude toward these alternative, complementary and integrative treatment modalities is part and parcel of the “my country right or wrong” and “our medical care right or wrong” thinking.

It’s time to acknowledge and understand how much the military mindset has invaded and occupied medical thinking.

More important, it’s time to explore new solutions to medical and military problems and create greater health and peace.

Dana Ullman is the author of several books on homeopathy, including The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy.