Trick or Treatment—The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Electronic book text)

By taking such a relaxed attitude towards alternative medicine, governments have exposed the public to medicines that are often ineffective and occasionally dangerous, and they have allowed alternative therapists, often deluded and occasionally disreputable, to ply their trade without hindrance. It would seem obvious that governments ought to be playing a more active role, by banning dangerous or useless alternative therapies and properly regulating those that are harmless and beneficial. Yet most governments have shied away from taking such a stance. For some reason they seem frightened of confronting the multi-billion-dollar alternative medicine industry. Or perhaps they are more worried about the millions of voters who currently use alternative medicine and who might be offended if their favourite herbalist or homeopath were forced to shut up shop.

There are numerous examples that demonstrate the need for governments to intervene, either by banning certain products or by tightly regulating them. For example, it is still possible to buy homeopathic kits for malaria protection on the internet or in your local health-food shop. One product claims to be ‘a credible and highly effective alternative to conventional malaria treatments…Taken daily as a spray under the tongue it is suitable for all from the toughest adult to the tiniest tot: it even tastes good.’ At a price of just £32.50 it seems like a bargain, except it does not work! Nobody seems to be enforcing any advertising or trading standards, and nobody seems to be worried about the public-health issue that is at stake here.

Governments ought to be moving rapidly to regulate therapists and products in order to protect patients, but there are very few signs that this will happen anytime soon. Indeed, there are clear signs that the British authorities are moving in the opposite direction, as they seem keen to encourage the use of largely unproven treatments. Two examples serve to demonstrate the desire of UK officials to return to the Dark Ages.

First, the UK Department of Health helped to fund a 56-page booklet written by the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health. Entitled Complementary Health Care: A Guide for Patients, this has been one of the most influential documents in relation to alternative medicine, because it purports to be a reliable source of information for patients, and it was also distributed to every British GP. However, the booklet implies that alternative medicine is effective for a whole range of conditions, when we know that this is simply not the case, or at the very least we know that the evidence is poor.

For instance, the booklet states: ‘Homeopathy is most often used to treat chronic conditions such as asthma; eczema; arthritis; fatigue disorders like ME; headache and migraine; menstrual and menopausal problems; irritable bowel syndrome; Crohn’s disease; allergies; repeated ear, nose, throat and chest infections or urine infections; depression and anxiety.’ Notice that the booklet does not say that homeopathy is effective for these conditions, but the phrase ‘most often used to treat’ certainly implies that patients should consider using homeopathy in all these situations. This government-subsidized propaganda is similarly misleading for chiropractic, herbal medicine, acupuncture and other forms of alternative medicine.

The Department of Health tried to defend the booklet’s lack of rigour by declaring that it was never intended to include any scientific evidence about effectiveness, but this was less than honest. Professor Ernst had originally been asked to contribute to a whole section about scientific evidence, but this part was discarded before publication as such information presumably would have undermined the booklet’s ambitions. Also, correspondence between the Department of Health and the Foundation for Integrated Health (obtained by Les Rose under the Freedom of Information Act) clearly shows that the guide was originally meant to include reliable information on effectiveness. In any case, if a patient guide does not contain such information, what on Earth is it for?