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

In a second example of British disinformation, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in 2006 took the shocking decision to allow homeopathic products to make claims on their labels based on homeopathy’s own theory of testing known as ‘provings’. As discussed in Chapter 3, these tests cannot demonstrate clinical effectiveness, and yet customers will now encounter labels based on provings and endorsed by the MHRA. This will mislead consumers into believing that homeopathic products are effective. The MHRA, which is an executive agency of the Department of Health, makes the proud claim: ‘We enhance and safeguard the health of the public by ensuring that medicines and medical devices work and are acceptably safe.’ Yet, for the first time since the creation of the Medicines Act, they have sacrificed their integrity.

The reason for the MHRA’s shameful irresponsibility is hard to fathom, but Professor David Colquhoun feels strongly that the Prince of Wales has been an influential figure in this regrettable endorsement:

The MHRA have received letters from the Prince of Wales, and we are aware that an MHRA member has met the Prince at Clarence House at least once. But all the contents are secret from the public. The Chairman of the MHRA Agency Board, Prof Alasdair Breckenridge, and chairman of their Herbal Medicines committee, Prof Philip Routledge, have both admitted to receiving such letters from the Prince of Wales, but neither will give any details, despite having been condemned by their own professional organisation, the British Pharmacological Society.

The MHRA argue that it is better to regulate and allow homeopathic remedies for safety reasons, but even if this were a good idea (and we do not think it necessarily is), then there still would be no need to give misleading indications of efficacy. Professor Michael Baum commented, ‘This is like licensing a witches’ brew as a medicine so long as the bat wings are sterile.’ Journalist and broadcaster Nick Ross was equally scathing: ‘Sometimes politics must take priority over science. After all, Galileo capitulated to the Inquisition. But what instruments of torture threatened members of the MHRA — or were they simply intellectual cowards?’

10 World Health Organization

This list of people, organizations and entities responsible for the unwarranted growth of ineffective and sometimes dangerous alternative medicine has been in no particular order, except that the World Health Organization (WHO) has been deliberately chosen to complete the list as it holds a special position.

No organization has done more to improve health around the world, such as the eradication of smallpox, and yet the WHO has acted shamefully in its attitude and actions towards alternative medicine. We would have expected it to provide clear and accurate guidance about the value of each popular alternative therapy, yet (as we saw in Chapter 2) in 2003 the WHO muddied the waters by publishing a highly misleading document on the value of acupuncture. Entitled Acupuncture: Review and analysis of reports on controlled clinical trials, the report based its conclusions on several unreliable clinical trials and thus endorsed acupuncture as a treatment for over 100 conditions. Of course, the evidence from high-quality reliable clinical trials paints a very different picture. In reality, acupuncture might possibly (though it looks less possible as each year passes) be effective in treating some types of pain and nausea, but it offers no proven benefit for any other conditions.

Naturally, ever since its publication, acupuncturists have cited the WHO report as the most authoritative evaluation of their mode of healing. And, not surprisingly, prospective patients have been persuaded that acupuncture must be effective for a whole range of conditions, because, after all, it has the blessing of the WHO. However, the WHO report was a shoddy piece of work that was never rigorously scrutinized and which should never have seen the light of day.

The WHO could repair its reputation if it were prepared to re evaluate acupuncture fairly and publish a new report that reflected the evidence from the latest and most reliable trials. In this way, it could make a huge contribution to the public’s understanding of what acupuncture can and, more often, cannot treat. Unfortunately, there is no sign that this is likely to happen.

Worse still, it seems that history is about to repeat itself and that the WHO is destined to fail us and embarrass itself again. According to a report in the Lancet, the WHO is planning to publish a report on homeopathy, which will have much in common with its irresponsible report on acupuncture. In other words, it will be rose-tinted and lacking in rigour.