Closing homeopathic hospital could be a “no-brainer”
FRESH doubt has been cast over the future of Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital, as managers stop sending patients to the wards.
Members of the British Medical Association have already said the NHS should stop funding such hospitals, arguing there is no evidence they work.
Now, Robert Calderwood said one health board has decided to cease referring patients. If others followed, he said, he would have to look at how much the hospital is costing the health board.
With cuts of about £50 million in the next financial year, and the BMA calling for funding to be withdrawn, Mr Calderwood said of closing the hospital: “You could be forgiven for thinking it is a no-brainer.”
Contiues: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/doubts-over-future-of-homeopathic-hospital-1.1083878
I’m prepared to be open minded about homeopathic medicine, the treatments needs to be tested in the same way as any conventional treatment. Based on those results, homeopathy that isshown to be more than a placebo effect could be offered through regular means and then specialist homeopathic hospitals wouldn’t be needed.
You can do everything homeopathic medicine does with a bottle of sugar pills.
And studies have been done that prove that.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre/dp/000728487X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297200499&sr=1-1
Please read before commenting further…
Open minded sounds good.
We usually expect the evidence to be in BEFORE we administer the treatment routinely (as we do for all other medicines).
There is the further complication that various reviews reached the conclusion that there is enough negative evidence that further research isn’t warranted. We have to decide how to allocate medical research funds, and there is no case for spending it on something that so is so thoroughly tested with so little result, and that flies in the face of well established scientific principles, when there are a lot more promising avenues of treatment that need funding, which are well supported by scientific evidence or theory.
I find it depressing that the government is so incapable of cutting stuff we know doesn’t work for political reasons, when money is allegedly so tight.
Homeopathy works because the placebo effect is hugely powerful. If some people get benefit from it, that’s great, but it tends to work for minor, self-limiting illnesses which in most cases resolve spontaneously.
It makes no sense to pour money into a hospital that treats people that 99% of the time will get better without any kind of intervention, and in some cases will be made worse by the treatment.
The Homeopathic Hospital could be turned into something much more powerful & effective quite easily. If the building is demolished and reduced to dust, then each speck of dust is placed in the foundations of a new building, millions of hospitals could be built which would be much more powerful than the original!