The University of Central Lancashire and the University of Salford both declined requests to talk to Nature or share details of their homeopathy degrees. One university that is willing to discuss its teaching is the University of Westminster in London. Students are required to do research and produce critiques of the literature. Reading lists include papers from sources such as Homeopathy , a journal published by the Faculty of Homeopathy, a members' association for professional homeopaths based in Luton.
But the lists also include recent studies that are critical of homeopathy and conventional guides to doing and evaluating healthcare research.
One assignment asks students to critique a paper that assessed the health changes reported by patients suffering from a range of chronic diseases when they attended follow-up appointments after receiving homeopathic treatment at a hospital in Bristol.
Almost three-quarters of the 6, patients reported that their condition had improved D. Spence et al. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 11, —; The paper generated significant media coverage when it was published, but its methodology has been widely criticized. No control group was used, prompting Colquhoun to note that the study is not even capable of showing that homeopathy was producing a placebo effect.
So what happens when students critique the paper? Do they get full marks for showing that it provides no evidence at all for homeopathy? Not quite, says Isbell, who says the paper was chosen precisely because of the controversy over its methodology. Students would be expected to discuss the problems with the lack of controls and to suggest ways to run better studies. But Isbell says that the Bristol researchers still collected useful 'outcome measures' — basically a set of reports from individual patients about how they improved.
The differing opinions over the paper highlight an issue at the centre of the dispute about the evidence for homeopathy, and which explains in part why lecturers feel they can teach the subject as science. For advocates of evidence-based medicine, the double-blind randomized clinical trial in which neither the doctor nor the patient knows who is getting active treatment and who is getting a placebo is the best form of evidence available to practitioners.
When regulators take decisions on drug safety, for example, they usually rely on such studies. But for homeopaths, there is a serious flaw in this approach. When a patient visits a homeopath, the practitioner asks questions that go beyond the symptoms and probe other aspects of the patient's life, such as whether they are feeling stressed or unhappy.
The result is an individualized treatment that takes longer than the ten or so minutes that the patient would get with a government-funded family doctor. This personal interaction is critical to homeopathy, both in tailoring the medicine and in gaining the patient's confidence.
Homeopaths say that if there is a chance that the patient might receive a placebo at the end of it, the necessary trust can break down. Relton argues that homeopathy is scientific, but that the problem of trust means that double-blind trials aren't the best way to measure its effectiveness.
Instead, she and other homeopaths prefer to rely on more qualitative methods, such as case studies and non-blinded comparisons of treatment options. These, they say, provide ample evidence that homeopathy works.
Similar attitudes to homeopathic teaching are evident outside Britain. For advocates of evidence-based medicine, such arguments are equivalent to admitting that homeopathy is nothing more than a strong placebo effect brought on by an attentive practitioner. The authorities have tolerated, if not encouraged, unscientific thinking , and made a virtue of anti-intellectualism. Even in normal times, these would be troubling developments, particularly in a country that spends far less than the recommended proportion of its GDP on health care, and where several diseases that have largely been defeated elsewhere remain prevalent.
Faced, however, with a pandemic in which tens of thousands have already died in India alone, with little sign of the pace of infection abating, this science denialism is having a profound effect. Take, for example, the reorganization of the government apparatus: Within three months of becoming prime minister, Modi transformed the department in the health ministry responsible for traditional medicine into a full-fledged ministry, the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy, or AYUSH.
One of its first decisions— shelved after uproar in the medical community—was to permit AYUSH doctors to conduct noninvasive abortions. On January 29, the day before India reported its first confirmed case of the coronavirus, the AYUSH ministry issued a health advisory recommending the homeopathic medicine Arsenicum Album 30 as a prophylactic to prevent contraction of the virus. In the northern state of Punjab, the ministry has been actively distributing the same treatment.
In May, when Mumbai was in the beginnings of a worsening COVID crisis , two BJP officials in the city gave out thousands of bottles of homeopathic pills in their respective districts.
Similar actions have been reported elsewhere in India, including in states such as Telangana , Uttarakhand , Tamil Nadu , Odisha , and Karnataka. Other forms of traditional and nonscientific treatments have also been promoted. One BJP activist was arrested when someone fell ill after attending a party he organized in March that reportedly advocated the drinking of cow urine as a treatment for the coronavirus. And despite recommendations from the WHO to the contrary , the Modi government has revised its national guidelines to recommend hydroxychloroquine as a preventive medication for asymptomatic health-care workers, frontline staff working in coronavirus containment zones, and some paramilitary and police personnel.
This embrace of traditional—and untested—treatments is evident in the private sector too. In June, as coronavirus cases spiked, Baba Ramdev, an instantly recognizable face in India who has made a fortune selling health supplements, launched what he claimed was an Ayurvedic cure for the coronavirus. Yet the ministry nevertheless permitted the company to continue selling the product, as long as it is advertised as an immunity booster and not a cure.
The drug is currently on sale, despite the company facing legal action over it. India, Brazil, and the United States—all led by populist leaders who have dismissed the severity of the pandemic, resisted wearing masks, and engaged in science denialism —collectively account for nearly half of global coronavirus infections.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and President Donald Trump have both supported anti-lockdown protesters, even as the virus has hit public-health infrastructure.
It, however, caused an uproar as several researchers cast doubt over the claims. In the ministry, a research unit — Central Council of Research for Homeopathy — conducts tests and studies on it across the country. Moreover, it is regarded as an ancient therapy, with an endorsement from the ruling establishment. India needs free, fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism even more as it faces multiple crises.
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Whether you live in India or overseas, you can do it here. Support Our Journalism. People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness.
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