Jeremy Hunt sent homeopathy research to chief healthcare officer

Chief health care officer Sally Davies has mentioned publicly she believes homeopathy is ‘rubbish’. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

The overall health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, asked the chief health care officer to commission professional critiques of 3 homeopathic remedy studies carried out by a industrial French organization – in spite of the CMO’s publicly expressed belief that homeopathy is “rubbish”.

Dame Sally Davies, the CMO, has categorically dismissed homeopathy as a waste of time and cash. “I am perpetually stunned that homeopathy is available on the NHS,” she told the Commons science and technology committee in January 2013.

However Hunt, who expressed help for homeopathy in 2007 before he joined the Department of Well being, asked Davies to initiate critiques of 3 studies carried out by the French company Boiron, which have already been dismissed by scientific critics.

Boiron has run into legal troubles in the US in latest years. In 2012, it set aside $ 5m to refund customers who bought certain homeopathic products. Skilled witnesses argued that the “energetic ingredients” were neither energetic nor substances.

Homeopathic treatments are dilutions of substances to this kind of a high degree that the authentic ingredient is undetectable.

Hunt’s action followed lobbying from the strongly professional-homeopathy Tory MP David Tredinnick. The wellness secretary’s intervention was unveiled via a Freedom of Info request by the web site BuzzFeed.

In a letter to Tredinnick, Hunt thanked the MP for drawing his attention to the scientific studies and said: “It is essential we do not discount different techniques of remedy if they demonstrate to be efficient and I asked the CMO to have them reviewed. The research have now been assessed by two senior researchers with experience in research layout and encounter of research in complementary therapies.”

The letter, drafted for Hunt, showed that the researchers located the studies did not provide proof of the efficacy of homeopathy. Two of the scientific studies had been “well-designed, with robust outcomes” but had been basically descriptive studies, that is, that they did not test 1 treatment against one more or towards a placebo, as would come about in a clinical trial.

The third review in contrast two group of sufferers with musculoskeletal disorders, such as back strains and sprains. 1 group was treated by GPs using homeopathy and the other by GPs utilizing traditional signifies. “Drawing any company conclusions is hard since of the relatively reduced response fee at 12 months and in certain the lack of randomisation, which implies that the results may have been developed by distinctions in between patient groups that have not been taken into account,” the reviewers had found.

Hunt, nevertheless, said he was prepared to carry on the discussion. “I am of program satisfied to place any counterpoints or additional scientific studies you might have to the reviewers for further consideration,” he told Tredinnick in his letter.

Hunt signed an early day movement welcoming the availability of homeopathy on the NHS in 2007, but a source near to the overall health secretary stated on Thursday: “Jeremy is not a supporter of homeopathy and is not persuaded that there is any scientific evidence that it works.”

Jamie Reed, a shadow wellness minister, mentioned patients and medics would be dismayed but not shocked to find out that Hunt had “wasted time and money” on investigating studies into homeopathy.

He added: “The government’s own NHS Selections web site states that the proof for homeopathy is ‘scientifically implausible’ but this isn’t going to appear to be sufficient for the error-susceptible well being secretary. As his policies continue to injury the NHS, I hope he hasn’t ordered an investigation into the use of leeches.”

Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor at Exeter University and a critic of homeopathy, mentioned there was presently evidence in the public domain relating to Boiron’s studies. “I have repeatedly commented on the dismal good quality and misleading conclusions of Boiron-sponsored study on my weblog,” he stated. “We have to inquire why an individual in a position like Hunt ignores all these facts and requires such extraordinary action.”

The examine evaluating patients treated by GPs with distinct strategies discovered significantly less medicine in the homeopathy group. It was, Ernst stated, “a self-fulfilling prophecy, like finding that a good deal of men and women in Macdonalds consume meat”.

He mentioned he was astonished that Hunt had offered to refer any further evidence from Tredinnick back to the reviewers. “He is actually offering additional assistance he consequently is considerably far more than a ‘conduit’. [Which is] really unbelievable – officially, he had renounced his enthusiasm for homeopathy.”

The campaign group Sense About Science stated Tredinnick had currently raised the scientific studies with them, at a hearing of the science and technology committee in Could final yr. “He already knows about the limitations of these research,” mentioned the campaigns director, Sile Lane. “It is a disingenuous request. This is single-review campaigning – if the pharmaceutical market did this, people’s response would be, rightly, indignant.”

Jeremy Hunt sent homeopathy research to chief healthcare officer