High Court backs NHS decision to stop funding homeopathy

Authored by telegraph.co.uk and submitted by ManiaforBeatles

A decision to stop NHS funding for homeopathy has been upheld by a High Court judge.

The British Homeopathic Association (BHA) brought a legal challenge against NHS England's decision, made in November last year, to stop paying the £92,000 annual cost of homeopathic remedies.

But, following a four-day hearing in London in May, Mr Justice Supperstone dismissed the BHA's case in a ruling on Tuesday.

Simon Stevens, head of the NHS, welcomed the decision, describing the legal action as "costly and spurious".

NHS England issued guidance in November last year that GPs should not prescribe "homeopathic treatments" as a new treatment for any patient.

The guidance also stated GPs should be "supported in de-prescribing" such remedies for all patients who were receiving them at that time.

The body issued the guidance as part of a drive to save £141 million a year by no longer prescribing 18 treatments deemed to be of "low clinical effectiveness" - including homeopathy and herbal treatments.

It defined homeopathy as "the treatment of patients with highly diluted substances that are administered orally" in its guidance to clinical commissioning groups.

In a report ahead of the guidance, NHS England's board identified homeopathy as an item where there was a "lack of robust evidence of clinical effectiveness".

Johnnius_Maximus on June 6th, 2018 at 12:51 UTC »

My ex's mother (and ex to an extent) were massively into this stuff.

They even roped me into attending a few sessions of a few different 'alternative medicine' workshops even though I told them it's complete quackery.

My favorite ones were the workshop where the talker would click as some sort of brain retraining, basically she would talk normally then very loudly make a clicking sound whilst motioning her arms around.

Then there were the hand healers, the crystal therapy beds. More alarmingly were the amount of marks lapping it all up as gospel.

The best one however was when some guy had me hold two electrodes in my hands which were hooked up to a machine, this was then loaded with different materials and a dial would fluctuate indicating what my body 'needs'. Then a bottle was made up with a drop of that material in a heavily diluted mix of brandy. The price for this consultation and two bottles was £250... He was doing so well that he was based in central London!

A complete load of bollocks, just like all quacks everything above cost an absurd amount of money, the only one I enjoyed was reiki and that's because I had a nap.

We had an argument once so I downed several bottles of this Jesus juice, they thought I was going to die, as you'd expect nothing happened to me, didn't even get drunk which was disappointing.

Ahh what we do for love.

Edit: Thought I'd add this here for visibility just so people can see how much people spend on this rubbish.

"Oh and those crystal healing beds came in various models. The one I lay on had fibre optics fed into the crystals on the back. There was also a large moveable head on an arm kinda like what you'd expect to see in a surgical theater with numerous interchangeable crystals, each fed with its own fibre optic cable so they lit up.

These things cost over 10k!"

peatoire on June 6th, 2018 at 11:56 UTC »

I watched the select committee hearing on Parliament TV when it happened a few years ago. The "experts' putting their case forward for the efficacy of homeopathy got absolutely destroyed by MPs and doctors, it was satisfying to watch. I'm surprised its taken this long.

EDIT: Can't find the video but here is an article just after https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2010/feb/22/mps-verdict-homeopathy-useless-unethical

Here's the video (credit to /u/furrycaboose ) https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/7374b758-5e81-430e-8f7b-13d43ec13b9a

Edit: go to 10.45 on the time bar if you don't have time to watch the full 2hrs

-SaC on June 6th, 2018 at 10:45 UTC »

Good. Bullshit merchants, woowoo and quackery shouldn’t be funded by the public. If my GP came out with ‘I think you should give homeopathy a bit of a go...’, the only thing I’d be giving A Bit Of A Go would be finding a new GP.

Dara O’Briain is not a big fan...