The continuous attacks on homeopathy/CAMs for being “unscientific,” emanating from an informal combination of largely biomedically oriented scientists and sections of the media (collectively termed the New Fundamentalists), are themselves unscientific.
Regardless of their lack of compliance to a narrowly defined version of evidence-based discourse, homeopathy/ CAMs are used successfully on a regular basis by millions around the world. In the UK, there will be increasing opportunities for homeopathy/CAMs to make significant contributions to primary health care within a modernizing, more holistic NHS, if they can provide evidence of cost-effectiveness, real-life efficacy, proper regulation, and good clinical governance.
One can only hope it is not too late for the homeopathy/CAM community to unite; for public opinion to be galvanized; and for their combined might to be brought to bear on government and NHS Trusts in order to retain their homeopathy/CAM services. It would be the best possible critique of the New Fundamentalists, and would mark, not as they hope “the end of homeopathy” but as Winston Churchill once said in a different context and a different century, “the end of the beginning.
By Lionel Milogram, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., M.A.R.H.
