[Oe List ...] Alternative Medicine, Britain

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2192360,00.html

The Times, U.K.

May 23, 2006



NHS told to abandon alternative medicine

By Mark Henderson, Science Editor


Top doctors say money should go to conventional treatment

Full text of the letter to trust chief executives


A GROUP of Britain’s leading doctors has urged every NHS trust to stop

paying for alternative medicine and to use the money for conventional

treatments. Their appeal is a direct challenge to the Prince of Wales’s 

outspoken campaign to widen access to complementary therapies.


Public funding of “unproven or disproved treatments” such as homoeopathy and

reflexology, which are promoted by the Prince, is unacceptable while huge

NHS deficits are forcing trusts to sack nurses and limit access to

life-saving drugs, the doctors say.


The 13 scientists, who include some of the most eminent names in British

medicine, have written to the chief executives of all 476 acute and primary

care trusts to demand that only evidence-based therapies are provided free

to patients.


Their letter, seen by The Times, has been sent as the Prince today steps up

his crusade for increased provision of alternative treatments with a

controversial speech to the World Health Organisation assembly in Geneva.


The Prince, who was yesterday given a lesson in crystal therapy while

touring a complementary health unit in Merthyr Tydfil, will ask the WHO to

embrace alternative therapies in the fight against serious disease. His

views have outraged clinicians and researchers, who claim that many of the

therapies that he advocates have been shown to be ineffective in trials or

have never been properly tested.


The letter criticises two of his flagship initiatives on complementary

medicine: a government-funded patient guide prepared by his Foundation for

Integrated Medicine, and the Smallwood report last year, which he

commissioned to make a financial case for increasing NHS provision.


Both documents, it is claimed, give misleading information about scientific

support for therapies such as homeopathy, described as “an implausible

treatment for which over a dozen systematic reviews have failed to produce

convincing evidence of effectiveness”.


The letter’s signatories include Sir James Black, who won the Nobel Prize

for Medicine in 1988, and Sir Keith Peters, president of the Academy of

Medical Science, which represents Britain’s leading clinical researchers.


It was organised by Michael Baum, Emeritus Professor of Surgery at

University College London, and other supporters include six Fellows of the

Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, and Professor Edzard

Ernst, of the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, who holds the UK’s first

chair in complementary medicine.


The doctors ask trust chief executives to review their policies so that

patients are given accurate information, and not to waste scarce resources

on therapies that have not been shown to work by rigorous clinical trials.


They conclude: “At a time when the NHS is under intense pressure, patients,

the public and the NHS are best served by using the available funds for

treatments that are based on solid evidence.”


Professor Baum, a cancer specialist, said that he had organised the letter

because of his “utter despair” at growing NHS acceptance of alternative

treatments while drugs of proven effectiveness are being withheld. “At a

time when we are struggling to gain access for our patients to Herceptin,

which is absolutely proven to extend survival in breast cancer, I find it

appalling that the NHS should be funding a therapy like homoeopathy that is

utterly bogus,” he said.


He said that he was happy for the NHS to offer the treatments once research

has proven them effective, such as acupuncture for pain relief, but that

very few had reached the required standards.


“If people want to spend their own money on it, fine, but it shouldn’t be

NHS money.”


The Department of Health does not keep figures on the total NHS spending on

alternative medicine, but Britain’s total market is estimated at £1.6

billion.