Pay for it!

Published: 29 July, 2010

• SORRY but, despite assertions from various individuals (Letters, July 22), no reliable tests have shown any real benefits from homeopathy.

By “reliable” I mean what are called double-blind tests, where neither the patient nor the person giving the medicine knows which drug is being supplied.

If the treatment works, these tests will confirm it; if it produces no effect, you can fairly say the material being examined is ineffective.

That is why the NHS has decided not to pay for homeopathic treatments: no reliable studies have shown it to have any benefit.

This doesn’t stop people using it – they just have to pay for it themselves!

Snake-oil salesmen made their profits from the gullibility of people until modern medicine came along, and homeopathy is in the same category.

This isn’t a bias against alternative treatments. It’s simply using the best way of examining the claims being made in an objective way.

And homeopathy does not pass this simple test, and a few people claiming it does work is not enough: you have to prove that it works!

DAVID REED
Eton Avenue, NW3