NHS money 'wasted' on homeopathy
news.bbc.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
I am always shocked to see how many people, who should know better, fall for the homeopathy scam. Some do believe that it is 'medicine with natural ingredients' and start to argue that our modern medicine is based on the natural medicine. While this is true, it has nothing to do with homeopathy. The concept of homeopathy is fundamentally flawed and is based on crazy pseudo science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
Then there is this 'but if it helps with the placebo effect it is not that bad' argument. It is that bad because some people put too much faith into it and try to cure for example Malaria with sugar pills. It wont work. People will die.
I am just shocked that this stuff is still available in 2010...
The NHS funds a few small homoeopathy clinics.
I would be extremely surprised if any GP has 'prescribed homoeopathy'. I'm sure it's almost always the case that the patient asks/demands to be prescribed it because they've read/heard something about it, or conventional medicine just isn't working for them.
As the NHS is publicly owned, it has to try and please most people. If a segment of society believe in alternative medicine, unfortunately it's going to be hard to tell them "Yes, you pay your taxes for healthcare, but we do not believe in alternative medicine, so we will not provide it for you".
At the end of the day though this is a ridiculously small % of people, and a ridiculously small amount of money compared to the full NHS budget.
What part of the NHS in the UK is publicly owned? I pay my NI the same as everyone, but they never asked me as an owner what I felt about it.
>> "but they never asked me as an owner what I felt about it."
You get to vote. You get to write to your MP, your local hospital, etc etc.
>> There's a difference between a GP suggesting homoeopathy, and a GP refering a patient after the patient has requested homoeopathy.
That is a fair point, but you can't say for sure that a GP hasn't perscribed or refered someone for this treatment. So kind of irrelevant.
But it remains that the HNS wasted the money. As you yourself pointed out they didn't put it to good use because they spent it on homeopathy. Anything not put to good use is wasted is it not?
Sure, waste is waste, but the amount is tiny.
"Delays to NHS computer system could cost taxpayers £40bn"
I'm not saying the £4m isn't important, but it's not massive compared to their budget. They could likely have cut down on using temp staff, and saved that £4m easily enough.
The NHS is one of the best things the UK has. We pay far less for our healthcare than the US, and enjoy longer life.
It's not all bad. Any large system has wastage, it's just a part of being big.
However, while it may be debatable the NHS is one of the best things the UK has (I can introduce you to many NHS workers who disagree) that be it £4million or £40 billion wasted, wasted is wasted, and that's why the BBC article put it in quotes. Because any wasted money in a government organisation costs jobs.
It is thought about £4m a year is spent on homeopathy by the NHS
Compare that to the total funding of NHS, roughly £100 billion.
It took me a while to get used to that practice, myself. After years of reading American headlines, a lot of BBC headlines look like they are trying to be ironic or something.
It's not meant to convey irony, just that the accusation that the money was wasted is not an objectively verifiable fact and, anyway, that the BBC itself does not necessarily agree with that characterization.
Scare quotes can be used to quote a person and to provide distance from their words
Look at another example off the homepage: Hope over peanut allergy 'cure' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7899383.stm
Cure is in quotes because it's not yet proven that the technique is indeed a cure. Not because the BBC wants to give proper credit to whichever person called it a cure.
Sure you can call them scare quotes but these quotes can be used for various reasons, I'm pretty sure as a news organisation the BBC intended use–mention distinction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction
They occasionally be used for other reasons like jargon.
Sceptic James Randi is so convinced that homeopathy will not work, that he has offered $1m to anyone who can provide convincing evidence of its effects.
They don't even have to demonstrate it works, just that you can tell homeopathy from water.
Medicine.
No, seriously. Every morning, I wake up and the sun has risen. Clearly I made it happen. It happens while I'm asleep so it can't have been the placebo effect.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3344
for information about United States federal funding of "alternative medicine" research. I think homeopathy is not as routinely covered by health insurance in the United States as in some other countries, but of course the insurance system in the United States is not really a national system at all, but a collection of varied private contracts state by state.
Personally though, I prefer acupuncture, which is also available via the NHS.
Science is currently the best way we have to look at the world from a not that subjective perspective. Homeopathy does no better than the placebo effect. If something claims to 'work'.. then I expect it to 'work' better than a placebo. Homeopathy is not better. Not a bit.
Believe me, I would be very happy if some of the pseudo science stuff would work. Live would be great!
edit: fixed typo