Sugar-coated solutions

Politicians who lend their support to homeopathy advocates are doing a disservice to science
  • The Guardian,
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To MPs, early day motions must be much like street petitions. Signing costs nothing, almost certainly changes nothing, and is the easiest way to get rid of someone annoying. So perhaps it was unfair that I emailed each of the 206 MPs who signed early day motion 1240, supporting NHS homeopathic hospitals.

It called for more government backing for homeopathy on the NHS, stating that complementary medicine, and by implication homeopathy, "has the potential to offer clinically effective solutions to conditions such as eczema, depression, insomnia, allergy, and irritable bowel syndrome". My question was simple: what evidence did each MP use in supporting that statement?

The replies varied from pragmatic to puzzling, but few contained evidence.

Lembit Opik argued - in an admirably bold deviation from accepted medical practice - that taxpayers should pay for treatments until they are shown to fail, rather than the other way around. "The onus is less on homeopathy to prove itself than on its detractors to prove it necessarily does not work," he said.

Harry Cohen joined him at the more eccentric end of the spectrum by implying that conventional medical treatments were improperly tested (he would not say which ones) and referring to Prince Charles as someone "who has made a very strong case" for homeopathy.

Some emails bounced and fewer than half the MPs replied. However, many responses were perfectly reasonable. John Hemming spoke for many when he said: "Even if you take the perspective that it only acts like a psychological treatment, then it is effective."

But the motion did not say homeopathy was a good placebo, it said homeopathy offers clinically effective solutions to named conditions. That is a claim even the UK Society of Homeopaths does not allow its practitioners to make. Its code of practice states that a homeopath is required to "avoid making claims (whether explicit or implied; orally or in writing) implying cure of any named disease".

Why the controversy? Homeopathy involves treating people with chemicals diluted in water until not a single molecule remains - based on the idea that the water will "remember" the chemical, but not everything else that has previously been dissolved in it. Scientifically speaking, that's absurd. So some pretty powerful evidence is required.

Which is where a second school of thought came in. About half the respondents spoke of constituents who had told them of the benefits they had gained from treatment - an understandable parliamentary basis for supporting homeopathy. But medical science has moved on from considering anecdotes to be evidence. Instead, it tests thousands of people, and looks for a result better than that expected by taking a sugar pill alone.

Research has been done. Steve Webb, the only MP to cite published papers, proved that. The most authoritative of his papers, which included one that just asked homeopathy patients if they felt better, reached the underwhelming conclusion that there was merit in further research. It also said: "We found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition."

That was in 1997. There has been further research since, and it has also shown homeopathy to be no better than a placebo. Homeopathists may dispute the results, but they offer little in return. How much more research is needed? More than 200 years after Samuel Hahnemann first dissolved Peruvian tree bark in water to cure malaria, there is still nothing concrete to back up homeopathists' extraordinary claims.

So despite what MP Peter Luff suggested, there is no conspiracy by "big pharma" to keep homeopathy down. If homeopathy were proved to work, then the one certainty, aside from having to rewrite all known chemistry, is that drug companies would find a way to make money out of it. There is no conspiracy by science either - the first ambitious researcher to explain how distilled water could have a molecular memory would be guaranteed the Nobel prize.

Science is not just another pressure group for an MP to deal with. It is not a point of view or political persuasion. It is the best tool we have for understanding the physical world. When we abandon it, we abandon logic. And if our elected representatives will not respond to logic, then who will? The MPs' full responses are posted at:

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