Has the tide turned in the direction of complementary medicine?

There was a time earlier this year when it looked as if all the progress made towards a more integrated health approach was going to be dashed. Vitamins, minerals and herbal medicine have been under attack from new EU laws, while homeopathy was all but pronounced dead and was definitely going to be made unavailable on the NHS.

And then along came Andrew Lansley, whose decisions up until now have not been altogether brilliant. As the coalition government's health secretary it was up to him to decide on the future of the NHS provision of homeopathy which would decide the future of homeopathic hospitals - one of which has already closed and of which there are four more including the eminent Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.

I was one of the people who wrote to him (see a previous blog) about preventing illness with complementary medicine and saving money for the health service. Then a report on the findings of the parliamentary Science & Technology Committee's findings on homeopathy, written by Earl Baldwin of Bewdley was surprisingly balanced and fair and made the point that any observer could see, that the panels were unfairly balanced against homeopathy and included the most prominent people in the homeopathy-bashing camp, who were never going to change their minds whatever evidence was produced.

The net result was that in the interests of patient choice we are to be allowed more access to homeopathy. This has upset some of the scientists and journalists with loud voices who cannot bear anything that isn't mainstream medicine. They would declare the earth was flat in another age. I was appalled to see the media comparing homeopathy to 'witch doctors' and 'voodoo' the other day. It only shows their ignorance really.


Plenty of people benefit from complementary medicine by paying for it, so why not allow access to everyone on the NHS instead of making it an elitist luxury? The College of Integrated Medicine has now been set up by four of the fellows of the former Prince's Foundation of Integrated Health which was discredited when one of its directors stole some of the funds.

What they fail to acknowledge is that many pharmaceutical medicines have caused serious illness and death and continue to do so. If they were so well proven, why does this happen? There are numerous cases of people suing drugs companies because of the side-effects of very commonly prescribed medication for arthritis and diabetes, to name just two.

The press, as usual, have gone fairly berserk about this but I feel that they cannot overly criticise the four founders - Michael Dixon, formerly medical director of the Foundation; David Peters, chairman of the British Holistic Medical Association; George Lewith, head of a complementary medicine department at Southampton University; and Christine Glover, a holistic health consultant. These people are reputable doctors and practitioners and not a bunch of nutters.

Their aim is to ensure integration of complementary medicine with conventional medicine, which is laudable and could be the model for a far more effective health service than the 'sick' service we currently have.