Ontario college scraps homeopathy program

Ontario’s publicly funded Georgian College, in Barrie, north of Toronto, has nixed its homeopathy diploma program — before the program’s launch date.

The three- year course, which was due to be offered beginning next fall, was quashed one day after National Post health reporter Sharon Kirkey published a scathing report on the new program and a treatment philosophy that doctors, including the chair of the Ontario Medical Association’s chronic pain section — and at least 12 other international organizations — have described as “junk science.”

The college’s board of governors released a statement Friday afternoon explaining its decision.

“In light of the recent response from our local community and beyond and in consideration of our students, Georgian College has made the decision to cancel the homeopathy program.”

While the diploma program is now dead, the Ontario government continues to regulate the practice of homeopathy, a stance critics decry as legitimizing “quackery.”

“It is good that homeopathy is not being offered at the college level, this was a bit of an experiment, I suspect, for other colleges and it didn’t fly,” said Barrie phys- ician Chris Giorshev, an outspoken critic of the diploma program and homeopathic treatments.

“But there is an underlying problem that still needs to be addressed with homeopathy — it is still considered a regulated health profession, and the standard to become a regulated profession are very low, and the government needs to re consider what the standards should be, and I think, at a minimum, you should establish that what the profession does actually works.”

After a thorough review, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council concluded in 2015 that there are “no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective.”

One pharmacist recently dubbed the practice: “the air guitar of medicine.”