Medicine that offers nothing but false hope
Somewhere, sanity prevails – and it is in the NHS. It has been announced that our Health Service will no longer provide homeopathy or herbal medicine. NHS England ruled yesterday that, “at best, homeopathy is a placebo and a misuse of scarce NHS funds that could be better devoted to treatments that work”.
Finally, homeopathy is being seen for what it is: snake oil, essentially.
I remember going to a homeopath when all my hair fell out at the age of 18. She told me that it was probably because of all the Diet Coke I drank – the sweeteners, apparently, were poisoning me. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t drink Diet Coke. I shuffled off, relieved of 50 quid but not much else.
If you think homeopathy works for you, despite there being absolutely no scientific evidence to back this up, then that is completely fine. Continue to take your tiny little pills and get on with your life. The danger, though, comes when evangelists for the “medicine” start spouting off about how it can cure everything from cancer to Ebola.
Homeopathy may seem harmless, but when it is offering false hope to the vulnerable, it is actually profoundly cruel.