Utter hokum ... but if it helps, why not?

AS A doctor, I take a slightly different view on homeopathy to many of my peers and it’s one that pleases neither the critics nor the supporters of alternative medicine.

On one level, I completely agree that the Berlin Wall remedy does sound laughably daft. But that rather misses the point. For me, what’s important is that some people take it and, for them, it works.

Now, just to be clear, from a scientific perspective I think that homeopathy is utter hokum. It relies on preposterous ideas, with no evidence base whatsoever.

In recent years, there has been a group of increasingly vocal doctors who have championed ‘evidence-based medicine’. They argue that everything that is provided by the NHS must have irrefutable evidence that it works. But that’s the thing — for some people, homeopathy does work. I do not doubt this is down to the placebo effect, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that homeopathy can be beneficial.

The exact power of the placebo effect varies, but it is estimated to be around 30 per cent. That means that if you give a placebo to ten people, three of them will feel better even though what you’ve given them has no medical or pharmacological benefit.

For a long time, whenever I did live TV, I would take a homeopathic remedy beforehand to help me relax. I knew it didn’t really do anything, but I still felt that it did.

One day, I realised half way through a segment on TV that I’d forgotten to take the tablets and yet I was totally calm. I didn’t need them again.

Every doctor has those ‘heart sink’ patients — people who they just can’t seem to help. They are often plagued with multiple vague problems that conventional medicine simply has failed to get on top of.

So if a homeopathic treatment makes people feel better, does it matter if it’s due to a genuine pharmacological reaction or simply the power of the mind?