GPs in England could be banned from prescribing homeopathy after the threat of a judicial review apparently forced ministers to launch a consultation on the move.
The Department for Health announced the consultation on Friday, with George Freeman, the minister for life sciences, saying that in a time of rising demand the government had a duty to ensure NHS funds were spent only on the most effective treatments.
“We are currently considering whether or not homeopathic products should continue to be available through NHS prescriptions. We expect to consult on proposals in due course,” Freeman said.
The move comes after the Good Thinking Society threatened to challenge the department’s refusal to add homeopathic products to the NHS’s “schedule 1” blacklist, which details the products NHS doctors cannot prescribe, effectively blocking taxpayer funds from being used for them. It includes more than 3,000 products, ranging from pharmaceutical drugs to Ribena.
Simon Singh, the science writer and founder of the Good Thinking Society, said the decision came after almost a year of pressure on the government: “We’ve been arguing with the Department of Health, saying look, homeopathy by four of your own criteria should be on this list, and they have been going back and forth saying we are not updating the list.
“After many, many months of to-ing and fro-ing they have now agreed to review whether homeopathy should be on the blacklist. They have said it privately, but they have now said it officially.”
The four conditions that Singh said homeopathy failed to meet were whether it was effective, whether it was cost-effective, whether there were cheaper alternatives, and whether it was so widely available on the high street it did not need to be prescribed.
“By any of those criteria homeopathy should be blacklisted,” Singh said. “This is money that could be spent on drugs that do work. It’s not about being anti-homeopathy, it’s about being pro-patient and spending money on drugs that do work.”
Jamie Potter, the public law and human rights partner at law firm Bindmans, which was to represent the Good Thinking Society in a potential judicial review, said: “The NHS blacklist exists to ensure that NHS money is not spent on products that do not work, that work no better than cheaper alternatives, that are not cost-effective or that are widely available inexpensively.
“By every one of these criteria, it’s clear that homeopathic products should be included on the blacklist. A refusal to add homeopathic remedies to the list would not only represent a breach of the Department of Health’s legal obligations, but also a failure to ensure that NHS funds are spent on treatments that can genuinely help patients.”
Homeopathy is based on the idea that the body can heal itself through highly diluted substances. It is controversial because experts say there is no evidence that it works beyond the impact of a placebo.
A 2010 House of Commons science and technology committee report on homeopathy said the remedies performed no better than dummy pills and should not be funded on the NHS, adding that it was underpinned by principles that are “scientifically implausible”. England’s chief medical officer, Prof Dame Sally Davies, also views homeopathy as ineffective.
Dr Helen Beaumont, president of the Faculty of Homeopathy said: “It’s disappointing that at a time when the NHS is facing a funding crisis the Department of Health is embarking on a costly consultation that could prevent highly skilled clinicians prescribing a course of treatment that benefits thousands of patients each year. If the department were serious about saving money surely it should be looking at SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) prescribed for mild to moderate depression in vast quantities at considerable cost to the NHS, but which studies have found to be ineffective for those conditions.”
