Keep complementary medicine out of NHS, say leading doctors
May 23rd, 2006Some of the UK’s most eminent doctors have mounted a direct challenge to the integration of complementary medicine into the NHS, on the day that Prince Charles urges the World Health Assembly in Geneva to back the cause of alternative and complementary medicines alongside scientifically-proven treatments.
Thirteen senior doctors have written to every hospital and primary care trust in the UK urging them not to suggest anything but evidence-based medicine to their patients.
There has been growing concern among some in medical and scientific circles about the increasing referral by GPs to complementary medicine practitioners. Some GPs use therapies such as acupuncture and homeopathy on their patients; others are increasingly willing to send them to complementary therapists in cases where they cannot themselves provide treatment.
Signatories to the letter include Sir James Black, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988, Sir Keith Peters, president of the Academy of Medical Science, and, according to the Times, six fellows of the Royal Society. Yesterday a spokesman for the Royal Society said that it had not organised the letter, but acknowledged that the society took a sceptical view. “As far as the society is concerned, it has always said that alternative medicine needs to be assessed on the same sort of criteria as conventional medicine – but we have not expressed a view about its role within the NHS,” said Bob Ward.
The letter was organised by Michael Baum, a cancer specialist who is emeritus professor of surgery at University College London. Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University, is another signatory.
The doctors urge primary care trusts not to spend money on unproven therapies at a time when the NHS is short of cash. It criticises two recent initiatives of the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Medicine – a patient guide to complementary medicine, for which it was given government funds – and last year’s Smallwood report, which purported to find that complementary medicine on the NHS was cost-effective. […]
Look carefully at the authors and signatories of this letter: ’emeritus professor’, ‘Nobel Prize winner’, ‘president of the Academy of Medical Science’, ‘fellows of the Royal Society’…’the UK’s most eminent doctors’.
All of these men are interested in only one thing; thier own positions of power and social standing. They say that they want to save the NHS money. If that were the case, they would not care how the patient was treated, as long as she was treated and no longer a financial burden on the system.
The fact of the matter is that these ‘doctors’ are not in the slightest bit interested in the health of the patient; they are only interested in the primacy of thier philosophy. Nowhere is there any mention that harm can come to a patient from getting accupuncture treatment (for example) and of course, those true, patient centered scientists and medical practitioners know for a fact that accupuncture is so powerful that it can be used in the place of anesthesia for surgery.
Many of these people are not only morally bankrupt but they are completely corrupt, owning shares in pharmaceutical companies, whose products if abandoned in favour of ‘alternative’ medicine, would cause financial loss to these very same venal drug peddlers. They therefore have a double cause to be against the NHS adopting patient centered medicine; not only will people ignore their built up staus, but they will face financial ruin also.
Thankfully those health workers on the front line, dealing with the scarcity of resources both physical and financial will use anything to get the job done, not only for those reasons, but because they are in constant contact with human sufffering, are actually interested in alleviating that suffering, rather than being concerned about the method of relief above all else.