Monday, February 22, 2010

Science 1 - Homeopathy 0

Today science got a huge victory against homeopathy (and hopefully the whole alt-med/woo community) as the Science and Technology Committee in the UK published the report of their Evidence Check 2 session.
The Evidence Check session is an inquiry into the reasoning behind the NHS (National Health Service) funding of homeopathy.

Fortunately for everyone in Britain, the result was that the Members of Parliament 'URGE GOVERNMENT TO WITHDRAW NHS FUNDING AND MHRA LICENSING OF HOMEOPATHY' (original emphasis).

What this means is that homeopaths will no longer be funded by the UK government as they sell their non-medicine. The committee found that there were no evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy (which we knew already) and that it is 'useless' and 'unethical'.

Best quote ever: 'The Committee concurred with the Government that the evidence base shows that homeopathy is not efficacious (that is, it does not work beyond the placebo effect) and that explanations for why homeopathy would work are scientifically implausible.'

This is a major victory for science, sense and reason. Not to mention the health of the general public in the UK.


In other news
The Bad Astronomer has a post about it as well and he says that '2010 may very well be the best year skeptics have ever had, and we’re only two months in!'.

I couldn't agree more, this is going to be a great year.
First a blow against the anti-vaccination groups and now this :)

(The antivax news can be seen here: The AVN (Australian Vaccination Network) may be shutting down and The Lancet withdraws Wakefield’s paper.)

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