Adventures in paediatric homeopathy

Let me take you on a journey through the homeopathic education system. I recently came across this site, Adventures in Medicine, that offers a postgraduate course in paediatric homeopathy. The rationale for the course is described as follows:

There is a large gap in the training of homoeopaths when it comes to treating children. Most homoeopaths have to struggle for years to gain the knowledge and experience required to create a successful practice in paediatrics.

This course is designed to bridge that gap by providing training in paediatric care by experienced teachers who are experts in their field.

It is also designed to empower and support students to enable them to practice with knowledge and confidence in what is often a very little understood area of homoeopathy.

These seem worthy aims, after all it is worrying that a profession that so desperately craves respectability fails to adequately train its practitioners to work with the most vulnerable section of society, children. I am glad that the organisers of this course think that the notion that homeopaths have to effectively experiment on young children to gain knowledge is a step too far. I am also glad that the organisers have access to experienced teachers who are experts in their field. The field of paediatrics is fraught with difficult ethical issues and guidelines for working with children are necessarily strict. I would hope that these expert teachers are members of, or at least trained on courses accredited by, The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Care who uphold standards in medical care for children. After all the course does allow successful candidates to receive a Diploma in Homeopathic Paediatrics and be able to use the letters DHP after their name. This will indicate to parents that they have specialist training and knowledge of treating children.

But before we look at these experts, let us look at the course structure, content and assessment.

The course runs over nine months and consists of weekend long seminars consisting of lectures and tutorials with a typical day lasting from 1000-1800 with 2 hours of breaks. So in total that is 108 hours, which is about the equivalent of a course run over a semester in academia, a perfectly adequate time to acquire reasonable knowledge.

It is this knowledge where doubts begin to creep in about the appropriateness of this course in preparing homeopaths for paediatric work. The course content includes lectures on Genetics/Miasms/Conception and Birth and Cranial Osteopathy that bear worrying signs that the teachers might not be familiar with conventional paediatric concepts. This leads to concerns that the other lecturers on Vaccination, Infectious Diseases and Skin and Respiratory Disorders amongst others might not reflect current medical knowledge.

Still I hope that their assessments are suitably strict.

The course will run on a self-assessment basis. Each student will be expected to fill in a self-assessment form each month and complete a paper case on the theme of the day, both to be handed in the following month. The self-assessment forms enable the student to gauge their progress, and the teaching staff to assess where individual students may need help.

So perhaps not then. Self assessment provides no prevention against cheating or plagiarism. I wonder what the pass rates for this course are?

I hope the above concerns are alleviated by the qualifications of the course teachers. Lets look at these experts:

Stella Berg:

Stella discovered homoeopathy in 1980 after fifteen years’ searching, and trained at the College of Homoeopathy………..She worked with John Morgan to open Helios Pharmacy, and published several homoeopathic journals in the 1980s. Since 1988 she has run apprenticeship and post graduate courses, and practises in London, Ross and Abergavenny. Her special interests are gynaecology, developmental and nervous disorders and oral disease.

Marian Camilleri:

Marian originally trained as a psychiatric nurse, qualifying in 1986. She then undertook further training in child and adolescent mental health and family therapy. For the past 20 years she has specialised in this field and currently works as a community nurse specialist helping children at risk of exclusion from school. While working with children, she became concerned at the number being treated with drugs for conditions such as ADHD and autistic spectrum disorders and began exploring alternatives. While attending a course on Australian Bush essences with Ian White she decided to train as a homeopath. Marian completed her training as a homeopath in 2005 at the South Downs College of Homeopathy. Her final year dissertation was on ADHD and Homeopathy.

Nina Constandinou:

Nina Constandinou qualified as an Osteopath and Naturopath in 1990 from the British College of Osteopathy & Naturopathy (now the British College of Osteopathic Medicine). After graduation she studied Cranial Osteopathy at postgraduate level and also trained in cranio-sacral therapy. As well as working in her own practice, Nina has spent time working as a member of staff at the Osteopathic Centre for Children, and as a clinical tutor at the British School of Osteopathy.

Hilery Dorian:

Hilery Dorrian started her career as an acupuncturist, qualifying from Leamington Spa in 1981. She went on to study Homoeopathy at the London college of Homoeopathy graduating in 1988. Homoeopathy quickly became her passion and she continued her studies in India. She runs a very busy practice in Surrey and also works at the healthy Living Centre in London. She teaches at many of the homeopathic colleges in London and the South East. Skin problems have always interested Hilery and she treats lots of eczema and psoriasis in her clinic. Her interest in these problems led to her setting up Barefoot Botanicals, a natural skincare company, with fellow Homoeopath Jonathan Stallick.

Anna Foxell:

Anna Foxell is an expert in homeopathy and antenatal education. She provides solutions to a wide range of health problems both emotional and physical. After working as a psychiatric nurse, she trained as an antenatal teacher for the National Childbirth Trust, qualifying in 1982. She then worked for the Youth Counselling agency SPACE in Slough and Windsor as a counsellor before training as a homeopath in the mid 90s and has had a busy practice in Windsor ever since. Anna has broad experience of treating most of the common conditions which afflict many of us today, typically, eczema, asthma, PMT, migraine and depression. She treats a lot of pregnant women and young children, even tiny babies, and enjoys seeing conditions resolve quickly, restoring the balance in life that we all deserve.

Lorraine Grayston:

Lorraine Grayston has been a full time practising homeopath for the last twelve years and brings extensive experience of working with children, from conception onwards, and the families they are born in to. Whilst she works with all aspects of childhood, she is particularly passionate about working with the mental and emotional impact of life situations on children to help them to a place of health. She is a core teacher at the Lakeland College of Homeopathy and designs and delivers practitioner and personal development training as co-founder for the Centre of Homeopathic and Shamanic Medicine.

Christina Head:

Christina Head qualified from the London College of Homoeopathy in 1986 and began practicing in Manchester where she quickly developed a busy local practice. She continued as a Member of the College, teaching both there and the Northern College of Homoeopathy, in addition to giving Adult Education classes and local talks. She completed a years teacher training in 1995 and has given many talks in colleges and to the public on various homoeopathic subjects, in particular Vaccinations. In 1988 she left Manchester and came to live in Surrey where she still lives. After working in two South London clinics she created a small multidisciplinary centre in Clapham Junction (Baby Valley!), and continued teaching until 2002. Christina has also written a book “An Educated Decision” to inform parents and practitioners about the homoeopathic approach to vaccinations.

Dr Patrick Quanten:

Dr Quanten was born in Belgium in 1955 and qualified in Brussels as a medical practitioner in 1983. From there he went straight to the island of Alderney, in the Channel, where he ran his own single-handed practice for over 18 years. For the last ten years of that time, he struggled to integrate western medicine and the alternative therapies that he had come across. Frustration with the ineffectiveness of medicine had driven him to study everything he could find. In 2001, when it became clear that integration was a total impossibility, he gave up his practice and started dedicating his whole life to the teaching of a better understanding of health.

Diana Tibble:

Diana Tibble is a Registered Member of the Society of Homeopaths, specialising in Obstetrics. Prior to training as a homeopath at Purton House Diana had sixteen years experience as a practising midwife. Whilst working as a community midwife she won a scholarship enabling her to study counselling to postgraduate level at Hertfordshire University. She teaches at various homeopathy colleges and regularly on the Obstetric module on the HPTG course for doctors and nurses studying homeopathy.

Jenni Tree:

I have studied homoeopathy for over twenty years and have taught for 17 of those in colleges in England, Finland, The Netherlands, Australia and Sweden. I’ve studied in depth with the Bombay group – Divya Chhabra and Rajan Sankaran in particular since the 1980′s, but also count amongst my many teachers Jeremy Sherr, Jan Scholten and Lou Klein.

Trevor Gunn:

Trevor Gunn graduated in Medical Biochemistry in 1983 and has been practising homeopathy since 1989. He is currently Vice Principal of the Japanese College of Homeopathy in London. Author of ‘Mass Immunisation – A point in question’ and ‘Comparing Natural Immunity with Vaccination’, he has researched extensively into the effects of vaccines and other pharmaceutical drugs on the human body.

Myriam Shivadikar:

Myriam has been in clinical practice for 21 years and has taught internationally for 20 years and in the UK for the last 8 years. She has a unique, eclectic approach to treating patients, which combines mind, body and spiritual aspects.. Her training began with Acupuncture and Homeopathy and her own research into remedies via bioresonance machines. She then studied diet, nutrition and herbal medicine, which are incorporated in order to advise patients regarding lifestyle and to remove maintaining causes. The spiritual aspect of the origin of disease is perceived using insights gained intuitively via astrology, tarot and from her understanding of homeopathic remedies.

This is all very worrying. While there are some medically qualified teachers none of them appear to have any formal training in paediatrics or child health. More worrying still is the heavy anti-vaccination emphasis of many of the teachers. In fact Christina Head, the course organiser, aneducateddecision.com, runs a ludicrous anti-vaccination site that advocates homeoprophylaxis for childhood diseases.

I believe that this course and its content emphasises the need for proper regulation of the homeopathic profession. Not only is the course unaccredited, making it as valid as Gilian McKeith’s PhD, it is not overseen by any body dedicated to maintaining standards of paediatric education but it also seems to promote content that is dangerously ignorant. Vaccination save lives. To argue against vaccination is irresponsible. To incorporate those arguments into an education programme that gives the appearance of competence is downright dangerous.

This course aimed at increasing the competence of homeopaths to work with children actually reduces that competence by promoting dangerous nonsense. We would not let doctors or nurses specialise in paediatrics without appropriate qualifications and training so why should homeopaths be in any different?

Homeopathy is in desperate need of a firm hand to rein in it’s excesses and ludicrous claims, this blog has shown that professional organisations set up by homeopaths are woefully inadequate for this purpose and, as the Quackometer has discussed, homeopaths don’t want other people to regulate them. Homeopathy is out of control and must be stopped.

Won’t somebody think of the children?