Society of Homeopaths apply to join Health Professions Council

The Society of Homeopaths (SoH) are applying for membership of the Health Professions Council (HPC). The HPC function as a regulatory body acting to protect the public by keeping a register of health professionals and ensuring that members meet stated professional standards, membership by a profession also means that the title used by members of that profession would be restricted to HPC members.  The SoH would like nothing better than to gain official professional status and have released the following statement.

The Society of Homeopaths, the UK’s largest organisation representing professional homeopaths, is to apply to the Health Professions Council (HPC) for the statutory regulation of homeopaths.

The Society is the lead body for homeopaths and a survey of its members in 2006 showed that 65 per cent supported statutory regulation.

Currently, 65 per cent of all registered homeopaths are members of the Society, which has long been committed to the highest standards for homeopathy, having run a voluntary regulatory system for the last 30 years and a course recognition process for the last 15 years. Further, it was the first homeopathy organisation to institute a Code of Ethics & Practice.

The move to statutory regulation is therefore seen as a logical progression for both The Society and the profession, most importantly to offer protection to the public as, under existing laws, someone without training could practise as a homeopath.
The application coincides with the tenth anniversary of the House of Lords’ Select Committee on Science & Technology report into Complementary & Alternative Medicine (session 1999-2000), which categorised homeopathy as a ‘Group One’ therapy along with acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal medicine and osteopathy.

Of the five, homeopathy is the only profession not yet in the statutory regulation process although the report acknowledged that “Under The Society of Homeopaths, the non-medical homeopaths have organised themselves well and their professional organisation should mean the transition to statutory regulation does not present too great an upheaval(1)”

The House of Lords’ report also called for more research. By the end of 2007, 134 randomised controlled trials of homeopathy have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Of these trials, 59 were positive i.e. demonstrating that homeopathy has an effect beyond placebo; eight were negative and the remaining 67 were inconclusive.

The Society has already held preliminary meetings with the Health Professions Council and is now working on the submission of an application for its consideration.

Chair of the board of directors for The Society, Jayne Thomas, said: “This is a natural step forward for homeopathy and builds on the work of the profession over the last ten years to independent regulation. The Society’s registered members have met our academic requirements, completed a registration process, hold comprehensive insurance and agreed to abide by a Code of Ethics & Practice. Statutory regulation will independently formalise this process and most importantly, offer greater protection for the public.”

There are several things wrong with this statement.

1)  Homeopathic training to a satisfactory standard (ignoring concerns over the inherent implausibility of homeopathy) is going to be difficult as universities are rapidly dropping CAM courses, including homeopathy, as criticism and falling intakes bite. All that will be left are unaccredited homeopathy schools, such as Dynamis, run by the unethical Jeremy Sherr.

2) The SoH have been very selective in their claims about research.  The claim about 134 Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) comes from the Faculty of Homeopathy (FoH), who make these claims on their website (PDF).  This document, published by a pro-homeopathy organisation, ignores the very robust meta-analysis carried out by Shang et al., that concluded:

Biases are present in placebo-controlled trials of both homoeopathy and conventional medicine. When account was taken for these biases in the analysis, there was weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions. This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects.

3) The SoH as an organisation are incapable of abiding by their own ethics code.  They have displayed frequent and persistent breaches in their official leaflets and website.

4) SoH members are incapable of abiding by their own ethics code.  The Homeopathic Action Trust (HAT), a charity controlled by the SoH and their members, is continuing to fund unethical experiments in the developing world on terminally ill HIV+ve individuals and populations at risk of malaria.

I hope the SoH are refused permission to join the HPC.  Far from protecting the public it would put them at greater risk of harm.  The professional status accorded to homeopaths could make people less wary of using them, it could embolden homeopaths to offer even more bad medical advice, and it would run the risk of discrediting the HPC, already under some criticism for not applying its own rules on evidence, by endorsing obvious nonsense often practiced in an ethical vacuum.