Europe March 8, 2010, 7:06AM EST

Homeopathy Backers Push for EU Support

Advocates of homeopathic medicine, a $1.4 billion industry, are pushing for the alternative treatment to be covered by public health plans across Europe

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With the European Commission soon to launch a review of EU pharmaceutical laws, the homeopathy industry feels the time is ripe to launch fresh lobbying push in Brussels to have the EU force all member states to provide access to the product from public health systems and loosen up the approval process for their remedies.

Representatives of the industry, practitioners and patients that use homeopathic products are to hold an EU Homeopathy Day in the European Parliament on 23 March as the kick-off for a new effort to win EU-level alternative-medicine-friendly legislation.

Industry lobbyists and their MEP allies believe that with the new European Commission expected to launch a review of EU pharmaceutical laws at some point during its four-year term, now is their chance to press their case.

"It provides an excellent opportunity for positive change," Irish liberal euro-deputy Marian Harkin, the organiser of the event in the parliament, told EUobserver. "The aim is to integrate homeopathy into EU health policy,"

Homeopathy claims to heal patients with highly diluted treatments of substances that cause physical responses that are similar to the symptoms of the ailment. Invented by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, the treatments are diluted to such a degree that nothing of the original substance is left. Its practitioners say however that the water retains a 'memory' of the substance.

While up to 125 million Europeans, including, famously, Prince Charles, use homeopathic products every year – the water is usually dropped onto sugar pills that are then consumed – and the industry was worth €1.05 billion as of 2009, reviews of all the published studies on the practice fail to demonstrate any efficacy beyond the placebo affect.

As a result, the practice is regularly pilloried by sceptics who attack it as pseudoscience and potentially dangerous if taken instead of conventional medicines such as vaccinations.

"There's always a question about the science," said Ms Harkin, "but with homeopathy, a lot of it is based on tradition and you need to be careful that the judgments are not purely based on science. They need to be based on efficacy as well as that."

According to Nand de Herdt, the president of the European Coalition on Homeopathic and Anthroposophic Medicinal Products (Echamp), the industry lobby group based in the European capital, said they are to press for "concrete action at the EU level," and that the coming legislative review "provides a very good opportunity to do so."

Single market

The European institutions, even after passage of the Lisbon Treaty, still have very little responsibility for the health sector and until now, the European Commission has said as a result, it has very little room to manoeuvre in this area.

But this time, according to Mr de Herdt, instead of trying the health legislation route, the lobbyists will "try to leverage single market rules," where the EU has very powerful powers indeed.

In this way, Echamp and its partners hope to win a harmonisation of laws governing the authorisation of homeopathic products across the bloc. "Some people have access to some products in some member states but not in others. Patients, doctors, practitioners are being denied access to the products they choose."

Ms Harkin believes the single market angle will work: "If we look at the EU and what it's basically about, it's about ensuring the free movement of people, goods and services across the union. So from that perspective, we can get legislation in this area."

Using the same legislative crowbar, the industry lobby along with the European Central Council of Homeopaths – the professional association for practitioners, the European Committee for Homeopathy – which brings together the doctors that prescribe the sugar pills, and the European Federation of Homeopathic Patients' Associations – representing the people that swallow them, hope to require public health systems to pay for access to such treatments wherever patients demand them.