Homeopathy Backers Push for EU Support

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"In most member states, homeopathy is a private matter. That is to say, not covered by all public health systems. But it ranges from country to country. This is a major concern. Sweden for example forbids doctors from prescribing it, while in France, it can only be prescribed by doctors."

Mr de Herdt complains that the number of homeopathic products on the market as compared to the total number of homeopathic products that could be available is far too low. They exist on the market, often sold by small outfits over the internet, but there is no legal status for these products. Unauthorised, they are tolerated by authorities.

"This is fine for a small internet business, but for serious manufacturers, this is not a good situation."

The problem is with the approving authorities, he says, "because they apply the rules that apply to chemical substances. But these are practices from a very old tradition, and authorities do not have the capacity to manage an appropriate assessment of these products."

As a result, the major push of the homeopathy lobby is to have a separate stand-alone EU directive that exempts them from regular chemical and other health and safety rules. EU legislation from 1992 lays down provisions for the licensing of homeopathic products, but Mr de Herdt says after 18 years, the laws are outdated, resulting in a "significant reduction in the number of homeopathic products on the market."

"The current system is substance-oriented. Our products need a system that is therapeutic-oriented," he said, explaining that it was not just the medicine itself but the whole process a practitioner applies that produces the result.

Research funding

Echamp meets with commission representatives "three or four times a year" and Mr de Herdt says that the EU executive is on side with most of their arguments already, but that the changes they are looking for are for the moment "not at the top of their priorities."

"On the level of the therapeutic argument, research projects, we've had a lot of success, but in terms of product authorisation, the success so far has been more limited."

On 16 March, the new European Parliament Intergroup on Complimentary and Alternative Medicine is to have its founding meeting. The work programme of this initiative, an alliance of MEPs and "a consortium of European homeopathic patients and doctors," is to focus on "improving access, availability and choice."

Already, in 2006, the chamber amended the Seventh Community Framework Research Programme (FP7), the EU's main instrument for funding scientific research, to include 'complementary medicine' and in 2007, the parliament similarly amended the Second Programme of Community Action in the Field of Health, the bloc's funding mechanism for public-health-related projects.

Then in October 2009, the EU awarded a grant of €1.5 million for a 36-month research project carried out by the Communication Platform on topics related to Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Europe (CAMbrella), a Munich-based, 12-member-state research network whose advisory board includes alternative medicine practitioners and product manufacturers. The project's remit includes a review of the current legal status and policies governing alternative medicine provision in the EU.

UK parliament committee: 'Just a placebo'

The lobby's fresh push for EU homeopathy rules comes just as the UK readies itself to strip provision of homeopathic medicine from the country's National Health Service. On 22 February, the influential Scientific Committee of the House of Commons slammed the practice, saying there was no evidence that it provides anything more than the placebo effect and that manufacturers must stop making medical claims for their products.

Andy Lewis, the proprietor of the Quackometer website, which debunks quack medicine on the internet, said that the new campaign of European homeopathy lobby was at odds with the British parliament's enquiry.

"The MPs concluded, after a very detailed review of the evidence, that homeopathy was scientifically implausible and could not be shown to be effective," said Mr Lewis, who was also one of the organisers of a series of 'homeopathy overdose' demonstrations outside pharmacists across the UK in January in which sceptics swallowed entire bottles of homeopathy sugar pills. "The recommendation was that homeopathy should not be publicly funded and that medicines labeling regulations should not allow it to make unfounded claims."

"The EU would be failing its citizens, and pandering to business interests, if it allowed homeopathy sugar pill manufacturers to make misleading claims about this discredited 18th-century quackery," he added.

Ms Harkin, for her part, is familiar with such criticism, but dismisses it as in the service of Big Pharma: "There are those that believe that only those medicines prescribed by doctors and manufactured by Pfizer (PFE) will make you well, but a lot of ordinary people do not subscribe to that view."

"[The sceptics] are saying medicines must be judged by one criterion only, that it satisfies a scientific equation. Whereas there are many standards by which medicines should be judged," she said.

"The agenda is to say that science has the answer to everything. Well, they should have learnt by now that it hasn't."

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