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Treatment can work
• MY heart sank when I read Professor Michael Baum’s scathing criticism of homeopathy (Defenders of Homeopathy take on PCT, December 13).
Prof Baum is entitled to his opinion, but his sweeping statements decrying homeopathy as “ludicrous” bunkum amount to a public insult to all those patients for whom homeopathic treatments have worked.
I was lucky enough to have been referred to the UCL Homeopathic Hospital three years ago for a skin problem. I had spent the previous 10 years trying every medication prescribed to me by a series of GPs without any success and told there was little more conventional medicine could do for me.
I had heard that homeopathic treatment could work for complaints similar to mine and although initially sceptical (I couldn’t find any sensible explanation of why and how the treatments worked) at that stage was willing to give it a go.
To my surprise and delight, after six months of consultation and treatment at the homeopathic hospital, my condition completely cleared up.
There may be a lack of scientific evidence to defend homeopathy, but critics and sceptics just need to talk to some of the hundreds of thousands of patients who, like me, it has helped. They are the living proof that somehow it works. Perhaps it is partly psychological (although I don’t buy the argument my chronic condition was so quickly and completely cured by the placebo effect). I don’t really care. All I know is that, for me, it succeeded where conventional medicine failed.
For an NHS that is being crippled by an increasingly aged and infirm population, I would have thought that any treatments which concentrate on treating problems at their root cause, as homeopathic treatment does, rather than just dealing with the symptoms are worth investing in.
To close down a service which has provided relief for so many people in London is sad and short-sighted. Please, Camden PCT, listen to your service users and don’t be swayed by the pharmaceutical industry’s heavy propaganda.
LESLEY MAY
Shell Road, SE13
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