Swiss government approves of Homeopathy

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The Swiss government's exceedingly positive report on homeopathic medicine

Sunday, April 08, 2012 by: Dana Ullman

http://www.naturalnews.com/035499_homeopathic_medicine_Swiss_report.html#ixzz1rT\

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(NaturalNews) The government of Switzerland has a long history of

neutrality, and therefore, reports from this government on controversial

subjects need to be taken more seriously than other reports from countries

that are more strongly influenced by present economic and political

constituencies. Further, when one considers that two of the top five largest

drug companies in the world have their headquarters in Switzerland, one

might assume that this country would have a heavy interest in and bias

toward conventional medicine, but such assumptions would be wrong.

In late 2011, the Swiss government's report on homeopathic medicine

represents the most comprehensive evaluation of homeopathic medicine ever

written by a government and was just published in book form in English

(Bornhoft and Matthiessen, 2011). This breakthrough report affirmed that

homeopathic treatment is both effective and cost-effective and that

homeopathic treatment should be reimbursed by Switzerland's national health

insurance program.

The Swiss government's inquiry into homeopathy and complementary and

alternative (CAM) treatments resulted from the high demand and widespread

use of alternatives to conventional medicine in Switzerland, not only from

consumers but from physicians as well. Approximately half of the Swiss

population have used CAM treatments and value them. Further, about half of

Swiss physicians consider CAM treatments to be effective. Perhaps most

significantly, 85 percent of the Swiss population wants CAM therapies to be

a part of their country's health insurance program.

It is therefore not surprising that more than 50 percent of the Swiss

population surveyed prefer a hospital that provides CAM treatments rather to

one that is limited to conventional medical care.

Beginning in 1998, the government of Switzerland decided to broaden its

national health insurance to include certain complementary and alternative

medicines, including homeopathic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine,

herbal medicine, anthroposophic medicine, and neural therapy. This

reimbursement was provisional while the Swiss government commissioned an

extensive study on these treatments to determine if they were effective and

cost-effective. The provisional reimbursement for these alternative

treatments ended in 2005, but as a result of this new study, the Swiss

government's health insurance program once again began to reimburse for

homeopathy and select alternative treatments. In fact, as a result of a

national referendum in which more than two-thirds of voters supported the

inclusion of homeopathic and select alternative medicines in Switzerland's

national health care insurance program, the field of complementary and

alternative medicine has become a part of this government's constitution

(Dacey, 2009; Rist, Schwabl, 2009).

The Swiss Government's " Health Technology Assessment "

The Swiss government's " Health Technology Assessment " on homeopathic

medicine is much more comprehensive than any previous governmental report

written on this subject to date. This report carefully and comprehensively

review the body of evidence from randomized double-blind and placebo

controlled clinical trials testing homeopathic medicines, plus they also

evaluated the " real world effectiveness " as well as safety and

cost-effectiveness. The report also conducted a highly-comprehensive review

of the wide body of preclinical research (fundamental physio-chemical

research, botanical studies, animal studies, and in vitro studies with human

cells).

And still further, this report evaluated systematic reviews and

meta-analyses, outcome studies, and epidemiological research. This wide

review carefully evaluated the studies conducted, both in terms of quality

of design and execution (called " internal validity " ) and how appropriate

each was for the way that homeopathy is commonly practiced (called " external

validity " ). The subject of external validity is of special importance

because some scientists and physicians conduct research on homeopathy with

little or no understanding of this type of medicine (some studies tested a

homeopathic medicine that is rarely used for the condition tested, while

others utilized medicines not commonly indicated for specific patients).

When such studies inevitably showed that the homeopathic medicine did not

" work, " the real and accurate assessment must be that the studies were set

up to disprove homeopathy... or simply, the study was an exploratory trial

that sought to evaluate the results of a new treatment (exploratory trials

of this nature are not meant to prove or disprove the system of homeopathy

but only to evaluate that specific treatment for a person with a specific

condition).

After assessing pre-clinical basic research and the high quality clinical

studies, the Swiss report affirmed that homeopathic high-potencies seem to

induce regulatory effects (e.g., balancing or normalizing effects) and

specific changes in cells or living organisms. The report also reported that

20 of the 22 systematic reviews of clinical research testing homeopathic

medicines detected at least a trend in favor of homeopathy.* (Bornhoft,

Wolf, von Ammon, et al, 2006)

The Swiss report found a particularly strong body of evidence to support the

homeopathic treatment of upper respiratory tract infections and respiratory

allergies. The report cited 29 studies in " Upper Respiratory Tract

Infections/AllergicReactions, " of which 24 studies found a positive result

in favor of homeopathy. Further, six out of seven controlled studies that

compared homeopathic treatment with conventional medical treatment showed

that homeopathy to be more effective than conventional medical interventions

(the one other trial found homeopathic treatment to be equivalent to

conventional medical treatment). All of these results from homeopathic

treatment came without the side effects common to conventional drug

treatment. In evaluating only the randomized placebo controlled trials, 12

out of 16 studies showed a positive result in favor of homeopathy.

The authors of the Swiss government's report acknowledge that a part of the

overall review of research included one negative review of clinical research

in homeopathy (Shang, et al, 2005). However, the authors noted that this

review of research has been widely and harshly criticized by both advocates

and non-advocates of homeopathy. The Swiss report noted that the Shang team

did not even adhere to the QUORUM guidelines which are widely recognized

standards for scientific reporting (Linde, Jonas, 2005). The Shang team

initially evaluated 110 homeopathic clinical trials and then sought to

compare them with a matching 110 conventional medical trials. Shang and his

team determined that there were 22 " high quality " homeopathic studies but

only nine " high quality " conventional medical studies. Rather than compare

these high quality trials (which would have shown a positive result for

homeopathy), the Shang team created criteria to ignore a majority of high

quality homeopathic studies, thereby trumping up support for their original

hypothesis and bias that homeopathic medicines may not be effective (Ludtke,

Rutten, 2008).

The Swiss report also notes that Sackett, M.D., the Canadian physician

who is widely considered to be one of the leading pioneers in " evidence

based medicine, " has expressed serious concern about those researchers and

physicians who consider randomized and double-blind trials as the only means

to determine whether a treatment is effective or not. To make this

assertion, one would have to acknowledge that virtually all surgical

procedures were " unscientific " or " unproven " because so few have undergone

randomized double-blind trials.

For a treatment to be determined to be " effective " or " scientifically

proven, " a much more comprehensive assessment of what works and doesn't is

required. Ultimately, the Swiss government's report on homeopathy represents

an evaluation of homeopathy that included an assessment of randomized double

blind trials as well as other bodies of evidence, all of which together lead

the report to determine that homeopathic medicines are indeed effective.

The next article will discuss further evidence provided in this report from

the Swiss government on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of

homeopathic care.

REFERENCES:

Bornhoft, Gudrun, and Matthiessen, F. Homeopathy in Healthcare:

Effectiveness, Appropriateness, Safety, Costs. Goslar, Germany: Springer,

2011. http://rd.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-20638-2/page/1 (This

book is presently available from the German office of the publisher, and it

will become available via the American office as well as select booksellers

in mid- to late-February, 2012.)(NOTE: When specific facts in the above

article are provided but not referenced, this means that these facts were

derived from this book.)

Bornhoft G, Wolf U, von Ammon K, Righetti M, Maxion-Bergemann S, Baumgartner

S, Thurneysen AE, Matthiessen PF. Effectiveness, safety and

cost-effectiveness of homeopathy in general practice - summarized health

technology assessment. Forschende Komplementarmedizin (2006);13 Suppl

2:19-29. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16883077

Dacey, . Therapy supporters roll up sleeves after vote. SwissInfo.ch,

May 19, 2009. http://www.swissinfo.ch

Linde K, Jonas W. Are the clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects?

Lancet 36:2081-2082. DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67878-6.

http://download.thelancet.com

Ludtke R, Rutten ALB. The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy

highly depend on the set of analysed trials. Journal of Clinical

Epidemiology. October 2008. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.06/015.

http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(08)00190-X/abstract

Rist L, Schwabl H: Komplementarmedizin im politischen Prozess. Schweizer

Bevolkerungstimmt uber Verfassungsartikel ?Zukunft mit Komplementarmedizin?

ab. Forsch Komplementmed 2009, doi 10.1159/000203073.

(Translation: Complementary medicine in the political process: The Swiss

population votes on the Constitutional Article " The future with

complementary medicine "

http://www.ayurveda-association.eu

*Although this Swiss government report was just published in book form in

2011, the report was finalized in 2006. In light of this date, the authors

evaluated systematic reviews and meta-analyses on homeopathic research up

until June 2003.