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New rules for homoeopathic remedies anger UK peers

London -- The health of patients in the United Kingdom could be at riskafter rules governing the licensing of homoeopathic medicineswere changed. Members of the House of Lords have described thechanges as the "abandonment of science."

Peers in the House of Lords last week debated the changes, whichallow homoeopathic medicines to make medicinal claims. In September,the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)introduced a scheme to regulate homoeopathic products in theUnited Kingdom, which allows manufacturers to specify the ailmentsthat preparations can be used for.

These changes have led to an outcry from much of the scientificand medical world, says the Liberal Democrat Lord Taverne, wholed the debate and called for the regulations to be annulled.

"This regulation was made explicitly for the benefit of themanufacturers of homoeopathic products," he said. "For the firsttime in the history of the regulation of medical products, itallows claim of efficacy to be made without scientific evidence.It is an abandonment of science and the evidence based approach.

"When homoeopathic substances have been tested scientifically,no evidence has been found that they work any more than as aplacebo. It is the equivalent of witchcraft."

Lord Taverne, who chairs Sense about Science, a charity thatpromotes an evidence based approach to understanding scientificissues, said that it had been inundated with expressions ofconcern from organisations such as the Royal Society, the Academyof Medical Sciences, the Medical Research Council, and manyothers.

Arguing against Lord Taverne, the crossbench Countess of Marsaid that the regulations were the result of protracted andwide consultation.

"They iron out existing anomalies and bring homoeopathic medicinesinto line with the 2005 legislation on traditional use of herbalmedicines," she said. "Homoeopathic medicines have been usedfor more than 200 years and there is wide bibliographic evidenceto support their use and effectiveness."

The Labour health minister Lord Warner of Brockley said thatthe new scheme would assure the public about the quality ofmanufacture and safety and provide them with better informationabout homoeopathic products.

"This scheme will improve the protection of consumers who chooseto use these products and we have acted in this area in patients'interests and not to promote commercial products.

"Because homoeopathic products are different from conventionalmedicines, it is right, in our view, that they are regulatedin a different way. They cannot demonstrate efficacy in thesame way that conventional medicinal products are required todo to obtain a licence."

BMJ 2006;333:935 (4 November).