The trials of homeopathy

From time to time a study showing that homeopathy is effective is published, to great acclaim amongst those seeking scientific support for their faith if alternative medicine. Few of these studies survive subsequent scrutiny, but their births remain more memorable than their deaths.

The latest of these studies comes from three research workers in the University of Limburg, in the Netherlands.¹ Their article in the British Medical Journal describes all the controlled trials of homeopathic medicines published in the world scientific literature, analyses the quality of the methods used in each trial and attempts to assess the significance of the results.

They conclude ‘that the weight of the presented evicence will probably not be sufficient for most people to decide (on the effectiveness of homeopathy) one way of the other’. But they add that some of the evidence that they present ‘would probably be sufficient for establishing homeopathy as a regular treatment for certain indications’.

Critics of the Limburg researchers quickly pointed out the faults of their review..

Where they had shown an apparent positive benefit from homeopathic medicines, it was mainly in the treatment of conditions like hayfever or migraine where the illness changes in intensity and severity in an unpredictable way, and where psychological state may have a great influence on the courseof the complaint. Treatment for such conditions is notoriously difficult to assess.

Even where gains had been registered after using homeopathic remedies, they seem small. For example, bowel function return to normal after abdominal surgery a day earlier for individuals taking opium C9, raphanus C9 and arnica C9, compared with those takeing placebo, but is this important? And would they all have recovered faster with a few doses of a natural laxative?

A second study of the scientific literature on homeopathy, using more critical criteria for what constitutes good scientific methods, found forty trials worth analysing². Twenty suggested that homeopathic methods worked, and twenty did not.