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Homeopathy- Should it be taught in Our Pharmacy Schools?
By Andrew Onariase
10 Mar 2010
Homeopathy has been in the headlines for the past couple of days, regarding the NHS funding it in the treatment of patients. Homeopathy is a two-century old system of treatment that uses highly diluted substances that are given orally in the belief that it will stimulate the body’s healing mechanism. Supporters believe remedies help relieve a range of minor ailments from bruising to insomnia. Homeopathy is different from herbal remedies, in that the active substance is heavily diluted, and it has very little evidence suggesting that it works. Herbal Remedies is taught under the Natural Products unit in most Pharmacy Schools, this is due to the fact that a majority of drugs are derived from natural products. E.g. Anticancer drugs; Vincristine, Vinblastine and Vinorelbine, all derived from Madagascar periwinkle, Catharanthus roseus.
I think Homeopathy should be included in the teaching curriculum in Pharmacy Schools, because pharmacists should have a basic knowledge about homeopathic remedies, as patients may want to know about homeopathic medicines which they just bought from the pharmacy, this may have provided them with results that conventional scientific medicines could not give them or may just ask if it may potentially interact with any other medicines that they are taking, for example a patient that has just bought St John Wort from the pharmacy, may want to know if it interacts with the warfarin he/she has been taking, in this case the pharmacist will advise the patient to avoid St John’s Wort, as warfarin may lost its clinical effectiveness and thus increase the risk of bleeding.
Homeopathy lecture
I am in the same class as Andrew at Portsmouth.
We were introduced to Homeopathy in one of our Community Pharmacy unit lectures a couple of weeks ago.
We were all a bit skeptical from the outset, and were far from convinced by the end of the lecture, having been told the remedies were 'practically the same as water in content'.
So, is it just the placebo effect?
Re: Homeopathy Lecture
It's about evidence
Integrating the teaching of homeopathy into the MPharm degree is in my opinion a dangerous thing to do, and risks further damaging the credibility of the pharmacy profession.
At a time when we as professionals are trying to justify our position as on a par with doctors and nurses, how on the one hand can we demand evidence based medicine whilst continuing to advertise and sell products with no evidence base behind them ?
Most healthcare professionals will agree that the science behind homeopathy is irrational and illogical. So is it right that community pharmacists should fill their tills with sales of Bach rescue remedy?
Homeopathy-!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0
Enjoy this little video
@ Gerald Alexander
Thanks Gerald for the Mitchell and Webb Homeopathy youtube video, i couldn't stop laughing whilst watching it.
I will show this video to one of my lecturers and my coursemates, and they can form their individual opinions about homeopathic remedies.
@ Tarun Nayyar
Thanks Tarun for your comment. The Community Pharmacy relies solely on its customers for business and the customer is always right. So if a customer comes into the pharmacy to request for a supply of a homeopathic remedy, i think we as pharmacist should be able to provide appropriate counselling regarding the homeopathic remedy and inform them regarding any likely drug interaction.
Homeopathy
Re: Homeopathy
Hey Tarun, let's go back to the basics of the NHS. Ths NHS was founded in late 1940's, so as to provide a public free health care for all patients. The Working Population pays tax, and some of this goes towards the funding of the NHS, so if a patient that has tried all other medications and yet has seen no improvement in their condition and then decides to opt for homeopathy, why then would the NHS refuse to fund homeopathy? Also, don't forget that certain patients are tired and sick of having to suffer nasty side-effects associated with some medications, which is absent when taking a homeopathic remedy.
Regarding your other point, not many drugs interact with placebos, but as i mentioned in my blog above: some homeopathic remedies such as St John's Wort interact with some medications and this can lead to dreadful side-effects and also it's within the rights of the patients to know about the potential interactions with medications that they are already taking.
Thanks ever so much Tarun for your contributions to my blogs, keep them coming, i really enjoy sharing a fellow student's point of view on certain trivial issues currently affecting the world of pharmacy. Also, you can show my blogs to your mates and they can post their opinions, so that i can further broaden my horizons.
Homeopathy
Yes the NHS was founded in 1948 with three essential principles of being inclusive, free at the point of delivery and based on clinical need. However the NHS has changed tremendously over the last 60 years - you only need to look at how prescription charges have been introduced and developed to see this in action. Whilst I agree with your statements regarding how patients may feel frustrated with allopathic medicine, I don't feel that the NHS should be using its precious financial resources to fund alternative medicine, particularly when as I've mentioned before new evidence-based therapies are being rejected. Separating the industry into the private sector keeps patients happy as they can continue to access and pay for homeopathic mixtures, and NHS managers and clinicians can be assured that greater funding is poured into evidence based medicine.
As a side point St John's Wort is not a homeopathic remedy but a herbal medicine. The active constituents have shown to exhibit pharmacological effects as well as adverse effects and well known pharmacokinetic interactions.
Whilst some homeopathic remedies may contain ingredients of plant or animal origin, the numerous dilutions carried out during preparation mean that the concentrations of such ingredients essentially exhibit no pharmacological effect.
Everyone is free to join the debate !
Re: Homeopathy
Valid Arguement Tarun, but i still stick to my original point; that homeopathy should be available to patients who opt for it, since they pay tax. Thanks for the correction about St John's Wort, i just looked it up.
By the way, Private Health Care hasn't worked in the United States, there are so many under priviledged people who can't get basic health care that we get in the UK, so the idea of privatising health care wouldn't work. Health Care should not being a "money-making" scheme, it should be about the general well-being of the patients.