Friday, April 20, 2018

New Scientist and Goldacre: Homeopathy is Coupled with Inferior Deviant Evidence-Disrespecting UK Medical Practice Behaviors

here, a excerpt from a New Scientist piece* describing a Ben Goldacre study from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine analyzing what comes along with homeopathy prescribing:

001. @newscientist.com, Clare Wilson writes in "Doctors Who Prescribe Homeopathy Ignore Other Medical Guidelines" (2018-04-19):


*the journal reference is Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, DOI: 10.1177/0141076818765779.

"[the] study looked at all the 7618 primary care practices in England with data available on a website called Open Prescribing, which analyses use of medicines within the NHS [...] developed by Ben Goldacre of the University of Oxford and colleagues [...] doctors who prescribe homeopathy tend to flout a range of best practice guidelines [...the] team found that 644 practices had issued one or more homeopathy prescriptions in a six-month period ending in 2017; these had slightly worse composite scores obtained by judging them on 70 standards of good practice in prescribing [...]";

so, there's the inferior and the deviant.

"primary care services that offer the alternative medicine to their patients are more likely to practice bad habits such as the overuse of antibiotics, according to a study of prescribing data [...]";

now, THAT'S very interesting.  Because I live in a state, Connecticut, wherein naturopathy is asking for more prescriptive authority and they love their homeopathy here. 

"the UK’s National Health Service has been cutting down on use of alternative medicines for several years, with several bodies saying there is no good evidence to show that it works [...] the findings may reflect a lack of respect for evidence-based practice, says Goldacre [...]";

hear, hear.  That's why it's called alternative medicine.  If it worked, it would be called a scientific discovery.

"last year NHS England recommended doctors no longer prescribe any homeopathic or herbal remedies [...]";

ah, and yet North American naturopathy claims such is hugely effective and science-based.

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