Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has made a startling claim that they have found no good quality evidence that will prove the effectiveness of homeopathy’s effectiveness at treating health conditions in people.
The expert body conducted rigorous review of over 1800 papers from which it selected 225 studies that met the criteria of being ideal for establishing effectiveness of homeopathy.
“The review found no good quality, well-designed studies with enough participants to support the idea that homeopathy works better than a placebo, or causes health improvements equal to those of another treatment”, NHMRC said in a statement.
The expert body did acknowledge that it came across studies wherein conclusions were conforming the effectiveness homeopathy, but they were either too small and/or were of poor quality.
“These studies had either too few participants, poor design, poor conduct and or reporting to allow reliable conclusions to be drawn on the effectiveness of homeopathy”, says NHMRC.
According to CEO Professor Warwick Anderson, medical treatments and interventions should have a strong backing of reliable evidence and NHMRC’s review on effectiveness of homeopathy shows that there is no good quality evidence that supports the claim that homeopathy works better than a placebo.
“People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness”, said Anderson.
“People who are considering whether to use homeopathy should first get advice from a registered health practitioner and in the meanwhile keep taking any prescribed treatments.”
Based on its review NHMRC recommends Australians not to “rely on homeopathy as a substitute for proven, effective treatments.”
Considering that some factions of the general public hold rather strong views about the topic, the expert body said that its review process was consultative and that it invited information and evidence from public “all of which was considered by our expert working committee.”
