by
Chris Day
on Wed 30 Jan 2008 07:33 GMT
At a time when homeopathy is being edged out of the medical establishment in the NHS, owing to lack of 'scientific proof', it is amazing to find the establishment lauding a different anecdotal discovery. The Independent today carries this item:
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Scientists performing experimental brain surgery on a man aged 50 have stumbled across a mechanism that could unlock how memory works.
The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man's appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. Electrodes were pushed into the man's brain and stimulated with an electric current. Instead of losing appetite, the patient instead had an intense experience of déjà vu. He recalled, in intricate detail, a scene from 30 years earlier. More tests showed his ability to learn was dramatically improved when the current was switched on and his brain stimulated.
Scientists are now applying the technique in the first trial of the treatment in patients with Alzheimer's disease. If successful, it could offer hope to sufferers from the degenerative condition, which affects 450,000 people in Britain alone, by providing a "pacemaker" for the brain.
Three patients have been treated and initial results are promising, according to Andres Lozano, a professor of neurosurgery at the Toronto Western Hospital, Ontario, who is leading the research.
This is exciting stuff indeed but it shows:
a) yet another 'accidental' medical breakthrough - I constantly maintain that all important medical discoveries have been accidental and serendipitous (www.alternativevet.org/animal_experiemnts.htm) - we should be doing away with the scandalous waste of animal experimentation that is costing us a fortune, achieving nothing but animal suffering and is, in fact, holding back medical advance.
b) that the medical establishment can accept anecdote, when it is convenient to do so - here they responded to a single anecdote - what is wrong with looking at the massive weight of anecdotal evidence supporting the enormous value of homeopathy?
Homeopathy is fast disappearing from the NHS map, as a result of a co-ordinated and energetic campaign. If you don't defend it, you'll lose it! Your freedom of choice is being eroded. Write to your MP.
By James.LeFanu, Sunday Telegraph 27.07.07
'Homeopathy is to medicine what astrology is to astronomy," observes Emeritus professor of surgery Michael Baum. "It is witchcraft, totally barmy, totally refuted."
Professor Baum is particularly incensed at its availability on the NHS, and together with several other distinguished professors is campaigning, with considerable success, to close down the Royal Homeopathic Hospital by encouraging primary care trusts to "review" their arrangements for funding treatments "unsupported by evidence".
So far eight trusts in London have stopped or severely restricted referrals to the Royal Homeopathic and no doubt this number will rise after a further open letter, last week, from Professor Baum to senior health service administrators. - - - - - -
- - - - - There is in all this a strong feel of biblical "motes and beams". Professor Baum might be more usefully occupied campaigning to curtail the massive over-prescription, "unsupported by evidence", of unnecessary medicines whose devastating consequences on people's lives have recently featured in this column.
AND:
A study found only 37 per cent of 132 primary care trusts still had contracts for homeopathic services. More than a quarter had stopped or reduced funding for the therapies over the past two years. Telegraph 30.01.08
Only 18% of modern medical intervention is evidence based! What is their problem with homeopathy? They bleat about funding when homeopathy is more cost-effective. One cannot help feeling that there's vested interest rather than science and dogma rather than patient welfare behind this campaign.
Why not take a look at www.alternativevet.org , while you're here?
