Expert welcomes withdrawing of funding for complementary alternative medicine

Funding for Alternative Medicine

The withdrawing of funding from homoeopathy in the NHS is welcomed in a letter to this week's BMJ.

In the UK National Health Service, primary care trusts are, quite rightly, withdrawing funding from homoeopathy, writes David Colquhoun, Professor of Pharmacology at University College London.

"Something has been done, at last," he says, following news that Tunbridge Wells Homoeopathic Hospital will close and the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital is in great danger.

He also supports the view that the US Congress should stop funding the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).

He points to an article about National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which states: "After ten years of existence and over $200 million in expenditures, it has not proved effectiveness for any 'alternative' method. It has added evidence of ineffectiveness of some methods that we knew did not work before NCCAM was formed."

That is something that could be done, he says. The total funding so far for National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine approaches $1 billion.