Spain Regulates Homeopathy While More Scientists Question Effectiveness

At three years old, Javier was a delicate child. Bronchiolitis, allergies, atopic skin. “I was always sick. We spent the day in the emergency room. The child always with medication, Ventolin, which drove him hyperactive. It was frustrating,”said his mother. It was then that someone recommended a particular doctor. “The child took the homeopathic treatment and in six months he was perfect. And until today.”

Vicente Baos, a physician at the health center in Collado Villalba, cases of almost miraculous cures, such as Javier, is not impressed. “Of course there are patients who report improvement with the use of these products,” he admits, “but is that the mind has a great capacity of suggestion, except that no ailments are cured with time, no more.”

And yet, no one can deny the popularity of homeopathic remedies, which has been increasing exponentially since Javier received her treatment, eleven years ago. One in three Spaniards ever used, according to the white paper prepared by the Chair sponsored by Boiron laboratories at the University of Zaragoza, which stood at 60 million euros annual turnover in 2011. ” Ever sold more. It’s a real boom, “confirms Elena, owner of a pharmacy in the center of Madrid. And that despite having lived all these years in legal limbo, now coming to an end, because Health has decided to implement the European directive of 2001, which finally regularized the situation of homeopathic remedies on the market for drugs.

UK National Health Service has withdrawn these treatments and has stopped funding homeopathic hospitals in the country, following a damning 2010 report. A year later, another report from the Spanish Ministry of Health on therapies equated alternatives to placebo effects of homeopathic remedies. So the announcement of regularization has the scientific world at war.

“Homeopathy is a therapy without any scientific basis. It surged 200 years ago when medicine was not as developed as today. It has been evaluated with scientific methods and has never been proven to have more effects than placebo, “says Baths, one of the campaigners, launched in December to coincide with the announcement of such adjustment to demand that the Administration not follow through with it, and that has multiplied in recent months props.

“What is absolutely anomalous is that is called a drug or not, these products have to comply with certain type of safeguards across Europe while in Spain are allowed to be benefiting from a transitional provision ” Belén Crespo, director of the defending Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products. A situation that dates back to 1994 and authorizes its sale in pharmacies” without following any evaluation, without having to communicate any change in the course of their presence in the market and without having been given, for example, what was correct information that should accompany the homeopathic product,” he adds.

The ministerial order to end this anomaly is ready for signature. Thanks to her, homeopathic products enter the legality once certain requirements are overcome. Manufacturers will have to provide reports and laboratories to ensure their quality and safety. As for effectiveness, it will suffice to demonstrate their traditional use, without having to provide clinical trials, with the exception of declaring a therapeutic indication, they are a tiny minority. After obtaining the approval of Health, may enroll in drug registration. While homeopathic galaxy rubs his hands to give approval to solvency and guarantees these products and allow them to advertise them in scientific fields are tearing their hair for precisely the same reasons.

Vicente Baos, which advises the European Medicines Agency and its Spanish counterpart, is amazed that the adjustment is done without requiring laboratories to conduct homeopathic clinical trials to test its effectiveness. “This is a Spanish decision, all that is included in the 2001 EU directive. Reviews are due to ignorance of these texts,” says Susana Díaz, technical director of the Spanish subsidiary of Boiron, the French giant homeopathy.

Boiron, such as German or Spanish Heel Iberhome laboratories, manufactures its remedies prepared following the guidelines of the Saxon physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), founder of homeopathy. Hahnemann proposed a comprehensive approach to the sick, and established a compendium of remedies and dilutions (homeopathy is based on the principle of similarity, whereby the factor that causes a disease can also cure it, once diluted in water in infinitesimal dose) roughly, is still in force today.

Socially well packed with famous athletes and Hollywood stars among his patients, homeopathy greatly flourished in Germany and France and, according to its proponents, is practiced in at least 80 countries. And in Switzerland has been reinstated to the health system (provisionally), after claim citizens in a referendum held in 2009. The EU decided to order and control these remedies with Directive 2001/83/EC of 6 November 2001, adopted by all European countries now finally applied in Spain.

Officially, very critical of alternative therapies, medical sector applauds the measure. ” The ministerial order seems very clear, timely and justified to correct an irregular situation: that products that do not have drug code, lacking any prospect evaluation and even marketed,” says Jerome Fernandez – Torrente, Assistant Secretary of the Board General of Medical Colleges of Spain, which represented the 52 public schools and through them 245,000 collegiate faculty there. But Fernández- Torrente inconsistency regular regrets about using products without having a professional regulated profession. The industry, he says, ” is a mess, with 14 associations and 1,700 naturopaths centers without an authorized and approved training, selling placebos to 60 euros.” Quite another thing for a medical doctor chooses this therapy. ” If a doctor prescribes one of these treatments no longer a medical act, provided it complies with the scientific principles and ethical code of the profession.”

Dolores Snakes, responsible for a scientific committee called homeopathy Association of Professional Natural Therapies (APTN – Cofenat) with 7,000 associates, complains of what he considers medical double dome. “On one hand, with its critical stance seeking to discredit the discipline, but also to control and win prospective clients, in the case of the public to ignore their arguments and choose homeopathy as a therapy.”

Antonio Cano, Professor of Psychology at the Complutense University, attributes the healing effects of homeopathy in some patients to ” mere suggestion ” even in the case of very young patients. “The faith of parents in a particular remedy has positive effects on children who are given “. And how do you explain the improvement in animals mentioning some veterinarians? ” The same positive effect in animals also occurs when their masters rely on a remedy,” he explains. Cano is convinced that the regulation of homeopathic products only responds to ” the desire to collect taxes to a mere placebo.”

The economic aspect is not negligible. Bethlehem itself Crespo cited as a major cause of delay in the implementation of the 2001 directive ” the discrepancy in considering homeopathic dilution level or strain level ” between administration and laboratories. Not the same charge a fee to each of the 19,000 dilutions on the market, which impose only 6,000 parental strains (homeopathy is based on infinitesimal dilutions of substances of animal, vegetable, mineral or chemical). In that long tug of war seems to have been the laboratories that have taken the upper hand. “With the amendment of the Law of Guarantees in 2013, rates have dropped. 90 euros will be charged for each strain, “says Diaz, Boiron.

Surprising, however, that Farmaindustria, employers of pharmaceutical companies, where both Roche and Novartis as Boiron are integrated, refuses to even comment on the regulation in place. From Novartis headquarters in Basel, a spokesman also declined comment on the issue, ” because I do not homeopathic research.”

“To me the person is a medical unit and as when I worked in Social Security, patients listened to much time trying to understand not only your physical symptoms but also their suffering in a comprehensive way,” says Inmaculada González- Carbajal, president of the Spanish Federation of homeopathic Physicians, which represents about 2,500 physicians. Long time – Carbajal González formed as in Argentina and homeopath with 32 years experience in this field, does not work in public health, but in private practice in Oviedo.

There is also a Spanish Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists presiding Cesar Valera, and Spanish Association of Patients for Homeopathy in front of which appears Bubath Peter Schmidt. Attempts by this newspaper to contact both were unsuccessful after an initial telephone conversation.

So much upset that the media picked up the reviews of the scientific world, that deny the bread and salt to homeopathy? Dr. Carbajal – Gonzalez denies most. ” There referents with which scientists can assess the effectiveness of homeopathy, but can not use the same as for traditional medicine, which is essentially based chemistry, while in the case of homeopathy the referent is physical ” explains.

The Government does not intend to enter this debate, but enforce European law, protect what is sold under the label of homeopathic remedy, and charge the fees.

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