Missed the edit window, but I need to apologise to **SenorBeef **- it seems that I was wrong and there are actually four “homeopathic hospitals” in the NHS:
*How much does homeopathy cost the NHS each year?
Exact figures for the cost of homeopathy are not collected. However, there are currently four homeopathic hospitals in England, and in the region of 25,000 homeopathic items are prescribed each year. Total costs are thought to be in the region of 3-4 million a year.*
Now, 3-4 million is a drop in the ocean of the NHS budget of course, but I’m still a little shcoked by the existence of those hospitals. I presume those hospitals also use real medicine?
Hey! Don’t be a homeophobe!
Just fighting my own ignorance as much as anything here, but this article suggests that those four NHS “homepathic hospitals” are really just clinics, remnants of a much larger number of homeopathic insitutions dating back to pre-NHS times:
*It is a myth that there are homeopathic hospitals in the UK. What we have are the tiny, vestigial remnants of Victorian Quackery in a few small clinics.
[…]
So, what is the status of the remaining four? None can really call themselves hospitals anymore. Gone are the full range of services you would expect from a hospital with in-patient facilities, dedicated buildings, independent management and budgets. Instead, we find mainly simple out-patient facilities annexed to bigger institutions.
*
I’m very much unhappy with the NHS homeopathy stuff too, but you do need to realise that a lot of the arguments for funding it are based on a respect for the placebo effect, and concern about what patients will end up with if they go elsewhere.
?? I get the placebo effect part, but almost by definition, homeopathic remedies contain no active ingredients. They’ll end up with the same tap water (maybe with a dash of brandy) anywhere, won’t they?
I will say that lots of people who really should know better think that “homeopathy” means “natural or hebal remedy” even though they are not the same thing at all. For example, when you rub Aloe on a sunburn, you’re using a natural remedy, which is not homeopathic in nature.
Haven’t they cut all funding for homeopathy on the NHS recently?
I can’t let this go.
[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
The NHS in England runs homeopathic hospitals.
[/quote]
No it does not.
No, it isn’t. It is tolerated, why, I really don’t know. The common’s science & technology committee and British Medical Association want to stop funding it.
Can’t speak for the Aussies but homeopathy regularly has the piss taken out of it in the popular media, anyone standing up for it will be laughed at. Prince Charles is running joke for believing in this sort of bollocks.
Well, it would be if it was 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001% aloe - which, like most homeopathic remedies, would probably mean that it was made of all of the water molecules on the planet and half of 1 of each of the molecules of aloe.
Of course, then it would give you a sunburn.
I thought this place was for fighting ignorance? I have seen natural remedies used successfully on more than one occasion. Would someone care to explain all the bad mouthing? My father used flax seed to lower his cholesterol from high to normal levels and I know someone who uses medical marijuana for pain management and they claim it works better than any of the pharma choices. Please no nitpicking about the difference betwen homeopathic and naturopathic, I know the difference, but as stated earlier they are often used interchangeably. Personally I think the line betwen the two is pretty fine and it would be somewhat hypocritical to believe in one and not the other.
The main reason that people rail on homeopathic medicine is because it’s complete quackery.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind02/c7/c7s5.htm
http://dx.doi.org/10.1001%2Farchsurg.133.11.1187
The fighting ignorance part is where people mention that none of the remedies you mentioned were homeopathic, regardless of how incorrectly some people understand the term.
Flax seed and marijuana are not remotely homeopathic. Flax seed is… well, a seed. A food item. Marijuana is a drug. Both of those things may have positive effects exactly because they have something to them - that’s the opposite of homeopathy.
Well, what is it that you want? You just pointed out the answer to your own question. “Naturopaths” are probably full of shit because they don’t subscribe to any scientific method, but they can occasionally stumble onto a helpful treatment because they’re actually giving people stuff with active ingredients. Homeopathy is magic, not herbal remedies.
No, it’s not even close. Homeopathy believes that if you have one molecule of caffeine out of a hundred trillion of water it will work as a sleeping pill. And they actually believe the smaller the amount, the better it works. To the point where if you actually completely eliminate the active ingredient from the solution, it works best of all! Because the water remembers it, you see.
Whereas there are actually herbal remedies and stuff that work - they’re just drugs that hippies prefer to stick up their asshole in leaf form instead of getting something similar with a refined active ingredient in pill form.
? Naturopathy and homeopathy are completely different things; it’s like the difference between astronomy and astrology. If people are using the terms interchangeably, then they are wrong and ignorant and should be corrected.
The line between the two is not fine at all. People here are rightly bashing homeopathy; to believe in homeopathy is to disregard such basic fundaments of scientific knowledge as the molecular theory of matter and the germ theory of disease.
Wow, that’s all pretty much a massive misunderstanding and miscommunication of the place of homoeopathy in the NHS. 
You make it sound like England is currently building hospitals for homoeopathy.
What did I say that was incorrect? I didn’t say they were building hospitals, but that they run them. As has been pointed out upthread, the “hospitals” are more of a clinic, but I’m only referring to them the same way the NHS website does.
And they do let doctors use them as legitimate treatment, and the degree to which they’re accepted in the medical community there is certainly higher than in the US.
Well yeah, but your doctor would probably rather that you get your sugar pill from a somewhat tame “practitioner” rather than risk your ending up with someone who will try and get you to abandon the evils of science entirely
As pointed out this might well be a confusion about terms, but I’ve seen it done with actual plain water homeopathy too. My theory, a lot of the more cynical, less earnest homeopaths have ceased to worry too much about the “science” on the fairly safe assumption that their customers aren’t particularly well clued up on that sort of thing 
Upon further review, I have overstated the case for naturopathy. Occasionally they happen to come up with a useful treatment, but the science behind naturopathy is typically not rigorous at all.
That said, naturopathy and homeopathy are definitely two distinct things and one should not be confused with the other.
[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
What did I say that was incorrect?
[/quote]
Homeopathy is witchcraft say doctors
BMA backs withdrawal of NHS homeopathy funding
This (Tory/LibDem) government is following the example of the previous (Labour) government of ignoring its own scientific advice and is not removing NHS funding. The official line is it is a question of “choice”. IOW they don’t want to lose the moron vote.
Looks like they’re braver in Scotland.
How does that disprove what I said? Homeopathy in the US is almost unversally rejected by doctors, whereas - even if it’s not a primary method of treatment - it’s accepted as valid treatment in the NHS and certainly more doctors than in the US feel that it’s a viable treatment option.
[QUOTE=Machine Elf]
Upon further review, I have overstated the case for naturopathy. Occasionally they happen to come up with a useful treatment, but the science behind naturopathy is typically not rigorous at all.
That said, naturopathy and homeopathy are definitely two distinct things and one should not be confused with the other.
[/QUOTE]
A lot of naturopaths use homeopathy (along with a hodge-podge of other forms of woo). There is even a Homeopathic Academy of Naturopathic Physicians.
Sadly, it is not unprecedented for nurses to push woo on patients. One notable example is the bogus practice of therapeutic touch.
And it’s not just nurses. A bunch of academic medical centers are “integrating” woo with mainstream therapies.
There was a case recently of a physician in Texas selling an herbal supplement (and engaging in other questionable practices). When a couple of nurses at the hospital reported him to the state medical board, the local sheriff (who’d been in the supplement business along with the doctor) found out their names and got them prosecuted for supposedly revealing confidential patient information. The nurses were acquitted, filed a lawsuit and recently accepted a $750,000 settlement from Winkler County TX.
Hopefully Britain will stop reimbursement for homeopathy under the NHS. While I’m unaware of insurance companies in the U.S. paying out for this garbage, you can bet homeopaths and their allies will push for this as Obamacare revs up (when the transition team was taking health care suggestions prior to inauguration, these people were flooding the website with calls for public financing of woo).