Homeopathic Medicine System in India
Context:
- The current push to include ‘AYUSH’ medicinal systems into mainstream health care in order to achieve universal health coverage and ‘decolonize medicine’ is a pluralistic method that would require each participating system to meet basic safety and efficacy standards.
Homeopathic efficacy and safety:
- The evidence for the efficacy of homoeopathy is limited.
- The Nuremberg Salt Test (1835), the first carefully conducted and well-reported double-blind randomised controlled trial (RCT), concluded that “the symptoms or changes which the homoeopaths claimed to observe as an effect of their medicines were the fruit of imagination, self-deception, and preconceived opinion — if not fraud.”
- Multiple systematic reviews and meta-analyses have found that homoeopathic treatments have no clinically significant effects across ailments, population groups (adults versus children), study types (placebo-controlled versus other trial types), and treatment regimes (individualised versus non-individualised).
- Researchers observed that more than half of the 193 homoeopathic trials conducted in the last two decades were not recorded.
- Unregistered research demonstrated efficacy, whereas registered trials did not. There was reporting bias and other questionable practises, casting doubt on the authenticity and trustworthiness of the evidence supplied.
- Furthermore, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued a warning against homoeopathic drugs for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, as well as flu and diarrhoea among infants, noting that they have “no place” in their treatment.
- Contrary to popular belief, evidence is growing that homoeopathy does not work for cancer and may not help to reduce the negative effects of cancer treatments.
- Treatments, on the other hand, have been linked to both non-fatal and fatal adverse events, as well as their worsening.
- Seeking homoeopathic care also delays the utilisation of evidence-based therapeutic care. In numerous instances, it has resulted in injuries and, in some cases, death.
Concerning standards:
- Supporters of homoeopathy argue that the standards commonly used in evidence-based medicine are insufficient for quantifying the “holistic effects” of homoeopathy. This claim is debatable.
- First, practitioners of allopathic medicine do not conveniently select the norms for themselves.
- Second, proponents of homoeopathy have failed to propose trustworthy alternative evidence synthesis frameworks fit for assessing its efficacy and safety that are equally acceptable to opponents.
- Third, the assertion that homoeopathy is holistic is sometimes associated with the claim that evidence-based treatment is “reductionist.”
- Fourth, evidence-based medicine does not and should not end with the acquisition of empirical data. The quest also includes determining and understanding the mechanisms underlying the evidence. There has been no meaningful evidence for suggested mechanisms of action for homoeopathy in the previous century.
- There is no scientific proof (molecular, physiological, biochemical, or otherwise) to explain how concepts such as “like cures like,” “extreme dilution,” and “dematerialised spiritual force” result in enhanced health.
- Several allopathic/modern medicine practises have modified themselves in response to rising scientific understanding throughout the same time period.
The proper method is as follows:
- Adopting a varied approach to medicine offers the ability to decolonize medicine. In India, homoeopathy opposes this.
- In 1839, Austrian physician J.M. Honigberger.
- Of course, not all colonial practises must be abandoned. Those with health and developmental benefits, such as evidence-based allopathic therapy and gender and caste reforms, should be kept.
Conclusion:
- The case against homoeopathy is predicated not only on its coloniality, but also on a lack of evidence for efficacy, some evidence for lack of safety, no substantial improvement in mechanisms of action in the last century, and the escapist claims of homoeopathic practitioners. The path to universal health care in India must be predicated on evidence-based and ethical medicine.
