Britain urged to crack down on remedies

LONDON, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- The British government and doctors should do more to crack down on those who promote remedies such as curing AIDS with vitamins, a researcher says.

David Colquhoun of the University College London wrote in an editorial in the Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal that colleges "avoid the hard questions by setting up committees," while the government's department of health refers the hard questions to the Prince of Wales' Foundation for Integrated Health, which was asked to draft "national occupational standards" for make believe subjects like "naturopathy."

Colquhoun cits two recent examples that illustrate the problem.

The recent homeopathy "evidence check" conducted by the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee was "eventually cajoled into admitting that there was no good evidence that homoeopathy worked but defended the idea that the taxpayer should pay for it anyway," Colquhoun says.

In addition, Colquhoun criticizes the head of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for suggesting that homoeopathy cannot be tested by proper randomized controlled trials.