Ayer recibimos una buena noticia. Un informe creado por el comité de expertos científicos del parlamento británico dice que la homeopatía no funciona más allá del placebo y que, como tal, no debería ser subvencionada de ningún modo por dinero público.
Parece que en el Reino Unido se gastan 4 millones de libras al año en tratamientos homeopáticos, incluída la financiación de cuatro hospitales homeopáticos. Esto no lo sabía, y me parece una aberración, tanta como que se gaste dinero público en magia y hechicería. Ahora falta ver si este informe acaba teniendo alguna resonancia en los presupuestos del NHS (el servicio público de salud británico) algún día.
Acabo de leer un artículo de Richard Dawkins en el que propone un experimento que demostraría si la homeopatía funciona o no. Como todo en ciencia, no se puede negar categóricamente la existencia de algo, pero si el experimento saliera positivo y demostrara que la homeopatía funciona, como él dice, estaríamos ante un descubrimiento científico que revolucionaría la química, la física y la medicina tal como las entendemos:
If the hopes of the homeopaths were realised, and if experiments as carefully controlled as this one reliably and repeatably showed that the extremely diluted homeopathic substances were effective, what should we conclude? Since there is no chemical difference between the doses, it would mean that a hitherto unknown principle of physics had been discovered. This is exceedingly unlikely, but not totally impossible. The homeopath who made such a stunning discovery should receive the Nobel Prize for Physics, as well as the Nobel Prize for Medicine. With such a holy grail in view, shouldn’t homeopaths, if they really believe in their subject, be beavering away, night and day, in the laboratory to demonstrate the effect? And are they? No. They are much more interested in taking money off patients who believe in the treatment because – like any placebo – it sometimes seems to work.
Y me uno a su conclusión:
If homeopathy really worked, it should be easy and cheap to demonstrate it. The conclusion seems inescapable. More clearly and obviously than for any other ‘alternative’ therapy, homeopathy seems vanishingly unlikely to work. Not all homeopaths are charlatans; many of them are probably sincere, as are their patients. But until homeopathy is demonstrated to work (which it almost certainly will never be) it should not be supported by the NHS.