Silvio Garattini, in his latest book, deals with homeopathy. According to Garattini, director of the "Mario Negri" pharmacological research institute, doctors should not prescribe it and pharmacists should not sell it. Prescribing homeopathic remedies for a disease, when effective products exist, is a subtraction of therapy and pharmacies, if they want to be places of health education, cannot continue to sell products that do not contain active ingredients as health treatments.
Of (site) Saturday 24 October 2015 – AgoràVox
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u www.quotidianosanita.it have been published the conclusions of this book. I deem it appropriate to report some parts of what Garattini wrote in his conclusions, from which Garattini's opinions on homeopathy clearly emerge. “In the public debate it seems that the judgment on homeopathy can never find a fixed point.
Even in the face of the most reliable, detailed and explicit research, which demonstrates the ineffectiveness of homeopathy, there is always someone who raises and re-proposes the question in unchanged terms, as if nothing had happened.
The latest example, in March 2015. The main Australian medical research body, the National Health and Medical Research Council, releases a report (cited several times in this volume) which concludes that 'there are no diseases or clinical conditions for where there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective. People who choose it can put their health at risk if they refuse or delay treatments for which there is good evidence of safety and efficacy.'
In spite of the enormous work of analysis, selection and evaluation of studies carried out by such an institution and conducted in all its phases according to rigorous, explicit and verifiable criteria; in spite of the wide-ranging discussion open to the contributions of homeopaths and others, which lasted two years, there are those who, at least in Italy, manage to re-propose the same statements that have been heard for decades or pre-scientific reasoning that aim to confuse the waters ”.
"The difficulty - for a normal person who cannot frequent medical journals - of gathering reliable information is the reason why, in this volume, we have tried to provide the reader with a little history and a little with the state of the art of homeopathic practice, in its relations with institutions and with the world of medicine; but above all we have tried to recall the scientific reasons that invalidate the therapeutic assumptions of homeopathy and its remedies and to deconstruct the many unfounded clichés that circulate in this regard”.
“We have highlighted the reasons why, in a civilized country, similar products shouldn't be available not only in pharmacies, but not even on the market because they represent an exception compared to all the products that are on the market: imagine if water was sold in bottle, with a label declaring it 'wine in homeopathic dilution', but at a much higher cost than real wine!”.
“For the same reason, medical orders should dissociate themselves from medical practices that have no scientific basis and not endorse choices that are not in line with a medicine that thrives on evidence rather than impressions. The responsibility of continuing to welcome homeopathic doctors or followers of other alternative therapies for corporate reasons is grave, for fear that they will form parallel organizations. Over time, citizens and patients would certainly know how to judge”.
“The State obviously cannot prevent its citizens from being treated in the way they deem most appropriate, but it certainly must not promote the adoption of treatments that conflict with scientific evidence: through the national health service, it should carry out campaigns for correct information on the ineffectiveness of homeopathic products. The State cannot legitimize – through training courses and regulations – therapies that have no scientific basis, just as it cannot train operators in astrology or horoscopes and regulate these activities”.
Silvio Garattini's positions are very clear and I must admit that, even though I'm not a doctor, they seem very convincing to me.
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