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The Lancet Office
Editorial Department
Mr. Richard Horton
32 Jamestown Road
London NW1 7BY
United Kingdom
Brussels, September 2nd, 2005
Dear Mr. Horton,
Your journal, one of the best reputed medico-scientific journals in
the world, foresees (or wishes) in its editorial The end of
homeopathy! For ECHAMP (the European Coalition on Homeopathic and
Anthroposophic Medicinal Products), the central question is: what
made The Lancet come out with such unfounded and onesided editorial
in the issue of August 27th?
The meta analysis of Aijing Shang and colleagues, Are the
clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study
of placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy and allopathy, published
in the same edition, cannot be the only reason for the attack on
homeopathy by the author of the editorial.
In his comments, published in the same edition, JP Vandenbroucke
from the Department of Clinical Epidemiology of the Leiden
University says: evidence does not exist in isolation, meaning that
sophisticated application of statistics might not solve the problem
when learning that the final conclusion of the study was made after
isolation of only 8 studies on homeopathy and 6 studies on
allopathy out of the 110 for each of the two approaches! The
parameters for selecting or refusing studies are not mentioned in
the article. From the point of view of the authors, no
effect beyond that of placebo could be found. This is not quite
surprising and due to a selection effect based on the result of the
statistical method (funnel plot). These standards are likely to be
misinterpreted. The PEK(1) evaluators themselves state that
for methodological reasons meta-analyses could not be considered
unambiguous. And the evaluation reports of the Swiss PEK program,
funding source of the Shang study, without exception arrived at
positive results regarding the efficacy of homeopathic medicine
based on published systematic reviews and
randomised clinical trials.
ECHAMP fully agrees with one of the finalising sentences of the
study that ….future research efforts should focus on the nature of
context effects and on the place of homeopathy in health-care
systems.
Now, why did The Lancet publish in the very same issue a report
entitled Critics slam draft WHO report on homeopathy? Could it be
that The Lancet has become the victim of a cleverly launched and
concerted action against homeopathy by the influential “quack
buster group” which already attacked the draft WHO review on
controlled clinical trials in homeopathy? Both the Belgian and the
Dutch chairmen of their national "anti quackery
organisations" have given interviews to the Lancet reporter
McCarthy. Their criticism appears overly prominent and to be
the
instigating source for the attack against homeopathy.
Remains the question, why your journal had to take such a
polemic unscientific point of view in its editorial as it did.
Maybe the author himself should have thought a little more about
the deeper meaning of his citation of Kant, namely that we see
things not as they are but as we are.
Yours truly,
Max Daege
President of ECHAMP (eu.daege@web.de)
1 Complementary Medicine Evaluation Program (Programm
Evaluation der Komplementärmedizin) of the Swiss Federal Office of
Public Health
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