The defunding of homeopathy in France and England in 2000 and 2022

This paper employs a governmentality framework to explore resistance by sceptics to homeopathy’s partial settlement in the public health systems of England and France, resulting in its defunding in both countries in 2018 and 2021, respectively. While partly dependent upon long-standing problematisations – namely, that homeopathy’s ability to heal is unproven, its mechanisms implausible, and its consequences for patients potentially dangerous – the defunding of homeopathy was also driven by the conduct of  sceptics towards so-called alternative medicine (SCAM), who undermined homeopathy’s position in strikingly different ways in both contexts. This difference, we suggest, is a consequence of the diverging regulatory arrangements surrounding homeopathy (and SCAMs more generally) in England and France—and the ambivalent effects of SCAM’s regulation. If law and regulation have been a key component of SCAM’s integration and (partial) acceptance over the past four decades, the fortunes of homeopathy in England and France highlight their unpredictability as techniques of governmentality: just as the formal regulatory systems in England and France have helped to normalise homeopathy in different ways, they have also incited and galvanised opposition, providing specific anchor-points for resistance by SCAM sceptics.

The authors state that they approach the sceptics’ actions as a form of resistance to the normalising power of governmentality—a resistance that is also shaped by the possibilities and spaces offered by legal orderings. From a Foucauldian perspective, resistance is immanent to relations of power: the two presuppose one another. If regimes of governmentality have increasingly let SCAMs ‘in’ as a means of normalising them, then this paper attends to some of the resistances the modes of SCAM’s regulation have incited and shaped, and how resistance to SCAM has taken different forms in different regulatory contexts. At times, resistance has emanated from some SCAM healers themselves, who regard their practice as inimical to the standardisation and bureaucratisation required by formal regulation. In the case of homeopathy, much resistance has come from those outside of the SCAM professions. Such resistance seemingly rejects per se the notion that ‘good’ homeopathy (or SCAMs more generally) can be distinguished from ‘bad’—and, hence, the idea that state institutions should grant any form of legitimacy to such practices. By grounding our analysis in a governmentality perspective, we invite a closer consideration of the means by which homeopathy’s regulation (and its conditional acceptance by formal institutions)—a core component of its normalisation—has incited irritations, aggravations and resistances which have paradoxically helped to challenge its place in the national healthcare systems of England and France.

The authors further explain that SCAM sceptics’ initial resistance to homeopathy began to emerge in a coordinated fashion in the mid 2000s, and can best be described as a cumulative build-up of dispersed sceptic activism and campaigning on the part of a loose coalition of prominent non-state, non-official individuals, often, but not always, from outside the medical profession itself. It included high profile scientists and academics such as Edzard Ernst and David Colquhoun, and sceptic campaigning groups, such as Sense About Science (SAS), which was founded in 2002. In other words, the multifaceted nature of their campaigning and the dispersal of their targets appeared to be a reaction to the diffuse, decentred provision and regulation of homeopathy in England and the involvement of a broad range of actors ‘beyond the state’.

__________________________

I find this version of events interesting (I encourage you to read the full text of the paper) and somewhat amusing, as I hardly recognise it. The way I experienced and recall this story is roughly as follows:

• In the 1970/80s EBM had become the generally accepted norm and logic  in healthcare. It had begun to generate significant, tangible advantages for the fate of suffering patients.
• Thus many areas of medicine came under scrutiny and those that were non-compliant with EBM were rightly criticised.
• From the early 1990s, I and others started to apply the principles of EBM to homeopathy (and other SCAMs).
• This soon made it obvious that homeopathy was lacking convincing evidence of efficacy.
• Now, it was merely a question of time that the regulators had to act accordingly.
• England and France happened to do this first, but, in my view, it is virtually inevitable that other countries will follow – not because of any organised activism but because ethical medicine must always follow the evidence and cannot tolerate quackery.

I disagree with the authors of the above paper; there was no coordinated resistance, cumulative build-up, activism, coalition of individuals, multifacetet campaigning to speak of. The actions that occurred were merely the inevitable consequence of the scientific evidence that emerged from the 1990s onwards. In other words, the principles of EBM were simply taking their course. The defunding is thus not unique to homeopathy but has happened (and will continue to happen) in many other areas of healthcare that do not demonstrably generate more good than harm.

The authors of the above article mention my name repeatedly and seem to imply that I assumed the role of a key activist. Interestingly, they do not cite a single of my papers, presumably because none of them can demonstrate the points they are trying to make. The truth is that, until my retirement from academia in 2012/13, my role was merely that of a researcher. The activism that did happen consisted mostly of diverse and unfunded actions of rationalists who felt that homeopathy was making a mockery of EBM.

Looking back, I am still surprised that these actions were achieved almost entirely by altruistic amateurs. I even feel a little ashamed that the vast majority of doctors seemed to care so little (and were put to shame by the amateurs) about upolding the values of EBM, the best interest of patients and the importance of medical ethics.