progress
In 2015, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences stated that “Homeopathic remedies don’t meet the criteria of evidence based medicine” and that homeopathic products should follow the same strict scientific standards as conventional drugs. In 2017, the Scientific Advisory Board of European Academies (EASAC) concluded that there is no substantial evidence that homeopathy works and may even be harmful to our health.
Now, Hungary is about to act. New regulation is tightening the marketing of homeopathic products in Hungary. From Wednesday this week, homeopathic remedies can only be distributed in Hungary without a therapeutic indication or claim. The reason for this move is that none of the products’ efficacy have been adequately confirmed by rigorous clinical trials.
In a statement, the Hungarian National Institute of Pharmacy and Nutrition (OGYÉI) said the changes are due to a law amendment that came into effect last year. The new regulation only allows homeopathic medicines with therapeutic indications authorized before Hungary’s accession to the EU (2004), to be marketed after July 1, 2020, if they have complied with the EU regulations on the marketing of these medicines.
Currently, Hungary has no homeopathic product with therapeutic efficacy proven in clinical trials. The product license of homeopathic products – in compliance with the legislation of the European Union – can be obtained by two different procedures in Hungary. The so-called simplified procedure can be used for “high-dilution products” marketed without a therapeutic indication, in which case the effectiveness of the product does not need to be certified.
The “normal” procedure is applicable to homeopathic medicinal products marketed for a therapeutic indication, in which case, just as any other medicinal products, therapeutic efficacy must be clinically proven. OGYÉI emphasized that from July 1st, the advertising of marketable homeopathic remedies may only contain the label text of the product, no additional information.
The move by the Hungarian authorities is, of course, most welcome. It brings Hungary finally in line with the rest of the EU. The many enthusiasts of homeopathy will no doubt suspect a worldwide conspiracy against homeopathy. If so, they merely disclose how far they have put their heads into the sand. Such measures are nothing but the long overdue actions towards abolishing double standards that have existed far too long and have helped nobody except the homeopathic industry.
Am I the only one who is tired of hearing that, in India, homeopathy is doing wonders for the current pandemic? All of the reports that I have seen are based on little more than hearsay, anecdotes or pseudo-science. If anyone really wanted to find out whether homeopathy works, they would need more than that; in fact, they would need to conduct a clinical trial.
But wait!
As it happens, there are already ~500 clinical trials of homeopathy. Many show positive effects, but the reliable ones usually don’t. Crucially, the totality of the evidence fails to be positive. So, running further studies is hardly a promising exercise. In fact, considering how utterly implausible homeopathy is, it even seems like an unethical waste of resources.
But many homeopaths disagree, particularly those in India. And it has been reported that several trials have been given the go-ahead in India and are now up and running. This regrettable fact is being heavily exploited for swaying public opinion in favour of homeopathy. The way I see it, the situation is roughly this:
- a few trials of homeopathy are being set up;
- they are designed by enthusiasts of homeopathy who lack research expertise;
- therefore their methodology is weak and biased towards generating a false-positive result;
- while this is going on, the homeopathic propaganda machine is running overtime;
- when the results will finally emerge, they will get published in a 3rd rate journal;
- homeopaths worldwide will celebrate them as a triumph for homeopathy;
- critical thinkers will be dismayed at their quality and will declare that the conclusions drawn by over-enthusiastic homeopaths are not valid;
- in the end, we will be exactly where we were before: quasi-religious believers in homeopathy will feel vexed because their findings are not accepted in science, and everyone else will be baffled by the waste of time, opportunity and resources as well as by the tenacity of homeopaths to make fools of themselves.
But criticising is easy; doing it properly is often more difficult.
So, how should it be done?
The way I see it, one should do the following:
- carefully consider the implausibility of homeopathy;
- thoroughly study the existing evidence on homeopathy;
- abandon all plans to study homeopathy in the light of the above.
But this hardly is inconceivable considering the current situation in India. If further studies of homeopathy are unavoidable, the following procedure might therefore be reasonable:
- assemble a team of experts including trial methodologists, statisticians, epidemiologists and homeopaths;
- ask them to design a rigorous protocol of one or two studies that would provide a definitive answer to the research question posed;
- make sure that, once everyone is happy with the protocol, all parties commit to abiding by the findings that will emerge from these trials;
- conduct the studies under adequately strict supervision;
- evaluate the results according to the protocol;
- publish them in a top journal;
- do the usual press-releases, interviews etc.
In India, it seems that the last point in this agenda came far too early. This is because, in this and several other countries, homeopathy has become more a belief system than a medicine. And because it is about belief, the believers will avert any truly meaningful and rigorous test of homeopathy’s efficacy.
This was essentially the question raised in a correspondence with a sceptic friend. His suspicion was that statistical methods might produce false-positive overall findings, if the research is done by enthusiasts of the so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) in question (or other areas of inquiry which I will omit because they are outside my area of expertise). Consciously or inadvertently, such researchers might introduce a pro-SCAM bias into their work. As the research is done mostly by such enthusiasts; the totality of the evidence would turn out to be heavily skewed in favour of the SCAM under investigation. The end-result would then be a false-positive overall impression about the SCAM which is less based on reality than on the wishful thinking of the investigators.
How can one deal with this problem?
How to minimise the risk of being overwhelmed by false-positive research?
Today, we have several mechanisms and initiatives that are at least partly aimed at achieving just this. For instance, there are guidelines on how to conduct the primary research so that bias is minimised. The CONSORT statements are an example. As many studies pre-date CONSORT, we need a different approach for reviews of clinical trials. The PRISMA guideline or the COCHRANE handbook are attempts to make sure systematic reviews are transparent and rigorous. These methods can work quite well in finding the truth, but one needs to be aware, of course, that some researchers do their very best to obscure it. I have also tried to go one step further and shown that the direction of the conclusion correlates with the rigour of the study (btw: this was the paper that prompted Prof Hahn’s criticism and slander of my work and person).
So, problem sorted?
Not quite!
The trouble is that over-enthusiastic researchers may not always adhere to these guidelines, they may pretend to adhere but cut corners, or they may be dishonest and cheat. And what makes this even more tricky is the possibility that they do all this inadvertently; their enthusiasm could get the better of them, and they are doing research not to TEST WHETHER a treatment works but to PROVE THAT it works.
In the realm of SCAM we have a lot of this – trust me, I have seen it often with my own eyes, regrettably sometimes even within my own team of co-workers. The reason for this is that SCAM is loaded with emotion and quasi-religious beliefs; and these provide a much stronger conflict of interest than money could ever do, in my experience.
And how might we tackle this thorny issue?
After thinking long and hard about it, I came up in 2012 with my TRUSTWORTHYNESS INDEX:
If we calculated the percentage of a researcher’s papers arriving at positive conclusions and divided this by the percentage of his papers drawing negative conclusions, we might have a useful measure. A realistic example might be the case of a clinical researcher who has published a total of 100 original articles. If 50% had positive and 50% negative conclusions about the efficacy of the therapy tested, his TI would be 1.
Depending on what area of clinical medicine this person is working in, 1 might be a figure that is just about acceptable in terms of the trustworthiness of the author. If the TI goes beyond 1, we might get concerned; if it reaches 4 or more, we should get worried.
An example would be a researcher who has published 100 papers of which 80 are positive and 20 arrive at negative conclusions. His TI would consequently amount to 4. Most of us equipped with a healthy scepticism would consider this figure highly suspect.
Of course, this is all a bit simplistic, and, like all other citation metrics, my TI provides us not with any level of proof; it merely is a vague indicator that something might be amiss. And, as stressed already, the cut-off point for any scientist’s TI very much depends on the area of clinical research we are dealing with. The lower the plausibility and the higher the uncertainty associated with the efficacy of the experimental treatments, the lower the point where the TI might suggest something to be fishy.
Based on this concept, I later created the ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HALL OF FAME. This is a list of researchers who manage to go through life researching their particular SCAM without ever publishing a negative conclusion about it. In terms of TI, these people have astronomically high values. The current list is not yet long, but it is growing:
John Weeks (editor of JCAM)
Deepak Chopra (US entrepreneur)
Cheryl Hawk (US chiropractor)
David Peters (osteopathy, homeopathy, UK)
Nicola Robinson (TCM, UK)
Peter Fisher (homeopathy, UK)
Simon Mills (herbal medicine, UK)
Gustav Dobos (various, Germany)
Claudia Witt (homeopathy, Germany and Switzerland)
George Lewith (acupuncture, UK)
John Licciardone (osteopathy, US)
The logical consequence of a high TI would be that researchers of that nature are banned from obtaining research funds and publishing papers, because their contribution is merely to confuse us and make science less reliable.
I am sure there are other ways of addressing the problem of being mislead by false-positive research. If you can think of one, I’d be pleased to hear about it.
Yesterday, it was announced that UK universities are not doing well according to international league tables. Of the UK’s 84 ranked universities, 66 saw their staff to student ratio decline while 59 had a drop in research citations. International student numbers at 51 universities also fell.
No reason to despair; help is on the way!
The University of Exeter reported that “as International Education Champion, Sir Steve will have a leading role in a 10-year strategy to both increase the number of international students choosing to study in the UK higher education system to 600,000 and increase the value of education exports to £35 billion per year by 2030. The University of Exeter is delighted and proud with this appointment…
The role of International Education Champion will be to work with organisations across the breadth of the education sector, including universities, schools, the EdTech industry, vocational training, and early years schooling providers. Steve will also help target priority regions worldwide to build networks and promote the UK as the international education partner of choice. The role will additionally help to boost the numbers of international students in the UK.
The appointment of Sir Steve Smith fulfils a priority action from the International Education Strategy, published by the Department for Education and the Department for International Trade. Sir Steve will spearhead overseas activity and address a number of market access barriers on behalf of the whole education sector, including concerns over the global recognition of UK degrees and other qualifications. Sir Steve’s experience, knowledge and global connections will help to develop long-term relationships with international governments and overseas stakeholders…”
Shortly after becoming VC at Exeter, Prof Smith closed two Departments: Music and Chemistry. Apparently, they were not bringing in enough cash. Several years later, he had a key role in closing my unit. It had attracted a complaint from Prince Charles’ 1st private secretary (full story here, in case you are interested).
I hope Sir Steve is more productive in boosting international education. One thing seems certain to me: post-Brexit/post-COVID academia in the UK will need a boost after what our current government has done to it.
In the wake of both the NEJM and the LANCET withdrawing two potentially influential papers due unanswered questions about the source and reliability of the data, one has to ask how good or bad the process of peer review is.
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competences as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. It normally involves multiple steps:
- Authors send their manuscript to a journal of their choice for publication.
- The journal editor has a look at it and decides whether to reject it straight away (for instance, because the subject area is not of interest) or whether to send it out to referees for examination (often to experts suggested by the authors of the submission).
- The referees (usually 2 or 3) have the opportunity to reject or accept the invitation to review the submission.
- If they accept, they review the paper and send their report to the editor (usually following a deadline).
- The editor tries to come to a decision about publication; often the referees are not in agreement, and a further referee has to be recruited.
- Even if the submission is potentially publishable, the referees will have raised several points that need addressing. In such cases, the editor sends the submission back to the original authors asking them to revise the article.
- The authors do their revision (often following a deadline) and re-submit their paper.
- Now the editor can decide to either publish it or send it back to the referees asking them whether they feel their criticisms have been adequately addressed.
- Depending on the referees’ verdicts, the editor makes the final decision and informs all the involved parties accordingly.
- If the paper was accepted, it then goes into production.
- When this process is finished, the authors receive the proofs for final a check.
- Eventually, the paper is published and the readers of the journal may scrutinise it.
- Often this prompts comment which may get published.
- In this case, the authors of the original paper may get invited to write a reply.
- Finally the comments and the reply are published in the journal side by side.
The whole process takes time, sometimes lots of time. I have had papers that took almost two years from submissions to publications. This delay seems tedious and, if the paper is important, unacceptable (if it is not important, it should arguably not be published at all). Equally unacceptable is the fact that referees are expected to do their reviewing for free. The consequence is that many referees do their reviewing less than well.
When I was still at Exeter, I had plenty of opportunity to see the problems of peer review from the reviewers perspective. At a time, I accepted about 5 reviews per week, and in total I surely have reviewed over 1000 papers. I often recommended inviting a statistician to do a specialist review of the stats. Only rarely were such suggestions accepted by the journal editors. Very often I recommended rejecting a submission because it was rubbish, and occasionally, I told the editor that there was a strong suspicion of the paper being fraudulent. The editors very often (I estimate in about 50% of cases) ignored my suggestions and comments and published the papers nonetheless. If the editor did follow my advice to reject a paper, I regularly saw it published elsewhere later (usually in a less well-respected journal). Several times, an author of a submission contacted me directly after seeing my criticism of his paper. Occasionally this resulted in unpleasantness, once or twice even in threats. Eventually I realised that improving the publications in the realm of SCAM was a Sisyphean task, became quite disenchanted with all this and accepted less and less reviews. Today, I do only very few.
I had even more opportunity to see the peer review process from the author’s perspective. All authors must have suffered from unfair or incompetent reviews and most will have experienced the frustrations of the endless delays. Once (before my time in alternative medicine) a reviewer rejected my paper and soon after published results that were uncannily similar to mine. In alternative medicine, researchers tend to be rather emotional about their subject. Imagine, for instance, the review you might get from Dana Ullmann of a trial of homeopathy that fails to show what he believes in.
Finally, since 40 years, I have also had the displeasure of experiencing peer review as an editor. This often seemed like trying to sail between the devil and the deep blue sea. Editors want to fill their journals with the best science they can find. But all too often, they receive the worst science they can imagine. They are constantly torn by tensions pulling them in opposite directions. And they have to cope not just with poor quality submissions but also with reviewers who miss deadlines and do their work badly.
So, peer review is fraught with problems! The trouble is that there are few solutions that would keep a better check on the reliability of science. Peer review, it often seemed to me, is the worst idea, except for all others. If peer review is to survive (and I think it probably will), there are a few things that could, from my point of view, be done to improve it:
- Make it much more attractive for the referees. Payment would be the obvious thing – and by Jove, the big journals like the LANCET and NEJM could afford it. But recognising refereeing academically would be even more important. At present, academic careers depend largely of publications; if they also depended on reviewing, experts would queue up to do it.
- The reports of the referees should get independently evaluated according to sensible criteria. These data could be conflated an published as a criterion of academic standing. Referees who fail to to a good job would spoil their chances to get re-invited for this task.
- Speed up the entire process. Waiting months on months is hugely counter-productive for all concerned.
- Today many journals ask authors for the details of experts who are potential reviewers of their submission and then send the paper in question to them for review. I find this ridiculous! No author I know of has ever resisted the temptation to name people who are friends or owe a favour. Journals should afford the extra work to find who the best independent experts on any particular subject are.
None of this is simple or fool-proof or even sure to work well, of course. But surely it is worth trying to get peer-review right. The quality of future science depends on it.
Homeopathy has had its fair share of declarations, and now there is another one. I find this new one important because it is from German medical students and might thus indicate where German homeopathy is heading.
The ‘Bundesvertretung der Medizinstudenten in Deutschland’ – the German Medical Students’ Association – has recently looked into the evidence for and against homeopathy and came up with this poignant declaration:
Here is my translation for those who cannot read German; I have added a few footnotes to explain the German context:
- Homeopathy does not work beyond placebo [1].
- The legal health insurances should not reimburse homeopathy [2].
- The law stating that homeopathy can only be sold in pharmacies should be abolished [3].
- Medicines should only be licenced, if there is a valid proof of efficacy [4].
- In public debates, it must be made clear that homeopathy is not part of naturopathy [5].
- The medical degree in homeopathy must be scrapped [6].
- The teaching of homeopathy must be evidence-based and context-related [7].
_______________________________
- This seems to refer to the wording a German manufacturer of homeopathic preparations tried to suppress.
- At the moment most German health insurances do pay for homeopathy.
- In Germany, pharmacies have a monopoly on homeopathic remedies.
- Since many years, there has been a special regulation in Germany whereby homeopathics could get a licence without proof of efficacy.
- German homeopaths tend to be keen on muddying the water by claiming homeopathy is part of naturopathy.
- All German students are being taught (and examined on) some rudimentary knowledge of homeopathy.
The new declaration is ‘spot on’. I congratulate the students for their courage and wisdom to publish it. They are the future of German medicine, a future where homeopathy’s place is exclusively in the history books as a bizarre episode of anti-science.
Someone alerted me to a short article (2008) of mine that I had forgotten about. In it, I mention the 32 Cochrane reviews of acupuncture available at the time and the fact that they showed very little in favour of acupuncture. This made me wonder to what extent the situation might have changed in the last 12 years. So, I made a renewed attempt at evaluating this evidence. The entire exercise comes in three parts:
- My original paper from 2008
- The current evidence from Cochrane reviews
- Comments on the new evidence
PART 1
Acupuncture has a long history of ups and downs. Its latest renaissance started in 1971, when a journalist in President Nixon’s press corps experienced symptomatic relief after being treated for postoperative abdominal distension. He reported this experience in The New York Times, which triggered a flurry of interest and research. In turn, it was discovered that needling might release endorphins in the brain or act via the gate control mechanism. Thus, plausible modes of action seemed to have been found, and the credibility of acupuncture increased significantly. Numerous clinical trials were initiated, and their results often suggested that acupuncture is clinically effective for a surprisingly wide range of conditions. Both a World Health Organization report and a National Institutes of Health consensus conference provided long lists of indications for which acupuncture allegedly was of proven benefit.
Many of the clinical studies, however, lacked scientific rigor. Most experts therefore remained unconvinced about the true value of acupuncture, particularly as a treatment for all ills. Some investigators began to suspect that the results were largely due to patient expectation. Others showed that the Chinese literature, a rich source of acupuncture trials, does not contain a single negative study of acupuncture, thus questioning the reliability of this body of evidence.
A major methodological challenge was the adequate control for placebo effects in clinical trials of acupuncture. Shallow needling or needling at non-acupuncture points had been used extensively for this purpose. Whenever the results of such trials did not show what acupuncture enthusiasts had hoped, they tended to claim that these types of placebos also generated significant therapeutic effects. Therefore, a negative result still would be consistent with acupuncture being effective. The development of non-penetrating needles was aimed at avoiding such problems. These “stage dagger”-like devices are physiologically inert and patients cannot tell them from real acupuncture. Thus, they fulfil the criteria for a reasonably good placebo.
The seemingly difficult question of whether acupuncture works had become complex—what type of acupuncture, for what condition, compared with no treatment, standard therapy, or to placebo, and what type of placebo? Meanwhile, hundreds of controlled clinical trials had become available, and their results were far from uniform. In this situation, systematic reviews might be helpful in establishing the truth, particularly Cochrane reviews, which tend to be more rigorous, transparent, independent, and up-to-date than other reviews. The traditional Chinese concept of acupuncture as a panacea is reflected in the fact that 32 Cochrane reviews are currently (January 2008) available, and a further 35 protocols have been registered. The notion of acupuncture as a “heal all” is not supported by the conclusions of these articles. After discarding reviews that are based on only 3 or fewer primary studies, only 2 evidence-based indications emerge: nausea/vomiting and headache. Even this evidence has to be interpreted with caution; recent trials using the above-mentioned “stage-dagger” devices as placebos suggest that acupuncture has no specific effects in either of these conditions.
Further support for the hypothesis that acupuncture is largely devoid of specific therapeutic effects comes from a series of 8 large randomized controlled trials (RCTs) initiated by German health insurers (Figure). These studies had a similar, 3-parallel-group design: pain patients were randomized to receive either real acupuncture, shallow needling as a placebo control, or no acupuncture. Even though not entirely uniform, the results of these studies tend to demonstrate no or only small differences in terms of analgesic effects between real and placebo acupuncture. Yet, considerable differences were observed between the groups receiving either type of acupuncture and the group that had no acupuncture at all.
The most recent, as-yet-unpublished trial also seems to confirm the “placebo hypothesis.” This National Institutes of Health-sponsored RCT included 640 patients with chronic back pain. They received either individualized acupuncture according to the principles of traditional Chinese medicine, or a standardized form of acupuncture, or sham acupuncture. The results demonstrate that acupuncture added to usual care was superior to usual care alone, individualized acupuncture was not more effective than standardized acupuncture, and neither type of real acupuncture was more effective than sham acupuncture.
Figure
Schematic representation of the recent acupuncture trials all following a similar 3-group design. These 8 randomized controlled trials related to chronic back pain, migraine, tension headache, and knee osteoarthritis (2 trials for each indication). Their total sample size was in excess of 5000. Patients in the “no acupuncture” group received either standard care or were put on a waiting list. Sham acupuncture consisted of shallow needling at non-acupuncture points. Real acupuncture was semi-standardized. The differences between the effects of both types of acupuncture and no acupuncture were highly significant in each study. The differences between sham and real acupuncture were, with the exception of osteoarthritis, not statistically significant.
Enthusiasts employ such findings to argue that, in a pragmatic sense, acupuncture is demonstrably useful: it is clearly better than no acupuncture at all. Even if it were merely a placebo, what really matters is to alleviate pain of suffering patients, never mind the mechanism of action. Others are not so sure and point out that all well-administrated treatments, even those that generate effects beyond placebo, will induce a placebo response. A treatment that generates only non-specific effects (for conditions that are amenable to specific treatments) cannot be categorized as truly effective or useful, they insist.
So, after 3 decades of intensive research, is the end of acupuncture nigh? Given its many supporters, acupuncture is bound to survive the current wave of negative evidence, as it has survived previous threats. What has changed, however, is that, for the first time in its long history, acupuncture has been submitted to rigorous science—and conclusively failed the test.
[references in the original paper]
Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.
People who use so-called alternative medicines (SCAM) tend to be more vaccine hesitant. One possible conclusion that can be drawn from this is that trusting SCAM results in people becoming more vaccine hesitant. An alternative possibility is that vaccine hesitancy and use of SCAM are both consequences of a distrust in conventional treatments. an International team of researchers conducted analyses designed to disentangle these two possibilities.
They measured vaccine hesitancy and SCAM use in a representative sample of Spanish residents (N = 5200). They also quantified their trust in three CCAM interventions;
- acupuncture,
- reiki,
- homeopathy
and in two conventional medical interventions:
- chemotherapy,
- antidepressants.
Vaccine hesitancy turned out to be strongly associated with (dis)trust in conventional medicine, and this relationship was particularly strong among SCAM users. In contrast, trust in SCAM was a relatively weak predictor of vaccine hesitancy, and the relationship was equally weak regardless of whether or not participants themselves had a history of using SCAM.
According to the authors of this paper, the implication for practitioners and policy makers is that SCAM is not necessarily a major obstacle to people’s willingness to vaccinate, and that the more proximal obstacle is people’s mistrust of conventional treatments.
This is an interesting study. Yet, it begs a few questions:
- Is it possible to reliably establish trust in SCAM by asking about just 3 specific therapies?
- Is it possible to reliably establish trust in conventional medicine by asking about just 2 treatments?
- Why those therapies out of hundreds of options?
- Could it be that here are national differences (in other countries distrust in conventional medicine is not a strong determinant of SCAM use)?
- Is trust in SCAM and distrust in conventional medicine perhaps the common expression of an anti-science attitude or cultist tendencies?
Guest post by: Loretta Marron
In March 1991, the Australian College of Allergy published an article in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) about a ‘bioresonance’ device for allergy testing. Titled “VEGA testing in the diagnosis of allergic conditions”, it stated that it was “an unorthodox method of diagnosing allergic and other diseases” with “no established scientific basis” and “no controlled trials to support its usefulness”.
The article raised concerns that this test “may lead to inappropriate treatment and expense to the patient and community”. VEGA is one of nearly 30 ‘energy medicine’ devices, some of which continue to cite Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) ‘listing numbers’.
Sometime costing more than $34,000, the sponsors tell practitioners that they can earn up to $150,000 annually with these computerised devices. Referring to ‘bioresonance’ as “the medicine of the future”, they claim that all toxins, viruses and bacteria have unique ‘frequency patterns’, which, when ‘neutralised’ by the device, restore the patient to health. They may also claim that it can cure addictions to alcohol, cocaine, crack, nicotine, heroin, opiates, cannabis, spice, ‘legal highs’ and other medications. Some claim that it can cure cancer, hay fever, allergies, auto-immune diseases, behavioural problems, smoking addiction and that they can kill parasites – the list goes on.
The devices are ‘based’ on acupuncture, homeopathy and ‘quantum physics’. More than 60 reviews in the Cochrane Collaboration (the ‘Gold Standard’ for evidence-based Medicine), have failed to find robust evidence for clinically significant outcomes for acupuncture for any disease or disorders. The National Health & Medical Research Council concluded, “there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective” and quantum physics “is not at work”. In February 2020, nearly 30 years after that MJA article, the TGA’s cancellation of two of these devices saw the last of them removed from their register, but not from permissible advertising or practice.
From 2014 to 2018, Friends of Science in Medicine (FSM) had repeatedly written letters and submissions to the TGA asking for these devices to be investigated. Meeting with the national manager in 2016, we were told that these devices could not be cancelled because they were ‘biofeedback’ devices, which had a legitimate place in health care. In 2018, FSM sourced comments from informed experts here and overseas. These disputed the ‘biofeedback’ claim. FSM sent screenshots from more than 200 websites to the TGA advertising complaints. In 2019, after issuing a warning on bioresonance, the TGA closed the complaints and commenced an ‘education campaign’. They also engaged a credible Australian scientific organisation to review the evidence provided by eight ‘sponsors’ of 12 bioresonance’ devices listed in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods).
All devices have now been cancelled by their sponsors or by the TGA. The ‘education campaign’ continues. Even though the devices are still widely used, and courses still being run, FSM considers this a modestly satisfactory outcome.
Informed opinions:
Biofeedback:
o Michelle G Aniftos BCN, FCCLP, QEEGD, MEd, MPsych (Clinical), GradCertClinNeurophysiology, Fellow, Biofeedback Certification International Alliance, &
o Dr Tania M. Slawecki, PhD. Energy and the Environment Laboratory (formerly Materials Research Lab), Penn State University, USA (Author of “How to Distinguish Legitimate Biofeedback/Neurofeedback Devices”;
Electronic devices:
o Dr Stephen J Roberts, BSc ARCS DIC PhD. Consultant on electronic devices;
Psychology:
o Emeritus Professor Joseph P Forgas, AM, DPhil, Dsc (Oxford), FASSA, Scientia Professor, Psychology, UNSW &
Alternative medicine:
o Emeritus Professor Edzard Ernst MD, PhD, FMed Sci, FSB, FRCP, FRCP(Edin)
Their comments include the following:
· Ms Aniftos: “Having reviewed the specifications of the BICOM device, I find that its inclusion on the ARTG as a ‘biofeedback device’ is erroneous”;
· Dr Slawecki: “the BICOM device does not fit the criteria of a legitimate biofeedback device”;
· Dr Roberts: “The claims of how the BICOM and CyberScan work are preposterous.”Quantum physics” is not at work”;
· Professor Forgas: “The BICOM is NOT a biofeedback device and should be cancelled”; “The description of this device makes it crystal clear that it cannot possibly have any effective diagnostic or therapeutic function, and certainly has nothing at all to do with biofeedback.
“The claims made for the device amount to the worst kind of psychological manipulation, and their sole purpose is to mislead and exploit vulnerable people for financial gain. As a civilised society, we should not allow this kind of immoral exploitation to continue and the device should be banned forthwith”;
· Professor Ernst: “Bioresonance is not biologically plausible, not of proven effectiveness, potentially harmful and associated with exorbitant costs. I cannot recommend it for anyone or any purpose”.
An international team of students of chiropractic have published a paper protesting against those chiropractors and chiropractic organisations that claim their treatments boost the immune system and thus protect the public from the corona-virus infection. Here their abstract:
Background
The 2019 coronavirus pandemic is a current global health crisis. Many chiropractic institutions, associations, and researchers have stepped up at a time of need. However, a subset of the chiropractic profession has claimed that spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) is clinically effective in improving one’s immunity, despite the lack of supporting scientific evidence. These unsubstantiated claims contradict official public health policy reflecting poorly on the profession. The aim of this commentary is to provide our perspective on the claims regarding SMT and clinically relevant immunity enhancement, drawing attention to the damaging ramifications these claims might have on our profession’s reputation.
Main text
The World Federation of Chiropractic released a rapid review demonstrating the lack of clinically relevant evidence regarding SMT and immunity enhancement. The current claims contradicting this review carry significant potential risk to patients. Furthermore, as a result of these misleading claims, significant media attention and public critiques of the profession are being made. We believe inaction by regulatory bodies will lead to confusion among the public and other healthcare providers, unfortunately damaging the profession’s reputation. The resulting effect on the reputation of the profession is greatly concerning to us, as students.
Conclusion
It is our hope that all regulatory bodies will protect the public by taking appropriate action against chiropractors making unfounded claims contradicting public health policy. We believe it is the responsibility of all stakeholders in the chiropractic profession to ensure this is carried out and the standard of care is raised. We call on current chiropractors to ensure a viable profession exists moving forward.
In the paper, the authors also state that significant reputational damage can follow when unfounded claims are made that undermine public health policy… We call for a strong stance to be taken against these unsubstantiated claims and do not condone this unacceptable behaviour. As students, we are worried for the profession’s reputation and call on current chiropractors to ensure we have a viable profession moving forward.
BRAVO!!!
Now that the students have realised that the immunity claim is bogus, it would be only a small step to realise that so many other claims chiropractors make on a daily basis are false as well. There may be a difference in terms of severity, but there is none in terms of principle. As responsible healthcare professional to be, the student must rebel against ALL false claims made in their name.
So, will these students and other like-minded chiropractors please not stop here. I urge them to have a serious look at the claims their profession makes. Subsequently, they ought to take the ethically appropriate action.
And what might that be?
I see two possibilities:
- Get rid of the abundance of lies that dominate chiropractic.
- Find a different, more honest profession.