The academies of medicine and pharmacy have co-signed a press release to denounce homeopathy, deemed ineffective, and to demand the cessation of its reimbursement by Social Security.
So that homeopathy is no longer reimbursed by Social Security. With 58 votes for and 16 against, the Academy of Medicine voted on Tuesday March 26 in favor of a press release co-signed with the Academy of Pharmacy to denounce the ineffectiveness of homeopathy, announces Le Figaro this Wednesday, March 27. The Academy had already openly taken a stand against homeopathy in 1984, 1987, 2004 and then in 2017 via the Scientific Council of the European Academies of Sciences.
Insufficient knowledge
“The state of the scientific data does not make it possible to verify” any of the principles of homeopathy and “meta-analyses have not made it possible to demonstrate the effectiveness of homeopathic preparations”, is it written in today’s press release. today. According to a working group set up on the subject, homeopathy does not deserve to be called “medicine”, or even “alternative medicine”. And if the French believe in it (72% of them consider it effective according to a recent survey), it is mainly because of “insufficient knowledge and/or underestimation of the placebo effect with expectation”, affirm the two Academies.
Thus, according to Daniel Bontoux, rapporteur of the text, homeopathy is, at best, “a good auxiliary” of the placebo effect and the conditioning of the patient, to whom the doctor owes the truth on the subject, he insists. -he. Consequently, the press release asks that homeopathy no longer be reimbursed by Social Security and that the dedicated university degrees cease to exist. Whether in medical school (this has already been the case in Lille since the start of the 2018 school year), pharmacy or even veterinary school.
“It’s time for the public authorities to take action!”
If doctors are used to showing their distrust of homeopathy, the opposition of pharmacists is more recent. Last December, for the first time, some of them co-authored a column in The Express to denounce its reimbursement.
“No, homeopathy is not an active medicine, even if it has marketing authorization and reimbursement. An unjustified fact, because homeopathy, unlike other medicines, does not “has not proven its effectiveness on the basis of verifiable and objective demonstrations recognized by the international scientific community”, they wrote, indicating in passing that these white granules were “not necessarily harmless”. “Yes a product based on water and sugar can obviously do no harm, it can waste time, even endanger life in the event of an acute or chronic illness whose treatment cannot wait”, alarmed -they.
Today, “we are happy to see that the two academies are clearly positioning themselves. It is time for the public authorities and the ordinal authorities to take note of this!”, explains Dr Jérémy Descoux, cardiologist and president of the fakemed collective (short for “Fake medicine”) at Figaro. The doctor regrets, however, that the press release is not more incisive. “Prescribing and dispensing homeopathy means accepting its premises; and when we offer homeopathy to a patient, we are at least ambiguous”, he believes, more in favor of non-drug interventions. such as psychotherapy or dietetics.
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