A panel of scientists and doctors has told MPs that treating patients with homeopathy on the NHS is unethical and a dubious use of public money, arguing that there is insufficient clinical evidence to support such treatments.

“If the NHS  commitment to evidence-based medicine is more than a lip service, then money has to be spent on treatments that are evidence-based, and homeopathy isn’t,” said Edzard Ernst, a professor of complementary medicine at the Peninsula medical school in Exeter, quoted in the Guardian.

Homeopathy is based on the principle of “like cures like” - in other words, a substance taken in small amounts will cure the same symptoms it causes if it was taken in large amounts.

Homeopathic medicines are manufactured by repeatedly diluting and succussing (shaking) a preparation of the original substance, mainly plants and minerals, in water and alcohol. After dilution the medicine is added to lactose tablets or pillules, according to the Faculty of Homeopathy, a regulatory body established by parliament in 1950.

The NHS spends about 4 million pounds a year on homeopathy, the  group says.  There are four NHS homeopathic hospitals, which treat 55,000 patients a year, referred by GPs and NHS specialists.

More than 400 GPs treat 200,000 NHS patients a year with homeopathy.

While conventional drugs must undergo testing to prove their effectiveness, homeopathic remedies can be sold without being proven to work in clinical trials. They can be marketed for mild conditions if homeopathics agree on their effectiveness.

Scientists say the exemption should be removed because it is misleading.

Paul Bennett, Boots standards director, says the chemist will continue to stock homeopathic remedies.

“It’s about consumer choice and a large number of our customers think they work,” he said.

Do you believe homeopathic treatments work? Should they be available on the NHS?

The National Health Service (NHS) has endured a barrage of criticism from opponents of Barack Obama’s plans to push through a healthcare bill that would rein in costs, place constraints on insurance companies and expand health cover to 46 million uninsured Americans.

Stateside critics of the U.S. President’s plans — including former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin — have branded the NHS “evil and Orwellian” and said it allowed “death panels” to decide levels of care for the elderly. They see it as an overly bureaucratic, “socialised” system of healthcare and the proposals have prompted angry scenes at town halls across America.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan stirred up further controversy by describing the NHS on a U.S. TV show as a “60 year mistake” and as a service he “wouldn’t wish on anybody”.

Political leaders in the UK have been united in their defence of the NHS following the onslaught. Gordon Brown used micro-blogging site Twitter to voice his support, saying: “The NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there.”

A campaign supporting the health service on Twitter, called welovetheNHS, has received tens of thousands of messages.

David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, was quick to distance himself and his party from Hannan’s remarks. “Just look at all the support which the NHS has received on Twitter over the last couple of days. It is a reminder — if one were needed — of how proud we in Britain are of the NHS,” he said in a statement.

What do you think of the National Health Service? Do you agree with our country’s politicians that it is a system we should be proud of? What are your views on healthcare in the U.S?

Vows by Labour and the Conservatives to protect the NHS from spending cuts will require tax hikes or cuts to other areas, a new report shows.

Promises to “ring-fence” health spending in the lead-up to the next election — to be held before June — might lead to cuts of about 8 percent in other departments over the next six years, say researchers at the King’s Fund and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Alternatively, sizeable tax hikes could be in store as the next government tries to tackle the largest public deficit since the Second World War.

The deficit, forecast to rise to 175 billion pounds this year, has put public spending at the forefront of political debate.

In its equation, researchers posit that the government would have to raise the equivalent of 340 pounds for each family in the country if it were to restrict spending cuts to other departments to 2 percent, while freezing the NHS budget.

Despite being in the midst of a deep recession, the two main political parties have said they will “ring-fence” most spending.

Does this make sense in the current economic climate? From which departmental budget would you cut public spending?

Are more women choosing to have a Down’s Syndrome baby despite learning from a prenatal scan they are carrying a child with the condition?

The Down’s Syndrome Association charity believes this is the case. Its conclusion has been widely followed in press reports, including in the Daily Mail, Independent and the Times.

But research data published in response by the National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register (NDSCR) in London suggests otherwise. It says that the rate of terminations of unborn Down’s Syndrome babies has remained constant since prenatal screening became widely available in 1989.

The Down’s Syndrome Association says its help desk has been receiving an average of two calls a week from expectant mothers who have received a positive scan for the condition who say they are continuing their pregnancy, a much higher rate than two to three years ago.

And it points to figures from the NDSCR showing that more Down’s Syndrome babies are now being born in England and Wales than before the start of widespread prenatal screening — there were 749 births in 2006, the latest year figures are available, compared to 717 in 1989 and a low of 563 in 1995.

The number of Down’s Syndrome births as a proportion of all live births has also increased by around 15 percent since 2000.

Carol Boys, the chief executive of the Down’s Syndrome Association said in a press release she was surprised by the numbers.

“It seems to show that more parents are thinking more carefully before opting for prenatal screening and termination –- that being born with Down’s syndrome is being seen in a different light today.”

Together with the BBC, the Association conducted a survey of parents of children with the condition to find out “why more women are opting to go ahead with their pregnancies”.

The findings suggest that attitudes to people with the condition or other disabilities have changed for the positive. Some 35 percent of the parents asked said they felt life and society had improved for people with Down’s Syndrome.

But an examination of birth and termination data cited by the Association and compiled by the NDSCR fails to show that more mothers are indeed pressing on with their pregnancies.

NDSCR Research Director Professor Joan Morris, based at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, told me she had issued a release of her own in response to the charity’s claim.

The release says: “92 percent of women who receive an antenatal diagnosis of Down’s syndrome decide to terminate the pregnancy. This proportion has not changed since 1989.”

“I’m pretty annoyed with the Down’s Syndrome Association that seem to have totally the wrong end of the stick,” she said.

“The story as we see it is massive increases in the number of Down’s Syndrome pregnancies, due to maternal age increasing, and a lot more screening going on.

“That is causing a lot of the pregnancies to be diagnosed prenatally and women decide to have terminations.

“These two big increases are matching against themselves … and the end result is that the number of births is increasing very slightly. But it’s nothing to do with women deciding to keep their pregnancies.”

[Picture shows Down's Syndrome performer Hu Yizhou from the China Disabled Peoples Performing Art Troupe conducting at a rehearsal for a concert in Seoul in this March 2004 photo. REUTERS/You Sung-Ho]

Anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) says serious thought should be given to a ban on smoking in cars.

In a report which says smoking costs the NHS 2.7 billion pounds a year, the lobby group argues that millions of children and young people are exposed to second-hand smoke in vehicles every day.

Similar bans are in place elsewhere in the world and a poll shows that the British public also supports such action.

Pro-smoking groups say such suggestions are just an attempt to stigmatise smokers and bully them into quitting. Lobby group Forest says such moves are an attack on the freedoms of adult smokers.

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A simmering row between family doctors and the government has erupted after Health Minister Ben Bradshaw accused GPs of stifling competition by operating “gentlemen’s agreements” not to poach each others’ patients.

Laurence Buckman, chair of the British Medical Association’s GP Committee, told the BBC the claim was “absolute nonsense”, but then rather undermined his own argument by adding:

“Nor are we going to compete for patients, that is not the way general practice works.”

But that is precisely the way the government wants general practice in England to work in future. It wants to improve patient access to family doctors and believes offering the public a choice of GP surgeries will be a popular and vital element of its plan.

It has already arm-twisted doctors into agreeing to offer extra evening and weekend appointments and is building 150 polyclinics — now referred to as “GP-led health centres” — open early till late, seven days a week, where patients can get seen without needing to register.

“My view is you can compete and collaborate at the same time,” David Colin-Thorne, the government’s national clinical director for patient care, told a media briefing. “Patients need choice to drive up quality and for flexibility.”

Mayur Lakhani, a former chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, told the same briefing that his research into the medical experience of black and minority ethnic people had found they were afraid they would be struck off their surgery’s register if they complained about their GP.

When they did try to change to another practice, they were faced with a long list of questions asking why they wanted to move.

“That shows the big culture change we have to undertake. The receiving practice, instead of welcoming a change, were actually putting barriers up,” said Lakhani.

“I don’t think patients will change GPs and practices every six months, but I think the ability to do that is very important.”

Family doctors will come under greater scrutiny, with their surgery’s performance against quality standards and the views of local patients published on the NHS Choices website.

The government wants to sweep away the days of being stuck with an unsatisfactory GP practice. The question will be whether it can keep pumping in the resources — and keep doctors sufficiently on-side — to make sure there are enough GPs around for patient choice to become a reality.