Etat des lieux de l'homéopathie en Belgique - KCE

94 Homeopathy KCE Reports 154
6 OVERVIEW AND DISCUSSION
6.1 BACKGROUND
The Belgian Minister for Public Health and Social Affairs has asked the Federal
Healthcare Knowledge Centre (KCE) to describe the current situation of these
practices in order to review or implement the law of 1999 (the so-called ‘Colla law’).
Acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathy and homeopathy can be classified under the label
of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM). In 2007 the National Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) of the National Institute of Health
(US) defined these medicines as a ’group of diverse medical and healthcare systems,
practices and products that are not currently considered to be part of conventional
medicine’ 118 . These therapies are referred to as ‘complementary’ where they are used
jointly with conventional treatments, and as ‘alternative’ where they are used instead of
conventional treatment.
These medical practices differ from classic medicine in the sense that they are not based
on empirical science. Nonetheless, many patients resort to these.
This report is the last in a series of three: after osteopathy, chiropractic and
acupuncture, we now analyse homeopathy, focusing on homeopathy practices and
practitioners. Indeed, this report does not address the specific issue of homeopathic
remedies.
Homeopathy is a therapeutic method developed more than 200 years ago by German
physician and scholar, Dr Samuel Hahnemann. It relies on the administration of
preparations made from highly diluted and dynamised mother substances. This
‘medicine’ is also based on certain principles, established as proper laws, including the
famous law of similars, ascribed to Hippocrates, which states that agents that cause
symptoms in a healthy person will cure the same symptoms in a sick person. Every
homeopathic remedy of animal, plant or mineral origin relates to the symptoms that a
healthy person would manifest if they absorbed this substance. Associated with this first
principle is a specific technique for preparing homeopathic remedies, based on the
principles of high dilutions and dynamisation (or potentisation), which are believed to
release the inner, spirit-like essence of substances, with the ability to act on patients’
vital force. In addition to the law of similars, and the principles of dilution and
dynamisation of remedies there is the law of individualisation of treatment (there are no
diseases, but only patients), used in conjunction with the concept of the patient’s
‘terrain’. These four principles are the foundation of classical homeopathy, which has
since diversified greatly.
In Belgium, it has been practised by physicians for nearly 200 years and, more recently,
by non-physicians too.
6.1.1 Objectives and methods
The report aims to respond to the following questions:
1. How effective is homeopathy? What are the benefits and harmful effects?
2. How can homeopathy be defined, and how is it used by the Belgian population?
3. What is the legal status of these medicines and how are they organised in
Belgium?
4. How are the therapists trained?
In order to grasp these medicines in their complex and multidimensional nature, a range
of methods were used:
• the medical literature was analysed to assess the clinical effectiveness and
safety of the therapies under study;
• a telephone survey of the general population gave a view on the scale of the
consumption of these therapies (n=2000);