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Beneficial therapies
• YOUR reporter, Jamie Welham, refers to homeopathy as a “controversial form of alternative medicine offered on the NHS at RLHH and other hospitals” (Defenders of homeopathy take on PCT, December 14).
Homeopathy does not claim to be an alternative medicine, a substitute for conventional medicine. It claims to be complementary medicine supplementing conventional treatment in accordance with the individual characteristics of the patient. The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital provides numerous other complementary therapies besides homeopathy. We have personally benefited from several of them.
Islington Primary Care Trust does not have the power to “close” the RLHH, though it could pressurise general practitioners not to refer patients. PCTs are under continual pressure from the government to save cash in order to “find the money” for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A prominent antagonist of the RLHH appears to be UCH professor Michael Baum. The RLHH is patronised by The Queen. The treatments offered by the RLHH are accepted by the official National Institute for Clinical Excellence.
Is Prof Baum right and all of them wrong?
On pages 15 and 18 of our excellent Islington Tribune there are paid advertisements for privately provided complementary and alternative therapies.
There are private clinics providing such therapies in practically every town in the country. Good luck to them.
The RLHH has the additional advantage that such therapies are provided free of charge at the point of use by medical doctors who are qualified in conventional and complementary therapies.
FLORENCE and IVOR KENNA
Compton Street, EC1
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