Suppressed Australian Report Exposed
In October 2019 the Homeopathy Research Institute released the following statement: Suppressed NHMRC 2012 report found ‘encouraging’ evidence homeopathy is effective for some medical conditions.
The NHMRC report on Homeopathy was released in 2015 (i.e “the second report”) with the conclusion that “…there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective”. The key word here is the definition of what was considered “reliable”. Since 2015 the Homeopathy Research Institute has worked alongside the homeopathy and CAM groups in Australia and around the world to uncover the truth about how the conclusion of this report could even be possible. What they found was essentially that:
NHMRC did the homeopathy review twice, producing two reports, one in July 2012 and the one released to the public in March 2015.
The existence of the first report was not disclosed to the public– it was only discovered through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
NHMRC say they rejected the first report because it was poor quality despite it being undertaken by a reputable scientist and author of NHMRC’s own guidelines on how to conduct evidence reviews.
FOI requests have revealed that a member of NHMRC’s expert committee overseeing the review process – Professor Fred Mendelsohn – confirmed the first review to be high quality saying – “I am impressed by the rigor, thoroughness and systematic approach given to this evaluation [….] Overall, a lot of excellent work has gone into this review and the results are presented in a systematic, unbiased and convincing manner.”
NHMRC said the results of the second report published in 2015 were based on a “rigorous assessment of over 1800 studies”. In fact results were based on only 176 studies.
NHMRC used a method that has never been used in any other review, before or since. NHMRC decided that for trials to be ‘reliable’ they had to have at least 150 participants and reach an unusually high threshold for quality. This is despite the fact that NHMRC itself routinely conducts studies with less than 150 participants.
These unprecedented and arbitrary rules meant the results of 171 of the trials were completely disregarded as being ‘unreliable’ leavingonly 5 trials NHMRC considered to be ‘reliable’. As they assessed all 5 of these trials as negative, this explains how NHMRC could conclude that there was no ‘reliable’ evidence.
Professor Peter Brooks, Chair of the NHMRC committee that conducted the 2015 review, signed conflict of interest form declaring he was not “affiliated or associated with any organisation whose interests are either aligned with or opposed to homeopathy”, despite being a member of anti-homeopathy lobby group ‘Friends of Science in Medicine’
NHMRC’s guidelines state that such committees must include experts on the topic being reviewed, yet there was not one homeopathy expert on this committee.
In 2015 Media around the globe jumped on the “Homeopathy doesn’t work” bandwagon and are still referencing this 2015 “second report” to this day – even after the existence of the hidden 2012 “first report” became known several months ago. It appears that for some reason it is not in their interest to reveal this information to the public…?
In late November 2019 several key stakeholder groups in Quebec held a press conference in Montreal to increase awareness of the findings of the suppressed NHMRC 2012 report and announce the creation of The Quebec Coalition for Homeopathy.
It will take a lot of work to restore the harm done to the reputation of Homeopathy by the NHMRC 2015 report but, with the continued support from the millions of people who have been helped by homeopathy, it will once again take the place it deserves in health care in Canada and around the world.
From a 2019 survey of Canadians:
In the past year 4.9 million adults used HM products.
HM users are most likely to be women, between 25-44 years old, university educated and parents of minor children.
The most common reason for choosing HM is because it is natural.
Satisfaction levels with HM are high at 77%, and driven mainly by perceived efficacy.
Most HM users (76%) expect to use HM in the future. Interest in HM among non-users is also significant at 20%.