Sir, – I am responding to Paul O’Donoghue’s article (“Disturbing claims by homeopaths”, Science Today, April 12th).
He is perfectly entitled to his opinion, as are we all in this democratic society.
I find it “disturbing” that he feels so free to publicly disparage a fellow professional. I am a registered homeopath and if I were as disparaging of his profession, the Irish Society of Homeopaths would discipline me, as I would be in breach of its Code of Ethics; I wonder if his governing body, the Irish Association for Humanistic Integrative Psychotherapy, has anything similar in its code of ethics?
The Swiss government carried out an HTA (Health Technology Assessment) on the effectiveness, appropriateness, safety and cost of homeopathy in health care and it concluded that homeopathy is a valuable addition to health care. tinyurl.com/7ycunch
As conventional medicine has no solution to offer those on the Autistic Spectrum, surely Mr O’Donoghue would not advocate depriving them of a complementary medicine that has been deemed effective, appropriate, safe and cost effective by the Swiss government. – Yours, etc,