In relation to the malaria issue: I’m sure Simon can empathise with my outrage (as a homeoopathic doctor who had been contacted by his ‘researcher’) when he said that his ‘study’ showed that 10 out 10 homeopaths were prepared to give homeopathic prophylaxis against malaria. What he published at the time is a different matter. The debate was about homeopathy on the NHS and homeopathy on the NHS is practised by doctors who would never prescribe homeopathic malaria prophylaxis. I’m sure that Simon Singh can understand that as a homeopath (and medical doctor) who specifically remembered telling his ‘researcher’ in no uncertain terms on the phone that ‘there is no homeopathic alternative to orthodox prophylaxis’, it was horrendous to hear him refer to his ‘study’ in the way he did – making no mention of the 100% correct response given by medically trained homeopaths to his researcher.

In conclusion I will say that if Simon Singh wants the NHS only to allow evidence based medicine that is his opinion but as my column The Pie Man Strikes Again! shows, only a smallish percentage of orthodox interventions are fully endorsed when looked at through the lens of evidence based medicine. In my opinion it is medically unethical to use evidence based medicine as a tool to bash homeopathy and CAM and not to subject ALL medical interventions to the ‘evidence based’ test. Many orthodox remedies happily sold in chemists will fail and even some ‘highly established’ treatments in orthodox medicine both medical and surgical are less than evidence based.

I am also sorry that Brian misunderstood my comments regarding our investigation into whether homeopaths offer malaria prevention. I will not discuss it in detail, but you can find out more about the investigation at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5178122.stm or http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/71/ . When we started the investigation, we assumed that qualified doctors who offer homeopathy would not consider homeopathy for malaria prevention, but we thought we ought to check – sure enough, the couple that we contacted acted responsibly. However, the ten other non-doctor homeopaths we contacted were all willing to offer homeopathy for malaria prevention. There are thousands of UK homeopaths who are not qualified doctors and from our small survery it seems that the overwhelming majority of them would have been willing to offer protection against malaria.

When this story broke in media, it was clear from the outset that our ’10 out of 10′ result did not relate to qualified doctors. Indeed, Dr Peter Fisher (qualified doctor and Director of The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital) condemned the homeopaths involved: “I’m very angry about it because people are going to get malaria – there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria and you won’t find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get malaria, people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice.”

And in case I was unclear in any part of the UCL debate, I certainly emphasised in my speech: “The use of homeopathy in terms of malaria and HIV and asthma and other killer diseases – I don’t blame the NHS. Clearly the NHS don’t offer homeopathy for malaria. That would clearly be ridiculous. But what the NHS does is offer it a veneer of credibility.”