[Sloper]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jun/10/complementary-medicine-nhs-more4

and about £1m per day on consultants, yep that's around £4.5Bn in the last 12 years which makes the expensive sugar pills seem like very good value for money.

[Slide]

WTF.  Give the fuckers a glade air freshner.  That'll sort em

[Sloper]

Consultants, patients or homeopaths?

[Slide]

The lot.   They can have a pool of them to lend out

[Slide]

Its all bollocks.

'Mr Jones i'm afraid you've cancer but here's a bottle of rose hip.  Bad-a-bing he's cured....

[Sloper]

Slide MRCP etc get yourself an award for bedisde manner.

[Bubba]

It may be a load of bollocks scientifically but if it works it works...and it does seem to for some people.

[slackline]

It may be a load of bollocks scientifically but if it works it works...and it does seem to for some people.

Placebo effect is well documented, so rather than wasting money on "official homeopathic remedies" how about just having a ton of plain calcium carbonate tablets that cost a fraction and get prescribed in their place, thus saving wasting money on hocus pocus nonce sense.

[Bubba]

I think a big part of it is engaging people's interest and emotions - some people need the hocus pocus in order to believe it's going to work, they don't want to just bang down a pill.

[tomtom]

It may be a load of bollocks scientifically but if it works it works...and it does seem to for some people.

Thats a really important point. If the person feels better - or is cured - despite only getting a placebo then they are still cured or feeling better!...

Google Ben Goldacre and homeapathy and you'll find loads. He's the Grauniads 'bad science' columnist and this is one of his pet topics....

[Johnny Brown]

Good article in New Scientist recently on the Nocebo effect.

[saltbeef]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jun/10/complementary-medicine-nhs-more4

and about £1m per day on consultants, yep that's around £4.5Bn in the last 12 years which makes the expensive sugar pills seem like very good value for money.

Sloper what are you alluding to? consultants don't get paid particularly well from the public sector compared to comparatively educated professionals. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Would you want a monkey doing your heart bypass?  

[Sloper]

I'm talking about management consultants not medical consultants, sorry if that wasn't clear enough.

[Monolith]

Having worked in a commissioning and contracts department within a PCT, I'm frankly more worried about the amount of money that gets squandered on stationary. Laugh if you will but the order books were obscene and unnesseccary. I dare say other areas such as facilities management probably yields some nasty surprises.

[fatkid2000]

Don't get me started - the NHS excels at wasting money. Fatdoc spends hours trying to control his departmental spend but that's a tiny drop in an enormous ocean.
 
The list for wasted money is enormous - mostly salaries.
If I start writing my views down I'll probably be struck off or offend people so I won't.

 Medical consultants & junior doctors are actually good value for money - in fact cheap labour may be somewhere near the truth for a newly qualified one.

[Sloper]

I have no problem with medics earning a good living, I do however have a problem with management consultants being charged for at £1000 per day to do feck all, and I should know as I had a very unhappy year working in the NHS and was paid a reasonable whack for doing precisely fuck all.

Fat witch of a director made me work (well attend on a random basis) my three months notice which wasn't very nice.

[slackline]

Half the people I work with within Sheffield Teaching Hospitals don't seem to have a clue how to do their job (including my manager).  E.g. Network server got infected with a virus, I ended up fixing it (with a Live Linux CD  )  Complete waste of money, as is the bullshit Myers-Briggs based personality training day we went on.

[Scouse D]

I recommend the book 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre.
www.badscience.net
Very funny exposee on all thing homeopathic/gillian mcKieth/placebo/fraud etc

[Stu Littlefair]

It may be a load of bollocks scientifically but if it works it works...and it does seem to for some people.

it's still a bad idea for two reasons. The first is opportunity cost; there are plenty of treatments out there that do work, work very well, and are either not prescribed or only prescribed as a last resort, beacuse there's no cash. Set against this backdrop wasting money on smoke, mirrors and a touch of woo is just crap. That money would be better spent on (for example) new biological agents for treating arthritis, which are much more effective, and have fewer nasty side effects like liver damage than the non-steroidal anti inflammataries which are usually prescribed.

The second reason is that it promotes a culture in which it is ok to ignore the cold reality of rational thought, because the alternatives are nicer. Such a culture has consequences: minors have died because their parents insisted on treating serious ailments with homeopathy...

[lagerstarfish]

I think a big part of it is engaging people's interest and emotions - some people need the hocus pocus in order to believe it's going to work, they don't want to just bang down a pill.

Similarly, the act of parting with hard earned cash goes some way to reinforcing confidence that something will work - which in turn helps it to actually work. So giving the stuff away (via the NHS) is counterproductive - make these wishy washy hippy types pay for their fairy dust and magic potions and everyone wins.

Now, back to the Mail crossword - 5 letter word beginning with B ..."intolerant of or takes offence to the opinions, lifestyles or identities differing from his or her own"...hmmmm..."normal" doesn't fit....

[tomtom]

Now, back to the Mail crossword - 5 letter word beginning with B ..."intolerant of or takes offence to the opinions, lifestyles or identities differing from his or her own"...hmmmm..."normal" doesn't fit....

Would the cryptic clue be something along the lines of "Before jockeys filled in tax returns"?

[Johnny Brown]

Further to that Nocebo link I posted above, some bright spark has realised that putting health warnings on fags is actually likely to increase the illness rate of those who continue to smoke...

[slackline]

Further to that Nocebo link I posted above, some bright spark has realised that putting health warnings on fags is actually likely to increase the illness rate of those who continue to smoke...

Smokers, bunch of hypochondriacs.  They're a dying breed anyway 

[Bubba]

It may be a load of bollocks scientifically but if it works it works...and it does seem to for some people.

it's still a bad idea for two reasons. The first is opportunity cost; there are plenty of treatments out there that do work, work very well, and are either not prescribed or only prescribed as a last resort, beacuse there's no cash. Set against this backdrop wasting money on smoke, mirrors and a touch of woo is just crap. That money would be better spent on (for example) new biological agents for treating arthritis, which are much more effective, and have fewer nasty side effects like liver damage than the non-steroidal anti inflammataries which are usually prescribed.

The second reason is that it promotes a culture in which it is ok to ignore the cold reality of rational thought, because the alternatives are nicer. Such a culture has consequences: minors have died because their parents insisted on treating serious ailments with homeopathy...

After reading Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" I have changed my mind totally and would now totally agree with your post Stu 

[Johnny Brown]

In principle I agree with Stu, but I know several parents who swear by homepathic soothing remedies for their babies. Rational folk who previously dismissed it. And the kids are too young to understand what's going on, so presumably less susceptible to placebo effects. Be interesting to see a proper study anyway...