Gosh, Tredinnick really is throwing his toys out of the pram here. Singh's position is defensive, but certainly not aggressive; it's very reasoned and rational. And upon whose say-so are these remedies popular? Or used round the world? We've only heard anecdotes about two "European" countries: France and... er... India. But why, anyway, should it matter whether it's popular? Medicine is an evidence-based discipline, not a popularity contest.

OK, so "orthodox" medicine doesn't always work, but that doesn't mean that the next best thing is to reach for the magic water and the other bonkers ideas, such as fancy needles and hand-waving

Should doctors be free to prescribe *anything* they want to? That sounds rather dangerous to me.

It's very rich, in my opinion, to ask others to have an open mind when you yourself have completely closed your own mind off from the possibility that you might be wrong, Mr. Tredinnick.

We do not need to waste money on more research. There is already plenty.

Only the jurors with their fingers in their ears who won't listen to *all* the evidence (just the three crap studies that appear to justify their pre-existing prejudices) are out. The rest of the jury was in some time ago. Hence the recent conclusions of the parliamentary Science and Technology committee that homeopathy should no longer be funded by the NHS.

Qualified? To do what exactly? How can you have qualifications to practise something that claims to be scientific but makes no scientific sense? See http://www.dcscience.net/?p=1329 for a good starting point on that discussion.

India's a part of Europe now?! In any case, why is it relevant how many practitioners there are in France or India?

No. We are way *ahead* of Europe. As medical technology and knowledge advances, the number of practitioners using this outmoded and superseded theory should be going down, not up.

"Poorly blinded, inadequately controlled" would be closer to the mark

This is what the authors concluded, but not justifiably so. See http://dianthus.co.uk/worrying-scientific-illiteracy-among-our-elected-representatives and http://moteprime.org/article.php?id=46

It only shows that it's not enormously worse than a brand of SSRI, which is little more than placebo in mild/moderate depression anyway, and even thenit's only just within the error margins. See http://www.nontoxic.org.uk/?p=205

It shows no such thing. http://scepticsbook.com/2010/02/14/a-giant-leap-in-logic-from-a-piece-of-bad-science/ and http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/a_homeopathic_bit_of_breast_cancer_scien.php