Ministers in the United Kingdom recently announced [3] that the National Health Service could ban doctors from prescribing homeopathic remedies. The announcement is a culmination of several years of campaigning by members of parliament who say that the health claims of homeopathy are unproven, their use is a waste of taxpayer money [4] and these remedies should not be supported by the nation’s publicly funded healthcare system.
The NHS could be spending around £5 million ($7.45 million) each year on homeopathic remedies, according to a report [5] by Good Thinking Society, a charity that campaigns against NHS funding for homeopathy [6]. Samuel Osborne of the Independent writes that the money the NHS currently spends on homeopathy “could fund 239 fully qualified nurses a year,” noting that homeopathy “has been extensively studied andconclusively debunked [7].”