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I have been in successful Homeopathic clinical practice for 15 years and have had a very supportive and collegial relationship with other health professionals. It concerns me that this relationship has been jeopardized by the comments of a GP in Tauranga, Shaun Holt.1I would be grateful to receive a CV of his formal qualifications and at which teaching organisation has adjunct Professor/Dr Holt graduated; and is this advicethat a medical practitioner's referral choice to do what is best for their patients should not include Homeopathysupported by the New Zealand Medical Association?The letter is most concerning, as in 2009 Shaun Holt published a short survey on Homeopathy in your New Zealand Medical Journal and the people surveyed had a positive and significant response to Homeopathic treatment.2 The printed reply from the New Zealand Council of Homeopaths (NZCH) was very supportive of this survey and called for more funding to be available to conduct further clinical studies on Homeopathy.It is unfortunate that there are few published studies in Medical Journals on Homeopathy, however this could be because the medical professionals are not practitioners of Homeopathy and their training is in the use of pharmaceutical medicineor it could be that Homeopathy does not have the same dose risks that pharmaceutical medicines have so do not need to undergo such rigorous clinical trials? It is reasurring, however, that published research is being conducted into high dilutions.3,4I am disappointed that the benefits that both our professions give to our clients should be jeopardized by such a call and I hope that our patients do not suffer as a result. Claire Bleakley (RC Hom, BSc/Psyc) Wrigley Street Health Masterton
Holt S, Gilbey A, Colquhoun D, Baum M, Ernst E. Call for doctors not to practice homeopathy or refer to homeopaths [letter]. N Z Med J. 2011;124(1332). http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/124-1332/4621/content.pdfHolt S, Gilbey A. Beliefs about homeopathy among patients presenting at GP surgeries [letter]. N Z Med J. 2011;122(1295).http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/122-1295/3627/content.pdfNewsmaker Interview: Luc Montagnier French Nobelist Escapes \"Intellectual Terror\" to Pursue Radical Ideas in China, Science 2010: Vol. 330 no. 6012 p. 1732. DOI: 10.1126/science.330.6012.1732Montagnier L, Aissa J, Ferris S, Montagnier J-L, Lavallee C. Electromagnetic signals are produced by aqueous nanostructures, derived from bacterial DNA sequences. Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci 2009;1: 81-90, Doi: 10.1007/S12539-009-0036-7.
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