FACULTY
STATEMENT — FURTHER THOUGHTS
by Peter Morrell
The Visitor. A poem by Tu Fu, 2 March 1982 – Peter Morrell
I would like to make a few more solid points about the Faculty Statement
which I have continued to reflect upon. Everything I have said before on this topic is based
upon prolonged historical study of homoeopathy, not upon passion, prejudice or divisiveness
as has been claimed.
Surely, the current success of British homoeopathy is entirely due to the
lay revival. Just pause for a moment and imagine where homoeopathy would be today if the lay
initiative for homoeopathy had not been launched in the late 70’s, and things had been left
to the Faculty. It would be just as backward and unadvanced in the public mind as it was in
1960 or 1970. In fact, choose any year you like between 1890 and 1970! That is a very clear
and accurate measure of how little the Faculty has done for homoeopathy in this country, and
by contrast how much the lay revival has achieved.
Even the BAH, which was supposed to be a campaigning organisation to keep
homoeopathy advanced in the public mind, has stood idly by and done absolutely nothing for
homoeopathy in over 90 years. These are the facts my opinions are based upon. It is clear
that the current resurgence of homoeopathy has been entirely created by and is still
entirely led and powered by the lay practitioners. Are they going to dispute these solid
facts – things that happened in the real world? Or will they continue to cling to fantasies?
Any part played by the Faculty in the current resurgence of homoeopathy
has been entirely marginal and insignificant. They have followed the lead of the lay
practitioners and while they have certainly benefited from its revival, their contribution
to it has been, and continues to be, utterly negligible. These statements are blindingly
obvious to anyone who lives in the real world and studies the history of homoeopathy and the
current scene. The Faculty have relegated themselves not only to a realm of fantasy, but to
the status of passive bystanders to the rapid growth of homoeopathy, eager to cash in on it,
but contributing nothing. They have painted themselves into a corner.
In fact the lay revival of homoeopathy was launched in the late 70’s
precisely because the Faculty had done nothing for so long and blocked every attempt by
those who tried to do something. They have done absolutely nothing for homoeopathy in over a
century, and yet they want all this marvellous progress, achieved entirely through the hard
work of others in 20 years, to be handed to them on a plate. It is astonishing.
To say they have done ‘absolutely nothing’ is not an exaggeration, it is a
plain statement of historical fact. It is the truth. It is an observation. And it is a
testament to their monumental indifference to the therapy they have been entrusted with ever
since the 1830’s. Our disbelief should not blind us to the stark fact that never once in
that whole time have they ever strived to popularise homoeopathy or make it anything more
than a narrow and elitist specialism for the rich. Furthermore, they have several times
deliberately stopped others from popularising homoeopathy and blocked every attempt both
from doctors and from laypersons from doing so. This point was made vociferously and
repeatedly by Dr John Henry Clarke, by Dr James Compton Burnett and by J Ellis Barker in the
pages of The Homoeopathic World between say 1880 and 1940; and then again by Edwin Tomkins
and Thomas Maughan in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. Every such attempt was blocked and fudged by
the dreary committees that have controlled homoeopathy throughout this century and held it
back. Read the journals, it is all there.
I am still amazed that a journal for students in lay colleges to read can
come to contain a document that is so packed with lies and smears, based almost entirtely
upon prejudice, without being challenged. Should we just accept whatever these doctors say
as true without any reference to a more balanced, less prejudicial or hysterical viewpoint?
It is another example of their astonishing arrogance.
Lay homoeopaths are fully justified in seeing the Statement as a thinly
disguised form of gutter journalism which was designed quite deliberately to poison the
public mind about lay homoeopaths, to try to discredit the lay Societies and the Colleges
and to cattle-prod politicians into legislating against them. This is a ‘fair, measured’ and
sound interpretation of the document. Where is the evidence for any other view?
None of the people who live and work in professional homoeopathy who I
have spoken with agree with a single word in it. Nor do they recognise from the document the
description it claims to make of their world.
It is only because NMQP’s have come to numerically dominate the current
resurgence of homoeopathy that the Faculty is even interested in their existence. If, as in
the 1950’s and 60’s, their numbers were still low, then the Faculty would be content to
blithely ignore NMQP’s. It is precisely because they are rapidly expanding and have eclipsed
MQP’s that the Faculty has even set up this so-called ‘working party’ in the first place.
Stated simply, they are perceived as an unwelcome threat by the Faculty, mainly in terms of
power and control.
I also question where the Faculty have got their information from and
which they claim forms the solid and objective content of their statement. Are we being
asked to seriously believe that this document was prepared by independent research that took
2 years to complete? Or was it just invented by the authors of the report, probably in a few
days? Who did the 2 years of surveys and data collection? Who was interviewed and
questioned? What questions were asked? Was it truly objective and rigorously and
independently organised?
Or is it just a hotch-potch of hastily assembled and prejudicial views by
some doctors about lay homoeopaths and based largely upon hearsay, prejudice, innuendo and
rumour? Here we have an oranisation that prides itself on rubbing shoulders with allopaths,
of cloaking itself in the virtuous trappings of scientific objectivity, rationalism and
experimental procedures. An institution that has spent most of the last two decades trying
to prove the efficacy of potentised drugs through expensive and long-winded double-blind
trials and desperately trying to distance homoeopathy from its clear historical links with
the ‘irrational’. Aren’t they now guilty of inventing the results without even doing the
experiment? What would their allopathic chums make of that? Or is their form of science just
a rubber-stamping of results that conform to their own biased expectations? No scientist
worthy of the title would accept such methods so why should lay homoeopaths?
If this was a sound piece of research, then how many Colleges were visited
by a team of competent and independent researchers? Who visited the Colleges and what
questions were asked? Which students and lecturers were interviewed? What clinics and
homoeopathic practices were visited? What patients interviewed? If this was a serious and
independent, 2-year study then they will have answers to these questions. We would all like
to know how it was conducted. Let us see the survey questionnaires, the lists of questions
and tabulated responses from patients of lay homoeopaths. Lay all this data before us like
the good scientists you claim to be and then we can all make our own judgements. Then we can
check the objectivity of your data, your research methodology and the bias of your questions
against accepted norms. Show us the evidence on which your views are based.
Because if the contents of the document were not obtained in that way,
then this so-called ‘1993 Statement’ becomes utterly discredited as a set of subjective
opinions, whispers, anecdotes and vile rumours. It becomes a worthless hotch-potch of
unsubstantiated and arrogant pre-conceptions and prejudices, hastily scribbled on the back
of an envelope by a group of doctors after dinner, bearing no relationship to lay
homoeopathy as it exists in the real world, but comes from a world of fantasy. In that
respect it is the same as the justifiably reviled and equally ludicrous BMA Report on
Alternative Medicine of 1986, and represents another monumental home-goal for men of
so-called medical science!
Evidence is the business of science, not poisonous rumours. And there is
no evidence of harmony in the 1993 Faculty statement. Nor are its absurd contents based upon
a scrap of evidence; they are based upon prejudice and inaccuracy, misconception and humbug,
of just the same type which has held British homoeopathy back for the past 120 years.
All this talk of regulation, on which the Faculty claim to be so keen,
will seem a tad less patronising and hollow when they present objective evidence to everyone
that any doctor who practises some homoeopathy is charging reasonable fees; has received
compulsory training in homoeopathy first; that their continued practice is tightly regulated
and periodically inspected; that their knowledge and skills are tested and upgraded by
retraining when necessary; with disqualification of the incompetent as a real option when
required. Qualification in allopathy does not constitute an adequate preparation for the
unregulated practise of homoepathy and the public should be told this. Only when your own
house is in good order is it wise to start throwing mud at others. At least professional
homoeopaths are making rapid and genuine progress towards regulation; aye and openly and
honestly for all to see.
There was nothing sad about my article, it was based upon sound historical
study. What was sad was the sniping and combative tone of the original Faculty Statement,
which wages a deliberate and unnecessary war on lay homoeopaths and which is couched in
wholly disreputable language and consists almost entirely of smears with hardly a shred of
truth in it. That was sad and it is still sad that they stand by that statement as if it
were based on a sound analysis of the real world, which it clearly is not.
The Faculty 1993 Statement is a badly written hotch-potch of muddled
thinking, that comes, not as claimed, from a two-year study of the real world of
professional homoeopathy, but from cloud-cuckoo land. It is fictitious, scurrilous and
insulting and poisons the whole world of homoeopathy. It should be universally condemned,
repudiated and withdrawn.