In light of recent developments in the UK regarding homeopathy, I would like to post here the reply I got from the Ministry of Health of Latvia when I asked them about the status of homeopathy and its medications in Latvia. The State Secretary of the Ministry of Health (or his subordinates) must be credited for the quite elaborate answer to my e-mail inquiry (which they could have thrown into the recycle bin, since e-signature is required for an application to be officially considered in Latvia).
Here is the red-tape answer (sorry for the translation quality, it is most likely equal to that of consecutive translation. plus the differences in legal definitions etc.)
Regarding homeopathy
The Ministry of Health has dealt with your electronic application of Feb 8 2010, in which you were asking about the status of homeopathy in the Republic of Latvia and homeopathic medications.
According to the Medical Treatment Law, medical treatment is professional and individual prophylaxis, diagnosing, treating, patient rehabilitation and care, which can be practised, on a regular basis, in their particular basic speciality field or sub-speciality field or supplementary-speciality field, according to the competences determined by the Cabinet, by medical persons who are certified and registered with the Register of Medical Persons and who have obtained medical education.
We would like to explain you that the list of approved medical technologies in Latvia includes homeopathy (traditional), initial examination of a patient using traditional Chinese diagnostic methods (pulse and lingual examination), as well as R. Voll’s diagnostics method, auricular diagnostics, corporal acupuncture procedure, point warming procedure, micro-system acupuncture method (auricular, scalp therapy), craniofacial regional acupuncture, intra-meridian acupuncture, prolonged acupuncture (micro acupuncture and application accupuncture), laser puncture, thermopuncture, pharmacopuncture, regional massage of acupuncture points and general massage of acupuncture points.These methods have been approved and registered in accordance with Cabinet Regulations No. 468 ‘Procedure for the approval of medical technologies and implementation of new medical technologies’, and the methods can be used in practice by medical persons only.
Furthermore, a homeopath and an acupuncture doctor, according to Cabinet Regulations of 24.03.2009 No. 268 ‘On the competence in medical treatment and theoretical and practical knowledge of medical persons and students who are studying in first- or second-level professional higher medical education programmes', are supplementary specialities of medical doctors.
Consequently, if the aforementioned medical technologies are used by a medical person who has received a certificate in the supplementary speciality of a homeopath or an acupuncture doctor from the Latvian Association of Medical Doctors and if the person is registered with the Register of Medical Persons, it can be deemed medical treatment.
Persons who do not have medical education and are practicing treatment of patients, hypnosis, coding and other methods that affect the psyche of the person, correction of person’s energetic fields (bio correction), acupuncture and other methods that affect the energetic system of human’s body according to Article 12 of the Medical Treatment Law, are not considered medical persons.At the same time, we would like to point out that healing cannot be equated to medical treatment and that healers are not medical persons.
Regarding homeopathic medicine, we inform you that according to the Pharmacy Law homeopathic medications are medications that have been made from homeopathic materials (products, substances or compounds) in accordance with the procedure for making homeopathic medications described in the European Pharmacopoeia, or if not described in it, in pharmacopoeias used officially by other EU Member States. According to Cabinet Regulation of 9 May 2006 No. 376 'Procedure for registration of medications’, the simplified registration procedure may be applied to homeopathic medications.
State Secretary
Any ideas on what could be done to counteract this stone-hard bureaucratic confidence in nothing? :)
Looks to me as though every one who claims to be able to diagnose and treat, who has been prepared to set up a system of education and registration, however modest, is in.
How active are your newspapers or television investigators/ If there is someone interested in investigating what you need are some volunteers with serious medical conditions prepared to go to the quacks as let them demonstrate their incompetence. Then ideally you need one or two real life cases of people who were misdiagnosed, with serious consequences. Satirical pieces on how this makes the Latvian system look silly would be particularly effective in conjunction with this info. You need people in the media prepared to follow where the story leads - questions in parliament, further stories that emerge as a consequence of the initial publicity. Finally lawyers prepared to follow through on one or more cases, to get compensation for the victims, the court system should keep the issue on the boil for a long time.
Once one of the group has fallen the others become much easier targets.
Sadly, but the media would be rather interested in anecdotal evidence of efficient quackery, I think.
It's sad that medical doctors close their eyes and mouths to the minority of them who practice medical quackery...
I think I will ask further questions to the State Secretary (he or his employees might be skeptics and well aware of the dubious nature of CAM. They just don't care, being good civil servants :) )
I am interested in answers how they differ traditional/conventional acupuncture from non-conventional :) What is the legal basis therefor, and so on.
By the way, does anyone knows a good reference in sources like the WHO that disprove EAV (and similar electroacupuncture quackery)?
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