Exaggerated claims for the efficacy of a medicament are very seldom the consequence of any intention to deceive; they are usually the outcome of a kindly conspiracy in which everybody has the very best intentions. The patient wants to get well, his physician wants to have made him better, and the pharmaceutical company would have liked to have put it into the physician’s power to have made him so. The controlled clinical trial is an attempt to avoid being taken in by this conspiracy of good will. (Advice to a Young Scientist)

The same comment about “controlled clinical trials” may be applied to other interventions than pharmaceuticals. It also indicates the need for rigour in assessing the quality of evidence and its relevance.

The article then questions whether full information would be given to patients on complementary therapies that are offered. This is frankly bizarre given that in the preceding paragraphs of the article you quote us as wanting full information on treatments to be given.

‘Full information’ or ‘full knowledge’ can mean different things. As argued in the post, I would be concerned that patients might be swamped with unhelpful information about useless ‘complementary’ therapies. As I’ve already discussed, the Greens’ call for the development of ‘alternative’ research methodologies and arguments for – for example – having ‘review boards’ for complementary therapies made up of representatives of those fields does not fill me with confidence as to the type of information that would be made available. I would be delighted to be proved wrong, though. Perhaps you could let me know, for example, what information you think it would be helpful to give patients re homoeopathic treatments for asthma?

On deciding the efficacy of treatments, and therefore whether they should be funded by the NHS, our policy describes a system similar to NICE. The policy states that we would want to involve experts in the field of that treatment in the assessment process, not to simply rely on those experts to make a decision as was stated in your article.

I didn’t intend to say that in the article – let me know if a particular part gives that impression, and I will clarify. It’s clear that the Greens would involve a range of people in assessing treatment. However, the policy does not read as if what is suggested would achieve the standards of an organisation such as NICE: as I have mentioned, developing ‘alternative’ research methodologies for complementary therapies does not sound promising. I would also be worried about a party that aims to ‘protect the availability’ of traditional homoeopathic and herbal remedies.

I thank you for pointing out the use of the term ‘learning disability’. I am sorry that this term was in the policy and that it was not changed sometime ago to ‘learning difficulty’. This was an oversight and will be amended.

Thanks for amending this. If the Greens haven’t already done so, you may find that involving the appropriate advocacy groups in the policy-making process is a useful way to avoid this type of problem.

As I’ve said, I’d very much welcome engagements with more substantive aspects of the post.