---
title: "Homeopaths offer to help contain Ebola outbreak"
date: "2014-10-31T10:48:10+00:00"
modified: "2014-10-31T10:48:10+00:00"
url: "https://rationalists.org.uk/2014/10/31/homeopaths-offer-to-help-contain-ebola-outbreak/"
post_id: 6303
categories: ["Uncategorised"]
---

# Homeopaths offer to help contain Ebola outbreak

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has killed thousands of people this year. Although a vaccine is in development, there are currently no readily available, proven treatments for the disease, which is killing 70 per cent of those infected.

Now, the [National Center for Homeopathy](http://homeopathycenter.org/news/ebola-crisis-homeopathic-community), a US-based organisation, has said that it is working to contain the outbreak. “Homeopaths worldwide have been mobilising their efforts towards gaining entrance in those countries affected in order to provide homeopathic medical intervention to those individuals stricken with Ebola,” said the group in a statement on its website. “The overriding goal is to investigate Ebola firsthand, and thereby determine which remedy of remedies are best for treating this disease.”

The statement goes on to claim that homeopathic remedies have been used successfully for past epidemics, including cholera, diphtheria, and hepatitis:

> Homeopathy has had a longstanding record in our over 200 year history in the successful treatment of a wide variety of epidemic diseases, including hemorrhagic fevers, some of which are in many ways very similar to Ebola. In our tradition of working with epidemics, homeopaths attempt to determine a central or core remedy that proves effective for most individuals who have contracted the disease, which is named the “genus epidemicus.” This remedy is derived from culling symptoms from many cases, and finding the very few, or preferably, the single remedy which best matches the natural disease expression of the epidemic under consideration.

There is no scientific evidence base for the efficacy of homeopathy. Homeopathic remedies consist of substances so heavily diluted they are effectively water. [Scientists warn that](http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/evidence-check-homeopathy.html) when it is used in developing countries and promoted as cheaper or more effective than conventional medicine, it can seriously undermine medical work and put lives at risk.

Yet the practice has a controversial recent history of operating in Africa. Clinics have been set up all over the continent, sometimes offering “cures” for serious, fatal diseases such as Aids, tuberculosis, and malaria. In 2009, [a group of African and British doctors](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/jun/01/world-health-organisation-homeopathy-hiv) petitioned the World Health Organisation to speak out against homeopathy, saying that it was endangering lives. The WHO said in response that it did not back homeopathic treatments for conditions like HIV, malaria, and infant diarrhea.

A Green MP in New Zealand, [Steffan Browning](http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/green-mp-s-ebola-homeopathy-support-really-sad-expert-6119920), has been criticised for signing a Change.org petition calling for homeopathic treatments for Ebola to be tested and distributed as quickly as possible. The country’s health minister, Jonathan Coleman, summed up the views of many when he said that this was a “wacko idea, adding: “It’s very, very dangerous.”