Page 16 - Winter 13

Great news from the U.S. The AVMA’s House of Delegates have voted against the anti- homeopathy resolution! The vote was 90.1% against the resolution.
Here’s the sequence of events over the past year leading to the vote:
As you may recall, the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA), under the influence of a notorious skeptic, passed a resolution stating: Homeopathy has been iden- tified as ineffective and its use is discouraged. This resolution was accompanied by an anony- mously written White Paper, later identified by the AVMA and a member of the CVMA as hav- ing been written by Brennan McKenzie, aka Skeptvet, which contained his usual writings.
Upon finding out about this resolution- which, by the way, the Connecticut VMA claims was thoroughly discussed- but as it turns out, without the knowledge or consultation of any veterinary homeopaths or notification of VMA members in the state of Connecticut- the AVH stepped to the plate. We had our members con- tact their AVMA representatives, we wrote our own White Paper and sent it to all the AVMA delegates along with many other documents dispelling myths, informing about the evidence that exists, about our successful cases and doing damage control; and Ann Swartz (incom- ing president of the AVH at that time, current president now) and I traveled to Chicago for the Winter AVMA Meeting. After meeting many people- and doing even more damage control- it’s amazing how homeopathy’s detractors will stoop to such low levels and inflict damage to our reputations and practice of homeopathy so effectively- we won over many of the delegates who exhibited open minds and a keen interest in keeping open possibilities for helping more of our patients.
The end result of that Winter Meeting was
Update on Clinical Trial of Homeopathic Treatment of Hyperthyroid Cats
Chris Almond
A Double-Blinded Randomised Placebo-con- trolled Clinical Trial of Individualised Homeopathic Treatment of Hyperthyroid Cats and Comparison with Methimazole.
When Andrew Bodey, a colleague from a neigh- bouring practice, asked me in 2007, if I would collaborate on a clinical trial of the treatment of feline hyperthyroidism using homeopathy, I was pleased to be involved. I had no idea that the trial would take six years to complete. The idea came about through a scheme devised by The Department of Veterinary Medicine at Cambridge, whose aim was to encourage clin- ical trials to be carried out by vets in practice.
that the resolution was voted back to the AVMA Executive Board (EB) with a recommendation for them to send it to the Council on Veterinary Services (CoVS) for review. The EB also decided to send the resolution to the Research Committee for review. I have no details on the findings of these committees except that AVMA published that they found no good clinical trials and only case reports, which they considered anecdotal. However, they felt that the current recently-reviewed AVMA CAVM Guidelines were sufficient and no modality should be sin- gled out. (Note: We had forwarded these com- mittees many documents – they requested no more than 12 from us – including Liesbeth's piglet diarrhea study, the JAHVMA Zeel study, and my JAHVMA case report. I have no idea if they actually read any of these studies or just relied on summary information provided to them from other sources.)
This past November, the AVMA EB met and reviewed the findings of the CoVS and Research Committee. Prior to this meeting, our members once again contacted their reps- this time, the District reps who had seats on the EB. Our president also wrote letters to all the reps and the president, president-elect, etc. The EB concurred with the conclusions of these com- mittees about the existing CAVM Guidelines and singling out a modality. Further, they did not feel it was within the purview of the AVMA to adjudicate which remedies vets could and could not practice.
While the AVMA felt that the goal should be to have supporting evidence for different modalities, to start singling out modalities would lead to a very slippery slope, given the lack of evidence for so many practices in veteri- nary medicine. They sent a letter to all the del- egates explaining the above.
The big 2014 Winter Meeting occurred in January. The Districts (composed of delegates
Funding would be provided for any laboratory fees and necessary documentation. To produce a valid set of results, the aim was to enrol 40 cats onto the trial.
The number of cases we needed has been the main cause of the prolonged length of the study. Cases with very high T4 levels were ruled out of the trial, because half of the enrolled cases would receive placebo for 3 weeks. We originally attempted to acquire cases from sev- eral different veterinary practices, but because of the time-consuming process of blood sam- pling and consultations required, we were unable to achieve this. Most of the cases came from Andrew’s practice and I was even unable per- suade the vets in my own practice to get involved.
In spite of these problems, we have finally fin-
from regional states) met, the Allied Organizations (composed of organizations like equine practitioners, AAHA, feline practitioners, AHVMA, etc.) met, and then the important Reference Committee met. This committee considers all the opinions on this resolution from of all the other meetings/groups that occurred over the past 1.5 days and then votes on a recommendation, which is delivered to the HOD. So this was a VERY important meeting. A former employee of mine – great woman in all regards, now works in industry – voiced her opinion against this resolution at this meeting. She texted me that the vote against this resolu- tion was unanimous!
Finally, the HOD vote came, after over a year and being bounced around like a ping pong ball. The voting occurred without any discus- sion and was overwhelmingly against the reso- lution. The votes are weighted by # of AVMA members in each state, so it’s tough to tell how many states actually voted against this resolu- tion (or for it). But our members had again spo- ken to their delegates and our president had emailed all the delegates, so based on the feedback we had received, we had a pretty good idea of which states would be voting against the resolution. Just glad it’s all over!
Things we learned:
In a world with detractors – monomaniacal ones at that – it is very important that we net- work with our conventional colleagues. Whether this is through professional collegiality or attaining positions on professional organiza- tions, the more interactions they have with us, the more opportunities they will have to recog- nize that homeopathy is out there, it's safe, it's being practiced with success, and it provides an opportunity to help more of our patients.
Shelley Epstein
ished the trial. The results are now with Mark Holmes at Cambridge Department of Veterinary Medicine, who is going to do the statistical analysis. When we receive this information, we can start the writing-up process. Andrew hopes to get the paper accepted by a main stream veterinary journal. I have not yet seen the final un-blinded results of the trial, but I hope that the outcome will provide a useful contribution to research into the use of homeopathy in vet- erinary medicine.
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