The Spanish Medical Council, Organización Médica Colegial de España, has recently adopted a resolution to recognise the practice of homeopathy as a medical act.
Some excerpts from that resolution:
“The Council takes the position that homeopathy should fulfil the same scientific and ethical requirements as any other medical activity.”
“The Council assumes its rightful role in defence of society and citizens’ health, based on the fundamental premise that any therapy, conventional or not, allopathic, holistic or homeopathic, is a medical act which requires a prior diagnosis of its therapeutic indication and application, and should necessarily be made by an individual who is legally qualified and authorized to do so, which means a physician.”
“Regardless of their results, all activities concerning a person’s health are regarded as health acts. If, in addition, they require a diagnosis, they become a medical act. Under existing law, in order to give a correct diagnosis a body of knowledge is essential which only medical doctors have acquired.”
“Homeopathic doctors are trained in both conventional medicine and homeopathy, and only their diagnosis and differential diagnosis ensures that citizens will receive a correct therapeutic approach, avoiding, above all, the error of omission and the delay in necessary treatment that, regardless of their effectiveness, may endanger their lives”.
“Homeopathy should be subject to the same ethical and scientific criteria as any other medical activity. Thus, to prove, scientifically, its effectiveness and efficiency through the implementation of relevant studies, developed with sufficient rigour and adequate methodology”.
So while homeopathy does get recognition as a ‘medical’ therapy, the council has also said that medical modalities need to be practiced only by trained ‘physicians’. There is no space for the non-medically trained homeopaths there.
What does the homeopathic community think about this?
How can a doctor practice in Spain?