PBA homeopathy ruling?
April 23, 2014
Friends of Science in Medicine
(FSM) is calling on the Pharmacy
Board of Australia (PBA) to urge
pharmacists to rid their shelves of
homeopathic medicines following
the National Health and Medical
Research Council (NHMRC)’s draft
report on homeopathy.
The draft paper found there
was “no reliable evidence that
homeopathy is effective for
treating health conditions” and
FSM founding president Professor
John Dwyer said as people welltrained
in science and asking for a
larger role in primary healthcare
provision, pharmacists should not
be stocking their shelves with nonevidence
based products.
As some of the most trusted
healthcare professionals in the
country, and as an industry
which adhered to the PBA’s code
of conduct, which stated that
pharmacists would practise in
accordance with the current and
accepted evidence base of the
health profession, pharmacists
needed to be “champions of
evidence based medicine,” he said.
FSM was asking the Board to
reinforce the message that its code
of conduct committed pharmacists
to provide evidence based products
and that if there was no evidence
for a product, it should not be
“foisted” on the public, he said.
A PBA spokesperson said while
the Health Practitioner Regulation
National Law did not limit practice,
all pharmacists needed to adhere
to its codes and guidelines.
The spokesperson said if anyone
had concerns about a pharmacist’s
health, conduct or performance,
they could lodge a notification with
the Board.
In its ‘Guidelines on practice -
specific issues’, the PBA has stated
that a pharmacist acting in the
capacity of an alternative therapies
consultant is to carry out this
function as “separate and distinct
from the practice of pharmacy in
approved-pharmacy premises.”
Complementary Healthcare
Council ceo Carl Gibson said
homeopathy had been around for
a couple of hundred years and he
was sure it would be around long
after the critics were gone.
A Pharmacy Guild of Australia
spokesman said people were
entitled to make such calls of
the PBA and the Guild was not a
regulatory authority.
The Guild policy for all
complementary medicines was
that pharmacists needed to adhere
to their professional and ethical
requirements in providing sound
advice about the evidence basis,
in relation to all products sold, he
said.
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