The Australian Government has made a commonsense decision to allow pharmacists to continue the sale of homeopathic products for those patients who find they derive benefit from their use.
The actual extract from the government response to the homeopathy issue in the final King Review Report states:

“Recommendation 4-4: Sale of Homeopathic Products in PBS Approved Pharmacies
Homeopathy and homeopathic products should not be sold in PBS-approved pharmacies.
This requirement should be referenced and enforced through relevant policies, standards and guidelines issued by professional pharmacy bodies.

Government Response
The Government notes this recommendation.
The Government notes the importance of the provision of information to consumers for all medicines and health related products available through community pharmacy.

Professional standards have been designed for use by individual pharmacists to assess their own professional practice.
They are intended to serve as guidance for desired standards of practice.
However, it is the sole responsibility of the individual pharmacist to determine, in all circumstances, whether a higher standard is required.
It is equally their responsibility to meet that standard and ensure that consumers are provided with the best available information about the current evidence for, or lack-of efficacy in, offered treatments and therapies.

As in relation to Recommendation 4-2, the Government has accepted the recommendations of the independent Review of Medicines and Medical Devices Regulation (RMMDR) reforming the regulation of complementary medicines in Australia.”
Unsurprisingly, there has been an outpouring of criticism of this government decision from certain medical groups using words like “quackery”, “patient rip-off”, “unacceptable risk” – the language of the Medical Fascists who conveniently ignore the serious side-effects and iatrogenic illnesses associated with mainstream medicine, that are anything but safe and a major cause of death nationally.
These same people also ignore the fact that global drug companies make substantial payments to this same group of Medical Fascists to lobby and protect mainstream drug markets by any means they can get away with.
The problem of hiding all these payments continually involves creative accounting or the use of offshore tax havens.
Trust me….I’m a Medical Fascist!

They are even revisiting a fabricated earlier decision made by the NHMRC in 2015 when a committee formed to investigate homeopathy was established and no expert homeopath was allowed to testify.
Also, the only evidence allowed to be presented had to have been developed in English-speaking countries.
That conveniently eradicated most of the useful knowledge and evidence because homeopathy practice is stronger in non-English speaking countries.
This particular committee was a “kangaroo-court”, stage-managed and controlled by Medical Fascists.
This was a denial of human rights and the predictable outcome “that there was no evidence to support homeopathy for any health condition” can never be regarded as a true and just “evidence-based decision”.

That pharmacists are medication specialists means that not only are pharmacists the natural choice of health practitioner to guide consumers down a safe pathway in their medication choices, but also to provide and support those consumers with a level of health literacy and knowledge to sustain a self care approach, which is also the most economical process.

It is a self-evident argument that the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA) has promoted, and the Australian Government now fully supports and agrees with.
In the words of Health Minister Greg Hunt:

“Professional standards have been designed for use by individual pharmacists to assess their own professional practice.
They are intended to serve as guidance for desired standards of practice.
However, it is the sole responsibility of the individual pharmacist to determine, in all circumstances, whether a higher standard is required.”

Well done, PGA!

This decision by the Australian Government takes away a considerable level of pressure the homeopathic modality and other natural therapy modalities have been experiencing from the Medical Fascists.
Recently, these health modalities have begun to organise themselves politically and are starting to develop fight-back tactics and strategies.

Pharmacy needs to support these practitioners because they provide a balance in the delivery of health and wellbeing.
Global drug company solutions can be very problematical.

That community pharmacy developed with strong roots in complementary medicines means that many pharmacists align philosophically with the principles of natural therapists who believe that assisting the body to heal itself is the best strategy for maintaining wellness.

The recent “win” allowing pharmacies to sell homeopathic remedies also is a broader win for pharmacists because it restores professional discretion to pharmacists that may not involve a mainstream medicine solution for their patients.

And that was a real target the Medical Fascists needed to destroy!

As pharmacists we must always provide the best solution for a patient from within our own personal discretion – genuine freedom of choice.

Other reading:

What Underwrites the Phenomenon of Illness Marketing

 

Medical Fascism – The Plan to ban Even Discussion of Alternative Treatments