HealthWatch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HealthWatch is a long-established UK charity which promotes evidence-based medicine. Its formal aims are:
- The assessment and testing of treatments, whether “orthodox” or “alternative”;
- Consumer protection of all forms of health care, both by thorough testing of all products and procedures, and better regulation of all practitioners;
- Better understanding by the public and the media that valid clinical trials are the best way of ensuring protection.
Its President is Nick Ross and its patrons are Baroness Susan Greenfield, Professor Tom Kirkwood, Lord Dick Taverne and Lord Walton of Detchant.
HealthWatch has a small but authoritative international membership, mostly of doctors, journalists, lawyers and medical scientists including a clutch of Nobel prize-winners. It promotes evidence-based medicine and is regarded by journalists as a reliable and unbiased source of information on medical science. It publishes a newsletter and occasional "position papers" on controversial medical treatments.
It was inspired by the oncologist Prof Sir Michael Baum, among others, and began as the Campaign Against Health Fraud mostly targeting unfounded claims by proponents of alternative medicine and downright quackery, but soon broadened to audit all forms of medical practice, and many of its members are more concerned about unproven orthodox therapies than complementary ones. Nonetheless it still sometimes attracts criticism from some believers in alternative medicine who claim that scientific approaches cannot be applied to their way of working. They have accused it of being in the pay of drug companies, but HealthWatch maintains it has no commercial sponsors of any form and relies on membership fees and donations from other charities.
