SPAIN'S health minister Carmen Montón will call for the European Commission to cease to classify homeopathic remedies as 'medicine', because 'they do not cure anything'.
Her department will put in place all measures possible within the law, including legal action and fines, to ensure that only authorised products which give full and correct information are allowed on the market to prevent patients ditching medical treatment backed by 'scientific evidence' for homeopathy.
At present, a European regulation covering homeopathic remedies which is under discussion may lead to their being classed as 'medication' and even allowing them to continue to be sold in pharmacies.
This regulation could become a directive, meaning Spain and the other EU-27 would be obliged to incorporate it into national law on pain of a €150,000 daily fine.
These remedies would also have to pay the taxes established by the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Healthcare Products (AEMPS).
Most of Spain's autonomously-governed regions had already called for the previous government's health minister Dolors Montserrat to argue the case against this rule in Europe.
Last month, the General Council of Official Colleges of Medicine (CGCOM) and the Central Deontology Commission, covering ethics versus rules, publicly condemned all practices which have been scientifically proven to have no beneficial effect as 'unacceptable and contrary' to moral practices.
They say that to date, no scientific evidence has been able to show homeopathy has any effect, other than as a placebo.
Homeopathic remedies are based upon 'treating like with like', or the idea that substances which cause the symptoms of an illness in a healthy person are therapeutic for the sick when they show similar symptoms.
It was developed by German physician Dr Samuel Hahnemann in the 1790s and has not been developed since.
Highly-diluted substances, normally in alcohol or distilled water and taken in pill format, are believed by homeopathic practitioners to stimulate the immune system into fighting these much smaller quantities of disease-causing elements.
They are made using substances from animal, vegetable, mineral and synthetic sources, including arsenic oxide, table salt, snake venom, opium, thyroid hormone and even bodily fluids and tissues from sufferers of the disease in question.
Some go as far as writing down the ingredients on pieces of paper which the patient pins to his or her clothing, stands under glasses of water they then drink, or carry in their pockets, and some manage to convince patients that the substance used for diluting – alcohol, petroleum jelly or even water – eventually 'remember' the homeopathic elements and that these no longer need to be added.
Major medical research bodies in the UK, USA, Switzerland, and EU-wide teams have concluded homeopathy is not effective and should not receive public funds.
Homeopathic remedies do not include other 'natural' treatments in common use, such as herbs, acupuncture and aromatherapy massage.
Some medical practitioners believe these help, but as complementary therapy and always in conjunction with traditional treatment, usually for prevention or symptom relief.
But no medic would ever advise ceasing or avoiding 'conventional' medicine in favour of 'natural' remedies, since this can prove fatal.
An oncologist in Spain has recently reported a case of a woman who died from breast cancer, which was caught in time to have been completely cured, by rejecting scientifically-proven treatment and opting for 'alternative' therapy instead.
Cases like these often arise through the widely-held myth that the medical profession is 'in cahoots' with so-called 'Big Pharma', or pharmaceutical giants, in order to line pockets, which is not the case.
