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Complementary medicines
Department of Health wants to avoid over-regulation
From Mr D. B. Needleman, MRPharmS
What a pleasure to read Robert
Woodward’s well written and cogent
letter relating to complementary and alternative medicine (PJ, 7 January,
p12). Dr Woodward makes the point that CAM philosophies differ from those
of modern medicine and, therefore, different methods of evaluation could
be more appropriate.
I am not at all surprised that yet again Edzard Ernst has been allowed
to reply. This aside, the last paragraph of his reply is opinion based
on misinterpretation.
The House of Lords Science and Technology Sixth Report (2000) does state
that CAM practitioners and researchers should attempt to build up an evidence
base with the same rigour as is required in conventional medicine. It does
not say that the same methodologies should be applied; nor did it intend
that interpretation.
This report, of which I am intimately cognisant (being a regular attender
to the House of Commons Parliamentary Group) deliberately did not address
the question of efficacy and was only interested in safety and the protection
of the public. To take one tiny paragraph out of context and out of a document
of some 180 pages is, I believe, a cynical attempt to promote views that
are not accepted by the thousands of practitioners and patients of the
various CAM therapies which were commented on in that report. Is it not
time that Professor Ernst should actively begin to promote that which he
professes to represent?
Dr Woodward expresses the wish that a pragmatic answer to consumer protection
could be found without hyper-regulation. This is exactly what the Government
keeps telling us. As a board member of the Council of Organisations Registering
Homeopaths, which is working to set up a single representative body for
homoeopathy, I am well aware of the Department of Health’s attitude
to over-regulation, which is what it wants to avoid by having a simple
and effective administration that promotes professional behaviour in a
professional and cost-effective way, especially in the case of those therapies
that have been deemed inherently safe (in the House of Lords Science and
Technology Sixth Report 2000).
David Needleman
Pharmacist and Homoeopath
Stanmore, Middlesex |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal