The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7404 p677
10 June 2006

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· Education (2)
· NHS funding
· Complementary medicine
· Electronic prescribing
· The profession
· Women in politics
· Packaging design
· Statutory Committee
· Annual general meeting
· Council expenses
· Regulation
· Section 60 Order
· Council election

Letters to the Editor

Complementary medicine

Disproven remedies should not be promoted

From Professor E. Ernst

I refer to your item “Doctors spark debate about alternative medicine in the NHS” (PJ, 27 May, p616). The letter, of which I was a signatory, invited NHS trusts to use those complementary or orthodox treatments which are based on good evidence and to abandon those which do not fulfil this criterion. It coincided with Prince Charles addressing the World Health Organization on the subject of complementary medicine. In his speech, he said that “the proper mix of proven complementary, traditional and modern remedies … helps to create a powerful healing force for our world”. This statement, and much of the rest of his address, demonstrates an intriguing consensus between our and his aims. It is essentially a layman’s expression of what evidence-based medicine is about. We should all thank our future king for this important clarification. It is now up to Prince Charles, I believe, to instruct his Foundation of Integrated Health no longer to promote disproven remedies. If he does so, his foundation should be renamed as “The Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Evidence-Based Medicine”. If, however, he or his associates continue to promote disproven treatments, they are demonstrably misleading the public.

Edzard Ernst
Director of Complementary Medicine
Peninsula Medical School
Universities of Exeter & Plymouth

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