Complementary and alternative medicine (1)
Editor – I must confess to some puzzlement after reading Professor Allan's editorial (Clin Med June pp 211). The main theme of the article seems to be a review of recent debates around the registration of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners but it hardly seems to me to make the RCP's position ‘crystal clear’. Indeed, Professor Allan even refers to the existence of a ‘conundrum’ surrounding the acceptance of CAM and the registration of its practitioners. To many of us there is no conundrum: the RCP and its allied bodies such as the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges should be campaigning actively and vigorously against CAM; we should be advising the public that CAM is, at best, an expensive placebo and at worst a series of risk-prone procedures which may lead, for example, to the spread of blood-borne infections or damage to vital organs by unskilled manipulation.
Footnotes
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- © 2010 Royal College of Physicians
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