Complementary and alternative medicine (2)
Editor – In your recent editorial (Clin Med June pp 211) you claim there is a conundrum. I am not clear if you are considering a lay person or a member of the RCP, who has to make this choice when you ask ‘Is it preferable to go to a registered acupuncturist who has been trained in the importance, for example, of using sterilised needles’.
For a lay person it is certainly better not to go to a practitioner whose therapies are not shown to be effective, so registration of such a practitioner can only do harm by misleading patients about the competence of the practitioner.
A member of the RCP facing this conundrum should consult the document that they received when being accepted as a member of the RCP. It is several decades since I received this endorsement, but I think it required me to maintain the highest standards of medical practice. ‘Alternative’ therapies cannot be thus described if they lack evidence of efficacy, so it is even clearer that no member of the RCP should offer, or accept, alternative therapies especially if the therapist is misleadingly ‘registered’. If an acupuncturist uses non-sterile needles this is an assault, which is in no way excused by ‘registration’.
Footnotes
Please submit letters for the editor's consideration within three weeks of receipt of Clinical Medicine. Letters should ideally be limited to 350 words, and sent by email to: Clinicalmedicine{at}rcplondon.ac.uk
- © 2010 Royal College of Physicians
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