And, as you might expect, it's being backed by Prince Charles:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3134337.ece
I wonder what David Colquhoun will have to say about it. Here’s what he had to say in 2004:
The problem is that you cannot regulate properly an area when it is not, in most cases, known whether the product being offered has no effect above that of wishful thinking.
http://dcscience.net/improbable.html#times-04
And there's this from his excellent ethical ‘dilemmas at the heart of alternative medicine’:
To maximise the benefit of alternative medicine, it is necessary to lie to the patient as much as possible.
As if telling lies to patients were not enough, the dilemma has another aspect, which is also almost always overlooked. Who trains CAM practitioners? Are the trainers expected to tell their students the same lies? Certainly that is the normal practice at the moment.
http://dcscience.net/?page_id=10
And here are Edzard Ernst’s views:
One thing's certain, it'll give the alt-medders a lot of undeserved legitimacy."The need for regulation has the potential for creating a potentially serious conflict. Informing patients about the best scientific evidence will, in some cases, mean telling them about the lack of scientifically proven benefit and the presence of potential risks, yet this would be overtly contrary to the personal (financial) interests, beliefs and emotional attitudes of CAM practitioners."
http://journals.medicinescomplete.com/journals/fact/current/fact0803a02t01.htm
I have mixed feelings which go something like this:
- CAM exists
- CAM will always exist. There will always, always, be a subset of people who reject conventional medicine (or conventional anything) and want newage.
- If something is going to exist, it might as well be subject to some sort of standard rather than no standard at all
- This is better than the current 'no standard at all'
The ideal is for CAM to be subject to the same standards as medicine. However, that is not going to happen yet (or maybe even ever) as the very point of its existence is to provide an alternative. It irks me, but I have to live with it. So, if I have to live with it, I'd rather it was cleaned up.
I also have a suspicion that in trying to regulate, a lot more questions will be raised than at present, where no-one is trying to create or apply a set of standards. People ALWAYS question formal standards. So, it may turn out to be a CAM of worms...
...sorry for the pun
I have to agree with teek on this one (not that I normally don't, but she is a woman and probably hasn't had her regular beating yet).
At the moment, most of CAM is unregulated - you can claim pretty much what you want (within certain laws) as to the effectiveness of your treatments. A regulatory body would be in control of what you are able to claim.
It would also be a one-stop place for complaints and legal action, should a practitioner step over the line in terms of claims, treatment or otherwise.
As teek said, formal regulations are open to scrutiny and I'm sure that even CAM practitioners won't be able to agree amongst themselves what the actual modes of action of their chosen CAM is, let alone be able to come up with a set of regulations for them. This should help expose some of te dodgier CAM practices for what they are - essentially made up.
I'm not sure this is a good move at all.
It's not mandatory and doesn't seem to have anything in the way of teeth. I suspect it will only serve to increase sCAM's perceived authenticity amongst the public, and practitioners will use registration as a form of advertising.
People will still be able to practise their brand of quackery whether they register or not and if someone is struck off the register they can still go on practising anyway.
To me it looks more like promoting sCAM than regulating it.
If there was legislation that really set standards, regulated the claims of practitioners, stated what they are and are not allowed to treat, and enforced the rules with strong penalties, I'd be all for it.
This, however, looks more like a 'trade association' than true regulatory legislation.
.
"Regulation" of sCAM, in the USA, is a failed experiment. It puts the inmates in charge of the asylum and gives a false sense of legitimacy. Consider naturopaths (NDs), they are the quackiest group because they incorporate every type of quackery (homeo, acupunc, herbs, detox, etc.); yet they have approved schools whose graduates are licensed (in some states) to practice like MDs. That is because the government lets them regulate their schools and licenses on the basis that they must be best able to judge themselves.
Furthermore, an ND license is a license to kill with a certain impunity. Utah licenses naturopaths, and, when an unlicensed ND was arrested for killing a patient (practicing med without a license) his lawyer complained that the the ND would not be in trouble if Utah had simply accorded him a license. Once licensed, as long as the board says he was working under the standard of ND care, the law cannot touch him. (He may be subject to civil penalties, demanded by the family of the victim).
In Arkansas, a physical therapist was accused of practicing a chiro "adjustment," rather than a PT "manipulation"(!?), and fined $10,000. The State Supreme upheld the fine, saying that it was within the board's jurisdiction.
A homeopath in Nevada (where one needs an MD license to get a homeo license) mis-treated a patient; but the medical board would not sanction him because he was practicing as a homeo on that occasion. It remains to be seen what the homeo board will do; but they have a long history of turning away complaints.
The bottom line is that "regulation" does nothing to protect the customers, and gives sCAM an air of legitimacy and protects its practitioners.
??? I'm trying to think of a way a Homeopath can mis-treat someone?
Originally Posted by John Jackson
I tend to agree with those views and, interestingly, it's more or less what The Quackometer has concluded about the situation:
...what it will achieve is that Prince Charles' name will give credibility to all sorts of unproven therapies and wacky non-medically qualified people to go out there and pretend to be healers. And at the same time, offer no guarantee of protection to the public.
I don't think this is the answer and I think it will even lead to a greater threat to the public.
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/12/curing-homeopathy.html
(Long analysis)
Failing to diagnose correctly, delaying appropriate medical treatment, advising against vaccination, and offering dangerous advice?
The classic mis-treatment is delay of effective treatments (including talking people out of taking their regular meds and vaccinations).
In this case, Nevada homeopaths have a much wider scope of activity than traditional homeopaths, including prescribing real drugs, and invasive procedures (e.g., catheterization). In this case, he took a woman with untreatable brain cancer and installed a catheter and injected lots of irrational stuff. The woman's cancer had progressed to the point where she could not move, or communicate; but the sick Dr told her family he had her walking and talking.
The example is valid because he told his customers he was a homeopath; it does not matter that we recognize this as outside the tradition.
I'm with John. Chiropractors and homeopaths already have regulatory bodies, and all they do is give an air of authenticity, and even have promoting themselves stated as one of their main aims. If any regulations are applied to sCAM, they have to be exactly the same ones as are applied to all other medicine. Anything else will be worse than not having any at all.
That it sickening, truly sickening. I almost wish I hadn't read that. Uck.In this case, he took a woman with untreatable brain cancer and installed a catheter and injected lots of irrational stuff. The woman's cancer had progressed to the point where she could not move, or communicate; but the sick Dr told her family he had her walking and talking.
I love that word sCAM. What could be more appropriate?
As for Prince bloody Charles, isn't it charming to think that by the time he's king (if it ever happens), he may have been indirectly responsible for the demise of a number of his subjects?
Agreed, Microsoft gets this right correctig sCAM to Scam at the beginning of a sentence.
As to Prince Charles, just continuing a long an honorable tradition, though in the past methods were somewhat more direct.
Here’s what a spokesman for Penny Brohn Cancer Care, formerly the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, had to say in a BBC report:
Some hope.With 280,000 diagnoses of cancer each year, more people than ever before are seeking therapies which complement their cancer treatment.
We hope the new Council will highlight best practice, encourage research and build the evidence base. We also welcome any move to raise professional standards."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7173026.stm
Getting back to the original Times report…
…nobody seems to have picked up on the fact that the UK Reiki Regulatory Working Group’s formally withdrew from the Federal Working Group (FWG) set up by the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health (PFIH) following exclusion from its September and October meetings .Among the practices to be covered by the scheme would be aromatherapy, reflexology, massage, nutrition, shiatzu, reiki, naturopathy, yoga, homoeopathy, cranial osteopathy and the Alexander and Bowen techniques.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3134337.ece
Apparently the Reiki group had a number of concerns about the regulatory structure being proposed by the FWG, all of which it highlighted in a letter sent the PFIH and the FWG (copying in the Queen). See the right-hand column in this link:
http://www.reikiregulation.org.uk/
One of its main concerns was:
We believe the Regulator should have an overriding duty to regulate the practitioners, but not the practices or therapies themselves, e.g. such as the teaching of Reiki in its many diverse forms
Perhaps the group’s been reading section 5.14 of The House of Lords Select Committee Report on Complementary and Alternative Medicine which states that a feature of effective regulation is"...to understand and advertise areas of competence, including limits of competence within each therapy"http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199900/ldselect/ldsctech/123/12307.htm#a29
Not that it's enforced as at least one established CAM regulator in the UK, the General Chiropractic Council, seems to have turned a blind eye to defining and limiting the scope of practice for its registrants. See these threads to learn more:
http://www.skeptics.org.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=1610
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=85046&page=2
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=98059
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=85436
It's going to be interesting to see how all this unfolds.
I don't know if it's been discussed before, but some of you must have read the ghastly recent story from Australia. A baby girl's parents treated her eczema with homeopathic stuff instead of prescription drugs, and she died in agony at the age of 9 months, emaciated, and with her skin actually split in places. Homeopathy didn't kill her, but belief in it certainly did. The coroner thought the parents could be prosecuted. Can any Aussie menbers tell us what came of it?
It would be nice to have legislation under which parents who chose homeopathy (or other imaginary cures) rather than regular treatment could, if the child died, be charged with manslaughter by gross negligence. It's kids who need protection most, as they can't make the decisions themselves.
In reality, I realise it wouldn't work. It would have to be established that the patient could have been cured by regular medical treatment, and the only way you could do that would be through the testimony of regular medicos. Imagine the howl of outrage from the believers: the medical establishment protecting its own market! Well, I can dream...
This was mentioned on the BBC news tonight, with the comment :
"THe new body will have the power to strike off anyone deemed as incompetent"
How about including ineffectual in that as well?
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