The Foundation for Integrated Health exists to promote aromatherapy, reiki, massage therapy, reflexology, homeopathy and a dozen or so other techniques. The treatments share a common absence of double-blind trials which can prove to the paying customers that they actually work.
Now the Foundation has established the Complementary & Natural Healthcare Council to regulate practitioners and assure the public they will receive a “positive, safe and effective experience”.
Who could possibly think they could get away with this? Step forward, the man behind the Foundation for Integrated Health – His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales.
The Prince's intervention has caused fury and hilarity among straight doctors. The science writer Andy Lewis has dubbed the Complementary & Natural Healthcare Council “OfQuack”. Some wag – no names, no pack drill – has even rigged the internet so that when you type
www.ofquack.org.uk into an address box, the Prince’s site pops up under the headline of “Ofquack – making quacks look professional since 2008”.
Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, is not impressed by the Council. He told the
Eye: “This is ridiculous. It really is a farce.
“All they will need to provide is that they are following an established technique they believe to be appropriate,” he added. “It’s a ludicrous system.”
And yet the therapists are treating HRH with extreme caution. The Society of Homeopaths, for example, declared that it had “yet to assess the suitability and standards of the Natural Healthcare Council for the purpose of providing regulation of homeopaths”. In other words, “we’re not co-operating”.
Meanwhile, the aromatherapists who gather at the website
www.aromaconnection.org lamented: “Within aromatherapy, the low educational entry requirements and abysmal course standards set in UK colleges are a national joke, so setting minimums standards for practitioners will presumably be a great source of material for satirical magazines such as
Private Eye.”
It might be worth double-checking.
