sCAM to be regulated in the UK…

Blue Wode

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…by the new ‘Natural Healthcare Council’ which will be backed by Prince Charles:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3134337.ece

[It] will be able to strike off errant or incompetent practitioners. It will also set minimum standards for practitioners to ensure that therapists are properly qualified.

Patients will be able to complain to the council about practitioners and the new body will be modelled on the General Medical Council and other similar statutory bodies.

-snip-

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.

However, there have been long-standing concerns over its regulation. At present anyone can set themselves up as an acupuncturist, homoeopath, herbalist, or other complementary therapist. However, a poll for The Times found that three quarters of people assumed that anyone practising complementary therapy is trained and registered by a professional body.

Although the scheme will initially be voluntary, it is hoped that all practitioners will be forced to join or lose business as the public will use the register as a guarantee of quality. The council will register only practitioners who are safe, have completed a recognised course, are insured and have signed up to codes of conduct.

-snip-

The council, whose formation has been driven by the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health, will consist of lay people appointed through an independent process, with a clear division between it and the professional bodies representing the therapies that it will cover.

The work of setting up the council, which is likely to be finished by the spring, led by Dame Joan Higgins, has been funded by the Department of Health and it will follow the best-practice model set out by the department in its white paper on regulation, Trust, Assurance and Safety.
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…but, unfortunately, no mention of whether or not the new Council will be addressing these ethical dilemmas:

In the absence of specific research, it seems reasonable to suppose that individuals who are susceptible to placebo effects, will get the best results if their treatment is surrounded by as much impressive mumbo jumbo as possible.

This suggests that, in order to maximise the placebo effect, it will be important to lie to the patient as much as possible, and certainly to disguise from them the fact that, for example, their homeopathic pill contains nothing but lactose.

Therein lies the dilemma. The whole trend in medicine has been to be more open with the patient and to tell them the truth. 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
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Peeve #1: poor "nutrition", "massage" and "yoga" that commonly get lumped in with the snake-oil derivatives in these proclamations :(

Peeve #2: get Charles on the throne already and occupy him with Corgi breeding, he's doing a good deal of damage while he's twiddling his thumbs :mad:
 
For an excellent analysis, see here:
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/12/curing-homeopathy.html

Snippet -

Firstly, by what standards will the Natural Healthcare Council set for competence and training? Professor David Colquhoun has documented the training dilemma of alternative medicine by noting that most alternative therapies are based on nonsense ideas that have no scientific and objective merit. "It cannot be expected that a universities will provide a course that preaches the mumbo jumbo of meridians, energy lines and so on... Can any serious university be expected to teach such nonsense as though the words [of alternative medicine] meant something? ". Since, homeopaths cannot even agree amongst themselves what homeopathy is and what are its essential elements (not surprising, as it is not based on reality) then the Council risks either alienating large swathes of practitioners or being completely arbitrary in its criteria. Either will not protect the public. Setting education standards for homeopaths is like trying to accommodate Hogwarts into the National Curriculum.

Secondly, by what standards will practitioners be judged in handling complaints and when upholding professional standards? Should we uphold a homeopath to standards of homeopathy, aromatherapy, reiki or - heaven forbid - evidence and science? This is important. In deciding whether a homeopath has crossed a line of ethics in offering malaria prophylactics, who will judge them? If homeopaths are involved, the the public will not be protected as they have dangerous and delusional ideas about their magic sugar pills. However, if they are to be judged by the standards of best evidence, then no homeopath will join the organisation as they know that they cannot practice within their strongly held beliefs. In either case, the Council will fail to protect the public. You might think that homeopaths would be willing to disengage from their wilder healing fantasies in order to gain the credibility of the name of Prince Charles, but all my experience says that homeopaths are fiercely proud, angry and determined not to be constrained by any external forces (probably orchestrated by 'allopaths').

And if the Council do uphold the strongest standards and do this in a transparent and accountable way, will the UK suddenly be free from rogue practitioners? Well, no. My recent example of the the ASA upholding a complaint against Osteomylogist, Robert Delgado, showed that even statutorily registering complementary therapists has big loopholes. This non-statutory and voluntary registered body, the Natural Healthcare Council, will have even less power over practitioners.

But 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.
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I fear the Black Duck's right. :(
 
Eh fun part will be watching them trying to create a set of regs that look okey but won't result in outlawing large areas of alt med.
 
Just heard a guy from this body - sadly, rather than regulating the evidentially-based results of these treatments, the guy said the body was to "regulate the behaviour of practitioners whilst they work on increasing their evidence base".

This is not about "regulating" people prescribing quackery, as this body has nothing to say on the efficacy or otherwise of these treatements. It's about giving the quacks a governmental rubber stamp of approval.
 
The BBC's confusing and messy take on the announcement. You'd think homepathy had some kind of proven use in treating cancer reading this. Anyone with a deeper knowledge of the issues than I, is welcome to take them up on this misleading report..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7173026.stm

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volatile said:
Just heard a guy from this body - sadly, rather than regulating the evidentially-based results of these treatments, the guy said the body was to "regulate the behaviour of practitioners whilst they work on increasing their evidence base".
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Don't worry even that can be enough to get them into trouble.
 
volatile said:
Just heard a guy from this body - sadly, rather than regulating the evidentially-based results of these treatments, the guy said the body was to "regulate the behaviour of practitioners whilst they work on increasing their evidence base".
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Interesting you should say that, because the UK Reiki Regulatory Working Group formally withdrew from the Federal Working Group (FWG) set up by the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health (PFIH) following exclusion from its meetings in September and October of last year.

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
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:rolleyes:

Perhaps the group had read 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 in any way though 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://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85046&page=2
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98059
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85436
 
The problem with officlal regulators and associations, specially Govt approved, is that it can give the appearance of legitimacy to the unwary. It's like a Wizard's Charter.
 
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Just read the story on the BBC and had the same concerns expressed here. This certainly seems like something which will lend a sense of legitimacy to the claims of those registered with the body. Apparently being able to show you can effectively treat patients is not a requirement for being a member, but it's easy to see why a member of the public would assume otherwise and think that the person could do what they claim if they are a member.
 
I understand this marvellous new body will have the power to strike off "incompetent practitioners".

How on Earth will they decide that? I'd love to know if they have written criteria, or if it's just a sort of Zen feeling they get that someone's been prescribing dangerously unconcentrated medicine.
 
This is all connected with the £2 million that HRH's Foundation is spending on regulation schemes. The achievements of this effort can be found at Skills for Health. I've only linked to the homeopathy section, but you can search on almost any woo you like and find an official standard for how it should be performed.

Yes I did say £2 million. Before the Dept of Health coughed up, the Foundation already had £1 million from the King's Fund. Great thing the Freedom of Information Act.
 
That is actually priceless. I really must update the Voodoo pages soon!

Rolfe.
 
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