Published 1 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a591
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a591

Letters

Complementary medicine

A very bad report on regulating complementary medicine

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

I think that in this instance the Department of Health is right to think again about the recommendations in Pittilo’s report.1 Both the department and the report have tried to separate the question of safety from the question of efficacy. But that is surely nonsense. You can’t consider the cost-benefit ratio for any course of action without knowing something about the benefit. In fact the report does consider the efficacy of herbalism and acupuncture, but its assessment of the evidence is execrably bad.2 The group who wrote the report consists mainly of people with a vested interest in extending alternative medicine. Pittilo’s own university runs several courses that would benefit from his recommendation that alternative practitioners should all take honours degrees.

It is silly to say that everyone must do honours degrees while at the same time saying that we don’t know yet whether the treatments work. Do you really . . . [Full text of this article]

David Colquhoun, research professor of pharmacology

1 University College London, London WC1E 6BT

d.colquhoun@ucl.ac.uk


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Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

The human element
Arun Nanivadekar
bmj.com, 5 Jul 2008 [Full text]
A bad report?
Peter O'Loughlin
bmj.com, 6 Jul 2008 [Full text]
Omissions & Omissions!
John Boyce
bmj.com, 7 Jul 2008 [Full text]
Re: Omissions & Omissions!
Peter O'Loughlin
bmj.com, 9 Jul 2008 [Full text]
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