The UK science writer Simon Singh and the complementary medicines expert Edzard Ernst have lent their weight to a campaign against the use of chiropractic on babies and children in Australia.

Australian medical and scientific experts have also backed the campaign by Loretta Marron, a cancer survivor and former “Australian sceptic of the year” who advocates against unproved and disproved alternative therapies.

Ms Marron has documented at least 50 chiropractic websites in New South Wales that offer treatment to pregnant women, babies, and children and has called on the Australian government to close a chiropractic paediatric clinic run by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University.

The university clinic is teaching “inappropriate and potentially dangerous techniques that target pregnant women, babies, infants, and children,” Ms Marron wrote in a report she recently sent to the federal health minister, Nicola Roxon. “As this is a clear breach …