Professor of complementary medicine resigns to save his research unit at Peninsula Medical School

Peninsula Medical School is about to advertise for a successor to Edzard Ernst, Britain’s first professor of complementary and alternative medicine. The action would seem to allay doubts raised about the future of the Exeter based research unit after Professor Ernst’s resignation earlier this year. “This is important,” he says. “We are probably the only unit worldwide taking the critical evaluation of complementary medicine seriously.”

Professor Ernst was appointed to his chair in 1993. Initially funded by a grant from the Laing Foundation, recent years have found him struggling to get sufficient cash from outside sources to keep going. The university, he says, …