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Dirty Politics / Prince Defiant Over Alternative Medicine After Doctors' Attack
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| Doctors have criticised the Prince's initiatives on complementary medicine, but he stuck to his guns in a speech today |
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The Prince addressed the annual meeting of the World Health Organisation in Geneva, arguing that an integrated, holistic approach was the best way of tackling chronic disease, rather than a "dangerously fragmented" approach that relied just on what he called the bio-physical treatment model.
While not detracting from modern medicine, which he said had served humanity well, he criticised excessive reliance on it for upsetting natural harmony.
"I believe there is now a desperately urgent need to redress the fragile but vital balance between man and nature, through a more integrated approach where the best of the ancient is blended with the best of the modern, and I am convinced this is particularly vital when it comes to the collective health of people in all our countries," he told the WHO delegates from 192 nations.
But in a direct challenge to the Prince's campaign, 13 British doctors and scientists issued an open letter to NHS trusts that said public funding of "unproven or disproved treatments" such as homoeopathy and reflexology were unacceptable while huge deficits are forcing trusts to sack nurses and limit access to life-saving drugs.
The scientists, who include some of the most eminent names in British medicine, have written to the chief executives of all 476 acute and primary care trusts to demand that only evidence-based therapies are provided free to patients.
The letter criticises two of the Prince's flagship initiatives on complementary medicine: a government-funded patient guide prepared by his Foundation for Integrated Medicine, and the Smallwood report last year, which he commissioned to make a financial case for increasing NHS provision.
Both documents, it is claimed, give misleading information about scientific support for therapies such as homoeopathy, described as "an implausible treatment for which over a dozen systematic reviews have failed to produce convincing evidence of effectiveness".
The letter was organised by Michael Baum, Emeritus Professor of Surgery at University College London, and other supporters include six Fellows of the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, and Professor Edzard Ernst, of the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, who holds the UK’s first chair in complementary medicine.
The signatories include Sir James Black, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988, and Sir Keith Peters, president of the Academy of Medical Science, which represents Britain’s leading clinical researchers.
The Prince did not fuel the row by referring to the letter in his speech to the WHO this afternoon. He did however stick to his guns, saying that increasing numbers of alternative therapies - including acupuncture for osteo-arthritis of the knee, the use of St John's Wort for mild depression - were being shown in clinical trials to have therapeutic effects.
And he singled out his Foundation for Integrated Medicine for praise, saying that for the last 11 years it had been the leading champion of the integrated approach to health treatment. This involved harnessing both modern and traditional therapies, looking at social and environmental influences, and empowering the patient by involving him in his own treatment, he said.
"I say that a mix of modern and traditional remedies that emphasises the participation of the patient can create a powerful healing force," said the Prince.
"It seems to be that in our ceaseless rush to modernise, many tried and tested methods which have shown themselves to be effective have been cast aside as old-fashioned or irrelevant to today's needs."
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