Alternative therapists back their treatments on NHS

Acupuncturists, herbalists and homoeopaths were battling to defend their place in the NHS yesterday after eminent doctors recommended they be ditched.

Complementary therapists rejected demands that their treatments be subject to the same rigorous scrutiny as orthodox medicine and insisted patients should have the right to choose.

The row was triggered when the group of 13 doctors, including Sir James Black, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988, sent a letter to all NHS trusts calling on them to stop paying for complementary medicine and use the money saved for conventional treatments.

"Patients, the public and the NHS are best served by using the available funds for treatments that are based on solid evidence," they wrote.

Professor Michael Baum, emeritus professor of surgery at University College, London, who organised the letter, told the BBC's Today programme: "I'm all in favour of treatments that make people better but there is the issue of evidence. How do we know that what we are witnessing is a real effect or a placebo? If the NHS is spending good money on placebos at the cost of not providing effective medicines, then it matters."

The letter was timed to coincide with a speech given by the Prince of Wales to the World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva yesterday in which he urged foreign health ministers to adopt a more holistic approach to health. "I believe that the proper mix of proven complementary, traditional and modern remedies, which emphasise the active participation of the patient, can help to create a powerful healing force for our world," he said.