TELEVISION / Taking bitter pills

WATCHING programmes about alternative medicine can be hazardous to the health. If you experience sudden rises in blood pressure, mood swings and an irrational desire to take a lengthy and expensive course of treatment from a homeopathic practitioner and then dilute your payment ten thousandfold then, like me, you probably suffer from orthodoxia inflammata, an unusual sensitivity to the toxins given off by quacks and mountebanks.

In Public Eye (BBC 2) Janet Trewin entered the world of aromatherapy, aura cameras and crystals to put the case for regulation of alternative medicine, that medieval fairground of technophobia and make-it-at-home philosophy. It would probably be easier to get a jellyfish to take up weight-training, but however impractical the project you could understand the desire after the programme had traced the sad history of Grant Grove, a young man who was diagnosed as having Hodgkin's Disease (or cancer of the lymphatic nodes) and who died following a two year illness.

After an encounter with conventional medical ineptitude (lost files and an unsuccessful bout of chemotherapy) Grant decided to consult a local homeopathist. This man, who sensibly chose not to defend his treatment on screen, was unhappy with the original diagnosis and decided that Grant was suffering from Grant Grove Syndrome. The treatment appeared to consist of decidedly unhomeopathic doses of bullshit and little else. Grant was given an inspirational tape which advised him to go to a local park, seek out a large flowering tree and 'establish a relationship with that plant. This may sound like lunatic fringe stuff but I promise you it does work'.

This is the point at which irrationality encounters the law. The Cancer Act makes it a crime to advertise a cure or treatment for cancer. However, personal accounts of a triumph over illness attached to a description of a specific regime are not illegal and are consequently widespread. (It was a little cheeky of the programme to get indignant about this given that its own evidence consisted solely of two anecdotal histories.)

Such inspirational tales eventually led Grant into a macrobiotic diet, a decision which reduced him to skin and bones and certainly did nothing to help his worsening condition. Judging from the evidence of the blather spun out by two alternative practitioners he consulted, who were interviewed by Trewin, he would have received more therapeutic effect from leaning against one of those optimistic posters you see on dentist's walls. It was clear that Grant Grove had been let down by those he trusted.

But even if you think crystal therapists are dumber than the rocks amongst which they sit, it is difficult to see how new laws could easily tackle the problem. You can outlaw false claims and imprison the quacks, but you cannot legislate against what fuels this growing industry: human fears, human foolishness and human hope.