[...]... innumerable others And yet complementary therapies are staging an unstoppable comeback Behind the scenes is a tussle On one side are those proclaiming the virtues of complementary therapies; on the other, those deriding them as unproven, potentially harmful, nonsense To complicate things further there is a comparatively recent addition to the fray: integrated or integrative medicine that attempts to merge the. .. than in opposition to, orthodox medicine This description is more common in the UK, Europe and the antipodes than in the USA where introduction 13 alternative therapy is still the most widespread term Doctors, researchers and many practitioners have overcome this confusion by referring to ‘complementary and alternative medicines’, abbreviated to ‘CAMS’ The definitions are not clear-cut The House of... of the University of California in San Diego in the March–April 2003 edition of the journal Psychosomatics In response, Matthews and his team have developed a series of questions to help patients determine the reliability of information on cancer information web sites The answers to questions such as whether the treatments were for sale online, if the treatment was touted as a ‘cancer cure’ and if the. .. complementary therapy in the UK alone In the USA at least 20 higher educa- 8 the whole story tion institutions offer some form of complementary or integrative medicine courses; there are eight in Australia and upwards of 40 across Europe The media, too, have discovered complementary medicine At one end of the spectrum is the sober, sceptical, view illustrated by a short piece in The Washington Post in... biologists delve deeper into the workings of our cells; and astronomers stretch the range of their telescopes to see further across the vastness of space Complementary and alternative medicines are difficult to study, they require a reach into unknown territory Like all thriving areas of investigation there 18 the whole story are factions, personal animosities and a great deal of passion There are believers... kill 30% of the people it infected medicine s conundrum 21 Polio is next on the list The World Health Organization hopes to eradicate it within the next few years The success of the polio vaccination campaign is most visible, or more accurately, invisible, in the West People of my father’s generation lost schoolfriends to iron lungs after they had picked up the polio virus: it attacks the muscles... and general practitioners use the information to treat patients The therapies discussed here are used as illustrations When demonstrating the problems involved in evaluating therapies there is little point talking about those for which very little data exists Therefore, all the complementary or alternative treatments mentioned in this book have one or both of the following features: they have been subjected... peer-reviewed journals There is one major omission from the list of therapies discussed here: herbal remedies These are biologically active medicines They can be tested in more or less the same way as pharmaceutical drugs and their efficacy is as easy, or difficult, to determine The debate surrounding herbal medicines concerns regulation, safety and conflicts with other prescription drugs that patients... generation as one of the key drivers of this change Now in middle age, this group were young in the 1960s, when authorities of all types were being questioned While their parents would never have challenged a doctor, no matter what they were pre- 10 the whole story scribed, baby boomers not only question them but go off and seek other advice if they are not satisfied with the answer Furthermore, they have... rejectionists – never mind the indifferent This book is the story of how the latest research into complementary medicine, practitioners and patients is giving medicine itself a thorough examination 2 medicine s conundrum 19 20 the whole story I received a package through the post yesterday, a new gadget for my collection of supposedly useful technology As always I got out my penknife to cut the tape . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" The Whole Story This page intentionally left blank The Whole Story Alternative medicine on trial? Toby Murcott Macmillan ©. Gynecology. On the other side of the Atlantic, a leaflet pushed through the letter boxes of Islington in north London advertises a newly opened suite of therapy