Criticism
"How does a regulator decide what is good practice and what is charlatanry when none of it has peer-reviewed, scientific evidence that it works?... Professor Michael Baum protested that 'this is like licensing a witches' brew as a medicine so long as the batwings are sterile'... It matters that Newsnight found homeopaths advising patients visiting malaria areas not to take anti-malarial drugs. And that patients are told not to give their children the MMR jab." Polly Toynbee, The Guardian.
Private Eye magazine argued that the council had a conflict of interests between promoting and regulating alternative medicine: "Everyone would say that propagandists cannot be regulators because they cannot be trusted to act in the public interest." It quoted Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, as saying: "This is ridiculous. It really is a farce. All they will need to prove is that are following an established technique they believe to be appropriate. It's a ludicrous system."
Private Eye and The Economist reported that critics have nicknamed the council 'OfQuack'. Private Eye quoted a joke slogan, 'OfQuack - making quacks look professional since 2008'.
In January 2009, an online petition was started at the UK Government Petition website, asking for stricter requirements on efficacy and safety as a condition of certification. An official response to this was posted, but simply reiterated the terms of the current requirements. However, in response to the point made by the petitioners and others, the CNHC has now amended its website, deleting its original statement that regulation by them gives a guarantee of the efficacy of the procedures carried out by their registrants.
In addition to the medical criticism, CNHC have also been censured by the British Standards Institute for use of their trademarked term "kitemark", and have also been criticised for poor openness and an inconsistent approach to data protection.
There is a Twitter feed from OfQuack, an obvious parody as it has been described as "puerile and sarcastic", and occasionally refers to the CNHC separately from itself.
Read more about this topic: Complementary And Natural Healthcare Council
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
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—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)