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Demands for greater supervision of alternative medicine practitioners
The prosecution of two doctors and a faith healer has been ordered by the Dutch appeal court, due to their treatment of a patient who died seven years ago.
The woman, well-known actor/comedian Sylvia Millecam, died of untreated breast cancer, having chosen alternative medicine as a therapy, perhaps persuaded that her illness was due to bacterial infection. However, although the public prosecution service had previously dismissed the case against three of the people involved in her treatment, a Dutch Healthcare Inspectorate investigation found that ‘various individual carers’ had offered such irresponsible care, based on ‘unfounded methods of treatment’, that disciplinary action or prosecution were likely.
The inspectorate now wants the law changed to ensure greater supervision of alternative practitioners and that all such practitioners have to be registered. It also wants it made illegal for anyone other than a trained doctor to be allowed to make a medical diagnosis. The Royal Dutch Medical Association supports the proposals.
(Full report: BMJ 2008;336:853
(19 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39549.
636586.DB )
* In many European countries, ‘alternative’ medicine has increased in popularity. When asked, for consumer surveys, about 60% of the public in the Netherlands and Belgium stated they would pay extra health insurance premiums for complementary treatments, and 74% of the British public thought they should be available from the country’s National Health Service. The Dutch population seeking treatments from alternative medicine practitioners was reported to be 6.4% in 1981, but this had increased to 15.7% in 1990 and, in France, 16% of the population visited practitioners in 1982, but the figure rose to 36% in 1992.
This article was published on 04/30/2008