Forgot to say this in my last post. I also wanted to point out the increasing drive within conventional (allopathic) medicine towards evidence based medicine. Whilst it is true that in the past medical practice has been governed on similar lines to complementary medicine - hit and miss, going by personal experience of what works, building up into a body of evidence - there is now a stronger drive to find out which treatments are most effective, and doing so in a scientific manner. Hence we have the systematic reviews of research in the Cochrane Library , journals of evidence based practice and the National Institute of Clinical Effectiveness (NICE). Now that many complementary therapies are becoming more used within the NHS, I hope the same rigour will be be applied to examining their effectiveness from a neutral standpoint. Then we can look at the different therapies from a level playing field.

Bagpuss