Description
Patients in the UK spend more than £1.68 billion per year on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM, or ‘camistry’). The NHS funds nearly ten per cent of this. Americans spend more than $34 billion a year on camistry; Canadians – $6.4 billion on ‘natural health products’; the French – €279 million on homeopathic remedies alone.
Is this wise? Are resources being wasted? Could available funds be better spent on improving conventional care or providing counselling? Are patients being misled? Are funders being defrauded?
In this talk, Richard Rawlins combines his insights as a magician with experience a doctor to expose how alternative medicine works – and how patients can avoid being quacked and defrauded. He reflects on the views of HRH Prince Charles that ‘There is much more that can be done to foster and enhance those age-old qualities of kindness and compassion’ – but takes issue with the development of ‘integrated (or integrative) healthcare’ which undermines attempts to foster evidence-based medicine. Richard endorses Dr David Gorski’s view that ‘mixing apple pie with cow pie does not make cow better, it makes apple pie worse.’
agenda
10.45 am
Registration, tea and coffee
11.30 am
Welcome and introduction
11.40 am
Real secrets of alternative medicine
Dr Richard Rawlins, Retired Orthopaedic Surgeon and Author
12.30 pm
Discussion
12.45 pm
Close of meeting followed by lunch
For those who have pre-booked