Norman Baker MP Member of Parliament for Lewes constituency
|Home
Contact Norman at:
Norman Baker,
23 East Street,
Lewes,
East Sussex,
BN7 2LJ.
Tel: (01273) 480281.
Fax: (01273) 480287.
Email: info
This website has been partly paid for from the funds made available to every MP to assist them in communicating with and representing their constituents.
Printed and hosted by Pipex Communications UK Ltd, Humber Buildings, Humber Rd, Beeston, Notts, NG9 2ET. Published and promoted by Norman Baker MP, House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1A 1AA. The views expressed are those of Norman Baker, not of the service provider.
Local MP quizzes government over lack of research into non-conventional medicine
Local Lib Dem MP, Norman Baker, has called for complementary and alternative therapies such as acupuncture and Alexander Technique to be more easily available on the NHS.
In his exchange with the Health Minister, Andy Burnham MP, in the Commons yesterday, Mr Baker highlighted the fact that complementary and alternative medicine has been proven to be effective and cost-effective for some individuals and pressed the Department of Health to fund thorough, scientific trials of non-conventional therapies with a view to their being provided on the NHS in the future.
In response to Mr Baker, the Minister said that decisions to provide complementary therapies rest entirely with local NHS service providers and that it would be wrong for the government to mandate or rule out such treatments 'from the top down'.
Commenting on the question, Norman said:
"Our position in the UK is worryingly behind the times. Many of our European neighbours now have complementary therapies integrated within mainstream state healthcare and in the US over $1bn is allocated by the government every year for research into complementary and alternative medicine. In the UK that figure is virtually nil.
"Time and time again, the idea of comprehensively integrating non-conventional therapies into the NHS is dismissed on the ground that there is no scientific proof that they work. Yet I know from personal experience that treatments such as acupuncture and Alexander Technique do work, and don’t provide the side-effects associated with many drugs.
"Many of my constituents benefit from such therapies and it is important that the government becomes much more proactive in funding research into them. The government would never refuse to 'rule from the top down' in developing an area of conventional medicine that could drastically improve patients' quality of life so the decision to neglect the development of non-conventional medicine on this basis smacks of prejudice rather than sound science."