Patient-centred medicine.

It is easy within the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) literature to identify academic excellence, poor science and extreme bias. It is important to consider NHS service provision and the evidence separately. We would all agree that visiting the dentist is an excellent remedy for toothache despite the fact that there are no randomised clinical trials involving dental placebo procedures. Nevertheless, most of us intuitively accept the argument that dentists add value to our lives. Recently access to NHS dentistry has become more difficult thus separating the provision of an essential medical service from any argument about evidence of benefit. In a similar vein, we might separate health provision and policy from evidence of clinical effect in assessing CAM. Evidence is driven by clinical trials and academic excellence while health policy seems to be driven, in large part, by political expediency; thus, it would be sensible to separate rigorous science and politics in the context of healthcare.