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Complementary medicine – just a placebo?
Professor Edzard Ernst

Some complementary therapies have been shown in rigorous clinical trials to generate no effects beyond a placebo response. Spiritual healing, Bach Flower remedies or homoeopathy could serve as examples. Other treatments, such as acupuncture, generate large placebo effects in most situations and, in some, might have qualities which could maximise placebo effects. This lecture explored what all this might mean.

Professor Edzard Ernst, of Exeter University, is Britain's first and only Professor of Complementary Medicine. Since his appointment in 1993, he has scandalised alternative health practitioners by rigorously testing therapies like acupuncture, herbs and reflexology, to find out what works and what does not. While he has trained in many alternative therapies, his background is in conventional medicine: he qualified as a doctor in Germany in 1978 and rose to be Head of Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine at the medical faculty of Vienna. He is founder and editor-in-chief of two medical journals and has published more than 30 books and 700 articles. His work has won eight scientific prizes.

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