Disclaimer statement

The Advertising Standards Authority and Fair Trade Department are against anyone declaring they can help with medical problems unless there is research evidence to back up such a claim.

We take issue with this for various reasons.

One, the reason very little research has been done into osteopathy (and other alternative therapies) is that osteopaths have had to fund it largely out of their own pockets. You can imagine how much of a struggle this has been. Can you imagine how much medical research would have been done if doctors had to fund it out of their own salaries? Therefore, although it’s true that there’s very little evidence showing that osteopathy works, there’s no evidence that it doesn’t work!

Two, the osteopath’s reasoning is from the point of view of applied anatomy and physiology. In order words, from a knowledge of how the body actually functions, we figure out what needs to be done. When looked at from this point of view, dealing directly and manually with common body dysfunction is simply an obvious way to go.

Three, only 13% of modern medicine is ‘evidence-based’. That’s right, 13%. Furthermore, a staggering 49% of medical interventions are classified as ‘unknown effectiveness’ (see the British Medical Journal’s website ‘Clinical Evidence’). Strangely, the ASA doesn’t have a problem with this.

Four, if all treatments that were not evidence-based were withheld, this would rule out a huge amount of pharmacological medicine. For example, antidepressants – a multimillion pound industry – have been shown to be largely ineffective. Have they been withdrawn? No. Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry has a stranglehold over the practice of medicine, and has a powerful commercial influence over medical and governmental opinion.