An attractive alternative

Radio Scope The Other Medicine BBC Radio Four, Tuesday 9p.m.Alternative medicine is one of those topics that make normally easy-going people bristle. Words like "quackery" and "nonsense" tend to get thrown around by those who firmly believe that when you're sick, the only place to go is the doctor's surgery - and the only thing to come away with is a prescription.

Responses like these can give the impression that alternative medicine is in some way a minority interest, loved by people who wear socks with sandals in the winter. No so. In the UK where the growth in complimentary and alternative medicine, now more widely known as CAM, has been measured, the results are eye-opening. One in five Britons use some form of CAM each year and there were 20 million visits to CAM practitioners in Britain in 2003. To put that in perspective, there were about 14 million visits to A&E departments.

These figures were given in The Other Medicine, a new six-part series that explores the development of CAM. The series is presented by newsreader and journalist, Anna Ford who brings a dispassionate voice to an area of medicine that has caused heated debate. In the first programme, she teased out the question that's central to the growth of CAM, which is why, when there have such spectacular developments in conventional medicine in the 20th century, has their been a parallel growth in alternative medicine? She talked to CAM practitioners and clients and all felt that a major factor in turning people away from conventional medicine was the severe time constraints put on the therapeutic relationship.

Put simply, and I know this from personal experience, a visit to your GP can take five minutes with a cursory examination and prescription and cost €45, while for the same money an acupuncturist will spend three quarters of an hour finding out all about your current health status and your lifestyle before treating you in a relaxing, calming environment. It's easy to see which experience delivers a more positive emotional response.

This sort of shorthand analysis infuriates conventional medical practitioners and rightly so. Needless to say I changed doctor and my new GP is as holistic in his approach as any alternative practitioner.

A frustration with the claims made by alternative practitioners to be the only ones with a holistic approach infuriated the conventional practitioners interviewed in the programme, as did the unregulated nature of CAM. In the UK there are more than 200 different types of CAM, ranging from the now more mainstream acupuncture and osteopathy to iridology and colour therapy. At a practice called the Hope Centre, Ford met a GP turned crystal healer who, according to a mother interviewed had successfully treated her hyperactive son. "I find it hard to deny the sincerity of a woman whose son's difficult behaviour was cured by crystals," says Ford, whose voice betrayed just the slightest hint of scepticism, adding that people have amazing faith in things they don't understand.

Another GP-turned therapist George Lewith tied to explain why this new patient-led revolution is taking place. "It's not about a new gene, it's not a new drug, it's not a new scientific discovery... it's very different, it's about what patients want. It's the start of a battle about who owns health."