Off-label prescribing by doctors needs to be left out of any regulatory clampdown on complementary and alternative medicine, the AMA says.

The AMA has warned that doctors who write off-label scripts for evidence-based therapies are being lumped together with those offering herbal remedies and even homeopathy, under draft guidelines drawn up by the Medical Board of Australia last year.

The draft includes explicit warnings against doctors initiating treatment without a “reasonable expectation” of clinical benefit and is widely seen as an attempt to rein in doctors offering fringe treatments, including long-term antibiotics for Lyme-like illnesses.

Doctors would also be prohibited from offering alternative therapies without “necessary” training and from allowing financial or commercial conflicts of interest to influence their treatment.