Medical board backs down on new rules for doctors offering alternative medicine
The draft guidelines, published in 2019, would have effectively banned treatments that had no reasonable expectation of clinical benefit
The Medical Board of Australia has abandoned its plan for specific guidelines on complementary and alternative medicine, which would have effectively banned treatment without a “reasonable expectation” of clinical benefit.
In 2019, the board said specific rules were needed for disputed practices such as prescribing long-term antibiotics for Lyme-like illness, various alleged stem cell treatments and anti-ageing therapies.
Doctors would have been required to tell patients if their prescribed treatments were inconsistent with ‘conventional medicine’.
The proposed guidelines also warned doctors could be sanctioned for financial conflicts of interest if they were recommending and selling complementary medicines at their practice.
