Acupuncture for fertility treatment slamed by Professor for secondary gain

Once again Prof Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the Peninsula Medical School, has dismissed another complementary therapy, this time he has chosen to slam the use of acupuncture for fertility treatment.

Professor Ernst's not only the professor of complementary medicine he is also a member of the Medicines Commission in the UK for the last ten years. I believe this is why his research  has so much disregard for complementary medicine, why would he want to help patients recover faster through treating the causes of disease (through the complementary medicine approach); when patients can spend a lifetime on pharmaceutical products masking the symptoms. Complementary medicine has a different approach in treating patients with infertility, though this is not shown in any of prof Ernst's research.

Fertility treatment for pharmaceutical companies is big business with companies such as Supper Drug & Boots already selling fertility drugs. Why would companies like these who are authorised by the medicine commission want people having acupuncture for infertility. How do they rid all competition? through bias and inconclusive research supported by Prof Edzard Ernst.

Fortunately this form of bias research is being challenged. In December last year, a press release announced the plan by the European Commision (EC) to set up the CAMbrella project, (CAMbrella: a pan-European research network for complementary and alternative medicine), which will be supported with 1.5 million Euros of EC funding.
It seems that Professor Ernst believes that the project is dominated by partisan groups, and that a ‘pro-CAM’ bias would render the project a waste of money. Professor Ernst, it seems, has little difficulty with bias if it occurs in the opposite direction.  His anti-CAM biased research now registers as the single largest body of anti-CAM research produced by any research group, amounting to more than 1100 peer-reviewed publications. There are, however, grave weaknesses in the pharmaceutically-based evaluation methods used by Ernst’s group.