Five complementary therapies are once again available to Swiss people via their health system, with all becoming reimburseable under Swiss health insurance.

They are: homeopathy, herbalism, Traditional Chinese medicine, ‘holistic medicine’ (an integrated approach) and neural therapy.  They all become available again in 2012, however, the medicines must prove their ‘efficacy, cost effectiveness and suitability by 2017.

These therapies were available until 2005, when they were removed.  However, a massive petition led to a vote in 2009, in which two thirds of Swiss people backed the therapies, leading to their  reinstatement.

For the new trial, providers of homeopathy, holistic, herbal and neural therapies and traditional Chinese medicine will have to evaluate their effectiveness. The findings will then go before a recognised international institute – still to be determined – that will provide an independent scientific assessment. The UK’s NICE and the US NIH are both being considered.

The re-evaluation will not include new trials, rather an examination of existing data.

You can read the whole story here.

Here is our pick of the new MESH terms for people searching Medline/PubMed and many medical journals, catalogues and databases. The full list is available here in a handy tree format

Do remember to always check the scope notes to find out the formal definition, history and applicability of the heading.  These headings won’t be applied retrospectively to old material.

Catastrophization

Datura metel

Epidemics

Food, Organic

Horticultural Therapy

Information Literacy

Multi-Ingredient Cold, Flu, and Allergy Medications

Pain Perception

Watchful Waiting

Informed Consent By Minors

Medication Reconciliation

Neurofeedback

Synbiotics

Eye Pain

Freshwinds Institute of Integrated Medicine has issued a low price relaxation tape aimed at everyone who wants to learn basic techniques to relax their body.

You can find out more about it here.

You can follow their Twitter feed to get up to date news on new courses, which include one on complementary therapies and HIV @_FIIM_

A talk is taking place at Rudolph Steiner House on 5th April about anthroposophical medicine.

It’s given by Dr. Gerhard Florschutz, who in 1983, together with his wife Liz, founded the Raphael Medical Centre, the only anthroposophical hospital in the English speaking world.

Full details and directions on the website here.

The Wellcome Collection has been holding and recording a series of science talks at lunchtimes, with a strong emphasis on how we think and social behaviour.

Find out why some people can resist a chocolate biscuit and others can’t, the protective effect of disgust and even why how hungry you are can affect who you fancy.

All the podcasts are available free  – full details on the Wellcome website here.

The January edition of the NHS Evidence complementary and alternative medicine newsletter has been published online here.

There is a summary of recent systematic reviews, including inconclusive explorations of whether ginseng has an effect on cognition and the effect of antioxidants on lung disease in cystic fibrosis.  A round up of responses to newspaper reports observes that the Daily Telegraph jumped the gun when it suggested that tomato juice is good for bone health: the study they cited was a very small initial pilot.

There’s also a position statement on Vitamin D in health by a group of medical charities.

The results of the Annual Evidence check for Lower back pain are here.

The journal Science has recently interviewed the French virologist Luc Montagnier.  Montagnier won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his discovery of the HIV virus.  However he is also well known for being open to the ideas surrounding homeopathy.

In the Science interview he says

“I can’t say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules.”

In a study that was published in 2009, Montagnier demonstrated that some bacterial DNA sequences are able to induce electromagnetic waves, even at high aqueous dilutions up to 10^18. This study was an important contribution to the growing evidence base in fundamental research with direct relevance to homeopathy.

Although now 78, Montagnier is going to China to open a new research institute at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, where he will continue to explore electromagnetic waves produced by DNA in water.

In the interview, he also discusses the “intellectual terror” which makes it difficult to get funding in France for any research which appears to be homeopathically related and spoke in defence of Dr Jacques Benveniste whose research into homeopathy has been widely criticised in mainstream science.

Thanks to the European Committee for Homeopathy for this story.  The full interview is in the journal Science here – however there is a charge to read the article if you are not a subscriber.

We are pleased to announce a major international conference on Integrative Care for the Future, to be held March 11-12, 2011 outside of Amsterdam. Integrative Medicine/Integrative Oncology is evidence-based adjunctive care for the control of physical and emotional symptoms. The conference will open with a half-day Round-Table Symposium at which an international panel of Health Policy leaders will discusses the fiscal, organisational and policy challenges confronting Integrative Care. This will be followed by a full-day Plenary Session, at which experts from around the world will discuss the current state of Integrative Oncology in their regions.

Unique opportunities will be available to share experiences and contribute to the synthesis of ideas. Attendance is open to those professionally involved in oncology and related fields, including representatives of patient organisations, government agencies, insurance companies and educational institutions. For details and registration: http://www.integrativecareftfuture.org/

I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

Barrie Cassileth

Chief, Integrative Medicine Service

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

New York