Richmond House

In my normal life I probably get invited to at least one thing each and every week that I'd like to go to but can't because it's in London.  So, just for once, it's nice to have the chance to go to a meeting at the Department of Health in Richmond House.

Well not a 'meeting' as such.  More a demo. 

This is a bunch of postgraduate science students protesting against DH proposals to register acupuncturists, and practitioners of Chinese and other traditional medicine.  They argue that a registration scheme would give the impression that traditional medicine and it's practitioners are equivalent to western medicine and it's practitioners. 

I took a little test on old wives' medicine - what common spread should you put on a burn etc.  Then, because I got 100% in the test, I got a diploma.

I didn't tell them that I was there for The Times, or that I have a 'diploma' in western medicine.  Probably all very naughty.  But I did establish that none of them were doctors of medicine, and that they didn't have any evidence that a registration scheme for practitioners of traditional medicine would give any particular impression. 

When I got back to the office I further established that the 'proposals' they were arguing about came from a DH consultation document that described a number of possible registration schemes but didn't actually propose anything in particular.  The consultation was circulated last July with a deadline for comments of October 2009. 

The whole thing seemed a bit odd to me.  But it was fun to do get out and do a little bit of undercover reporting.  Maybe I will write something for the Eureka Blog on it.  I will certainly file my diploma with my other one.  It might come in handy.