Medical groups including the Canadian Medical Association and Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology are voicing concerns about some proposed guidelines on how Ontario doctors handle alternative medicine, CBC News reports.
The Ontario college is taking submissions from the public and organizations about its draft policy guidelines. The draft policy will instruct physicians regarding how they should handle alternative medicine.
Though the college's proposed guidelines will make a distinction between allopathic medicine (traditional medicine) and non-allopathic therapies (alternative medicine), some medical professional organizations are concerned the draft policy falls short of its goal to prevent unsafe or ineffective alternative therapies from being provided by physicians.
Groups including the Canadian Medical Association fear that the proposed guidelines may give alternative medicine scientific legitimacy.
"We believe the draft policy should be revised to sharpen its focus, and should respect the conviction of many physicians and clinical researchers, that [alternative medicine] has minimal scientific validity and that recommending it to patients achieves no clinical purpose and may be unethical," the Canadian Medical Association says in a letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).