“Over ten years of alternative medicine policy, successive [UK] governments have perfected the mystical art of "regulating without regulating”… Alternative medicine practitioners are being brought under a light-touch regulatory umbrella that confers legitimacy on them while allowing them to continue business-as-usual free of any requirement to demonstrate the evidence-base for their treatments. Industries built on pseudo-science are being allowed to pass themselves off as regulated health professions while subject to few of the checks of mainstream medicine. This is happening in spite of repeated scandals demonstrating the appalling record of professional bodies in the industry who have attempted to mislead Parliament, or allowed substantial proportions of their membership to make bogus claims.” Martin Robbins, The Guardian (23^rd February 2011)