Last month saw the announcement of the controversial plan to remove complementary therapies from the treatments offered by the UK’s National Health Service.

Some of the country’s leading doctors insisted that the money spent on alternatives should be used to fund conventional treatments, but their views met stiff opposition at every level – even from the royal family.

Prince Charles has long been a supporter of complementary remedies, and has recently been campaigning for even more of these treatments to be funded by the NHS. This latest news has therefore come as a bit of a bombshell, and has also outraged the many patients who are firm believers in alternative therapies.

The Times covered the topic in some detail, and published a mini review of the performance of some of the most well known therapies. Based on research by Toby Murcott, author of The Whole Story: Alternative Medicine on Trial?, they gave the eight therapies on test a “star” rating from one to four. This rating was based on a combination of the results achieved and the quality of testing.

Acupuncture and herbal medicine did best with four stars, then came Chinese herbal medicine with three, chiropractic and osteopathy with two and aromatherapy, reflexology and homeopathy with one each.

One problem with these results (and perhaps the reason that some of the scores came out relatively low) is that there just hasn’t been enough officially recognised testing to prove the claims made by complementary therapists.

The level of funding for tests, readily available to the major drug companies, simply isn’t an option - which means that a like-for-like testing programme currently seems impossible. As a result or this lack of conclusive evidence, some sceptics now claim that treatments such as homeopathy are deeply flawed, untested, unproven and even involve some form of brainwashing.

It’s difficult to see how brainwashing could possibly work on animals though and there are numerous homeopathic veterinary practices in UK who see family pets daily.

Homeopathy has also apparently been widely and successfully in farming, used to treat problems such as mastitis in cows. If the complementary approach works, it obviously seems a better choice than the chemical alternative – which often means a huge dose of drugs such as antibiotics, some of which may find their way into the milk supply.

So doubtless the arguments will rage on, but in the meantime, there are thousands of testimonials from people who have had amazing results from complementary therapies, not only for specific medical issues, but also for general quality of life.