Medical body acts against ‘psuedoscientific’ practice

Barcelona’s doctors’ association, the Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona, has begun disciplinary proceedings against 20 practitioners for using improper pseudoscientific therapies between 2014 and 2018. Cases of these types of medical practices have risen in recent years, from two registered in 2014 to eight last year, while another 11 are being processed.

The association’s proactive attitude towards so-called psuedoscientific therapies, which are those not approved by the international scientific community, coincides with action taken by the central government, which a few months ago announced a decree to regulate the issue (now on-hold due to the election), and the announcement by the Catalan government’s health department that a commission will be set up to supervise complementary therapies that could endanger the health of patients.

A few months ago, the Col·legi de Metges eliminated its homeopathy section and classified all natural therapies lacking scientific evidence –from acupuncture and reiki to reflexotherapy and chiropracty– as complementary therapies. According to the association’s secretary, Gustavo Tolchinsky, “the terrain is murky,” and he insisted that “all those practices that so far do not have enough scientific evidence to support them cannot be prescribed as main treatments.”