Values in complementary and alternative medicine.

In recent years so-called Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) practices have made significant political and professional advances particularly in the United Kingdom (UK): osteopathy and chiropractic were granted statutory self-regulation in the 1990s effectively giving them more professional autonomy and independence than health care professions supplementary to medicine; the practice of acupuncture is widespread within the National Health Service (NHS) for pain control; and homoeopathy is offered to patients by a few General Practitioners alongside conventional treatments. These developments have had a number of consequences: one is that both CAM and Conventional and Orthodox Medical (COM) professions have had to reappraise their professional identity. In manual therapy for example, questions have been asked about the differences between physiotherapy, osteopathy and chiropractic, and what the justification is for having separate professions.