FSM is committed to:
- maintaining tertiary educational institutions free of health-related courses not based on science;
- engaging regulatory authorities (and other responsible healthcare bodies) to reduce the real and potential harm from ‘complementary and alternative medicines’ (CAMs) not based on science;
- publicly challenging the non-scientific principles of many practitioners of CAMs, revealing their covert attempts to deceive the public;
- engaging the broader public to help clarify the exciting potential of more science for better medical care; and
- educating the public to help them understand how to receive evidence-based healthcare and how to avoid misleading and sometimes dangerous alternative CAM interventions.
What FSM opposes:
- the teaching of so-called ‘health courses’ or topics such as homeopathy, reflexology, chiropractic, iridology etc in our universities and other tertiary institutions; this contradicts the commitment of these institutions to maintaining the highest educational and research standards, compromises the real science taught in those Institutions and gives undue credibility to unscientific practices – our healthcare system should not tolerate these so-called professions with their roots in non-scientific principles.
What FSM supports:
- teaching the history of the concepts embraced under the CAMs umbrella, but FSM opposes the teaching of the concepts and interventions as being valid science;
- all healthcare students learning about CAM approaches so that they understand the lack of scientific support for these claims and can help those they care for to make informed choices; and
- those allied health sciences (such as physiotherapy, dietetics, etc) with solid empirical bases and practices which are consistent with scientific principles.