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It seems that bits of good news don’t come singly. First honours degrees in acupuncture vanish, Now a big chain of shops selling Chinese herbs and acupuncture has gone into administration. It seems that, at last, people are getting fed up with being conned out of their hard-earned money

Herbmedic Barking

A local newspaper, The North Herts Comet reported thus.

Customers of Herbmedic, which trades under the name Herbs and Acupuncture, on Queensway in Stevenage have been left counting the cost after shelling out hundreds of pounds for treatment they never received.

The company, which has practices across the country, is now in the hands of receivers, Macintyre Hudson.

Sandra Emery, of The Paddocks in Stevenage, paid £350 for 10 treatment sessions, but only received one before the practice closed.

She said: “A standard course of treatment is 10 sessions, so most customers will have bought this package.

Claudia Gois, of Walden End in Stevenage, paid £240 for 12 treatment sessions but only received four before the practice closed.

She said: “I went there on Friday and it was closed. There was no warning or anything.

“I got in touch with head office and they said it’s very unlikely I will get money back.

This report was on 1st April,  The company’s web site shows no sign of any problems, In fact they are still advertising jobs. So was this an April Fool joke?

No it wasn’t.  A visit to Companies House soon settled the matter. The whole company is insolvent, as of 27 March 2009..

Download the whole administration notice and the company report.

Criticisms of Herbmedic

This chain of shops was investigated by the BBC’s
Inside Out programme. (September 25th 2006).

“We sent an undercover reporter to branches of the Herbmedic chain in southern England.

On each occasion, the reporter claimed to be suffering from tiredness and was prescribed herbal remedies after a consultation lasting less than five minutes.

The herbalists, who describe themselves as “doctors”, didn’t ask any questions about the patient’s medical history or take any notes.”

This is so bad that even Andrew Fowler, a past President of the Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine, described it as “malpractice”.

“Herbmedic has been investigated by the authorities in the past.

In 2002, trading standards officers prosecuted the branch in Southampton for selling herbal remedies with 26 times the permitted legal limit of lead.

And in October 2003, the Advertising Standards Authority banned Herbmedic from describing its practitioners as “doctors”.

Despite the ban, all three of the stores visited by Inside Out referred to the herbalist as the doctor.”

See also the BBC report Herbalists’ customers ‘at risk’, and a report in the Sunday Times, Herbmedic accused of high-pressure selling.

Read the Advertising Standards report. Seven different complaints against Herbmedic were upheld.

This is entirely consistent with my own experience. I went into one of their shops and asked about a cure for diabetes (hoping the be able to refer them to Trading Standards, but the young lady behind the counter had such a poor grasp of English that her reply was incomprehensible. She just kept trying to push me into having a consultation with “the doctor” who appeared to speak no English at all. I left.

The chequered history of Herbmedic

The company that his just gone into administration is Herbmedic Centre Ltd.  It has been in existence for only two years. Its predecessor, known simply as Herbmedic, was dissolved on 13 March 2007, Companies House said

Type Date Description Order

Company Filing History
GAZ2(A)	13/03/2007	FINAL GAZETTE: DISSOLVED VIA VOLUNTARY STRIKE-OFF
GAZ1(A)	28/11/2006	FIRST GAZETTE NOTICE FOR VOLUNTARY STRIKE-OFF
652a	16/10/2006	APPLICATION FOR STRIKING-OFF

Another Chinese medicine chain seems to be having a few problems too

Harmony Medical Distribution Ltd (“specialists in acupuncture and holistic medicine”) seems to be still in business(web site here), but several very similar companies have been dissolved,  Harmomy Medics Ltd (dissolved 19 Sep 2006) ,, Harmony Medical Services (UK ) Ltd. (dissolved 6 May 2008) and Harmony Medical Services Ltd (dissolved 17 Oct 2008)

Given this history of companies that dissolve every couple of years and then mysteriously reincarnate with a slightly different name, one wonders if this really is the end of herbmedic, or it is just a device for shedding bad debts.  Is this just another “pre-pack administration“?

Watch this space for more.

What’s the latest evidence on acupuncture anyway?

A correspondent drew my attention to the 2009 Annual Evidence Update on acupuncture complied by the NHS Complementary and Alternative Medicine Specialist Library. This includes no fewer than 56 systematic reviews and meta-analyses.  Although the reviews are complied by alternative medicine sympathisers, they seem mostly to be pretty fair.  Well apart form one thing. 

Almost all of the reviews fail to come up with any positive evidence that acupuncture works well enough to be clinically useful.  Only two come close, and they are the two singled out as “editor’s picks”. Perhaps that’s not entirely surprising given that the editor is Dr Mike Cummings.

Again and again, the results are inconclusive: #8 is pretty typical

Acupuncture for tension-type headache: a meta-analysis of randomized, controlled trials.

This meta-analysis suggests that acupuncture compared with sham for tension-type headache has limited efficacy for the reduction of headache frequency. There exists a lack of standardization of acupuncture point selection and treatment course among randomized, controlled trials. More research is needed to investigate the treatment of specific tension-type headache subtypes.

Vast effort and a lot of money is being put into trials, yet there are very few (if any) positive results. Very often there are no results at whatsoever. All we hear, again and again, is “more research is needed”.

At some point someone will have to decide it is all a charade and start to spend time and money on investigating things that are more promising. 

Follow-up

A correspondent checked with Companies House to discover more about two of the directors of Herbmedic, Mr. Li Mao and Mr Xiao Xuan Chen.  They have a chequered history indeed. [download the complete list]

Mr. Li Mao is, or has been, on the board of 31 different companies. Of these 6 are active, 5 are in administration, 14 were dissolved, 4 were liquidated and 2 are active with proposal to strike off.  Not only is Her Medic centre Ltd in administration, but so is Dr China (UK) Ltd, and Great Chinese Herbal Medicine Ltd

With record like that, my correspondent wonders whether they should be disqualified.