Heir Brained

‘IF anyone is likely to welcome Labour’s back-to-the-future education policy, it is Prince Charles.

An accident of birth

The old crank is a sucker for anything with the word ‘traditional’ in front of it, whether it’s agriculture, architecture or apple sauce.

But it is the Prince’s championing of alternative health therapies that has landed him in hot water this morning, with one of the country’s leading doctors accusing the heir to the throne of ‘overstepping the mark’.

Professor Michael Baum told the Times that the medical establishment was exasperated by the Prince’s call for funding of a field that was his ‘personal prejudice’.

‘It is quite inappropriate for the Prince to use his influence to try and persuade cancer patients to adopt remedies without scientific proof,’ he said.

And in an open letter to the British Medical Journal, Professor Baum, a leading breast cancer specialist, went further.

‘Over the past 20 years, I have treated thousands of patients with cancer,’ he writes. ‘My authority comes with a knowledge built on 40 years of study. Your authority rests on an accident of birth.’

The Times says the Prince has been banging on about alternative therapies for two decades since addressing the British Medical Association’s 150th anniversary dinner.

Then, he likened the medical establishment to the Tower of Pisa, and attacked their suspicion and hostility to ‘anything unorthodox and unconventional’.

This would presumably be the same Prince Charles who has spent the past 20 years attacking architects who dared propose anything unorthodox or unconventional.’

Posted: 9th, July 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink