6419/37 Aim21(3)

Introduction The Laing Chair in Complementary Medicine was established in 1993. Its financial basis was an endowment from the Maurice Laing Foundation. This was meant to provide core funding for the first 10 years. Recently a second, major, generous endowment secured our medium-term future. The 'Clinical Research Unit' was founded in 1994, and the Department of Complementary Medicine in 1996. In 2002 we joined the ‘Peninsula Medical School’. As the School does not have Departments, we are now officially ‘Complementary Medicine’ at the Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth. Today the unit employs 13 researchers and four administrative staff with wide-ranging areas of expertise and professional backgrounds. Our tenth anniversary is a welcome occasion to review our work in relation to acupuncture research. The aims of our unit were defined at an early stage and have essentially remained the same during the last 10 years. We aim: to conduct rigorous, inter-disciplinary and internationally collaborative research into the efficacy, safety and costs of complementary medicine (CM); to be neither promotional nor derogatory, but to struggle to be objective and to promote analytical thinking in this area. The overreaching goal of all our research is to maximise the benefit and minimise the risk of CM for the patient. Our primary allegiance has always been (and hopefully always will be) with the patient and with good science, not necessarily with interest groups such as CM providers or political/commercial lobbyists. The main research tools used are systematic reviews, meta-analyses, clinical trials, surveys and laboratory investigations.