The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH) have been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons.  £300,000 has apparently gone missing from their accounts, the police are now investigating, and it is claimed their 2006 Smallwood report was funded by shamed politician, Dame Shirley Porter.  They have now appointed a former writer for an AIDS denialist publication as their new Chief Executive.

According to the Daily Mail report linked to above, the disappearance of £300,000 from the charities accounts is the explanation as to why their most recent financial report has not been filed with the charities commission.  While officially no members of the FIH staff have been suspended there has been a shakeup in the upper echelons of the organisation, with the most notable changes being that former Finance Director and acting Chief Executive, George Gray, is no longer with the charity, having been replaced by a new Chief Executive, Boo Armstrong.  Ms Armstrong used to write articles extolling the virtues of alternative approaches to health in Continuum, a magazine with an editorial position denying the link between HIV and AIDS as described by science.  The FIH have been aware of these articles since at least  the summer of 2009.

Ms Armstrong’s appointment is reflective of how wider society has treated alternative medicine in the past, with minimal scrutiny and an assumption of benefit.  She has been awarded money from UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, for pushing alternative medicine and has long been funded by the FIH before she was officially placed on their payroll.  She has also had a position on the National Clinical Audit Advisory Group (NCAAG) for some time, where her profile lauds her charity work.  She was also behind a market research, rather than scientific, project measuring the impact of alternative health in Northern Ireland.  This was instigated by former Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, who believes that homeopathy and a restrictive diet* cured his son’s eczema and felt that this justified spending £200,000 of taxpayers money on a weak report.  At not point did any of the above investigate her articles for Continuum or even her personal views on various forms of quackery, for example she thinks that osteopaths should be considered equivalent to doctors.

However, more recently, Ms Armstrong and the FIH are becoming unstuck, quite apart from any police investigation.  Thanks to the tenacious David Colquhoun, the recent attempts by an FIH backed organisation to set up an Integrated Medicine course with the University of Buckingham has failed. In particular Ms Armstrong was rejected as a teacher because she was “not qualified to do so academically”.  The FIH have also been reported to the Charities Commission by Republic, a pro-republican pressure group, due to alleged political interference by the Charity and Prince Charles in the appointment of Professor Ernst.

Appointing a supporter of an AIDS denialist magazine as Chief Executive of a charity advocating alternative medicine is not a wise move given the long track record of denialism, unconventional treatment and unethical trials with respect to AIDS in the alternative health movement.  It is especially unwise given that the FIH are no longer operating with minimal scrutiny, both the police and skeptical bloggers, journalists and campaigning organisations taking a close look at them.

The FIH and Ms Armstrong were asked to reply to questions regarding their investigations of the content of Ms Armstrong’s articles and whether Ms Armstrong has retracted her views.  They did not respond.

*specifically a gluten and dairy restricted diet, (there is no indication that Peter Hain’s son was tested by a registered medical practitioner for gluten or dairy allergies).