The rampant commercial attitude of many organizations, even within charities, healthcare and spiritual pursuits, has been a continuing revelation and source of distaste for me. We have seen the social and political movements of the sixties to the nineties, a complete turnaround from mass political protest and spiritual endeavours to the me-generation and so-called market forces and globalization of today.

I suspect that like me, many Positive Health readers would expect charities, magazines, journals, healers and complementary therapists to be focused foremost upon the end result of their service or product – the people they are helping or healing, the information they are providing, the progress of their field of endeavour, etc.

While many individuals work tirelessly to improve the lot of their friends, families and clients, the market situation in which we are all placed appears to force everyone to focus upon making enough money to survive, advance against our competitors and become the so-called 'best'.

This competitiveness has afflicted virtually every aspect of complementary medicine, wherein organizations and individuals within each and every discipline slug it out to become 'top dog' in their profession.

We at Positive Health, straddling all disciplines encompassing complementary medicine, have strived to develop a balanced and ethical approach editorially and with regard to advertising. As all editors will confide, perfection is never attained in these areas, although the quest for fairness and lack of bias is never-ending, amid the huge commercial pressures of the marketplace.

I thought readers might be interested in the agenda which underlies Positive Health:

* To demonstrate the huge diversity, indeed divergence, of opinion among health practitioners regarding treatment approaches for health conditions. The publication of hundreds of articles and research updates relating to allergies, cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, and many other topics, often with diametrically opposite treatment regimens, is a deliberate attempt to demonstrate that there is no one correct health approach;

* To stimulate interest in and educate readers about the fascinating aspects of research, with the publication of research in all complementary fields performed by researchers from around the world. I have been told that many Positive Health readers take the magazine mainly for the research updates;

* Not to patronize readers or insult their intelligence. Where the audience is not scientifically or medically knowledgeable about many topics covered, not to lower the tone to the lowest common denominator, but to educate and advance the knowledge base of readers;

* Not to sell the editorial content to advertisers. Many published articles are written by authors who have written books, teach courses, sell products, etc. which they can mention at the end; however the editorial content is not intended to be promotional;

* To maintain a balanced and open-minded attitude towards subjects, from peer-reviewed research, orthodox subjects such as osteopathy, acupuncture, herbal and nutritional medicine, to more challenging, (from a reductionist point of view), topics of energy medicine and healing. There are many techniques about which I have little understanding, and of which I remain sceptical; however if practitioners can write in a credible way that what they are doing is achieving clinical results, I won't allow my ignorance or lapses in my own education to keep such information from our readers;

* Not to carry advertisements for products not in keeping with complementary and natural health approaches, such as (pharmaceutical) drugs, alcohol, tobacco. I

have been shocked to see advertisements for drugs creeping into complementary and mainstream health magazines, which I feel are out-of-place;

* To enforce the rules of the Advertising Standards Association (ASA), i.e. to not permit adverts which make claims to cure serious diseases or to dissuade people from seeing their doctors.

With regard to both the editorial and advertising content, we continue to advise people to be sceptical about products, courses and practitioners and to seek the best advice possible before embarking on any health programme.

If we have managed to deliver this message alone, then we will have succeeded in our goal of educating a self-thinking and critical readership – read the disclaimers on this page.