You may have read about Ying Wu this week: a traditional Chinese medicine doctor operating out of a shop in Chelmsford, Essex, who for several years prescribed pills with high doses of a dangerous substance to treat the acne of senior civil servant Patricia Booth, 58. Following this, her patient lost both kidneys, developed urinary tract cancer, had a heart attack, and is on dialysis three times a week. Judge Jeremy Roberts gave Ying a two-year conditional discharge, saying she could not be blamed, because she did not know the pills were harmful and the practice of traditional Chinese medicine is unregulated in Britain, a situation that he suggests should be remedied.

This sounds attractive, and has been welcomed by alternative therapists, who see regulation as the path to legitimacy. It's worth noting that we do already have systems in place for dealing with dangerous substances and people who prescribe treatments that have dangerous side-effects.

But regulation for alternative therapists raises a simple problem: it's hard to regulate practitioners who make claims based on faith. Attempts at regulation have exposed these contradictions. The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council has a code of conduct that forbids alternative therapists making claims without evidence. Blogger Simon Perry complained about every reflexologist on the register on the day they joined if they were claiming to treat things such as arthritis, infertility, babies with colic and so on. All were told off, but the CNHC decided that fitness to practise was not impaired because the practitioners would have honestly believed their claims to be reasonable, since they would have been trained to believe they could treat these diseases.

So is training the problem? The government's review into regulation of alternative therapists has recommended that it should be compulsory to have a university degree in alternative therapies, and that universities should run such courses. What is taught on these courses? You cannot know, because universities have gone to shameful lengths over many years to keep the contents of these science degrees a closely guarded secret.

Myself and Prof David Colquhoun of University College London have obtained course materials from students who thought they were going to be taught the scientific evidence base for alternative medicine, and have been dismayed by what they found. Handouts from the bachelor of science degree in Chinese medicine at Westminster University, for example, show students being taught – on a science degree – that the spleen is "the root of post-heaven essence" and is responsible for the "transformation of qi energy", "keeping the muscles warm and firm". We also see the traditional anti-vaccine spiel, as students are taught that vaccination is a significant cause of cancer.

A lecture by Niki Lawrence on "Herbal approaches for patients with cancer", meanwhile, discusses the difficulties of the Cancer Act, which was specifically designed to protect patients from the more dangerous extremes of alternative therapists' self-belief. "Legally you cannot claim to cure cancer" it begins, on a slide headed "Cancer treatment and the law". "This is not a problem because: 'we treat patients not diseases'." Lawrence then explains that poke root is "especially valuable in the treatment of breast, throat and uterus cancer", thuja occidentalis is "indicated for cancers of possible viral origin, eg colon/rectal, uterine, breast, lung" and centella asiatica "inhibits the recurrence of cancer".

It is a tragedy that someone has contracted a fatal condition and is on dialysis. What worries me is that when you try to slot the square peg faith-based medicine into the round hole of regulation and university teaching, you create more problems and confusion than you started with.