Estimates vary, but there are about 40,000 alternative healthcare practitioners in Britain. Most are subject to little or no regulation. This clearly amounts to a public health issue: the main purpose of regulation must be to maximise consumer safety and, if we cannot be sure that these therapists are properly educated, experienced and obliged to abide by generally accepted standards of good clinical practice, many patients' health is at risk.

Adequate regulation has been in the pipeline for many years. In the 1990s, chiropractors and osteopaths were regulated by statute – that is to say, they are now regulated in a similar way to doctor or nurses. Statutory regulation of herbalists is currently being finalised and acupuncturists may follow soon. Is this a good or bad thing?

On the one hand, it ought to be an excellent idea which might ensure that alternative practitioners do not harm their patients. On the other hand, it could be a fairly nonsensical action which merely provides credibility to professions that do not deserve it. To decide which of the two scenarios is more likely, we might ask how well such regulation worked in the past, for instance, in the case of chiropractic.

Did it prevent chiropractors from making false therapeutic claims? No, it did not. On the contrary, when Simon Singh challenged the British Chiropractic Association for "happily promoting bogus treatments", rather than getting their act together, they sued him for libel. Even today, chiropractors have by no means stopped using and advertising questionable procedures.

Did statutory regulation prevent unethical behaviour by chiropractors? No, it did not. Discount incentives and failure to obtain informed consent are still regrettably common among the UK chiropractic profession. What is even worse is that the General Chiropractic Council seems to take no action against such behaviour.

But perhaps statutory regulation of herbalists, which is coming next, will be much more effective in achieving its aim of safeguarding the public? Personally, I have my doubts: the draft regulations I saw did not include the obligation for herbalists to abide by the generally accepted rules of evidence-based practice. Because, in conventional medicine, such an obligation is standard, the exception for herbalists must have a reason. Herbalists of all traditions – including Chinese, Indian or European – practice not evidence-based but individualised herbalism which has little grounding in science and even less support by sound evidence. Forcing herbalists to adopt evidence-based practice would thus be tantamount to forbidding them to practice their trade. In other words, such regulation would regulate them out of business.

Considering all this, one may well ask what the primary effects of the regulation of herbalists and other alternative practitioners might be. Will it truly safeguard the public, or will it just provide credibility, status and security for the practitioners? My fear is that the latter will be the case. Until herbalists and other alternative practitioners grasp the nettle of evidence-based medicine, a simple rule of thumb will apply: the regulation of nonsense must result in nonsense.