what is the best and most ethical model for the relationship between mainstream and alternative medicine: opposition, integration, or pluralism?
Despite radical improvements in medicine over the past 60 years, patients maintain multiple health care pathways that include high utilization of unconventional treatments. The authors examine three possible relationships between mainstream and alternative medicine: opposition, integration, and pluralism. Opposition, the traditional ethical position that the medical profession must eradicate unconventional medicine for the good of the patient, has withered away. Integration of mainstream and alternative medicine is increasingly advocated in tandem with hospital-based programs that amalgamate the use of conventional and alternative therapies. While advocates of integrative medicine often speak of “evidence-based” complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), integration fosters double standards for validating conventional and unconventional treatments. Integration also ignores unbridgeable epistemological beliefs and practices between mainstream and alternative medicine. Pluralism, whic
