Alternative medicine practitioners may offer a more informative and satisfying relationship to patients, and the anecdotal support for alternative treatments’ rationales may have emotional appeal, but quack medicines cost money and cause harm. What really matters is whether a treatment can stand up to scientific testing.

Integrative medicine combines the best of both conventional and evidence-based CAM therapies for treatment, wellness, and prevention. 61 percent of cancer survivors have used CAM.

Red yeast rice is an over-the-counter supplement, long used in China, that has shown lipid-lowering effects in trials. It has become popular among Americans but, until regulation and standardization improve, its use will remain controversial.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ opinions on ethical referral.

Even if a placebo is safe, it should not be employed as a way of mollifying patients or glossing over underlying causes of illness.

Respecting patient autonomy sometimes entails adult patients' making what those in allopathic medicine view as poor decisions, but compassionate patient communication can leave the door open for patients to change their minds.

Balancing parents' rights to raise their children and a state's duty to protect children is no easy task. Even though most states have religious exemptions to child abuse or neglect laws, courts have ruled in favor of both parents and states, depending on the circumstances.

Wayne Vaught argues that physicians have an ethical obligation to treat CAM fairly, which means subjecting it to standards that are as rigorous but not more so than those applied to conventional medicine.

Discussing CAM offers an opportunity to study the development of basic medical science that refuted vitalism, homeopathy, humoral theory, miasma theory, the doctrine of signatures, and other prescientific myths that persist today.

Unlike the medical doctor’s “unlimited” license, CAM practitioners have “limited” licensure that carves out a designated scope of practice.