Alternative or complementary medicine

This case presents possible problems associated with “unconventional medicine” in a particularly vivid form; the infant is seriously ill, the proposed treatment is completely unknown, and the frantic parent is obdurate.

The category of “alternative medicine” is commonly taken to include health practices that generally are not available from US physicians, are not offered in US hospitals, or are not widely taught in US medical schools. It covers a range of therapeutic modalities, some of which are currently being tested for efficacy by Western research methods, and some of which count as “conventional” in other countries. Some unconventional therapies are indigenous survivals of earlier schools of medicine, including homeopathy and chiropracty, while the waves of recent immigrants have introduced practices such as herbal medicine or acupuncture that are well established in other cultures. Schools of osteopathy and chiropracty medicine are accredited in the USA, and some homeopathic medicine is considered standard practice in Europe. Many medical schools and nursing schools now incorporate a unit on alternative medicine in their curriculum.

Underlying the concept of unconventional therapy is the question of whether medical judgments concerning disease and illness are objective or subjective. Are judgments based on Western science in a privileged position compared to judgments derived from non-Western sources? Or are all such judgments culturally determined? If the latter, then this requires changes in the medical curriculum and expanded efforts to determine which kinds of medical interventions, whatever their source, are most efficacious.