Evaluating the Effectiveness of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Abstract

The dramatic increase in the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the Western health care setting has caused much debate. Critics of CAM therapies view research in this field to be scientifically unverified, and as such, not effective or safe to administer to patient populations. Proponents of CAM, however, argue that the evidence-based medicine model that conventional medicine uses focuses to heavily on the randomized controlled trial (RCT) as a source of evidence.