Med Students Say Conventional Medicine Would Benefit By Integrating Alternative Therapies

Interesting study showing the future physician workforce is much more open to CAM, but the "lack of research" conundrum still exists:

" 84 percent of participants agreed to some extent that the field contains beliefs, ideas, and therapies from which conventional medicine could benefit.

- 49 percent of participating medical students indicated that they have used complementary and alternative treatments however few would recommend or use these treatments in their practice until more scientific assessment has occurred."

The problem here is that less research is done on CAM because there is less funding, in part because in many cases there is less money to be made so no individual organization will fund the research to determine efficacy, safety and drug interactions that are all done when a pharmaceutical company develops a new drug for FDA approval. The difference is the pharma company has a financial interest and seeks the financial benefit of the drug getting approved, so they put up the money to do the studies. One could argue about the rigor and speed of the pharma studies, but they are at the least uniform and provide with which to compare information about therapuetics. That, unfortunately, is not the case with the majority of CAM treatments, hence the 84% saying medicine could benefit but 49% thinking they are safe to use