This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on ISI (3)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in this journal

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In a recent debate,¹ Relman raised the concern that integrative medicine "would not be an advance but a return to the past, an interruption of the remarkable progress achieved by science-based medicine over the past century." Can integrative medicine contribute to the scientific advances beyond conventional biomedicine? Dr Relman's negative conclusion seems premature and has been disproved by current evidence. Among the various modalities of integrative medicine, acupuncture is regarded as one of the better studied.^{2, 3} Hundreds of randomized controlled trials on acupuncture have been published.⁴ The quality of the trials and the results were often mixed⁵ and complicated by the numerous difficulties in defining proper treatment, qualification of acupuncture practitioners involved in research, controls,⁶ and blinding procedures,⁷ as well as bias in publication.^{1, 8} Nevertheless, positive results of acupuncture trials have been reported in peer-reviewed conventional Western medical journals on a variety of conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,⁹ . . . [Full Text of this Article]

RELATED ARTICLES

Is Integrative Medicine the Medicine of the Future?: A Debate Between Arnold S. Relman, MD, and Andrew Weil, MD
Arch Intern Med. 1999;159(18):2122-2126.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

A Review of the Incorporation of Complementary and Alternative Medicine by Mainstream Physicians
John A. Astin, Ariane Marie, Kenneth R. Pelletier, Erik Hansen, and William L. Haskell
Arch Intern Med. 1998;158(21):2303-2310.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT