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Just wanted to say I found this bit of news rather ironic/humorous, considering I recently had a few people trying to convince me of the safety, and hence implied superiority, of our conventional medical system vs alternative ones. I think I, like this article, tried to point out the existence of risks, as well as sometimes potential conflicts of interests, inherent in our preferred system as well. Not to say that our system doesn't have more safeguards in place at the moment, but people do tend to accept the standard way they're familiar with without question most of the time. And to say that alternative medicine hasn't been sufficiently proven either effective or safe, as a blanket statement, is to ignore practices like acupuncture, which to me is about as safe as it gets. If it's been used for thousands of years, is non-invasive, etc., I think it could pretty well be said to pass the safety and effectiveness tests, even without having gone through double-blind studies. It may not be effective for all illnesses, but it is obviously for some. I just get bothered when I see unquestioned acceptance or obedience, or anything of that sort, to any system, whether it be medicine, religion, political, etc. I believe one should critically examine everything, and sometimes, most particularly, those things which one might pass over due to their familiarity. They in fact are often in the most need of scrutiny, in my opinion. Wendy Tebay