I refer to the current debate on the practice of integrative medicine. Why should there be any confrontation between medical doctors who strictly confine themselves to the practice of routine orthodox conventional medicine which revolves around pharmaceutical drugs and those that combine conventional practices with complementary medical practices?

The latter are also medical graduates who made the extra effort of studying alternative medical modalities, spending a fortune to acquire the knowledge and the equipment. The question that I would like to raise is this - why the need to question?

Lets save the flamboyant arguments for keeps sake. If a doctor is using procedures that threatens life then the patient is at liberty to pursue with legal action. At the same time, patients are free to decide if they want to receive any specific form of therapy.

Doctors shouldn't be quarreling over this subject matter at all. The World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki has developed a set of ethical principles for doctors worldwide. I quote Ethical rule No 32:

"In the treatment of a patient, where proven prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic methods do not exist or have been ineffective, the physician, with informed consent from the patient, must be free to use unproven or new prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic measures, if in the physician's judgment it offers hope of saving life, re-establishing health or alleviating suffering".

The above is self-explanatory and should compel doctors from quarreling any further on this matter.