The outlook for integrated medicine.

Graham Easton investigates the conflict between orthodox and alternative medicines and how they might be integrated. Dr Bob Leckridge says people want choices, want to understand their illness, and doctors need to treat the whole patient - one is not just a gall-bladder in a bed. But Dr Roger Fiskin is appalled by the risks of alternative medicine, as it betrays all the hard-won medical knowledge, the scientific heritage, going back to a quagmire of witchcraft and quackery! How can you rely on unproven methods? Can alternative medicine be tested? The debate continues, considering the needs of both mind and body, the effects of placebos or of psycho neuro immunology.