The other medicine. Part 3, Does it matter how it works?.

The third in a 6-part series about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This part looks at how CAM therapies work, assuming that they are more than 'elaborate placebos' as their many critics deem them to be. Yet the normal 'mechanisms' for testing medicines scientifically do not often seem to work with CAM therapies. But if CAM is a placebo, how do we explain the fact that it works in the treatment of animal patients? On the other hand, if CAM does work in part because of a placebo effect, it does so in a very powerful way; what does this mean? And does it devalue the nature of the treatment?