Friday, December 10

Ethics Conference:
Complementary and Alternative Medicine—The Scientific and Pluralistic Challenge

9:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Snyder Auditorium, G-1, Kresge Building
Harvard School of Public Health
677 Huntington Avenue
Boston

Presenters:
Allan Brandt, Division of Medical Ethics, Harvard Medical School
Howard Brody, Michigan State University
Daniel Callahan, The Hastings Center
Asbjorn Hrobjartsson, Denmark
David Hufford, The Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine, Hershey Medical Center
Wayne Jonas, Department of Family Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
Ted Kaptchuk, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Arthur Kleinman, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Loretta Kopelman, Department of Medical Humanities, East Carolina State University
David Larson, National Institute for Healthcare Research
Bonnie O'Connor, Department of Family, Community and Preventive Medicine, MCP Hahnemann University
Arnold Relman, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Kenneth Schaffner, George Washington University
Alfred Tauber, Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University
Paul Wolpe, Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania
Tom Whitmarsh, Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital, U.K.

This one-day conference will focus on methodological and ethical issues in the evaluation of alternative and complementary medicine. Among other issues, it will take up such questions as:

• Is there only one acceptable method of scientific evaluation?
• What does it mean to say that a therapy "works"?
• How tolerant should medicine be of different methodologies and standards of evaluation?
• What is known about the placebo effect?
• What is a suitable research agenda for alternative and complementary medicine?