title: How Should We Respond to Non-Dominant Healing Practices, the Example of Homeopathy.
abstract: The debate around the ethics of homeopathy in recent issues of the journal has been approached as a binary question; is homeopathy ethical or not? This paper suggests that this is an unhelpful question and instead discusses a framework to establish the extent to which the dominant (medical) culture should tolerate non-dominant health practices such as homeopathy. This requires a sophisticated understanding of the placebo effect, a critical evaluation of what evidence is available, a consideration of the harm that the non-dominant practice might cause, and a consideration of how this might be affected by the culture of the patient. This is presented as a matter of cultural competence. At a clinical level clinicians need to respect the values and beliefs of their patients and communicate with all the practitioners involved in a patient's care. At a societal level there are a number of factors to be considered when a community decides which practices to tolerate and to what extent.
authors.affiliation: Otago University Wellington, 23A Mein Street, Newtown, Wellington, 6021, New Zealand. ben.gray@otago.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7647-9474
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gray
mesh_terms: D054521:Cultural Competency / Q000941:ethics*; D028663:Ethical Theory; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006705:Homeopathy / Q000941:ethics; D006801:Humans; D009520:New Zealand; D057240:Patient Preference / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Complementary and alternative medicine; Cultural diversity; Ethics of placebo; Homeopathy