Complementary alternative medicine and conventional medicine should use identical rules to complete clinical trials

Considerable time and debates may be dispensable if it is accepted and respected that the underlying concepts, beliefs, and assumptions in complementary alternative medicine (CAM) and conventional medicine (CM) are different whereas the methods to demonstrate efficacy and effectiveness of these concepts may be identical. We discuss in this paper that the formulation of precise questions may led to a consensus on the methods to be used in clinical trials of CAM and CM. To demonstrate that identical methods may be applied in CAM and CM we suggest using a sequence of ten steps. Six of these 10 steps are identical in CAM and CM while four steps are only similar. It is important to recognize that two of these four steps are applied in a different sequence in CAM and CM. The formulation of precise questions and the application of adequate methods may provide the basis to compare, evaluate and justify both approaches, CAM and CM.