Medical Schools Teaching Complementary Procedures

I guess under the heading, "If you can not beat them join them," comes an article from the January 17, 2000 AMA News that reports that more than 75 US and Canadian medical schools are now teaching what the article called "complementary procedures." In the article, Dr. Brian Bouch the medical director of Consensus Health, at Emeryville, states that he thinks the public is so far ahead of physicians on this issue that many medical doctors risk becoming irrelevant. Dr. Bouch goes on to defend medical incursion into these other areas by saying, "With one-third of the population having tried complementary and alternative medicine, more than 70% of insurers now offer at least one alternative treatment as a defined or discounted benefit." The focus of the article and the many experts they quote all state that the public is already using the non-medical procedures, therefore the medical professionals should be involved with them. The question that begs to be asked is how much of this new interest is financially motivated?