What ethical issues are associated with CAM in clinical practice?

In the context of clinical practice, the ethical issues pertain to providing optimal
medical care to an individual. Any physician, allopathic or otherwise, is bound by oath
to do no harm and to provide the most efficacious therapies to their patient. The
precepts of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and the accessibility of medical research
literature provide clinicians with powerful tools to identify such therapies. In
evaluating the risk of harm and the potential benefits of any therapy, weight must be
given to the amount and quality of research that has been done on the intervention,
known risks and side effects of the therapy, the credential and competence of the
practitioner, the seriousness of the condition being treated, and the belief system and
wishes of the patient. Given the relative dearth of research literature on many CAM
therapies, the clinician must use best judgment to decide which therapies are unlikely
to do harm, either directly or by reducing the effectiveness of other therapies, and
which may offer some, if not great, benefit. A CAM therapy that is neither harmful
nor effective can become damaging if it precludes the patient obtaining effective
treatment.
The advantage of integrative medical clinics is to take much of the guesswork out of
this algorithm. Well-trained, licensed CAM providers working alongside conventional
clinicians create an environment in which patient care can utilize current best
practices in each discipline. CAM therapies for some medical conditions require close
supervision by a CAM professional. Just as a patient with diabetes (or hypertension,
depression, etc) should receive ongoing medical supervision for his/her diabetes
(hypertension, depression, etc) management, the same holds for CAM therapies.
Many warnings about the risks associated with CAM therapy use are grounded in an
assumption that the patient may be self-treating and/or not receive adequate
monitoring by a trained CAM professional.

Reference:
Adams, L. (2014). Complementary medicine. Ethics in Medicine: University of Washington
School of Medicine. Retrieved from:
https://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/topics/compl.html