 “Complementary, alternative, or integrative medicine” is biomedicine’s ‘big tent’ category for non-biomedical systems of health care (see NCCIH in  Other Internet Resources).  Philosophers have pointed out that biomedicine, specifically evidence-based medicine, puts advocates of such non-biomedical systems into a no-win position. One such philosophical challenge is that some of the claims made by non-biomedical systems are claimed to be non-measurable experiences, e.g., the experience of Qi life force in traditional Chinese Medicine (Tonelli &amp; Callahan 2001). This means that advocates have to either submit to the epistemological framework of biomedicine (which may be incapable of assessing some of the effects claimed to exist), or refusing to play by medicine’s rules and hence being dismissed by as quackery by biomedicine. Epistemically, it seems like the latter option is the better option, but it would require advocates to “work to develop new research designs and new standards of evidence that reflect their approach to medical care” (Borgerson 2005: 502).