To be perfectly honest though, a LOT of conventional medicine has very very poor evidence for it, very few things we do as vets are actually true "evidence based medicine" decisions. This is my main problem with people pooh-poohing alternative medicine - if you actually go look for it, it can be extremely hard to find scientific papers backing a lot of what you do. Practicing "evidence based medicine" is a very nice thing to say, but nigh impossible to actually do - for most things, the data simply just isnt there to truly practice evidence based medicine.
A lot of areas of conventional medicine may not have had controlled scientific studies done on them, but often there is a lot of case based evidence available. At least much of what we do in conventional medicine has the benefit of seeing such widespread use that we can at least anecdotally assume that it works. And some of it has the benefit of being well tested in humans at least, so we know that it in principle works, even if we don't know for sure that it works on whatever particular species we are dealing with. You just have to be a bit flexible with the meaning of the term "evidence."
Much of alternative medicine in animals just doesn't see enough widespread use nor has reliable enough anecdotes for us to be able to be able to evaluate it as effectively. Some areas of alternative medicine, especially supplements such as flax oil, fish oil, and glucosamine, are very widely used and at least anecdotally supported or have some hypothesized scientific principle to back them up. I've used many of these things on pets or even myself. I also think there are some useful ideas at work in holistic and natural medicine. But a lot of alternative medicine is based in principles that are supernatural or pseudoscientific in origin and really do nothing but give gullible people hope. As for the stuff in between, like herbal remedies and modern acupuncture, I believe they can have some effect, but not generally enough to be worth it nor always the precisely intended effect. I don't put too much stock in them, but I know some people do and I'm okay with that. I've given my cat some herbal based calming treatments and stress relief I've found at the pet store before, simply because I didn't have anything else left to try. Did they work? Well, they made him sleepy, perhaps, if you can count that as calm. And it got him to stop having a hyperventilating panic attack while I had him with me in the car on a cross country move. But I think that may have been more the action of him stopping to lick the tasty gel than it was the effect of any of the herbal ingredients.
There isn't always a clear distinction between what is an appropriate treatment and what is not. It's the vet's job to evaluate what evidence (or lack there of) there is of a treatment's success and risks, and use that information to advise the client on the best course of action. Thus it is the vet's job to figure out where to draw the line in each particular case between what is an appropriate primary treatment, what is an appropriate secondary or alternative treatment, and what is downright unacceptable to condone (fraud, medicine based on misinformation or inaccurate pseudoscience). Vets can't force their clients to take the better scientific or anecdotal option, but for the welfare of the animal, they have to try their best to make sure their clients are making an educated decision. If the client has their heart set on sprinkling herbs on their diabetic cat's food instead of giving it insulin and isn't interested in considering alternatives, then they probably wouldn't have bothered to come to see you in the first place (but you never know, some people do crave validation for their crazy ideas).
And sorry if this post got a bit long winded and slightly off the original point i was trying to make--I'm a notorious rambler, and I can only go back through and reread and try to succinctify my post so many times before I just don't care anymore...
And of course I wouldn't go around telling clients "this has no scientific paper to back it etc I wouldnt recommend it," otherwise I'd have to start handing out scientific articles with all my prescriptions! haha.
😛 I'd probably just say "I'm not aware of any strong evidence to support such and such treatment, but I also don't believe it will cause any harm to try it along with such and such conventional treatment."
