On the other hand, it can take a long time for ideas to be accepted. Even Pasteur was a radical in his day; and I can't find him on Wikipedia, but there was a French doctor who introduced the idea of washing one's hands -- I think in carbolic acid? -- before delivering a child. This worked very well; but the doctors thought it was a nuisance and produced no benefit, and kicked him out.
I'm not defending homeopathy, which I'm pretty deeply suspicious of; it _might_ merit further investigation, but homeopathic medicines certainly shouldn't be sold as medicines until they start performing a whole lot better than they have so far. I just want to point out that the medical field, and most scientific fields, are resistant to adopting new ideas even when those ideas do work.
Another example of that slowness: post-traumatic stress disorder, which was only accepted by the APA in DSM-IV (1980) after a long struggle.
I've always seen terms like alternative, complementary, or integrative medicine as akin to the terms creation science and intelligent design. Basically, designed to present a false dichotomy of equals with the legitimate paradigms.
Edit: I'm fairly certain it came from House or Penn and Teller's Bullshit. Can anyone say one way or another?