Chris, I think one thing that you also need to keep in mind is how much the 'alt world' is actually a mainstream product. If you take vitamins for instance - they are 1) high tech manufactured products and 2) pushed by some very mainstream corporations. I was thinking about that when I saw a Kelloggs advert for some bran product which said something like 'you think you're getting enough fibre in your diet, but actually you're not - get our superduperbran chunks!'. That kind of line - which plays very directly into people's feelings about the inadaquacy of modern existence - is basically a common thread linking many popular discourses of 'alternative healing' to very conventional capitalism.
In this respect, this kind of critique of 'orthodox' medicine is less a honest endeavour than an attempt at differentiating a product in a very lucrative market. Similarly, the 'orthodox' medical establishment does its own spin. Though, as Doug points out, at least 'orthodox' treatments need to pass various regulatory hoops and the research that things are based upon is sometimes submitted to peer review.
'Alternative' medicine in my experience largely fails to break from many of bad things about medicine under capitalism - the authoritarian position of the practitioner, the focus on symptoms (even if the symptoms are broadened into the 'lifestyle' catagory) and their treatment rather than the critique of the social cause of those symptoms, etc.
In this respect, it often stays pretty 'orthodox', in ways which are often invisible to people who simply accept capitalism as everyday reality.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B