Cognitive biases and the predictable perils of the patient‐centric free‐market model of medicine

This paper addresses the recent rise of the use of alternative medicine in Western countries, and it offers a novel explanation of that phenomenon in terms of cognitive and economic factors related to the free‐market and patient‐centric approach to medicine that is currently in place in those countries, in contrast to some alternative explanations of this phenomenon. Moreover, the paper addresses this troubling trend in terms of the serious harms associated with the use of alternative medical modalities. The explanatory theory defended here is then predicated on the idea that serious and avoidable harms predictably result from an extreme patient‐centric model of medical practice that treats largely ignorant patients as consumers of medical products and services, when they are endowed with an essentially unrestricted power of freedom to choose treatments. Some important moral and epistemological consequences of this model are then articulated, and corrective measures are suggested.