During the Third Reich, German politicians forced a ‘shotgun marriage’ between conventional healthcare and the (then very popular) alternative medicine movement.1 (E. Ernst, Neue Deutsche Heilkunde: complementary/alternative medicine in the Third Reich, Complement Ther Med 9 (2001), pp. 49–51). This model of integrated healthcare failed dismally. Today integrated medicine is back with a vengeance. One of its promoters, Prince Charles, views it as the “best of both worlds”.2 In this article, I question, how sound its principles are. Several definitions of integrated medicine exist, and most combine two distinctly separate concepts.3 The first is the parallel use of the “best” interventions from both mainstream and complementary medicine. This sounds entirely reasonable, but is it? The answer depends on how we choose to define “best”. In healthcare, “best” can only mean one thing: supported by sound evidence to demonstrate that more good than harm is being done. The first concept of integrated medicine is therefore synonymous with evidence-based medicine (EBM). If that is so, integrated medicine is superfluous and could turn out to be a detrimental distraction from the aims of EBM.