Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials.
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25 Facts About Alternative medicine
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Alternative medicine is distinct from scientific medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect.
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Alternative medicine sector is a highly profitable industry with a strong lobby, and faces far less regulation over the use and marketing of unproven treatments.
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Terms alternative medicine, complementary medicine, integrative medicine, holistic medicine, natural medicine, unorthodox medicine, fringe medicine, unconventional medicine, and new age medicine are used interchangeably as having the same meaning and are almost synonymous in most contexts.
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Alternative medicine is defined loosely as a set of products, practices, and theories that are believed or perceived by their users to have the healing effects of medicine, but whose effectiveness has not been established using scientific methods, or whose theory and practice is not part of biomedicine, or whose theories or practices are directly contradicted by scientific evidence or scientific principles used in biomedicine.
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However, these descriptive definitions are inadequate in the present-day when some conventional doctors offer alternative medical treatments and introductory courses or modules can be offered as part of standard undergraduate medical training; alternative medicine is taught in more than half of US medical schools and US health insurers are increasingly willing to provide reimbursement for alternative therapies.
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Besides the usual issues with alternative medicine, integrative medicine has been described as an attempt to bring pseudoscience into academic science-based medicine, leading to the pejorative term "quackademic medicine".
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Traditional Alternative medicine refers to the pre-scientific practices of a certain culture, in contrast to what is typically practiced in cultures where medical science dominates.
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Alternative medicine practices are diverse in their foundations and methodologies.
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Traditional medicine is considered alternative when it is used outside its home region; or when it is used together with or instead of known functional treatment; or when it can be reasonably expected that the patient or practitioner knows or should know that it will not work – such as knowing that the practice is based on superstition.
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Until the 1970s, irregular practice became increasingly marginalized as quackery and fraud, as western Alternative medicine increasingly incorporated scientific methods and discoveries, and had a corresponding increase in success of its treatments.
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Alternative medicine therapies do not "complement" functional medical treatment.
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Practitioners of complementary medicine usually discuss and advise patients as to available alternative therapies.
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Alternative medicine is a profitable industry with large media advertising expenditures.
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Alternative medicine is criticized for taking advantage of the least fortunate members of society.
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The NCCAM's sister organization in the NIC Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine gives grants of around $105 million every year.
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Testing alternative medicine that has no scientific basis has been called a waste of scarce research resources.
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Alternative medicine has been on the rise "in countries where Western science and scientific method generally are accepted as the major foundations for healthcare, and 'evidence-based' practice is the dominant paradigm" was described as an "enigma" in the Medical Journal of Australia.
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Ayurvedic Alternative medicine remedies are mainly plant based with some use of animal materials.
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Integrative Alternative medicine is considered more acceptable in the interdisciplinary approach used in palliative care than in other areas of Alternative medicine.
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Alternative medicine lobby has successfully pushed for alternative therapies to be subject to far less regulation than conventional medicine.
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Forms of alternative medicine that are biologically active can be dangerous even when used in conjunction with conventional medicine.
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Complementary and alternative medicine is not as well researched as conventional medicine, which undergoes intense research before release to the public.
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Practitioners of science-based medicine discard practices and treatments when they are shown ineffective, while alternative practitioners do not.
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Edzard Ernst has said that most researchers into alternative medicine are at risk of "unidirectional bias" because of a generally uncritical belief in their chosen subject.
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