Alternative medicine - Misplaced Pages

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Alternative medicine is any method of treatment other than prescription medication, the heroic medicine of chemotherapy / radiation therapy and surgery.

Alternative medicine is a broad term for any method that seeks to prevent or heal disease through methods outside of the practices of mainstream Western conventional medical practice. The term refers to alternatives to conventional medical/surgical treatment. Alternative medicine that has been accepted by some parts of mainstream medicine goes by the preferred term of complementary medicine, in order to highlight their desire to offer alternative treatment methods in order to complement, rather than replace, their mainstream medical practices.

It should be noted that the term alternative medicine itself implies that all these methods see themselves as alternatives to conventional medicine. In fact some see themselves as promoting wellness, rather than treating disease, and refuse to be categorized within the conventional medical system's framework. Alternative practitioners are said to heal people because they work with the body's innate ability to heal itself, called vitalism. While conventional physicians reject the power of nature to heal and believe that only their Materia Medica art prolongs life. Hence, conventional medicine is said to only treat people externally.

Practitioners of mainstream conventional medicine try to give the impression that they rely on the scientific method for results. They try to point out that it is impossible to make and interpret claims based upon testimonials, hearsay and mystical arguments. But, conventional medicine once strongly advocated the use of Blood letting. In reality, traditional conventional medicine which places great value upon clinical experience suffers from the same defect. Clinical experience is currently considered to have lower evidentiary value than published research studies about population evidence. But, the facts are that the correct application of population evidence to a specific patient requires a great deal of clinical experience. Eclectic branches of alternative medicine place greater value upon the clinical experience of the practitioner than on their science. This hardly seems to be a defect of alternative medicine, as experienced older successful conventional practitioners likewise are in greater demand by the consuming public and thereby command higher fees for their services.

Although some aspects of conventional medicine such as antibiotics and asepsis were science-based, Evidence-based medicine (EBM) did not actually appear until the 1970s with the McMaster Medical School in Canada that used a clinical learning strategy that would eventually developed into Evidence-Based Medicine as we know it today. EBM further came into vogue in the 1980s at University of Harvard. But, the real boost to EBM and its formal acceptance by conventional medicine did not come until 1995 when the Center for Evidence-based Medicine at Oxford, UK was first established. So, prior to 1995, it cannot be truly claimed that conventional medicine practitioners relied upon the scientific method for their results. Prior to 1995, conventional medicine practice was mostly about following tradition.

As previously stated, alternative medicine is simply about using an alternative method of treatment. There is nothing innately anti-scientific or anti-intellectual about using some method of treatment other than medicine or surgery to achieve measurable results. Alternative medicine was yesterday's quackery, is today's complementary medicine, and will be tomorrow's new branch of medicine. For example, Osteopathy developed in America at the turn of the twentieth century. It was originally attacked as quackery by conventional medicine, but today is considered completely mainstream and just as scientific as Western medicine is.

Public interest in alternative medicine is significant. Since traditional medicine is still in a relatively early stage of development and is not yet able to treat many diseases and injuries, some turn to alternative medicine in the hope that cures which cannot be found through conventional medicine might somehow be found with an alternative method of treatment. Others are coming from the new movement of patient empowerment where users of the health care system are viewed as consumers capable of deciding where they want to spend their own money.

Published health research is continually proving that some alternative treatments are indeed effective. Many practitioners of alternative medicine, do in fact believe in the scientific method. Many eclectic branches of alternative medicine explore scientifically valid alternatives to current medical treatments. Most commonly, a patient seeks alternative treatment only after conventional medical care has already been tried, but was found to be ineffective, too brutal, or their practitioners lacking in proper bedside manners.

The boundary lines between alternative and mainstream medicine changes over time. Methods considered alternative at one time may later be adopted by conventional medicine. Alternative methods of treatment that achieve scientific support and are offered by mainstream medical practitioners eventually will end up being claimed by conventional medicine as having been developed by them directly from pure science.

Sample Forms of Alternative Medicine

References

Planer, Felix E. 1988 Superstition Revised ed. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books
Hand, Wayland D. 1980 Folk Magical Medicine and Symbolism in the West in Magical Medicine Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 305-319.
Phillips Stevens Jr. Nov./Dec. 2001 Magical Thinking in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Skeptical Inquier Magazine, Nov.Dec/2001

Sample Forms of Alternative Medicine

References

External links