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Alternative Medicine, Alternative Medicine

Practices may incorporate or base themselves on traditional medicine, folk knowledge, spiritual beliefs, or newly conceived approaches to healing. Acharya, Deepak and Shrivastava Anshu (2008): Indigenous Herbal Medicines: Tribal Formulations and Traditional Herbal Practices, Aavishkar Publishers Distributor, Jaipur- India. ISBN 9788179102527. pp 440 Jurisdictions where alternative medical practices are sufficiently widespread may license and regulate them. The claims made by alternative medicine practitioners are generally not accepted by the medical community because evidence-based assessment of safety and efficacy is either not available or has not been performed for many of these practices. If scientific investigation establishes the safety and effectiveness of an alternative medical practice, it may be adopted by conventional practitioners.

Committee on the Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine by the American Public. (2005).

Eisenberg, DM, Davis RB, Ettner SL "Trends in alternative medicine use in the United States 1990-1997." JAMA , 1998; 280 :1569-1575. PMID 9820257 Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia that "about half the general population in developed countries use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) ." Ernst E. "Obstacles to research in complementary and alternative medicine." Medical Journal of Australia , 2003; 179 (6): 279-80. PMID 12964907 MJA online Survey results released in May 2004 by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the United States National Institutes of Health, found that in 2002 62.1% of adults in the country had used some form of CAM in the past 12 months and 75% across lifespan (though these figure drop to 36.0% and 50% if prayer specifically for health reasons is excluded); this study included yoga, meditation, herbal treatments and the Atkins diet as CAM.

Alternative medicine providers recognize that health fraud occurs, and argue that it should be dealt with appropriately when it does, but that these restrictions should not extend to what they view as legitimate health care products.

Alternative medicine products are not subject to the same governmental quality control standards, and consistency between doses can vary. This leads to uncertainty in the chemical content and biological activity of individual doses. This lack of oversight means that alternative health products are vulnerable to adulteration and contamination.

NCCAM and its predecessor, the Office of Alternative Medicine, have spent more than $1 billion on such research since 1992.

James Alcock PhD, Alternative Medicine and the Psychology of Belief , The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, Fall/Winter 1999 Volume 3 ~ Number 2.

Use of standard-of-care treatment in addition to an alternative technique being tested may produce confounded or difficult-to-interpret results. Bodeker, G, Kronenberg, F. (2002). A public health agenda for traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine. American Journal of Public Health, 92(10), 1582-1591.

Approximately 4.4 percent of those studied used alternative medicine as a replacement for conventional medicine.

Source: Wikipedia > Alternative Medicine





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