Talk:Alternative medicine

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Wiki Education assignment: Global Poverty and Practice[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 January 2022 and 15 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Angelica.gnlz (article contribs).

Too skeptical[edit]

This sounds like it was written by the American Medical Association, to disparage anything that isn't big pharma and big corpoate medical profits. 2601:881:8102:97E0:EAB1:1FAA:B3F1:16B4 (talk) 03:03, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See Lunatic charlatans. JJPMaster (she/they) 03:05, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you have a specific change you'd like to make to the article, you may suggest it here. OverzealousAutocorrect (talk) 22:50, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A Biased Perspective?[edit]

This article comes across as sounding very biased. A less biased approach would be to define Alternative Medicines as those that do not yet have sufficient profit-potential to warrant the enormous cost of adequate testing for proof of efficacy and safety. Thus, the supposedly-scientific bases for medicines has been dragged into the realm of economics and patents.

As such, alternative medicines remain in the gray area as "possibly helpful" where the decision to use them needs to be balanced against possible negative effects including safety, cost and discouragement from seeking more reliable alternatives. When the negative effects are low, they often become "worth a try".

Another topic that the article fails to address is the inherent variability that exists from person to person with respect to body chemistry. Such variability can mean that there are some alternative medicines that will work for some people but not for others. In taking such medicines, one is essential experimenting on oneself, but if the product is safe, the downside of such a self-efficacy experiment is normally only the cost and time involved. Many vitamins fall into this category.

Generally, some distinction should be included concerning those alternative medicines which have been shown to be medically safe (as distinct from effective) vs those which have received no such testing and which, therefore, could be physically harmful.

Another perspective missing is that most (or all?) of the proven medicines were, at one point, unproven and thus could have been regarded as "alternative medicines" at that time. The tendency to label all alternative medicines as quackery would have blocked these medicines from ever finding their way into the realm of testing and proven efficacy. Jetstream423 (talk) 18:36, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for these comments, which are a lot more thoughtful than most of the complaints that show up on this talk page. I think the short answer to all your questions is that we must, by consensus, source the information on this page according to WP:MEDRS. If you or anyone else can provide such sourcing for the points you raise above, that would potentially be appropriate content to add here, for WP:NPOV. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:26, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, this article is heavily biased against alternative medicine and does not provide the reader with knowledge useful for making an informed decision. 2603:3018:404:1400:963:1E9B:EFF8:4F84 (talk) 16:30, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What you forget that many therapies from the alternative medicine are not simply "not proven to be effective", but severely lack any biological plausibility.
Artemisinin was devised based upon alt-med research, but it would not have been possible without the chemical industry.
"Negative effects" are not only lack of direct harm from the therapy, but the cost of foregoing effective therapy for serious diseases.
"Medicines being invented and getting researched" should not be conflated with those medicines being alt-med. The pharmaceutical industry has to take steps in order to show that an invented medicine is actually effective, and this for a large chunk of the targeted population.
Vitamins and other supplement are being abused. The dosage of many American vitamins is scarily high. Excess of many vitamins is not harmless. tgeorgescu (talk) 16:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the article is not written from a WP:NPOV. There are reasonable definitions for alternative medicine as well as complementary and integrative medicine provided from WP:MEDRS, such as Complementary, Alternative, or Integrative Health: What’s In a Name? | NCCIH (nih.gov) and Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) - NCI (cancer.gov). An operational definition of complimentary, alternative, and integrative medicine has also recently been determined Ng et al. (2022) and Cochrane Complementary Medicine.
Funding from the NIH, NCCIH, and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has increasingly supported research on the safety and efficacy of complementary and integrative approaches. It is inaccurate to generalize and suggest that complementary, alternative, or integrative approaches are not evidence-based. Here's a systematic review of CAM for the treatment of psoriasis published in JAMA Dermatology.
I definitely agree this article should be updated for a more neutral point of view. People can make more informed decisions, and shared-decision making between patient and provider is encouraged when it comes to making medical and health-related decisions. 4whirledpeas (talk) 23:45, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The NCCIH is not a reliable source for anything, it is a political body set up to promote altmed whether it works or not. You should have at Wikipedias article on it, which explains the history. Note also that a neutral point of view does not mean WP:FALSEBALANCE. Where the mainstream sources are critical, so too will be the Wikipedia article. MrOllie (talk) 00:43, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Plenty of reliable sources in addition to NCCIH and the others already provided offer reasonable definitions of complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine.
Professional practice policies, guidelines, positions, and statements for complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine approaches are available.
Original research and review studies have been conducted on various CAIM approaches. Thus, there is research that is based on biological plausibility with evidence of effectiveness that can also be considered for this article.
Some mainstream sources are critical, but not all. Some maintain a more open, balanced, and neutral framing of the topic of CAIM.
4whirledpeas (talk) 20:46, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Add Type: Physical therapy[edit]

insert this subsection under Types. Many of these techniques appear on the List of forms of alternative medicine and their articles reference the Alternative medicine page but there is very little mention of these here.

Besides the above reason, inclusion of this section will add the small amount of nuance about the subgroup of alternative medicine based on anecdotal or placebo based treatments with a lack of direct negative side-effects, as well as "treatments" science is unequiped to extract causality from due to difficulty of blinded trials, as mentioned above in A Biased Perspective?

Physical therapy and related disciplines[edit]

Physical therapy, along with related disciplines like Pilates, Yoga as therapy, and Tai chi, focuses primarily on the treatment of musculoskeletal issues and occupies a unique position on the fringe of conventional medicine, largely due to challenges in conducting standardized medical trials for addressing specific problems. These practices, which include manipulative techniques such as osteopathy and massage, as well as other methods like foam-rolling, manual lymphatic drainage, acupressure, taping, and sauna, often lack definitive proof of effect. Nonetheless, they are some of the few alternative medicine practices frequently recommended by healthcare professionals and sometimes funded by healthcare providers[1] due to their minimal risk of harm. However, their use in place of established treatments for serious conditions, such as cancer[2], can still lead to adverse outcomes. Elkir (talk) 15:51, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ Eardley, Susan; Bishop, Felicity L; Prescott, Philip; Cardini, Francesco; Brinkhaus, Benno; Santos-Rey, Koldo; Vas, Jorge; von Ammon, Klaus; Hegyi, Gabriella; Dragan, Simona; Uehleke, Bernard; Fønnebø, Vinjar; Lewith, George (2012). "A systematic literature review of complementary and alternative medicine prevalence in EU". Forsch Komplementmed. 19 Suppl 2: 18–28. doi:10.1159/000342708. PMID 23883941.
  2. ^ Ades, TB, ed. (2009). "Myofascial release". American Cancer Society Complete Guide to Complementary and Alternative Cancer Therapies (2nd ed.). American Cancer Society. pp. 226–228. ISBN 978-0-944235-71-3.
 Not done. The sources provided don't support the content. Is it common in the literature that physical therapy is described as alternative medicine? Are there sources that support it holding a "unique position on the fringe"? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:28, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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