Talk:Complementary and alternative medicine

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Chelation therapy for things like heavy metal poisoning are probably not considered alternative medicine. Is the author thinking of a particular kind, like ETDA with heart diseases? David E. Volk 14:52, 13 April 2008 (CDT)

Change article title to Complementary and Alternative Medicine

I believe making such a change would be more consistent with general usage in the broad fields of health. In the terminology of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, alternative medicine describes "whole systems" that totally supplant mainstream medicine or different whole systems. Complementary medicine can work with whole systems, including mainstream medicine. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:00, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Agree, with redirects from Complementary medicine and Alternative medicine. D. Matt Innis 01:39, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the undo...

But I strenuously object to separating complementary and alternative medicine at a high level, although there can indeed be separation within individual disciplines. See the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine taxonomy, which is not, at all, U.S. specific. If you want language revered, I'd appreciate more of an explanation. Even if it's simply that something is confusing, I'd like to know what is confusing. A confusing aspect may be a term of art that needs explanation or linking.

For example, there are advocates of Traditional Chinese medicine, which include acupuncture, to insist that it is a whole system. As you will see in the main TCM article, the Chinese goverment does not. I am personally quite willing to recommend acupuncture as an complement to pain management and rheumatology, both human and veterinary. It may work, it may not work, but it is also being done in an interdiscipinary way. Anecdote is not the singular of data, but I've seen people close to me sicken and die because they insisted on alternative medicine only.

The broad area of manipulative therapies, including chiropractic, osteopathic medicine and osteopathy, physical therapy, and massage, as well as a few other areas of physical medicine, are searching for new syntheses. For example, I know a few complementary practitioners that have dual-certified in chiropractic and physical therapy. They say chiropractic gives them the best tools for flexibility and pain control, while physical therapy is better for restoring strength. These practitioners routinely work with conventional physicians of many specialties, including rheumatology, pain management, neurology, orthopedics, and physiatry. Howard C. Berkowitz 14:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I think I see what you are saying.. perhaps that you want the theories explained only on the pages that are titles specifically for each alternative or complementary practice. I haven't thought that one through; there might be a reason to have a page on Alternative medicine - though I think most that were once alternative are being integrated slowly. Everyone seems to be crossing lines of what used to be "turf". I have no trouble with the beginning of the sentence that you removed. Maybe just remove the part about "these are explained on the Alternative medicine (theories) page. Matt Innis

Does "alternative" mean only "alternative" to conventional medicine? Certainly, once you start integrating, at least as I understand the concept, you are becoming complementary. I like NCCAM's term "whole system", which clearly identifies "classic" disciplines that do not share paradigms.

Other than to call it not-biomedicine, or maybe not-other-whole system, I literally don't know how to define alternative medicine. It is not synonymous with complementary.

I don't have an answer to whether a combination of classic homeopathy ONLY with classic chiropractic is alternative or complementary, but I'd lean toward alternative. To me, alternative means "biomedicine, get lost." Complementary says "we may each have something to contribute." "Basic" complementary might be an internist sending a patient with acute low back pain to a chiropractor. I'm thinking, though, of some chiropractors at an interdisciplinary symposium, who were suggesting that the manipulations might be helping not so much because they reduced subluxations, but the high-velocity movements caused neuromodulator release. They were very complementary, especially when the neurologists got together with them and the acupuncturists that added electrical stimulation, all guided by an anesthesiologist who started as a dentist. (Really!) Howard C. Berkowitz 00:23, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think "alternative" is a word derived by conventionalists (for lack of a better term). It was never meant to really define these different philosophies in any other way but "different than conventional". It is probably meant to be vague - in an effort not to offend or promote. When "conventionalists" begin to see value (of some sort) in some of these methods, they call them "complementary", and if they really like them, they give it the "integrative" brand. It's marketing. Now that "alternative" practices have been able to improve their brand, I would suspect that the name will be changed to something less appealing. Meanwhile, I wouldn't mind seeing someone like Martin work to write something about the evolution of "alternative" approaches to healthcare. It seems that might be part of his expertise, so why not. D. Matt Innis 14:20, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I have not followed this discussion, so I may have missed something obvious. Matt are you thinking that this article will consider the demarcation problems and the evolution of the relationship between these approaches and health sciences? While there should be two new articles describing complementary medicine and alternative medicine? Chris Day 14:35, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Chris, I don't see the need for two articles because I think the demarcation is not designed to be clear (I am open to other arguments on this). I think that Martin's edit suggests an article that examines the history of alternative theories (that incidently should include the birth of scientific medicine). Martin mentioned Paracelsus, who is certainly important to this train of thought. I would imagine that anything along this vein would enlighten the reader as to the why's and when's of these approaches and why and when they appeared and disappeared and why they were either left behind or continue to propogate. D. Matt Innis 15:45, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Conventionalists

• Premise: the term for the person with the lowest class rank in medical school, or the boarded specialist with the most fossilized view once established in her profession, is "doctor".
• Premise: the term for the person with the silliest ideas in a "new" or "rediscovered" healing art, if the members of the art use titles, is "doctor".

Even without moving outside "mainstream" medicine, there are conflicts of ego and power, even among the most qualified physicians. It took decades for Michael deBakey and Denton Cooley to begin to speak to one another again, even though they literally had hospitals across the street from one another. Everyone knew gastric ulcers were due to stress and needed surgical treatment — until Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren had an all-expenses-paid trip to Stockholm for one of the relatively rare Nobels given recently for clinical, not theoretical work: that most ulcers are caused by curable Helicobacter pylori infection.

When I hear the term "conventionalist", I cringe. The very real psyche it reflects has nothing to do with CAM versus mainstream. What I do see is that an ever-increasing group of mainstream physicians, and indeed an enlarging group of people from other systems, are working together in an integrative way.

CAM, as an article, covers something that I think is reasonably well-defined, with logical subarticles for particular disciplines. CAM, in turn, could reasonably be a subset of an article that talks about progress and change in generic care of sick people and encouragement of people to be well, an awkward phrase but deliberately selected not to use "health sciences", "healing arts", "CAM", etc. That broader article could address some of the ethics of current pharmaceutical marketing, both direct-to-consumer (unique to the U.S.) as well as hardcore business marketing to physicians. By all means, include the British policy work that goes beyond safety and efficacy testing, and considers if a new treatment is sufficiently better than the old that its cost and disruption justifies its introduction.

Martin's comments on ethics and the like are not unique to CAM. Matt's comments about "conventionalists" adopting things shown to work are not unique to conventional vs. CAM. I propose we keep CAM, do not have a separate Alternative Medicine, and seriously discuss a higher-level integrative article that certainly can include many social and philosophical issues. That integrative article can include the broad issues of whether healthcare is a right, and link to more specific issues of philosophy and policy such as futile care, informed consent, euthanasia, etc.

I hope such an article can be guided by the Osler quote that keeps getting removed from Homeopathy:

"A new school of practitioners has arisen which cares nothing for homeopathy and still less for so-called allopathy. It seeks to study, rationally and scientifically, the action of drugs, old and new."(Sir William Osler, quoted on page 162 of the Flexner report)

Can CZ, at least, appropriately synthesize, rather than raise artificial barriers? Howard C. Berkowitz 17:18, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to make you cringe, hehe. I don't see Martin's ethics comment? I agree that an Integrated medicine article would be great as well. I also think that an article that brings together all the different theories that we call Alternative medicine into one place is a good thought if written properly. D. Matt Innis 23:18, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I overreacted to your point, but I hesitate to separate complementary and alternative medicine, with one caveat. The caveat is, to use NCCAM's model, is that the true "alternative" paradigms are "whole" systems, which do not want to integrate with other approaches. Some of this comes across in the homeopathy article, where it seems that attempts to find similar ideas in biomedicine are angrily slapped aside, or trigger tirades about 19th century issues. In contrast, I see a great deal of search for common elements between reasonable people in traditional Western and Chinese medicine. To borrow from Colin Powell, almost anything is possible when people focus on the goal at hand, rather than who will get credit for success.

So, I see a CAM article with subarticles for schools of thought, and only reluctantly an "alternative medicine" article limited tp "whole systems". Please correct me if I misunderstand, but my impression is that there is one ("classic"?) whole system part of chiropractic that insists it has the definitive insight into all sickness and health, and treats as apostates anything that suggests that, say, chiropractic manipulation and pharmacological antiinflammatories might have synergy. The default assumption in homeopathy seems to be that it is a whole system. Howard C. Berkowitz 00:11, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I think we are essentially saying the same thing. I am not in favor of separating CAM. I am in favor of a CAM article and a separate article that explains where alternative medicine theories come from - not one that tries to explain the difference between complementary and alternative. Just one that explains the "evolution" (to steal Chris' word) of these theories. I think this was Martin's thought that I was supporting, but I may have misinterpreted his intentions. Chiropractic has elements of all three, alternative, complementary and conventional. It might be that all of them do to some degree, including medicine. Everyone's beliefs are unique to them, not their profession.D. Matt Innis 03:07, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

We are probably in agreement, but here's a question: is there enough in common among forms of alternative medicine to have one set of theories? Most do have a sense of the body generally healing itself, which really isn't that different than the biomedical view of optimal function. Where they start to divide (and ovelap) is, roughly (NCCAM uses a model similar to this), into:

1. Self-healing through a distinct flow of energies, which might include acupuncture and chiropractic. These tend to include manipulation, and American osteopathic medicine is about the best example of complementary/combined. I'm not sure I'd put physical therapy and physiatry outside mainstream
2. Less directional and mind-body focused, including reiki, shamanic healing, meditative forms, etc.
3. Less directional but systemic, including homeopathy, aromatherapy, and naturopathy; these tend to involve ingesting things rather than manipulation or mental interaction

Just as a parallel, a lot of conventional pain management, especially using the Melzack & Wall gate control theory, does recognize a flow model of sorts. Mind-body include psychoneuroimmunology and the psychodynamic disciplines, and blur into psychopharmacology in class 3. Metabolic and immunologic medicine ties into #3, although many alternative practitioners reject that idea.

I'd just like to see a reduction in the apparent anger in the homeopathy article, which differs from my experience in the other CAM disciplines where I have some exposure. Mind you, I remember, at the end of an interdisciplinary back pain symposium, the chiropractors said they were giving each other "standing adjustments". Sure looked like hugs to me, which definitely have their therapeutic role!Howard C. Berkowitz 03:24, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

"Most do have a sense of the body generally healing itself, which really isn't that different than the biomedical view of optimal function". I think that an article that examines the evolution of alternative "thoughts" in healthcare will reveal this same observation. From there, the value of each will become apparent without us having to loose our neutral approach.

There is a time and place for everything. While I don't deny that prayer will help a person whose arm is amputated in a collision, an EMT is who I want there when it happens (although if one is not available, I'll accept the prayer and a little handholding as well!) D. Matt Innis 03:37, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Of the hand that's lying on the highway or the hand that's trying to fashion a tourniquet around the upper arm stump? Hayford Peirce 03:42, 6 December 2008 (UTC)