Alternative medicine
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Alternative medicine, fringe medicine, pseudomedicine or simply questionable medicine is promotion or use of practices which are unproven, disproven, impossible to prove, or excessively harmful in relation to their effect — in the attempt to achieve the healing effects of medicine It differs from experimental medicine in that the latter employs responsible investigation, and is discarded when shown ineffective. The scientific consensus is that alternative therapies either do not, or cannot, work. In some cases laws of nature are violated by their basic claims; in others the treatment is so much worse that its use is unethical. Alternative practices, products, and therapies range from those which are simply ineffective to those having known harmful and toxic effects.
See also
- Conservation medicine
- Ethnomedicine
- Homeopathy
- Hypnotherapy
- Psychic surgery
- Siddha medicine
- Vertebral subluxation
