Alternative Medicine definition
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE DEFINITIONS by © V. Bradshaw 1996
Essentially Alternative Medicine is non-pharma medicine.
Pharma-medicine is Allopathy or Corporate medicine, which is disguised under the terms: Orthodox or Conventional Medicine.
Allopathy likes everyone, especially medical doctors, to think all Alternative Medicine is quackery (which is the line of Quackwatch), and that Allopathy is the only effective, scientifically tested medicine, and that allopaths are the only real doctors.
Alternative medicine mostly follows the Bechamp disease model, as opposed to the Pasteurian germ theory.
Not all medical doctors are Allopaths, many practice orthomolecular medicine, and other types of alternative medicine.
Complementary Medicine is one of the crumbs Allopathy threw to Alternative Medicine, as long as they don't rock the Allopathy boat.
Allopaths don't like to be called allopaths, partly because it is a term first coined by homeopathy for a system that treats symptoms, but mostly because they like to make out to themselves they are practicing the best medicine that got there through science not politics (the medical monopoly). Likewise they don't like to be called vaccinators, as they like to think their belief in vaccination comes from their own thinking and decisions, not from medical industry groupthink.
Here is an allopath Wikipedia editor getting upset with being labelled a vaccinator, after doing her best to suppress any vaccine critical links and text:
Jfdwolff: "I'm not sure
why you call me a "vaccinator" - I have never personally administered a vaccine,
and the only vaccine I ever prescribe in my position is flu vaccine. Does that make me a
"vaccinator"? Please avoid labeling people. I have had a look at your site, and
I'm more than just shocked by its inflammatory language, talk about conspiracies,
coverups, "medical fascism" and the "medical mafia", whatever that is
supposed to mean. The fact that some "medical men" have joined your ranks and
are the authors of your stuff is of marginal importance to the actual issue - the fact
that in this world the views expressed on your site are indeed very fringe. If you were to
ask a group of 100 people to read through your site, a large majority of them would find
themselves in disagreement to most of the material presented. The rest would just be
confused.
I have no problem with significant views being represented. We have a
long page on Andrew Wakefield, because his views are well known and are supported by a
signficant minority. Similarly there would not be slightest problem with significant
minority views being represented on other vaccine-related pages. Our neutrality policy
(see WP:NPOV) clearly indicates that we do not need to include your views just because
they are being held by a few people, even though some may have "M.D." behind
their names. Having a website does not automatically indicate notability or significance.
Wikipedia is not going to be a forum for your views. JFW | T@lk 15:14, 4 November 2005
(UTC)
I'm by definition a vaccinator! Well well, we love labeling don't we. I
think your website (and all your views for that matter) are not rational examinations of
the evidence available put nasty personal vendettas that harm people in the long run. If I
were in the business of "suppressing the anti-vaccine view" I'd be doing
something completely different, namely editing the relevant articles in a biased fashion.
But I'm not doing that. All I am doing is making sure your defamatory, confused and
misinformed page does not get its traffic as a result of link placement in Wikipedia.
I think an Alexa ranking of 1,000,000 a year is not very high and no sign that your page
is notable. Today, 106,763 sites were getting more traffic than you. JFW | T@lk 15:04, 11
November 2005 (UTC)" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Ombudsman&diff=prev&oldid=29203114