[WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health

[Sascha Noyes]

On Monday 08 December 2003 06:00, Fred Bauder wrote:
> There is a relatively clear meaning as to what alternative medicine is and
> it includes the many methods such as acupucture, chiropractic (in all its
> forms) herbal medicine, color therapy etc. Some of these are accepted and
> used by medical doctors, some scoffed at but althernative medicine is an
> umbrella term that includes them all. Their status in terms of reasearch
> varies, sometimes by country, herbs, for example, are tested much more in
> Germany than elsewhere.
>

Maybe you wouldn't mind sharing that "clear meaning" with us. Simply listing 
things that are considered alternative medicine does not constitute the 
definition of the term.

> >"Western
> > medicine" is an equally loaded and ill-defined term.
>
> What is meant by conventional medicine is simply what you get when you go
> to a typical doctor, but more and more frequently that may include
> alternative medicine.

So if I understand your logic correctly, one gets conventional medicine when 
one goes to a typical doctor. But one can also increasingly get alternative 
medicine there. So are conventional and alternative medicine one and the same 
thing? At what point of adoption does an alternative become conventional? Or 
is it even usefull to talk in terms of conventionality when discussing 
medicine? (I submit that it isn't.) Maybe this illustrates that there does 
perhaps not exist a clear meaning for the term "alternative medicine"?

Best,
Sascha Noyes