Alternative Medicine : Definition , Scope and Challenges

n the United States and worldwide, the use of “complementary” and “alternative” and medicine is increasing, and has resulted in major non-reimbursed medical or health-related consumer expenditures. Although the term “complementary and alternative medicine” (“CAM”) has been largely adopted by the American academic community, there are also several possible other terms, such as alternative medicine (AM), integrative, unconventional, soft, parallel, etc. We feel that none of them is satisfactory. We will arbitrarily use the term alternative medicine (or AM) throughout, as we imply that many of these practices as they exist in the US today are derived from traditional systems from other cultures. We will use the word “traditional” to refer to age-old cultural practices, and “conventional” to refer to practices of Western biomedicine. At present the public and the scientific community only partially understand why the use of these practices and products is increasing so rapidly. Alternative medicine, much of which derives from the world’s traditional medical systems (i.e., non-Western, nonbiomedical systems), is poorly defined and underresearched. We propose a new definition, as well as to examine some of the many factors that have been impacting — whether stimulating or impeding — progress in defining and investigating alternative and traditional medicine. To speed up that progress, we also propose some possible programmatic solutions that are being initiated at the Rosenthal Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, US.