Alternative medicine
Unscientific healthcare practices
Summary
Alternative medicine refers to practices that aim to achieve the healing effects of medicine, but that by definition lack biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or supporting evidence of effectiveness. Such practices are not part of evidence-based medicine. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of mainstream medicine and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural "energies", pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources. Frequently used terms for relevant practices are New Age medicine, pseudo-medicine, unorthodox medicine, holistic medicine, fringe medicine, and unconventional medicine, with little distinction from quackery.
Originally created by 47.83.107.xxx
9/26/2001, 10:48:32 PM
Modified
5/11/2026, 4:53:23 PM
Recent revisions
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Restored revision 1344563992 by [[Special:Contributions/Swasthhealth|Swasthhealth]] ([[User talk:Swasthhealth|talk]]): This edit reads like a the writer just wanted to add their bit on ALT-MED without reading the article. Already covered
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I don't know how these weasel words got in there
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/* Complementary or integrative medicine */ merged content from [[Functional medicine]] following a merge proposal. For the full discussion which led to the merge, please see the articles' talk pages. Please see the source page's history for [[WP:CWW|attribution]]. I didn't add additional content (just reorganised it), but the target section may need to be cleaned up.
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