What is alternative medicine based on?
Alternative medicine refers to unproven or disproven methods used instead of standard medical treatments to prevent, diagnose, or treat cancer. They have either not been thoroughly tested in clinical trials, or they have been tested and found not to work against cancer.
Why do they call it alternative medicine when it is the original medicine?
In the U.S. it refers to forms of medicine that are not widely accepted or practiced by medical doctors, particularly those that do not have as much scientific evidence to support them as more mainstream methods. Some types of alternative medicine have been around for hundreds and even thousands of years.
When was the term alternative medicine coined?
These services are often used interchangeably with the term "alternative medicine", a designation created in the 1800s that distinguished these modalities as alternative to allopathic medicine.