Category talk:Alternative medical systems

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I am glad to see that the Glossary of alternative medicine index/article is the main article for Category: Alternative medical systems rather than Alternative medicine. It should also be the main article for Category: Alternative Medicine.

You would NEVER expect that certain personalities not very long ago actually tried unsucessfully to delete this KEY index to articles on alternative medicine.

I like the Big Blue InfoBox, on these articles. Looks good! -- John Gohde 12:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Not sure exactly what you mean when you say "this article is the main article for Category: Alternative medical systems" - to me it currently looks like Glossary of alternative medicine is the article linked by . --apers0n 17:42, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * "Category:Alternative medical systems
 * From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


 * Category: Alternative medicine


 * The main article for this category is Terms and concepts in alternative medicine."
 * -- John Gohde 02:23, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to rename category
It appears that the NCCAM name for this category is actually "whole medical systems"; see this overview, for example. Should this category be renamed?

Not realizing the overlap, I have created the other category already...they should probably be merged. Hgilbert (talk) 14:26, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The NCCAM may believe these are whole medical systems but a lot of people practice them as Complementary therapies, i.e. they use mainstream medicine too, and they are not recognised as complete systems on which people should rely wholly by the mainstream and consensus. I presume that's why the category was named 'alternative medical systems' (I wasn't there at the time) as they are 'alternative' in terms of the mainstream, mostly not endorsed by normal doctors etc, so they are alternative medical systems and that's what most people would call them. On wikipedia we use a neutral point of view and put views which are not the mainstream views in perspective.


 * -actually, this category describes itself as "Alternative medical systems is the precise name of the NCCAM" thingy, which is worded like they've had this discussion before lol. Hopefully someone will come along who can tell us what was decided as the precise name and why. Sticky Parkin 23:21, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It appears that the terms are used interchangeably -- for example, on the same page that you link to, actually, which has a link labeled 'alternative medical systems' that takes the reader to a page about 'whole medical systems'.
 * I don't think that it is either necessary or important to rename this category, but the two should definitely be merged. My preference is to keep all of it at alternative medical systems, because that term is (1) clearly understandable to the uninformed lay person and (2) clearly excludes mainstream medicine (which is surely a "whole" medical system itself, since the use of the word whole here refers to the ability of the medical system to treat every condition that it considers noxious, not to whether or not it is perceived as addressing psycho-social-spiritual conditions).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:58, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The first sentence in this article is incorrect as it refers to the NCCAM definition of a subcategory of CAM, namely whole medical systems. NCCAM defines alternative medicine as:

"NCCAM defines CAM as a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine." Some CAMs are whole, many are not. We have to change this.Desoto10 (talk) 22:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)