Talk:Integrative medicine/Archive 1

Archive 1

Redirect to Alternative medicine

Although I've just extensively edited this page, I've realised that this topic is covered much better in the alternative medicine article, which this article has usually redirected to. I propose returning this redirect. Verbal chat 10:21, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

That article is fairly big already, but IM, CAM, AM, &c. all refer to the same sets of practices and can usually be used interchangeably. IM is bigger than Andrew Weil now, so Alternative medicine would seem the appropriate target. - 2/0 (cont.) 15:54, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Integrative medicine is a distinctly different ontological entity to "Alternative medicine". There is no way someone could mistake the two. It would be absolutely inappropriate to merge the two articles. Boleroinferno (talk) 05:04, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Integrative Medicine new text

I have written some information on integrative medicine. I do agree that alternative medicine is a major part of integrative medicine but only a subset. I will add more info to the page when I have time.Jenyee28 (talk) 21:07, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

The point of the article isn't what Integrative Medicine has in common with it's counterparts, rather it's what makes IM unique. Largely, the only thing unique to IM is that tries to blend CAM with mainstream science based medicine.

'

The attempt to distance CAM is disingenuous, a knee-jerk defense from supporters reaching for acceptance. Logically, the focus of an encyclopedia article about IM shouldn't be on the mainstream science based medicine that IM and everyone else uses, but rather the CAM integration that makes this branch of medicine unique.Jadon (talk) 15:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Revive discussion about redirect

18 months later, is this topic really different enough from Alternative medicine to justify two articles? At the very least, there will need to be a great deal of overlap between the articles. The existence and placement of any distinction is so finely dependent on the sources chosen that I find the single article solution superior. I could see an argument for the evolution of the use of the term integrative medicine, but the term is used in so many ways by so many people that it seems that anything beyond a simple dictionary definition would mislead more than inform. - 2/0 (cont.) 13:00, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I share your concerns. Someone even tried creating a category and began adding to it. I reverted based on the fact that it would be nearly impossible to create such a category as there is no clear definition of its possible content. It is nearly synonymous with "complementary" medicine, except it refers to the situation and not to the remedies or methods themselves. In practice practitioners of alternative medicine, be they laymen or MDs, claim pretty much every imaginable alt med therapy as "integrative" or "complementary", regardless of whether it's total nonsense, safe, or very dangerous. It's an absurd and uncontrolled jungle. All we can do is use the definition currently proposed.

We should include the definition, and bold the term, in the alternative medicine article. It used to be there but disappeared at some point in time. That's a violation of the original agreement made when we merged all three articles. All three should be mentioned in the lead there.

We should then make the article page here a redirect to the alternative medicine article and leave a redirect here to Talk:Alternative medicine.

What think ye? -- Brangifer (talk) 19:41, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Huh, when did that section disappear? Most of the content that I can recall at this point seems to be at Alternative medicine#Terms or Alternative medicine#Education, so it might not be so bad as all that. I will go see if I can add integrative medicine to the lead over there without causing a ruckus, then this page and talkpage can be redirected in a day or so. Good? - 2/0 (cont.) 21:08, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move per request. A history swap was performed with the target.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:08, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

---

Integrative Medicine → Integrative medicine — capitalization is wrong 64.229.101.119 (talk) 20:13, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support: Agree capitalization is incorrect as this is not a proper noun. Also confusing that the correctly cased article currently redirects to alternative medicine. –CWenger (talk) 21:36, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
• Support per nom. I had requested that this get titled as "Integrative medicine" when it got moved from AfC, but apparently that didn't happen (the AfC submission used the incorrect capitalization). I can't see this being a particularly controversial move. I did fix the redirect from the correctly cased article to avoid confusing in the meantime. Zachlipton (talk) 00:14, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

• Comment it might also be a possibility to histmerge this article onto Integrative medicine (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) since a previous version of the article existed there before being redirected to alternative medicine. There is no significant edit history between conversion to a redirect of the old article and creation of this article. 64.229.101.119 (talk) 18:43, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: This topic is be called holistic medicine in the UK. Snowman (talk) 23:48, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

NPOV disputes from February 2011

This article reads like a sales pitch from an intergreative medicine practitioner, it completely lacks the NPOV required of Wiki articles. Here's a couple examples in the introduction: "Integrative medicine is an approach to health care that puts the patient at the center...", "...integrative approaches to medicine have demonstrated clear benefits...". To explain, the prior is a loaded statement, implying that other competing branches of medicine don't put their patient's care at the center (or primary concern), also boisterous statements like clear benefits without citation are obviously not NPOV.

The authors go to great length to quote mine references that aren't actually about integrative medicine, and introduce those concepts out of context as proof toward it's veracity. In short, the article appears to contain original research and dubious claims of effectiveness, my marking it for a NPOV violation is an understatement. I don't have time to mark up all it's errors to make it more neutral, but I will add a " Criticism" section at the bottom to safeguard the gullible who might read this article in the meantime. Jadon (talk) 14:26, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

We have problems with COI editing, promotion, removal of a redirect with the participation of too few editors, especially considering it removed a redirect established after much discussion by more individuals who were not contacted or involved. This whole subject can be summed up in 2-3 paragraphs. The promotion fills the rest. -- Brangifer (talk) 20:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback Brangifer. I agree completely, this page is just a promotion tool, the subject really should be merged into alternative medicine as a mere header.Jadon (talk) 21:03, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I have added some content to address the pro-alt med POV. For example, integrative medicine doctors recommend morphine for severe inpatient pain much more than acupuncture, so I included this in the pain section. The prescribe hydrocodone much more than acupuncture for severe outpatient pain, so I added this. I added going to church in the proper spirituality section, reducing soft drinks for kids, stopping smoking as a lifestyle change for health and well being, etc. In fact, integrative medicine is so broad, that the alternative medicine aspects will have little or no part in the article, under WP:UNDUE. PPdd (talk) 00:26, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

The IM practitioners I've seen aren't allowed to prescribe controlled substances, they lack the licensure, similar to a doctor of psychology or a doctor of chiropractics. If there are IM practitioners that do prescribe hydrocodone, I'd attribute that more to their conventional medical education/degree... these are conventional doctors who also do IM on the side, but I suspect this is rare. Jadon (talk) 15:27, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I replied more fully in the section below. There seems to be two parallel kinds of IM doctors. One is an MD at a mainstream university's IM department, which is all people in that bubble like me ever hear of, and the other is a degree from an alt med school out selling snake oil (in good faith). In the latter case, there is no basis for opposing a merge. PPdd (talk) 21:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Your argument for merging is based on a biased view point in itself "selling snake oil (in good faith)". Objectively, Integrative medicine is a distinctly different ontological entity to "Alternative medicine". There is no way someone could mistake the two. It would be absolutely inappropriate to merge the two articles. Moreover, your argument to merge the two seems like a simple political move to further reduce the legitimacy of 'alternative' medicine based on your own opinion: this is very much not unbiased.

As a side note, look at the actual health outcomes of mainstream medicine in the US and you'll find that its success rate at CURING illness is not higher than 'alternative medicine', moreover is not much higher than traditional shaman healers. As a medical student in a non-alternative med school, I would wager this is because a person's problem is either easily treatable using some form of common sense or that the problem is sufficiently obfuscated that its cause is not easily determined by most forms of inquiry, such as it being manifestation of 'SBS' due to building contamination. Boleroinferno (talk) 05:14, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

POV ADVERT SYNTH

The article essentially claims that integrative medicine is everything exciting in medicine, plus alternative medicine if you find that good, too. Almost all of the sources do not even mention integrative medicine. Having declared itself to include anything in medicine it wants to that has to do with improving health (What gets excluded?), the article then SYNTHs a list of any field in medicine it likes, even though they have nothing to do with integrative medicine, and the sources do not mention integrative medicine. The article should be blanked and redirected to a small section of the complementary and alternative medicine article, and summing up every field of medicine in a long list is a POV SYNTH ADVERT for this new justification for letting quackery into science based medicine departments. PPdd (talk) 23:44, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

What? Are you the one that added this statement: Its academic proponents advocate misleading patients to enhance the placebo effect.[2][3] to the article? Gandydancer (talk) 00:08, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

That article was the subject of tremendous controversy in the medical profession, since its author is one of the nation's chief integrative medicine advocates, recently did a systematic review of acupuncture for pain, concluded acupuncture was no more effective than placebo, then published in NEJM a recommendation that acupuncture be integrated into medical care on that basis. I was in email correspondence with the editor in chief of NEJM about their peer review and editorial review of this recommendation, not criticising the integrative medicine acupuncture pusher, but NEJM, but a retraction was never published by NEJM. I don't understand what relevance your question has to my comment. PPdd (talk) 00:22, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Are you speaking of the blog that you used for a reference?Gandydancer (talk) 02:10, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

NEJM stands for New England Journal of Medicine, which published not as a blog, but as a product of peer review and editorial review, a statement by a leading integrative medicine practitioner and advocate, that although acupuncture was found to be only a placebo, "acupuncture can be a useful supplement to other forms of conventional therapy for low back pain". Science Based Medicine is a respected reference resource source that also publishes blogs. It contained material quoted from the journal that was inaccessible to users without paying, so is listed as a source for the journal content. I am not understanding the relevance of your question to this section. PPdd (talk) 02:54, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I know what the NEJM is and your article sentence, "Its academic proponents advocate misleading patients to enhance the placebo effect." did not come from the NEJM. It came from the blog that said this:

What I find so disturbing about this NEJM article is not so much that Berman et al pulled these usual CAM tricks. I expect that. I see it all the time in CAM journals and sometimes in unsuspecting legitimate medical or scientific journals. What I find so disturbing about this NEJM article is that the peer reviewers did not spot the obvious CAM abuses of language designed to obscure the fact that acupuncture is no better than placebo. The editors of the NEJM should be ashamed of themselves. The peer reviewers who reviewed this article should be ashamed of themselves. Those of us who rely on the NEJM for evidence-based findings and assessments of various treatments should be afraid.Gandydancer (talk) 11:41, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree entirely. Some reacted angrily at NEJM, but I just got depressed. Even more depressing was that the NEJM chief editor steadfastly pretended not to understand the problem in his email correspondence with me. I kept pointing out that the problem was not that a major integrative medicine advocate weasel worded a finding that acupuncture was a placebo treatment into a recommendation to use it (lying to patients), but that peer reviewers and editors at NEJM allowed such a recommendation to be published. No matter how many times I reworded this, the NEJM editor either did not understnd this criticism of his editorial error, ot pretended not to understand. He ultimately directed me to letters to NEJM that NEJM published after the article came out, none of which was critical of NEJM, only of the article, while the important criticism of NEJM was left out entirely, as if it never existed, typical more of editorial decisions of a CAM journal than of NEJM, which is supposed to be the flagship of medical sobriety in publication.

On another matter, intended or not, you pointed to the bloggish nature of the resource Science Based Medicine, which blends being a secondary RS for some information (RS, but maybe not MEDRS), with blogging put on top of the RS information it provides. I tried only to use it as a source as it pertained to either providing quotations from the NEJM article (inaccessable without purchase), or as supporting edits about what critics were saying. In the former case, it is clearly a secondary source. In the latter case it is a primary source, so only marginally usable under a commonsense IAR reading of RS. You may not have been intending to be pointing this out in your questions, but they brought to mind my own hesitancy in stradling IAR commonsense (Doctrine of Absurdity) and strict constructionist reading of RS, re positions of critics. PPdd (talk) 12:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge discussion at Talk:Alternative medicine

Join discussion there. -- Brangifer (talk) 16:59, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Bonniehorrigan edits

Hey Bonnie, unfortunately it looks like you've reverted the work of about half a dozen people and over 50 edits. We have toiled to bring this article up to encyclopedic standards. You're edits lack a NPOV required of Wikipedia, furthermore you should not have deleted the NPOV tag at the top of the page. Please do not delete well sourced and citied statements in favor of your original research, you're entire introductory passage, for example, is not sourced and contains loaded speech.

"Integrative medicine is grounded in the definition of health." This unsourced statement of yours is nonsensical, it's using conflated circular reasoning to define a medical practice.

Why are you including WHO definitions of the word health, that's pointless unless you're trying to imply that only IM cares about the entire person. Conventional, science based medicine is concerned with mental, emotional, and physical health to a much larger extent in that they have specialist that devote their entire careers in each of these fields. Only an idiot would attempt to attack a heart surgeon for not also simultaneously practicing psychiatry.

"... integrative approach has demonstrated clear benefits include prevention and wellness, obstetrics, pediatrics, primary care, acute and chronic care, pain management, cancer care, cardiac care and palliative care." Actually IM has not demonstrated any "clear benefits" beyond a placbeo, futhermore this sort of biased lanuage does not belong in an encyclopedia, it's more fitting to an IM sales pamphlet. Jadon (talk) 14:41, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Jadon: There must be some confusion. I have only made one change. Someone posted derogatory remarks about integrative medicine that we re not in keeping with Wiki policies. The remarks inferred Inferring that integrative medicine is "pseudo science " and "quackamania" medicine, which are a personal opinion of the editor involved and not based in fact. So I took those remarks down and reported the original statement. If you go to our nation's National Library of Medicine and search integrative medicine you will find hundreds of research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. It is a valid subject and there is evidence of its efficacy. User:Bonniehorrigan, 23 February 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bonniehorrigan (talk • contribs) 16:05, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Bonnie, the mainstream EBM part of IM does indeed have proven efficacy ("clear benefits"), but the part that makes IM called "integrative" (alternative medicine techniques) does not, neither by definition nor by research. If it's proven, it's called "medicine", not "alternative" medicine, and the research has been very disappointing:

• In 2009 the complaints of critics were vindicated by the highly publicized negative results of ten years of big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (formerly OAM):
  
  "Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do."
  
  Cancer researcher Andrew J. Vickers has stated:
  
  "Contrary to much popular and scientific writing, many alternative cancer treatments have been investigated in good quality clinical trials, and they have been shown to be ineffective. In this article, clinical trial data on a number of alternative cancer cures including Livingston-Wheeler, Di Bella Multitherapy, antineoplastons, vitamin C, hydrazine sulfate, Laetrile, and psychotherapy are reviewed. The label "unproven" is inappropriate for such therapies; it is time to assert that many alternative cancer therapies have been "disproven.""

Bonnie, quite frankly, your statements so far show you are laboring under a delusion and Bravewell is promoting it. Alternative medicine is either unproven or disproven. You have also been warned about your COI, and I hope you will refrain from directly editing the articles and will stick to using the talk pages. You and/or someone else also working for Bravewell has been editing the articles and one has been busted for sockpuppetry. Not only does that make Bravewell look bad, in some cases such actions can accelerate and get a website placed on our blacklist. To avoid confusion, I suggest that you talk with whoever else is editing from Bravewell and agree that only one of you deals with these subjects on Wikipedia.

As to the "derogatory" edits which you removed, yes, they are mainstream opinion about alternative medicine, and the inclusion of such opinions, when properly sourced, is well within policy. In fact, NPOV requires that such opposing opinions be included. Even blogs, when written by experts, especially when dealing with fringe subjects, are allowed as sources. That's because of our WP:FRINGE guideline, which allows the use of such mainstream sources to debunk fringe claims. That's because peer-reviewed sources never mention fringe subjects:

• "The critics say that alternative medicine (also known as "complementary" and "integrative" medicine, and disparagingly labeled "woo" by opponents) doesn't need or deserve its own home at NIH.
  "What has happened is that the very fact NIH is supporting a study is used to market alternative medicine," said Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale School of Medicine and editor of the Web site Science-Based Medicine (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org), where much of the anti-NCCAM discussion is taking place. "It is used to lend an appearance of legitimacy to treatments that are not legitimate." Washington Post

Brangifer (talk) 23:50, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

References

Alt Med journals revisited: Application of MEDRS re biomed conclusions "peer reviewed" by alt med and pseudoscience journals -

Alt Med journals revisited: Application of MEDRS re biomed conclusions "peer reviewed" by alt med and pseudoscience journals - Application of MEDRS re biomed conclusions "peer reviewed" by out of field non-experts is being discussed here[1]. PPdd (talk) 16:05, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Some very odd edits...

Who on earth is adding JUNK like this:

Pain Management See also: Pain management

• Morphine is one of the strongest pain relievers known, and is used by integrative medicine docors in hospitals around the world.
• Hydrocodone is one of the most widely prescribed pain relievers for lower back pain, is far more effective than acupuncture, and is prescribed by integrative medicine doctors around the world.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the edits to this and the alt med articles. I wish that the editor that did these edits would speak up and try to defend them. Gandydancer (talk) 16:46, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I chopped down that cherry tree. In the context of arguing that IM should not be merged into alt med, many editors claimed that integrative medicine practitioners might not even use, or rarely use, alt med. In my cafe lunch conversations with IM docs, in the context of my massively ruptured L5/S1 from a 100 verticle foot fall down a land collapse, they said they would use morphine, or prescribe hydrocodone, and so would any IM doc. Then in the context of a non-merge possibility, it made no sense to list acupuncture's at best barely measurable analgesic effects under a section header for pain, and not list the principal practices, as this would violate WP:UNDUE, and in fact, listing acupuncture at all in the pain section at IM should violate WP:UNDUE, unless there were a whole lot more examples of the DUE stuff. I did not source the statements because they are in no way controvertial. By the way, I support wiping out the whole IM article and merging to alt med. PPdd (talk) 17:01, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

PPdd, in no way do I wish to diminish your energy to bring good to the world, but you really do need to pull back on your desire to save mankind from disinformation! I did not know that you made these edits, but now that you admit to them it does not surprise me at all. Sitting over coffee with med students, etc., really does not equate to a sound medical background. Those of us that edit this article that do have a sound medical background know that this edit sounds as amateurish as hell. I appreciate your good intentions, but please try to work with the wikipedia community more closely to provide our readers with a somewhat reasonable encyclopedia. Not one of us is an expert, but as a group hopefully we can come up with something that is not too out of line. Gandydancer (talk) 18:33, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey PPdd, I was under the impression that a degree in Naturopathy, a Doctor of Natural Medicine (DNM) or Doctor of Integrative Medicine (IMD) lacks the license to prescribe controlled substances. The IM doctors I've seen only doll out multivitamins as a cure-all, so the good stuff like Morphine wouldn't even be an option. Do you know if this is true, also do you think it varies by clinic or state? Jadon (talk) 19:48, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I was not even aware that there is an IMD that was less than an MD, and never heard of DNM. The only integrative medicine doctors I have met are at stanford, ucsf, ucla, and harvard, and they all do (pseudo) "research", and have MDs, usually with PhDs on top. And their chief argument for alt med is that is a very good placebo, or that it is what poatients believe in, so the AMA recommends to go along with alt med and religious beliefs, so as not to alienate the patients from real medical care. I think this approach amounts to outright fraud, but I have not had to deal with patients (only grossly incompetent research MDs) so I might have the opposite opinion in the field, but I doubt it. That is where I got the answer to "how does IM treat pain?". There seems to be an ambiguity in usage of "integrative medicine", as I have been around these people for some time, and never heard of these lighter weight degrees. And I thought Naturopathy was an alt med, not IM. Is an IMD alt med or IM? Is an IMD an MD? PPdd (talk) 20:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

If one can only get these degrees at universities of alt med, then why oppose a merge? If MDs at mainstream universities do IM, and most of their practice is evidence based medicine, then why under UNDUE put alt meds like acupuncture as anything other than a bit part? If you don't have an MD, how are you "integrated"?

Thanks PPdd, makes sense... it's nice to have a MD contributing. I think we're in agreement that science should never pander to a delusion, even if that delusion has comforting benefits (most do). Any support of CAM fundamentally undermines causality and critical thinking in the minds of their patients, and that has broad consequences in how they approach all of life & reality. I have enough difficulty trying to keep my gullible friends and family from getting ripped off without doctors (who we look up to for guidance) lending support for healing powers of snake oil. Jadon (talk) 22:33, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not an MD. I'm a burned out desert mathematician/philosopher/statistician who left stanford after 11 years to join a circus, got tired of that, then was at caltech and mit most recently. i just had lunch at the med school cafes because i got sick of the other campus cafes, liked hanging out at harvard because mit sucks as a hang out, lived a few blocks from ucsf IM, and my mom had cancer and was treated at ucla. so i met some IM docs every so often. they're kind of kooky (and thats coming from me). I put some good RS a couple of sections down. :) PPdd (talk) 04:32, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Touching story

If you don't have time to read all the refs, the Mehmet Oz one at Huf Post is a very quick read, and kind of touching. PPdd (talk) 00:14, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome to provide a link to it.... BTW, Mehmet Oz's position on several forms of quackery doesn't exactly increase confidence in his trustworthiness, but he did give me some hope the other day when he actually referred to scientific research! It was about Human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) supplements and he stated flat out that it was unproven. Pretty good! He usually sides with the pushers of woo woo. So let's see if he's got something good to say that's also backed up by research, or at least doesn't contradict it. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:39, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Linked. I have not seen his show. I once saw a snippet which appeared like a childrens' medical education show. When I read the simple post in the link above, maybe it was just a mood I was in, but I thought he seemed genuinely disturbed about his inability to do antying about the woman's condition and the circumstances causing it. I thought to myself that I could never be a physician, and that I sure was glad I was not him, and even more glad I was not the woman in his story. PPdd (talk) 00:55, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, indeed a touching story and dilemma. I don't envy physicians. Brangifer (talk) 15:07, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Good Source for Int Med - Institute on Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences & Engineering and National Research Council

• Good Source. - Institute on Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences & Engineering and National Research Council - INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE AND PATIENT-CENTERED CARE

• And this has stuff and is pretty good about the author of that paper, Victoria Maizes, hand picked by Weil. PPdd (talk) 04:15, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

• And Integrative Medicine by David Rakel is a good book.

Now lets fill out the Integrative Medicine section and eliminate the junk (like the stuff I put in it). PPdd (talk) 04:23, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Self promoting blabber

This unsourced sentence could be applied to any medical practice - "Through personalizing care, MEDICINE-PRACTICE-A goes beyond the treatment of symptoms to address all the causes of an illness." It sounds like something pulled off of a self-promoting web site for IM or any number of other alternative medicines, as well as a general philosophy that it would be hard to find any evidence based medicine MD would disagree with. It should be deleted, and editors should be careful to distinguish what IM is from what it tries to assume the authority of. PPdd (talk) 23:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Preventive medicine section

Most of this section describes preventive medicine. What is it doing in an IM article. Evidence based preventive medicine has nothing to do with IM, other than IM claims to use all medicines. By this reasoning, there is no branch of medicine that would not have its own section in the IM article. PPdd (talk) 00:05, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Are we to have a separate secion for every kind of alt med and every subfield of evidence based medicine?

Are we to have a separate secion for every kind of alt med and every subfield of evidence based medicine? Where should the line be drawn, since IM self defines itself as "all nonquackery integrated with all quackery", or something equally broad like that. PPdd (talk) 00:08, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I have the same complaint... the majority of this article neglects to properly and logically tie into the subject. This is like an article on "Football" where they list how stadium grass is fertilized and various gear is made. This article could be a couple paragraphs long, it should concentrate on how it's defined and what makes it unique. Preventive medicine, for example, is not even slightly unique to integrative medicine... so there's no point in having a long paragraph quoting CDC stats to convince people of it's importance. This header, as well as "Patient-Centered Care" implies that IM is doing these things while others are not. Jadon (talk) 18:16, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

IM, MEDRS or Alice in Wonderland?

An “Integrative Medicine” article abstract goes like this, (paraphrasing slightly) - “Weight reduction and exercise are known to reduce the risk of heart disease. We did a study that added 'mindfel meditation' to weight loss and exercise, and the total intervention reduced risk. This shows Integrative Medicine methods can be used to reduce risk of heart disease, possibly by incorporating weight reduction and exercise.”[2] How should MEDRS be used to deal with such absurd reasoning in medical publications, which time and again is then used to reference WP article lines like “IM methods can be used to reduce the risk of heart disease”, deleing the speculation from the conclusion? The situation would be even worse if the study was a secondary source review of such primary source conclusions. PPdd (talk) 19:41, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow, now that's scary! Either it's outright intellectual dishonesty, or the authors are completely incompetent on the scientific method, and basic casualty. I'd hope med school could weed out these sort... this is probably a symptom for our declining educational standards. Jadon (talk) 19:19, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Sources and content is MASSIVELY not about IM

Very many of the sources cited do not even mention IM. The article is filled with claims about alt med, which are not about int med, so belong in the appropriate articles, not here. PPdd (talk) 02:56, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I am not making this up

I was taking out the garbage... from the IM article, checking if the sources supported the content, and I found this -

Because changing one’s lifestyle is not always easy, integrative medicine health care providers have developed interventions that help people make the needed changes. In addition to formal lifestyle change programs such as those developed by Dean Ornish, Founder and President of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute,

References

The source is this website. Click on it. I am not making this up. That's right, the spiritual warfare/faith healing group. And yes, IM does "integrate" faith healing. PPdd (talk) 04:48, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Article is being misread?

Re: this entry - "In more targeted studies, a trial at the Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant, which tested an integrative medicine intervention for lower back pain (acupuncture and mind-body practices for stress reduction), found a significant reduction in prescription pain medication intake, suggesting a potential long-term economic benefit to the company".

• (1) I did not read the article conclusion that way. Whoever put this in, please comment on your interpretation.
• (2) It was not tested against a placebo.
• (3) The primary source is not reliable. PPdd (talk) 02:17, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I removed this whole section for the simple reason that this article starts out by saying that IM is the "integration" of alt-med with conventional medicine (or, as I like to call it... medicine). But this study would seem to have "integrated" alt-med (acupuncture) and yet more alt-med (mind-body practices). It isn't, by its own definition, IM. This rather poor quality study might deserve mention on the acupuncture page, although I doubt it. Another reason for removing individual studies, is that this article will soon spiral out of control... Famousdog (talk) 09:51, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Approach to this article?

Is it appropriate that the criticism section is larger than the explanation of what the article is about? I don't think so.

btw - you skeptics may be interested to know that IM is defined very differently depending on who you ask. For those who work in the CAM world, "Integrative" is becoming more and more a term that describes physicians co-opting modalities from CAM providers. Isn't that interesting? IM can refer to care that is under the direction of a physician but can include treatments or consultations from CAM providers - or it often describes CAM providers who actually use an evidence-based approach (shocking! but true, they do exist). It seems you guys are thinking of it as if it were the same thing as CAM. I think the distinction is important.Herbxue (talk) 20:52, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Oops, just saw that you closed the proposal to merge with Alternative Medicine. This article is still improperly weighted though. Can we bring back some of the old descriptive information to flesh it out a little?Herbxue (talk) 00:57, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok I was going to revert some of the deletions but then saw that the original article did have a strong promotional feel. However, although we cannot promote individual doctors or centers, it does make sense to mention them as they are the driving force in defining "Integrative Medicine" as something distinct from CAM.Herbxue (talk) 14:44, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Article issues

This article, and the 'Reasoning' section in particular, seem very biased towards the promotion of the subject. The article's tone when comparing 'intergrative medicine' with conventional medicine is highly questionable as well.--Metalhead94 ^{T C} 17:29, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

On 6th October 2011 reams of POV, unsourced, original research appeared in this article thanks to the efforts of Zylla1. I have removed it according to wikipedia policy. We'll see whether it reappears. Famousdog (talk) 13:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Need more content

This article isn't very informative right now. The criticism section is the only real content other than a one sentence description. There needs to be more descriptions of who is using this term, why they are doing it, what modalities are commonly employed, and whether or not people find it beneficial. I think the person who put the POV tag was reacting to the obvious lack of descriptive content which makes the criticism section look excessive by comparison.Herbxue (talk) 14:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

"Whether or not people find it beneficial" is not a standard for inclusion at WP. It is also a false standard for medical efficacy. People "find" homeopathy, prayer, chiropractic, palm reading, TCM, dousing, and all sorts of things beneficial. That is the reason for controlled double blind experiments, and for rigorous statistical analyses. I agree "why they are doing it" should have more. There is much published that it is being done to make money off of ignorance, or to reign in alternative medicine practitioners to have some oversight. PPdd (talk) 00:13, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Agree with PPdd, although the article could use more discussion of who uses the term and why. As far as I can tell, the term "integrative medicine" is simply a way to smuggle alternative medicine into the health system by the back door, so it doesn't really need a lengthy article, but a simple redirect to alternative medicine would be unacceptable to many. Famousdog (talk) 08:58, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not asking for anything other than more descriptive content. Even if you were editing Hitler or Kony you would include some basic description of the thing you're talking about, no? As far as I can tell "Integrative Medicine" is not really alternative medicine practitioners sneaking in the back door, its conventional medicine Dr.'s and institutions using (or abusing) elements of CAM therapies, either because they are beneficial, popular, or just revenue-enhancing. Regardless, the popularity of figures like Deepak, Weil and Dr. Oz give enough notability to this subject to warrant a decent-sized article.Herbxue (talk) 18:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Um, yes. I agree with you about needing more descriptive content, that's why I've added some stuff to the lead about notable proponents. But i don't agree that this needs to be a particularly long article, since it seems to be in many cases a re-branding or re-casting of alt-med ideas and if it gets too long it could possibly constitute a POV fork. Famousdog (talk) 08:34, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for adding some stuff. I guess one problem is - who "owns" the term Integrative Medicine? CAM seems to be a term used mainly by CAM practitioners, while IM is not so much.Herbxue (talk) 14:36, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Problems with current definition

The current definition in the lede is identical to the definition for Complementary Medicine (CM), and that's not right. Integrative medicine claims to use alternative methods for which there is some high quality evidence, together with conventional medicine. Although the part about "high quality evidence" is still lacking, that's the claim, and that claim is not made for CM. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:55, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps we could use the definition from WebMD that can be found here[3] and that I gave in the thread below.

Merge template with Alternative Medicine

If you're going to put up a merge template, put your reasoning too.

• Oppose merge - It muddies two different subjects. This needs its own article to not mix up evidence based medicine with alternative medicine. Sidelight12 ^Talk 01:04, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose merge - Integrative medicine integrates unconventional therapies that are evidence-based: "While some of the therapies used may be nonconventional, a guiding principle within integrative medicine is to use therapies that have some high-quality evidence to support them."[4] Alternative medicine is a much broader term, and probably the majority of therapies don't have research or may be traditional practices. TimidGuy (talk) 14:38, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support merge - Unless someone can find me something that's "interrogative" but not "CAM" or vice versa. TippyGoomba (talk) 17:11, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support It's the same topic with a different name. We aren't a dictionary. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:58, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

• Support merge - While there may be a distinction between the two topics, that distinction is not made clear in the articles as they are now Flatoitlikealizarddrinking (talk) 15:03, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

• Support merge. This is small enough to easily be merged into the alt med article. It's the same subject anyway. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:35, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose merge - The term integrative is increasingly predominant, especially among the medical community. Alternative refers to a broader subject including very disparate practices, some of which are not commonly integrated into conventional care and do not have much research to support them.Herbxue (talk) 14:45, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Can that be supported by satisfactory sources, NPOV-wise? Qexigator (talk) 15:28, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I believe it's supported by the article on WebMD that I linked to above.[5] It's an excellent overview of integrative medicine and mentions the consortium of 42 medical centers and universities. Alternative medicine is diffuse, and a lot of it is wacky, but integrative medicine is being taken seriously. Here's what the article says: "It's no longer considered fringe," Sternberg says. "Medical students are being taught to think in an integrated way about the patient, and ultimately, that will improve the management of illness at all levels." TimidGuy (talk) 16:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. As a layman I can only take this pretty much at face value. Others may be in a better position to affirm. It has been in existence since 1997, as "the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Osher Center for Integrative Medicine". It names one MD for Director of Clinical Programs and another for Research.[6] The Center's director is Ph.D.[7] and "served for five years as the first deputy director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)". Qexigator (talk) 17:17, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Here's a recent article in the Wall Street Journal[8] Quote: "Integrative medicine programs including meditation are increasingly showing up at hospitals and clinics across the country."

Meditation may deservedly be gaining ground, and some medics may practice it for themselves and recommend it to others, including their patients, just as many practise prayer, religion and may be a few philosophy or gymnastics or golf for the good of their health. But how does that tell us about Integrative medicine? Qexigator (talk) 11:12, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

The subject of the sentence is integrative medicine. The source is making this assertion regarding integrative medicine programs in general. Integrative medicine is medicine that integrates evidence-based alternative medicine; it is increasingly being adopted at hospitals and clinics around the U.S. TimidGuy (talk) 10:21, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

As I didn't see any clear consensus here to merge, plus I didn't see any text from this article added to Alternative medicine, I reverted the redirect. Lova Falk talk 08:07, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. The concepts are different. Alternative medicine is (per Minchin's law) always bullshit, but SCAM and IM contain valid therapies as well. In fact, the quacks and cranks are actually trying to obliterate the distinction in the hopes that it will somehow make up for the fact that their practices are bullshit. We are not here to help them along with that. Guy (Help!) 00:58, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Definition

Unlikely that NCCAM would now endorse the definition quoted. See ref 8 where NCCAM says: There are various definitions for "integrative health care" and fail to offer their own. The link in ref 8 was updated May this year. The link to the NCCAM definition is ten years old. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.10.66.32 (talk) 19:23, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. Note that you've plagiarized the source. We'll need to fix that. Also, the source isn't really presenting the material you added as a definition. It's one of three facts that it lists. How about if we remove the old definition, properly summarize the three facts that it presents, and move that summary to an appropriate section of the article? TimidGuy (talk) 09:38, 24 September 2013 (UTC)