"Alternative medicine" is also defined by what it is not. According to David M. Eisenberg, M.D., of Harvard Medical School, alternative medicines are "medical interventions not taught widely at U.S. medical schools or generally available at U.S. hospitals."6 Wayne Jonas, M.D., director of the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave the OAM's definition: "Complementary and alternative medicine is defined through a social process as those practices that do not form a part of the dominant system for managing health and disease."7 These two definitions, though currently accurate, will soon be dated. An increasing number of medical schools are now offering courses in alternative medicine for their students, and some hospitals already have alternative medicine departments.

The term alternative medicine can also be considered as a code word for a whole series of significant changes and challenges occurring within the American health care system today, including:

• The realization, that, contrary to previously held beliefs, con-ventional biomedicine (the medicine that most people are familiar with: antibiotics, surgery, chemotherapy, etc.) cannot solve all of America's health problems
  
• The growing acceptance that health is more than just "the absence of disease" and involves more than just the physical body
  
• The growing body of scientific research, as well as public awareness, that many alternative medical treatments are more effective, more economical, and less invasive and less harmful than conventional medical treatments
  
• The growing number of informed health care consumers who are open to trying alternative medical treatments and demanding to be treated as a person — not as a diagnosis — by their health care providers

As stated earlier, each of the above "answers" is considered to be the "right" answer by various groups of experts on the subject. Possibly each of these experts has a part of the answer and not the whole answer. If that is so, each is worthy of consideration when seeking a definition of just exactly what "alternative medicine" is — and is not.

2. What is the difference between alternative medicine and conventional medicine?
Generally speaking, most high quality alternative medicine is founded on six core principles and practices that differ from the principles and historical practices of conventional medicine.

They are:

1. The healing power of nature first, and technique and technology second.
Probably the most important difference is that alternative medicine is founded on a deep belief in the healing power of nature (vis medicatrix naturrae). Alternative medical providers accept that within us is a natural ability to heal, an inherent recuperative power that is the key to all healing. The alternative practitioner believes his or her job is to support and stimulate this natural healing ability inherent in each patient.

Biomedicine or conventional medicine has historically tried to reduce the healing process to a series of physiological, physical, and chemical reactions that can be measured and documented by modern science. While there is some truth in this perspective, science has proven it to be an incomplete picture of the healing process. Conventional medicine has come to place more value on the techniques and the technology rather than on the inherent healing power of nature we possess as human beings.