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Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is an umbrella term for alternative medicine, complementary medicine, and integrative medicine. Alternative medicine describes practices used in place of conventional medical treatments. Complementary medicine describes practices used in conjunction and cooperation with conventional medicine. While integrative medicine is viewed as the best of complementary medicine by its advocates.

CAM has been described as comprising “a diverse group of treatments, ranging from symptomatic interventions to be used in conjunction with traditional therapies—therapeutic touch or meditation—to unique treatments meant to replace conventional chemotherapy or surgery. CAM includes complex and longstanding fields of study, such as acupuncture, ayurvedic medicine, and homeopathy, but can also be as straightforward as taking a specific dietary supplement to lower blood pressure or blood lipid concentrations.”

Wikipedia is undoubtedly the world’s biggest and most read and referenced encyclopedia. The community participation has made it a huge success. But its open architecture has (at times) also led to the use of Wikipedia for gaining political mileage and for spreading biased views by a handful of editors.

The same thing has happened to most complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies on Wikipedia. Millions of people who use internet to search for alternative medicine are being systematically exposed to anti-CAM data. At the time when the world is rushing towards alternative medicine, the effort to sabotage the alternative medicine cannot be ignored. The Wikipedia articles on CAM are not a true knowledge-base about any CAM therapy. It is primarily a place to post what CAM is not!!

This is why we need a place where the CAM community can build its own knowledge base. We need a place where the CAM practitioners themselves write articles and create a true picture of its history, development, efficacy and positive research.

The Complementary and Alternative Medicine community needs to come together to create exhaustive articles about each CAM therapy. This wiki is open ONLY to CAM practitioners. www.Wiki4CAM.org is technically supported by Hpathy.com, world’s leading homeopathy portal and we will try to ensure that this wiki gives the CAM community the most conducive atmosphere for creating its knowledge base.

Even if you ignore the effect of Wikipedia on CAM, there is no denying that Wikipedia is not a very exhaustive reference resource for all CAM therapies, practices and medicines. The knowledge base of CAM, which includes hundreds of years of clinical experience, is often ignored and ridiculed as unscientific because often there is no double-blind RCT data to support it yet. People forget that a large number of modern day medical practices and medicines are derived from the CAM practices and remedies. The rich knowledge base of CAM needs extensive documentation and easy accessibility to all researchers. www.Wiki4CAM.org intends to provide a platform to meet this goal.

Tags: Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Encyclopedia, Acupressure, Acupuncture, Alternative Medicine, Alternative medicine, Anthroposophic medicine, Applied Kinesiology, Aromatherapy, Ayurveda, Bach Flower, Bowen Technique