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I want to start with a few definitions and give you some
background to the field. I’m talking about a series of diverse medical and health care
practices that share the fact that they are outside the realm of conventional medicine and
are yet to be validated by scientific methods. These include things that we call
complementary because people choose to use them in addition to the kinds of practices that
we have long sought to develop and champion here at the National Institutes of Health
(NIH). And alternative practices are ones that people choose in place of those remedies,
however effective they are. |