ay. 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 availability of healers and doctors practicing holistic medicine has also increased in recent years, and more and more people are educating themselves in these new fields. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that between 65 and 80 percent of the worlds population (about 3 billion people) rely on traditional medicine as their primary form of health care.Because many of the treatments of alternative medicine do not adhere to the principles of conventional medicine, whether or not to allow practice of these techniques in the United States is a major concern of the medical community today. The Food and Drug Administration is the decision making body of issues such as this and more often than not, does not approve many of these practices. Due to the fact that holistic medicine sometimes contradicts the fundamentals of biomedicine, health care regulation boards such as the FDA find it difficult to accept many of these treatments. Because the Western world is so unfamiliar with these techniques it is only natural for medical community to often disprove these methods. However, as more and more doctors discover the limitations of conventional medical techniques, and discover how little knowledge human beings possess in respect to issues such as life and death it is important that these treatments be approved for practice in the United States.Although it is often unclear why some of these methods are so effective in the treatment of illness, I believe the large amount of data supporting alternative medicine, in general, is something that can not be ignored. According to the allopathic medical community, many of these treatments do not have much scientific basis. However, practices such as acupuncture have successfully treated patients for centur...
