Alternative Medicine Gets A Journal Of Its Own

Sun., Jan. 8, 1995

The Washington Post

Scientists have a favorite response to practitioners who claim results with alternative medicine: “Publish it in a peer-reviewed journal!” But most major medical journals are reluctant to publish such studies because they’re unimpressed with the work or don’t like mixing psychology, sociology and medicine.

Now investigators in homeopathy, herbal medicine and other nonconventional healing arts have an outlet of their own. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine: Research on Paradigm, Practice and Policy debuts this month as the nation’s first peer-reviewed journal devoted to alternative medicine.

The quarterly journal’s challenge is to bridge the perceived gap between holistic medicine and scientific rigor.

To do so, it has gathered an editorial board of respected physiologists, botanists, epidemiologists and medical historians - including former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

The journal’s editor-in-chief, Marc S. Micozzi, is a medical doctor and anthropologist who heads the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Bethesda, Md.

The inaugural issue includes a guest commentary by Sen. Tom Harkin, a major force behind the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

“The journal will focus not only on the results of clinical trials,” Micozzi said, “but on how to design studies … in alternative medicine.”

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