But as Dr. Gorski (Hi, Dave, glad to know your last name at last) knows from comments I’ve made to him on his blog and in e-mail, I am trying to get the Skeptical Community — and especially the Medical Skeptics — to stop using the term CAM. Medicine is what the bloggers here do, and my family doctor does. What these quacks do is no more medicine than what creationists do is ‘alternative geology.’

But by letting them use the CAM term — or by diluting the term medicine by referring to it as ‘allopathic medicine’ — we are conceding the ‘linguistic high ground’ to the (religious or non religious) faith healers who give us homeopathy, reiki, magic ‘purifying’ foot wipes, etc.

Even worse, we let the innocent believer respond ‘what do you mean X is not medicine? See, even the government calls it medicine.’

I have suggested the terms ‘ATM’ (for alternative therapy methods) or ATP (Alternative Therapy Practices).