John S Makulowich makulow@clark.net (c) 1994 John S Makulowich The Writers Alliance, Inc. July 29, 1994 Internet Resources on Alternative Medicine by John S Makulowich [NB: You can obtain a copy of this document through the Internet FTP service. URL ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/journalism/altmed.txt You can also retrieve it via a Web server; search for the characters "Menu" using the "/" key; it is the last item: URL http://www.clark.net/pub/journalism/brochure.html Comments welcome. This document is copyright (c) 1994 by John Makulowich and is made available as a service to the Internet community. It may not be sold in any medium, including electronic, CD-ROM, or database, packaged with any commercial product, or published in print, without the explicit, written permission of John Makulowich (makulow@clark.net)] The interconnected computer networks worldwide known as the Internet offer a variety of valuable resources for professionals who seek to communicate as well as to gather information about alternative medicine. In this article, I highlight some of these resources and describe how to gain access to them. For convenience, I arrange them by source, that is, newsgroups, discussion groups, Gopher servers and Web servers. While there are other sources worth exploring, for example, ftp (file transfer protocol) archives, the four covered here account for the great majority of information and data. (One caveat: the most comprehensive list of health resources on the Internet is Lee Hancock's excellent work, "Internet/Bitnet Health Sciences Resources," found via ftp at ftp.sura.net in the /pub/nic subdirectory under the file name of medical.resources.3-94. For those interested, the URL is ftp://ftp.sura.net/pub/nic/medical.resources.3-94) Newsgroups Commonly referred to as bulletin boards, newsgroups are one of the better ways to keep an ear to the ground for trends and developments. Alongside seasoned observations from world experts will be messages that seem the ranting and raving of a drunken sailor. While the criticism of newsgroups is often justified--that there is more noise than signal--the astute user can easily separate the worthwhile articles from the useless. Be forewarned, however, that few Internet service providers offer all the newsgroups, which currently number more than 9,000 and generate an estimated 50,000 posts daily. Thus, some of those listed below may be unavailable via your Internet connection. Further, depending upon the system you use to connect to the Internet, you will se e different news readers. Among the more common on Unix-based systems are nn, trn/strn and tin. To launch your newsreader, simply type nn, trn, strn or tin. If you are on a Unix-based system, you can type man and the name of the newsreader for details on how to use a particular newsreader. For example, type the words, man nn or man trn or man tin at your Unix prompt. Among the many newsgroups that touch on alternative medicine are: alt.health.ayurveda alt.hypnosis alt.magick alt.meditation alt.paranormal ba.politics bit.listserv.c+health bit.listserv.medlib-l misc.health.alternative rec.food.veg sci.med sci.med.nutrition sci.med.pharmacy sci.med.telemedicine soc.culture.french talk.politics.medicine Discussion Groups Compared to newsgroups, discussion groups use list managers (computer programs that perform administrative chores), which pass e-mail from individuals to the group interested in a specific subject. Each piece of e-mail sent to the group is transmitted to every individual or organization "subscribed." The advantage of a discussion group over a newsgroup is that all correspondence is archived and retrievable via a series of commands addressed to the list manager. How long the correspondence is archived dep ends on the list "owner," the person responsible for monitoring and maintaining the list and usually the one who starts the list. A convenient way to see if there are any groups in your subject of interest is to send e-mail to this address: listserv@bitnic.educom.edu (or listserv@bitnic if you are on the Bitnet/CREN network). In the text of the message, type these words: list global/ and then send it. For example, for this article, I sent this command to the address above: list global/med to gather all the discussion groups with the word medicine in their titles or descriptions. You could also use heal or health--as well as many others. Obviously, I also picked up groups on media and multimedia, but, at the outset, I wanted to gather as mu ch as possible rather than to exclude group names. Among the discussion groups I found were these: biomed-l@mcgill1 Assoc. of Biomedical Communications Directors compmed@wuvmd Comparative Medicine List emflds-l@ubvm Electromagnetics in Medicine, Science & Communications family-l@mizzou1 Academic Family Medicine Discussion gfulmed@ndsuvm1 GFULMED Grateful Med via BITNET glb-hlt@uicvm Global Forum on Medical Education and Practice healr-l@gsuvm1 Collaborative Research in the Health Sciences Professions health-l@irlearn International Discussion on Health Research healthre@ukcc Health Care Reform Discussion List hedir@siucvmb The Intl Electronic Mail Directory for Health Education herb@trearn Medicinal and Aromatic Plants discussion list hesca@dartcms1 Health Sciences Communications immnet-l@dartcms1 Medical Immunization Tracking systems inhealth@rpitsvm International Health Communication jmedclub@brownvm Medical Journal Discussion Club lasmed-l@taunivm Laser Medicine medforum@arizvm1 Med Student Organization/Policy Forum medinf-l@dearn MEDINF-L medlab-l@ualtavm MEDLAB-L is a discussion group for medical lab professionals mednets@ndsuvm1 MEDNETS Medical Telecommunications Networks mednews@asuacad MedNews - Health Info-Com Network Newsletter medssr-l@qucdn Medical Students for Social Responsibility medstu-l@unmvma Medical student discussion list medsup-l@yalevm Medical Support List mhcare-l@mizzou1 Managed Health Care nnlm-sea@umab National Net of Libraries of Medicine, Southeastern/Atlanta panet-l@yalevm Medical Education and Health Information Discussion Group rc_world@indycms Resp. Healthcare profiles World Fourm smcdcme@waynest1 Continuing Medical Education Discussion List smdm-l@dartcms1 Medical Decision Making List tecnomed@icnucevm TECNOMED Database list To subscribe to any of the discussion groups listed, simply send e-mail to listserv@domainname.bitnet and in the text of your e-mail, type "subscribe your full name" (no quotes). For example, if i wished to subscribe to the Health Care Reform Discussion List, I would send e-mail to listserv@ukcc.bitnet and, in the tex t, I would type the words (without quotes) "subscribe healthre john makulowich". By the way, if you are on a Bitnet network, you will not need to add the words, bitnet, to the end of the e-mail address. Gopher Servers Gopher, a program created in April 1991 by the University of Minnesota Microcomputer, Workstation, Networks Center and now used worldwide, is known as a seamless distributed information delivery system. The user can search more than 8,000 gopher servers (a networked computer with resources) worldwide and retrieve files by e-mail or by downloading them to his/her computer. Veronica, an indexing tool for use with gopher, allows the user to search the line item descriptions on the different gopher servers. Further, if the program is installed on the user's host machine (as a so-called client), then he/she can use the "bookmark" feature of the program to maintain a list of servers and files frequently visited and return to them with the press of a key. Here is a list of some of the gopher servers I found on the subject of alternative medicine. To access them, simply type gopher and the name of the Host. For example, in the first case, at your system prompt, type gopher gopher.qut.edu.au Alternative Medicine Menu Host=gopher.qut.edu.au Alternative Medicine Program: Meeting Host=gopher.internet.com 2002 Enriched Honey Products for Health Food & Alternative Medicine Host=gopher.matimop.org.il ENRICHED HONEY PRODUCTS fOR HEALTH FOOD AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE Host=nysernet.org 71 EXPLORATORY GRANTS FOR ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE Host=bluefin.utmb.edu EXPLORATORY GRANTS FOR ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE Host=prometheus.bsd.uchicago.edu EXPLORATORY GRANTS FOR ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: RFP/RFA Host=helix.nih.gov An introduction to alternative therapies Host=services.canberra.edu.au Wonders of Alternative Medicine Host=gopher.adp.wisc.edu Web Servers Another very popular tool to search and retrieve the resources of the Internet is Lynx, developed at the University of Kansas. (The original tool, WWW, was developed at CERN in Switzerland.) This tool, like Gopher, allows the user to seamlessly search Web servers worldwide. A major difference is that the Web servers are based on hypertext or hypermedia. This allows one to embed in the original document references to other resources, for example, pictures, sounds, databases, programs or text files, and to connect to them by pressing a key. One note: the links are called Uniform Resource Locators or URL. If you type lynx at your prompt and then type the letter h, you can view help files that explain completely how to use URLs. Among the servers I identified with information on alternative medicine were the listed below. To connect to any Web server, type at your prompt lynx For example, to connect to the first server, at your prompt type lynx http://golgi.harvard.edu/biopages.html AHSL Nutrition http://128.196.106.42/nutrition.html Bioscience http://golgi.harvard.edu/biopages.html DHHS http://130.20.92.130:8001/esh/eh-40/eh-40.htm Drug Information http://kiwi.uwaterloo.ca/drug_info.html Health/Fitness http://bigdipper.umd.edu/health-fitness/index.html Health Law Studies http://lawlib.slu.edu/centers/hlthlaw.htm Health Care & NII http://iitfcat.nist.gov:94/doc/Health_Care.html Health Professionals http://nysernet.org/breast/profess.html Health Sciences http://www.med.virginia.edu/ Medicine Web http://www.medinfo.rochester.edu/pub/MedicineWeb.html MEDISTAT http://biomed.nus.sg/MSTAT/welcome.html Nuclear Medicine http://count51.med.harvard.edu/JPNM/TF.html NYU Med School http://www.med.nyu.edu/ResTraining.html Finally, alongside these resources, one should not neglect the range of information available from the National Library of Medicine. A recent issue (vol. 49, no. 3. May-June 1994) carried a description of their World Wide Web server, Gopher server and an onymous ftp server. Here is the information: HyperDOC http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ Educational Technology Branch http://wwwetb.nlm.nih.gov/ Natl Ctr for Biotech Info http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ NLM Gopher gopher://gopher.nlm.nih.gov/ NLM FTP ftp://nlmpubs.nlm.nih.gov/ Natl Ctr for Biotech Info (NCBI) ftp://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/