Integrative, Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Challenges for Biomedicine?
Special Issue of Health Sociology Review
Volume 17 Issue 4 December 2008
ii+106 pages ISBN 978-1-921348-01-3
Editors:
Hans A Baer
School of Social and Environmental Enquiry and
Centre for Health and Society, University of Melbourne
Ian Coulter
School of Dentistry, University of California at Los Angeles
School of Dentistry, UCLA; RAND; Samueli Institute
In response to the emergence of the holistic health movement in the early 1970s and the rising popularity of complementary and alternative therapies, a growing number of biomedical physicians and institutions have embraced complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), often under the guise of integrative medicine.
Whereas alternative medicine is often defined as functioning outside biomedicine and complementary medicine beside it, integrative medicine purports to combine the best of both biomedicine and CAM. Some social scientists have argued biomedicine has become more holistic as a result of this development, whereas others suggest it has embarked upon a subtle process of absorbing or co-opting CAM.
This special issue includes papers addressing changes in the health care sector associated with the adoption of integrative medicine or CAM. Authors were also asked to debate on some of the causes and consequences of this development.
Is this a reframing of biomedicine itself? An erosion of medicine's political, economic, and social authority? A response to managerialism, the demands of consumers or market pressure? An expression of rising legitimacy for CAM? A new professional strategy for biomedicine? Where might the push for evidence-based medicine fit into this equation? This special issue is also available as a course reader. Course coordinators are invited to contact the publishers for an evaluation copy.
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